As my ‘bump’ gets bigger and my attention span gets smaller, I’m winding back blogging to spend with my family and prepare for our upcoming arrival. I have a few ideas for posts that may need to be written before I can say goodbye for good, but for now I’m on a semi-break and look forward to rejoining all my animal advocate friends soon!
Thanks for reading and for all your support!
x
:)shel
I saw Mitch Schneider speak last year – he wasn’t a ‘rescuer’, but the upper management of animal control. He had realised that treating the community like the enemy and blocking rescue was leaving his pound full. He said “what kind of crap boss am I, if I’m forcing my staff to kill pets, be stressed out and traumatised – when there’s an alternative?”
This interview is awesome.
………………..
This week we hear from an animal control director known for his innovative, yet very common-sense business model for animal control, Mitch Schneider of Washoe County Regional Animal Services in Nevada. His approach serves both the public safety and the welfare of animal, which the traditional model of animal control treats as incompatible.
Schneider was initially skeptical that No Kill could work in Reno, but didn’t want the initiative to fail because of him—you can’t know it won’t work if you have never even tried it. He agreed to try and Reno, Nevada now has one of the highest rates of lifesaving of any community in the United States, saving all healthy and treatable shelter pets, which turns out to be literally 95% of them. His model represents a better future for animal control—one in which animals’ lives are saved, and animal control works collaboratively with the animal rescue community and the animal-loving public, rather than treating them as adversaries. As an added bonus, this results in a cost savings to the taxpayers, better relations with the public and an improved image for animal control, all the while remaining consistent with their public safety mandate.
He is a strong believer in collaboration, but also understands that collaboration isn’t always possible. That was one of the things he sought to change when he became manager of WCRAS. In the past, leadership at animal control refused to work fully and collaboratively with the Nevada Humane Society. Sadly, that is true in many communities around the country, as traditional animal control shelters simply refuse to collaborate with rescuers and animal advocates, throwing away opportunities to save lives.
He has said, “In some ways, I see part of my job as getting out of the way of people who want to save lives.”
Mitch Schneider will be giving a webinar entitled ‘Getting to No Kill as an Animal Control Shelter’ on January 28, 2011 and will also be presenting at the No Kill Conference in Washington, D.C., July 30-31, 2011.
Animal control in Washoe County, Nevada follows a very different business model from any other animal control unit in the country. How did it come to be so different from animal control across rest of the country and what key things set it apart?
My fundamental belief is that one should try to do the right things for the right reason. With that in mind it makes sense to work with all the stakeholders in the community to achieve the best for the community. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when everyone respects one another (even differences) and works together toward a common goal (keep your eye on the ball, so to speak).
Many animal services programs and animal rescue groups focus on the difference in their primary missions; animal services’ focus is public safety and animal rescue groups’ focus is saving animals. By doing so, they often fail to recognize the commonality in their missions and resist working with each other, either intentionally or due to conflicting policies and practices. As a result, some animal services programs may be overlooking a significant opportunity to reduce costs and increase community support.
Compounding the problem, many traditional animal services programs follow an approach that parallels parking enforcement. In some parking enforcement situations, a vehicle is towed and impounded and held until the costs of the towing and impound fees are collected. This makes sense when you have a vehicle that is worth a substantial sum of money. But it doesn’t work quite as well when you’re talking about an animal that, more often than not, has little or no monetary value. This approach to recovering costs of animal services often increases the need for more shelter space and increases the abandonment and death rates, which in turn increases the cost of the program. Additionally, this approach fails to recognize that most people consider pets to be a family member and therefore, the traditional business model does little to garner public support.
To reduce the likelihood of needing a larger shelter facility in the future, at a cost in the millions of dollars, WCRAS policy directs Animal Control Officers to make every reasonable effort to return animals to their owner instead of impounding the animal. In addition to checking the pet for identification (tags or microchips), officers will check lost reports and speak with area residents in an attempt to determine if anyone knows where the animal lives. Besides reducing shelter costs, this policy also reduces animal abandonment and enhances public support. A dog license is promoted as “Your Dog’s Ticket Home”; providing a true benefit for licensing increases voluntary compliance, further reducing shelter needs and the inherent potential for abandonment. In 2009, officers returned nearly 1,000 dogs directly to their owners without impounding them, reducing shelter space needs, stress to the dogs and their owners and reduced shelter staff and supply costs. Upon returning the animal to the owner all laws are enforced and warnings or citations issued as deemed appropriate.
Another traditional practice in animal services that increases abandonment is the policy of not allowing an owner to redeem their pet if they can’t pay all of the fees at the time of redemption. Continuing to hold the animal until all of the fees are collected simply increases the redemption fees for the pet owner and increases the need for greater sheltering space, reduces public support and increases abandonment and the [kill] rate and associated costs. To address this issue, Washoe County has established a billing system, which is only used with supervisor permission to ensure that this option is offered as a last resort; unpaid bills are turned over to collections.
Disclosure of statistics is an area that requires some mention. It’s not uncommon for agencies to be reluctant to publish their statistics. However, WCRAS feels that by publishing detailed statistical information citizens can see the problems that need to be addressed within the community; this type of transparency can also help in gaining the trust of the animal rescue groups.
A lot of time is spent lamenting the ‘overbreeding’ of dogs in Australia and its implications to shelter and pound intakes. “Irresponsible pet owners access puppies too easily and then abandon them” the theory goes, “if we could restrict the number of puppies bred each year, less would end up in shelters.”
Anyone who reads this blog, know’s I love to put a good sheltering theory to the test. And as it turns out, this one was pretty easy.
Australia has 3,754,000 dogs (source: Contribution of the Pet Care Industry to the Australian Economy 2006). But for ease of our examination today, lets look at just 1,000 dogs and their likelihood of entering a pound.
Less than 5% of dogs ever need the services of a pound or shelter (source: The National People and Pets Survey 2006). So from our model 1,000 dogs 950 of these dogs will not enter a shelter, and 50 dogs will enter a shelter.
From that tiny 5% of dogs entering shelters, 85% of these are entering the shelters as strays (lost pets), or 43 of the 50 dogs.
Just 15% are owner surrenders, or around seven of the dogs. These are our so called ‘irresponsible owners’. (Source: What Happens to Shelter Dogs? An Analysis of Data for 1 Year From Three Australian Shelters (2004))
So, of these seven dogs, what could we be doing to stop them being ‘dumped’ at shelters?
No Kill advocates call a euthanasia rate for untreatably sick or aggressive pets as less than 10%. We’ll call that one dog of the seven.
Leaving us around six dogs entering the shelter.
Let’s give the public the benefit of the doubt and say half of them have genuine reasons for giving up their pets. So we have
Three dogs who were surrendered for genuine reasons
and
Three dogs who were surrendered by ‘irresponsible jerks’.
So in a wrap up – as animal advocates we need to consider that we have low resources, are short of time and really want to be working on programs which show maximum impact. By these calculations, if we work on programs to restrict breeding and pet ownership, for every 1,000 dogs, we’ll be improving outcomes for just three.
What do these figures mean in the real world? Remember our overall figure of 3,754,000 owned dogs in Australia? Approximately 188,000 of these dogs will enter shelters; which *does* seem like a lot. But when you consider the overall percentage of 5%, it really does reflect a pretty responsible community. While just a little over 11,000 dogs (from nearly 4 million!) end up in shelters because of truly ‘irresponsible’ owners.
While there are groups who are working hard to make dog breeding more humane and ethical (and I’m not meaning to pass judgment on their work, as I do believe what they are doing is important), when we look at it purely from a ’shelter intakes’ point of view, our work should focus much, much less on this. In fact, it could and should be prioritised as the following:
Which is definitely not how we’re prioritising things, when we focus solely on ‘reducing breeding’ or ‘restricting ownership’ as the solution to pound killing.
With the dawning of a new year, we have the chance to reflect on the ideas of the past and take a serious look at what has worked and what hasn’t. It makes sense that things that aren’t working get ditched – though this is often easier said than done. Some of our most unhelpful mantras are so pervasive, so ingrained, that we do not even recognise them as on the table for change. Here are my top shelter mantras that we should all chuck out in 2011.
“As a society, we can no longer accept that thousands of animals in need of homes are being euthanased while profit-driven breeders continue to churn out puppies”
Pet shops are located in convenient places, where people go. Being visible the community attracts potential customers, while the animals are presented in clean, well lit and well ventilated enclosures, all at eye height to maximise impact.
They offer convenient opening hours, 7 days a week 9-5 and ‘late night trading’ nights where they stay open 7pm and later. These extended hours attract customers who work, who have families (and money to pay for lifetime care!) and who are looking for a pet.
But even if pet shops stopped selling pets tomorrow, we wouldn’t see a surge in adoption – with the hurdles of of the way locales of most pounds, the inconvenient opening hours, shelter environments that are loud and confrontational and the difficulties in getting pounds to work with their communities, rather than against them – it’s a wonder that any pets get adopted at all.
Banning pet shop sales isn’t going to lead to more adoptions – people looking for a pet will just move to other, convenient sources of pets; newspapers, the internet and BYB. The only thing that can increase adoptions and reduce the killing of pets in pounds and shelters is, is shelters acting more like pet shops. And whether or not this happens, is in no ones hands except the shelter management.
Rescue groups also have a part to play in attracting and retaining potential adopters;
“… brick and mortar shelters quickly adopt out the highly adoptable, small fluffy dogs. Small dogs languish in rescue organizations longer than shelters – mostly because of the restrictive adoption policies imposed by the rescues on the adopters. The rescue groups still don’t seem to understand how this perpetuates the cycle. Denying adoptions and/or overly restrictive adoption policies drives people to the very same pet stores that the rescuers abhor. Many dog rescuers are pet store protestors on the weekend. This doesn’t make sense to me.”
~ Wisconsin Watchdog ~
If a potential adopter is not suitable for a particular pet, spurning their ownership capabilities, or simply ignoring their application is not helpful. In fact its counter intuitive to our mission to get pets out of shelters and into homes. Have a list of high-volume local shelters on hand that you can return mail, so that these potential owners aren’t lost and can visit to find a suitable pet.
Finally, there are a lot of good, ethical reasons to ban pet shop sales. But their existence does not prevent No Kill. Nothing will change in pounds and shelters, unless we change the pounds and shelters. Right now in some organisations, if you send them 100 pets, they’ll kill 90 – if you send them just 10 – they’ll still kill 9… it’s not about numbers, but a belief that the best and most appropriate response is to kill.
There are changes that could and should be made TODAY that would make our community pounds a safe place for animals. And its about pound and shelters taking on responsibility and accountability for their performance.
“Every year, people leave the unwanted animals they have received as Christmas presents. An influx of abandoned or unwanted animals over the Christmas period has put a strain on the shelter.”
While shelters harp on about ‘unwanted presents’ every year, despite there being little evidence that gifts are at risk of abandonment, a much larger issue continues to be ignored.
Nearly every animal boarding facility in Perth is booked out.
While those in Canberra were booked out months ago.
Chief executive of RSPCA ACT Michael Linke said the shortage of short-term accommodation was causing major problems for the Canberra organisation.
”We’ve seen a tremendous increase in the number of animals being surrendered over the last few weeks,” Mr Linke said.
”This problem will probably go until mid to late January.”
………
”We definitely need more [suitable pet accommodation in Canberra] at this time of year,” Mr Linke said.
”It would stop people giving up animals.”
The same problem is national – running a pet hotel in the off-season can be unprofitable, and then suddenly during the holidays there is a rush of bookings. Simply saying “you should have booked earlier” does little to help owners who have Christmas commitments make other arrangements.
So there’s the problem – what’s our solution?
“A kitten abandoned for playing with decorations is among those pets dumped at shelters since Christmas. And the excuses are flowing in almost as quickly as the animals themselves, as frustrated shelter workers predict more animals will be dumped on their doorsteps by the end of January.”
‘Shelters’ should be a place of safety for pets; the giveaway is in the name, an animal shelter. In Australia we also call them ‘pounds’, but the premise is the same – a place where pets go, where they are cared for, while we work out what we should do with them next.
If a women’s shelter said “our shelter is full because of ‘irresponsible’ women”, there would be an uproar. “These women should have made provision to not end up at the shelter, they should have made different choices, they should have cared more”. These kinds of beliefs run counter intuitively to the shelter’s mission as a place of safety for victims.
It seems crazy to us now, but it wasn’t so long ago that women were blamed for domestic violence as ‘they brought in on themselves’. The approach of offering judgment instead of compassion, blaming clients for their situation, rather than working to empower them to find a better future is Victorian and desperately unhelpful. And yet, animal shelters – the place we beg people to take their pets if they can no longer care for it – offer condemnation, describe the reasons people give for surrendering as ‘excuses’ and work to alienate their public by painting everyone who uses their services as simply and arbitrarily ‘dumping’ their pets.
One of the key differences, however, between open-admission shelters that continue to kill animals in high numbers, and those that dramatically reduce shelter killing, is that the progressive shelters don’t waste time blaming anyone for anything; they find it isn’t productive, and it certainly doesn’t solve the problem.
Instead of looking for someone to blame or shame, they look for a way to help.
Instead of shaming a local resident who brings in kittens from her cat, progressive shelters convince them to bring in the mom so they can spay her for free. Instead of castigating the public for failing to spay or neuter their pets, progressive shelters offer free and low-cost spay neuters. Instead of punishing someone whose dog escaped from his or her backyard, progressive shelters knock on doors and talk to neighbors in order to return the animal to its owner without removing it from the neighborhood and subjecting it to illness and stress at a shelter. And instead of embarrassing someone who considered surrendering a pet to an animal shelter, progressive shelters offer solutions to common pet problems and seek out positive ways to help keep animals in homes.
~ Ryan Clinton ~
And if all efforts to keep the pet in the home have failed and the animal must be surrendered, then that owner must be acknowledged as doing exactly what we asked them to – bringing the pet to the shelter. Not letting just turning it loose or giving it away free in the newspaper. I’ve even heard shelters say that owners should be made take the vet to have the pet killed themselves to ‘teach them a lesson’ – how incredibly unhelpful to be of the belief that an unwanted pet should be immediately killed, rather than offered a second chance at an animal shelter.
“It seems inconceivable that as a society we have come to accept the killing of thousands of healthy companion animals for whom no homes can be found—rather than demanding proactive solutions by government to stop the unrestricted breeding and selling of companion animals.”
If shelters were full of puppies and pet shops couldn’t sell a pup, then ‘there are too many puppies bred’ would have some credibility. But this isn’t the case. The dogs entering shelters go there for many reasons, just off the top of my head;
The owner can’t find pet friendly accommodation – the owner can no longer afford the pet – the owner can’t find a solution to issues like digging, escaping, barking or inappropriate toileting – the pet needs vet care the owner cannot afford – the owner has holiday commitments and cannot find a pet hotel – the owner doesn’t really like the pet – the owner got the wrong kind of pet for their lifestyle – the owner’s relationship has split – the owner has a new child – the owner has less time for the pet – the owner moves to a place where less pets are allowed – the owner loses their house/job/spouse – the owner gets sick and goes into hospital – the owner dies – the owner doesn’t realise the importance of pet desexing and has an unwanted litter/behavioural issues – the owner neglects to go to complete basic training/socialisation – the owner’s circumstances change and the pet is no longer wanted – the owner’s neighbours are making it hard to keep the pet – the owner had unrealistic expectations of living with the pet type they choose – the owner has lost interest in the pet – the owner tried to fix a behavioural problem with or without professional assistance and made the problem worse – the owner thought it would be more like in the movies – the owner took the pet from a friend/relative and it was the wrong match…
Notice I’ve framed all of these as ‘owner’ problems – which they all are – so as not to be seen as ‘letting owners off the hook’, but by realising that all of these are issues with different solutions, we can see how naive the idea of shelters being full because of ‘too many pets being bred’ really is.
Solutions include pre-purchase education on choosing the right pet, early intervention with good training options, after purchase support, taking in pets in crisis situations, recognising that 15 years is a long time and sometime things just come up and other times people make bad choices (just like in human relationships) and that the relationship between pet and owner is never going to work.
But the biggest reason pets enter shelters? Because they’re lost. Surrenders make up just 15% of dogs entering shelters, with 85% entering as strays. Proactive redemption strategies including; putting photos of impounded animals up on the internet, returning animals with identification directly to owners, and eliminating hurdles to collection like breed bans, high impound costs and fines and inconvenient opening hours, are vital to reducing shelter killing. Getting pets home is core – reducing surrenders is very much a secondary role.
“Only by eliminating the indiscriminate breeding of cats, can we stop the the annual destruction of tens of thousands of unwanted cats and kittens by animal welfare organisations.”
Contrary to popular belief, it is not a “cat breeding problem” causing high levels of killing in shelters – it is a cat shelter intake problem causing high levels of killing in shelters. Presently, the only option we have for unowned and undomesticated cats is death in a shelter. Until we’re willing to provide services which keep cats out of shelters we will always see high kill rates. Why? Because without these programs (TNR, semi-owned cat desexing and free-roaming cat programs) which give options other than death for these cats, we will not see a reduction in killing. With enormous numbers of undesexed, unowned cats breeding in the environment, the only solution to cats being killed in shelters, is finding other solutions for these animals.
“If people were responsible, then perhaps we would need shelters less, and they would truly become safe havens.”
We cannot aim to ‘fix’ the community to the point where we will not need shelters. Nor should we aim to. What we can do is change the wider community’s regard for us and our animals. We can become a resource for pet owners needing assistance. We can change our policies to be proactive, rather than reactive. And we can follow the path of others who have found success by embracing their public.
If anything, pounds and shelters need to play a larger part in their communities. Shelters should be a place of refuge and help, providing a safety net for animals. Our mission, to serve our communities, and our community’s pets.
Yes, there will always be deadbeats and jerks, and yes, sometimes people could have done something sooner, or harder, or better. Who the hell cares? That’s just the reality of the world we live in. Our communities need to help people and animals as they ARE, not as we think they should be.
~ Christie Keith ~
… dropping unhelpful mantras and replacing them with progressive solutions?
I guess we’ll wait and see!
From Canada’s International Summit for Urban Animal Strategies…
THE OPPORTUNITY: Care for Cats and the Year of the Cat are the first major initiatives resulting from ideas born at the International Summit for Urban Animal Strategies. This national program will enable all sectors of the companion animal industry to work together to tackle the cat overpopulation crisis while raising the social status and value of cats in our communities.
Care for Cats is a long-term project that will respond to the cat overpopulation crisis by creating and distributing public education programs and support materials, encouraging community collaboration across all industry sectors; providing accurate resources; and collecting and evaluating national metrics to measure success.
We cannot expect to completely solve the cat crisis in a single year. Care for Cats was formed … Year of the Cat is its first project. Launch date: 5th January 2011.
2011 Year of the Cat (YOC) is a Canada-wide initiative orchestrated by Care for Cats that is intended to “get rid of the myths and give the facts!’ This program will bring a national time-line of events such as adopt-a-thons and an identification week. To facilitate the effective delivery of these programs online tool kits will be provided at no cost to community collaborators across Canada.
THE CATALYST: In October 2009, industry thought leaders from across Canada gathered for the 4th Annual International Summit for Urban Animal Strategies (ISUAS) to focus on the issue of cat overpopulation. Dr. Elizabeth O’Brien was invited to showcase a successful education campaign created by the Hamilton-Burlington SPCA in 2008. It was called The Year of the Cat.
Enthused by the support she received at the ISUAS and the Regional Summits, Dr. O’Brien was asked by delegates to become the spokesperson for a national campaign in 2011, which is officially the Vietnamese Year of the Cat. With the support of an impressive team of industry collaborators, Dr. O’Brien has since traveled across Canada championing the initiative.
THE STRATEGY: With the generous support of its sponsors, and the volunteer commitment of dozens of Canada’s most well-respected industry experts, Care for Cats is working collaboratively to:
YEAR OF THE CAT WILL EDUCATE COMMUNITIES ON:
However, what makes this Canadian program so much more exciting than anything we’ve seen in Australia, is those things absent from these progressive and outcomes based programs:
Australia needs animal welfare leaders to stop championing cat abuse and killing, and start lobbying to implement those programs that are set to solve our cat welfare issues.
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