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Five months ago, an animal-welfare advocate in Tallahassee launched a blog called No-Kill Communities to track the progress that the No Kill movement is making in open-admission shelters across the country. This is a great idea, and I’m glad someone has stepped forward to provide a clearinghouse for the exchange of advice, encouragement, and data. Based on my first review of the site and my experience building ShelterWatch, I’d guess that managing the No-Kill Communities blog is practically a full-time effort. Its author deserves our thanks and support. One of the prominent features on her blog is an alphabetical list of No-Kill communities on the right side of the home page. And listed right near the top is Arlington, VA. Yep, that would be our own Animal Welfare League of Arlington, which was highlighted as a recent addition to the No-Kill ranks in this recent post and this post from August. A “live release rate” of 93% is great — if it reflects outcomes for all the homeless cats and dogs an open-admission shelter receives. But since most shelters use the Asilomar Accords statistics format to track and report their outcomes, there are two caveats to keep in mind. Ideally, these caveats should be adjusted for, to eliminate moral hazard and the undue influence that can be wielded by canine and feline escape artists. Moral Hazard If a shelter classifies more than 1-2% of its animals as unhealthy/untreatable, it’s likely that healthy pitbulls or mouthy puppies or orphaned newborn kittens or depressed adult cats are among them. So when I was collecting statistics for ShelterWatch, I included the euthanizations of unhealthy/untreatable animals in the live release rate calculations, assuming that the law of large numbers means that all shelters will receive roughly comparable proportions of truly unsaveable animals. Escape Artists Consider two open-admission shelters that both receive 1,000 cats and dogs per year. Citania serves a high-density community with apartment buildings and fewer escape artists, and Slowburbia serves a suburban community with fenced yards, open space, and more escape artists. | ||||
| Citania | Slowburbia | |||
| Cats and Dogs Received | 1,000 | 1,000 | ||
| Returned to Owner | 100 | 400 | ||
| Adopted Out | 500 | 200 | ||
| Transferred to Rescue | 100 | 100 | ||
| Killed | 300 | 300 | ||
| Live Release Rate, Asilomar format | 70% | 70% | ||
| Live Release Rate, ShelterWatch format | 67% | 50% | ||
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So in a community like Slowburbia, where fenced-in dogs and cats routinely escape and then are rounded up and returned, the open-admission shelter will have an artificially high live release rate. This collect-and-return service is important and beneficial, but at best it isn’t really relevant to the plight of homeless animals. At worst, it makes the shelter’s treatment of homeless animals look better than it really is. In this example, Slowburbia actually only received 600 homeless animals, and it killed half of them. While I haven’t seen the actual numbers underlying AWLA’s 93% live release rate, I think we can assume that Arlington looks more like Citania than Slowburbia. But the issues posed by moral hazard and escape artists are significant enough that aggregate percentages and results should be considered skeptically. All open-admission shelters should post their outcomes statistics in the complete Asilomar format, which allows viewers to assess these issues and adjust the results appropriately. | ||||
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
One year ago yesterday, Neil Trent joined AWLA as its new Executive Director. To mark the occasion, Arlington-based animal welfare advocate Debbie Marson sent the following letter to the Arlington County Board.
September 13, 2011
Today is a momentous day — Neil Trent started at the AWLA one year ago. And the animal lovers, animal advocates and the animals of Arlington could not be happier.
In his short tenure, Neil has significantly reduced the shelter’s euthanasia rate. He ended the fiscal year with an impressive 91% success rate for dogs and 85% for cats. But the 1st quarter of FY 2012 is even better. The success rate for this quarter is 95% for dogs and 91% for cats. For those of you who don’t know what the success rate is, it is the “live release” rate. This means, for example, that 95% of all dogs who entered the shelter between 7/1/2011 and today, came out alive. This compares to about 80% success rate for dogs in FY 2010 and 70% for cats. This is an amazing accomplishment in such a short period of time and one that Neil should be incredibly proud of. I know that I could not be happier with his efforts, dedication and results.
Neil has implemented many new programs and taken many steps in order to reduce the euthanasia. In addition to his new programs like, implementing TNR, adding a vet clinic and a new vet and waiving adoption fees for older cats, he has reached out to and embraced the local animal community. Not only has he met repeatedly with animal advocates, he has taken our suggestions and quickly implemented many of them. He has changed the shelter’s reputation to one of being friendly to the animal community and to being progressive and proactive in saving lives. I can now say that not only am I a donor but have encouraged others to support AWLA as well.
It is just a matter of time before the AWLA is the best shelter in the state. With the programs that Neil has implemented and the lives he has saved, he is already one of the top 5 shelters in Virginia. Recently a shelter director south of us was heard on the radio as saying, “We are not as good as Arlington yet, bet we are working on it”. It is nice to be the bench mark for others to aspire to.
Again, I’m beyond grateful for what Neil has done. He has saved hundreds of lives and has brought the joy of pet ownership to many Arlingtonians. Happy Anniversary and a HUGE thank you to Neil. Keep up the good work.
Debbie Marson
During the last decade, no one has worked harder than Debbie Marson to refocus AWLA on saving as many homeless animals as its impressive resources permit. Now Neil Trent is making Debbie’s hard work pay off, while raising the bar for other open-admission shelters in affluent DC-area jurisdictions.
The policies Debbie cites above (and others that Trent is implementing, like AWLA’s “Pit Crew” that works to find homes for well-adjusted dogs that other shelters routinely brand as pitbulls and then euthanize) lead to drastically reduced kill rates, or as in AWLA’s case, a kill rate approaching zero. And those results dramatically improve community support, which means more funding, more foster homes, more adopters, more volunteers, more animals saved. Everyone wants to be involved with a winner, and that’s what AWLA is becoming under Trent.
Are you paying attention AWL of Alexandria?
Montgomery County Humane Society?
Loudoun County?
Fairfax?
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
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It’s been almost two months now since Neil Trent joined AWLA as its new Executive Director, and some good things are happening.  AWLA found a home for Mya For starters, AWLA has taken tentative first steps toward marketing its on-view dogs. Three offsite events featuring adoptable AWLA dogs were held during the last two months. And AWLA seems to be discovering the potential of online marketing. They have yet to exploit Craigslist, but they did send out a broadcast e-mail asking recipients to help find a home for Mya, a young black dog with a bully-breed jaw who’d arrived at the shelter in April, gone on-view in May… and then spent five months waiting for a home. She was adopted in early October. And while we haven’t seen the outcomes data for the most recent quarter yet, daily observation of the dogs listed on the AWLA website suggests that fewer dogs are mysteriously vanishing a week or two after they first appear on the site. I won’t be surprised if the Q3 data shows that AWLA has stopped killing the vast majority of its pitbulls and other powerful breeds. Other promising signs: Trent has met with and listened to the advice of local animal-welfare advocates, many of whom have been repeatedly frustrated by their past interactions with AWLA. He has committed the organization to launching a trap-neuter-return program for feral cats, which his predecessor was unwilling to do. And he seems willing to expand the scope of AWLA’s foster program and develop more efficient ways of providing veterinary care for all its animals. So the early evidence suggests that Trent is trying to steer the organization in the right direction. A less encouraging observation is that he didn’t bring his team from Longmont Humane with him, which means he has inherited a management team steeped in AWLA’s traditional culture of selective disclosure and a circle-the-wagons mentality. Converting AWLA into a top-tier shelter (like those in Reno, Charlottesville, Ithaca, Richmond, Berkeley et. al.) would be a much easier task if he had a lieutenant or two who understood how these highly effective shelters work. If Trent chooses to retain the management team he inherited, AWLA’s recently released FY2010 Annual Report demonstrates the entrenched culture he’s up against. For example, the financial report states that for the fifth consecutive year, AWLA spent more money ($1.427 million) executing its responsibilities for animal sheltering and animal control than it received from its contract with Arlington County ($1.253 million). The report explicitly notes that “The League subsidizes this deficit (of $173,610) with its own funds.” As we pointed out in our Fun with Numbers series last fall, this is pure fiction. Correctly allocating the fees that AWLA receives from adopting out county-funded shelter animals would go a long way toward erasing this “deficit”. Instead AWLA classifies those fees as “program revenues”. Tuition from AWLA’s summer Kids Camp is another example of “program revenues” that is entirely dependent on the County-funded shelter animals. The bottom line is that Arlington County subsidizes AWLA, not the converse. Without its County Contract, AWLA would just be one of many local animal welfare organizations. Without a guaranteed revenue stream, it would have to spend more of its time pulling animals from municipal pounds and working to find them homes, because its fundraising efforts would depend on an expanding legacy of successful adoptions. Much less effort would be devoted to projects that don’t directly save animals, like Kids Camp, Canine Behavior Classes, and Baby-Ready Pets. Without the County Contract, AWLA would have to compete for volunteers, adopters, and donors based on its animal-saving performance, rather than rely on taxpayer funding and a captive supply of animals. For years, AWLA has essentially been a fundraising organization that uses its stream of animals to achieve its monetary goals, rather than an animal rescue organization that uses its stream of funds to achieve its lifesaving goals. If you don’t believe that, download AWLA’s tax returns from GuideStar and juxtapose them with its animal outcomes results. Or read this post. Or look at how AWLA’s profit of nearly $400,000 in FY2010 didn’t help increase the number of homeless cats and dogs it saved: | ||||
| FY 2010 | FY 2009 | FY 2008 | ||
| Homeless dog outcomes | 490 | 478 | 432 | |
| Adopted | 315 | 315 | 268 | |
| Transferred | 19 | 15 | 22 | |
| Died or lost | 3 | 7 | 6 | |
| Killed | 153 | 141 | 136 | |
| Live release rate* | 68.2% | 69.0% | 67.1% | |
| Homeless cat outcomes | 1079 | 1145 | 1125 | |
| Adopted | 692 | 765 | 735 | |
| Transferred | 33 | 3 | 4 | |
| Died or lost | 20 | 21 | 32 | |
| Killed | 334 | 356 | 354 | |
| Live release rate* | 67.2% | 67.1% | 65.7% | |
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* = (adopted + transferred) / outcomes Despite these uninspiring results, I’m convinced that Neil Trent has the motivation and ability to convert AWLA into the resource that it can and should be. But he’ll need plenty of encouragement and help from the outside the organization. | ||||
Posted in County Contract, Principles, Yardsticks | 5 Comments »
August 16, 2010
The Animal Welfare League of Arlington is pleased to announce that Neil Trent will join the organization as Executive Director in September 2010. Neil brings over 30 years of experience in international, national and local animal welfare. He is currently the Executive Director of the Longmont Humane Society in Longmont, Colorado.
Neil Trent has been at Longmont Humane for less than two years, but if he can convert AWLA into an organization like LHS, the AWLA Board will have dramatically improved the prospects for Arlington’s homeless companion animals.
Here are a few reasons for optimism:
- LHS took in 2000 cats and over 2000 dogs in 2009, compared with 1357 cats and 900 dogs for AWLA. So the new Director won’t have to worry about challenges related to scale as he addresses AWLA’s cultural deficiencies.
- LHS publishes its Asilomar animal outcomes statistics on its website, making it easy to track its progress in saving homeless cats and dogs. There is no more important step an animal shelter can take toward improving its performance.
- LHS has two staff veterinarians. AWLA could have prevented considerable suffering on the part of its animals and countless hours of unnecessary driving, waiting, and stress on the part of its volunteers if it had been willing to invest in in-house veterinary care.
- LHS extends its foster program to adult cats and dogs, not just kittens and puppies. AWLA’s foster program barely exists today.
- According to ShelterWatch.org, LHS ranks 5th out of the 49 open-admission shelters listed in its rate of dog adoptions, and 15th out of 48 shelters in its rate of cat adoptions. AWLA’s dogs need more help than its cats.
- LHS has a Tr/Eu (transferred/euthanized) ratio for dogs of .74, which is above average for the shelters listed on ShelterWatch. Its Tr/Eu for cats is an anemic .07, but that may be partially attributable to a preference for dogs over cats in Boulder Valley, Colorado.
And there are no doubt additional reasons for optimism.
We would be remiss if we didn’t applaud the effort that AWLA’s Chairman personally invested in the search for a new Executive Director. There have been other recent signs of progress at AWLA — a meeting with rescue groups in July, an offsite dog-adoption event last weekend — but nothing demonstrates a commitment to change like a comprehensive search for new leadership. We’re gratified and impressed that AWLA’s Board didn’t take the easy way out by hiring someone with prior connections to the organization. Instead they executed a national search and were able to attract a candidate with impressive credentials.
Next month the work begins. If Neil Trent is as capable as Bonney Brown at Nevada Humane, he’ll likely pursue many of the same steps that she outlines in her summary of how NHS became one of the country’s most effective open-admission shelters.
Given Arlington’s much smaller scale and AWLA’s resources, the job should be easier here. Welcome, Neil. We’re eagerly awaiting the start of the transformation.
Posted in AWLA Policies, Principles, Yardsticks | 4 Comments »
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In the first six months of this year, AWLA took in 210 homeless dogs. Here’s what happened to them, juxtaposed against how AWLA’s homeless dogs fared in 2009: | ||
| % of homeless dogs | Jan-June 2010 | Jan-Dec 2009 |
| Adopted | 59.0% | 66.7% |
| Transferred | 7.1% | 2.2% | Killed | 33.8% | 30.0% |
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The jump in the transfer rate is good news, but the other changes are in the wrong direction. The 71 homeless dogs that AWLA killed in the first half of this year were a mix of “owner-surrenders” (40), returned dogs (8), strays (13), transfers (2), and quarantines (1). Also among the 71 are “owner-requested euthanasias” (7) for dogs under five years old, including a one-year-old Rottweiler and a six-month-old pitbull. It seems likely that these young OREs were either misclassified or healthy enough to be rehabilitated. Of these intake categories, transfers had the best chance (88%) of making it out of the AWLA shelter alive, and strays had the worst survival odds (61%). Returned dogs had a low adoption rate but by far the highest transfer rate, implying that AWLA felt some kind of responsibility toward these dogs that it had previously placed in unsuccessful homes. Because an owner-surrendered dog is not “lost”, and because no statutory holding period applies for these dogs, most of them were never listed on AWLA’s website. Six dogs were killed within hours of being surrendered by their owners. The average tenure for killed owner-surrenders was six days. While AWLA killed strays at an even higher rate than owner-surrenders, it was compelled to post them on its website and hold them for at least five days first. Some were offered for adoption and listed online for several weeks. Others spent days or weeks hidden from adopters but listed on the “stray or found dogs” page of AWLA’s website. Here are photos of a few of the stray dogs that AWLA ultimately killed:  Josie  Mocha  Rasta  Neal  Pierson  Desiree  Stucky  Molly Josie: f American bulldog, 3 months Mocha: f pitbull, 5 months Rasta: m pitbull mix, 4 months Neal: m German shepherd mix, 5 months Pierson: m pitbull, 1 year Desiree: f pitbull, 2 years Stucky: m pitbull-lab mix, 8 months Molly: f chihuahua, 1 year If “pitbull” seems to be the most common breed of dog that AWLA kills, that’s only partly because AWLA receives a lot of pitbulls. It’s mainly because AWLA uses the term pitbull liberally to describe the dogs it receives (many mixed breed dogs are characterized as “pitbull mix”) and because AWLA kills almost all of the pitbulls it receives. During the first six months of this year, AWLA received 30 pitbulls. Five were adopted out. Three of these were puppies (and not really pitbulls), one was eight months old, and the lucky fifth was four years old. The other 26 pitbulls were killed, at an average age of 20 months. Eight of these dogs were 10 months old or younger. The youngest was only four months old. If this isn’t a de facto breed ban, it’s pretty close. AWLA doesn’t use its website (or Craigs List or Twitter or e-mail or any other form of digital broadcast) to attract prospective adopters and rescue organizations on behalf of the dogs it later kills. As mentioned in a previous post, this may be because pronouncing that “Josie’s last day is Wednesday!” would undermine the image it wants to project to potential donors. So instead Josie just disappeared from the AWLA website when she was killed on Jan 31, twelve days after she arrived at the shelter. And because AWLA doesn’t actively promote its on-view dogs, these dogs sit in their kennels for weeks on end while a trickle of visitors passes through the dog room. Meanwhile, local rescue organizations are staging and publicizing adoption events where the dogs in their foster homes can strut their stuff to the community. And as a result of their efforts, these rescue groups with a fraction of AWLA’s resources are sending more dogs home: Dogs Adopted Out, 2009 Lost Dog Rescue Foundation: 1,621 Foster programs, adoption events, publicizing the dogs it wants to transfer out — it’s not rocket science. Across the country, the most effective open-admission shelters implement these proven-successful tactics that AWLA continues to ignore. For Arlington’s homeless dogs, the clock keeps ticking. How many more will die before AWLA starts working harder on their behalf? | ||
Posted in AWLA Policies, AWLA Stories, Principles | 15 Comments »
On July 23, Governor Jack Markel signed Senate Bill 280, thereby establishing Delaware as a national model for the compassionate treatment of homeless companion animals.
Modeled on the No Kill Advocacy Center’s Companion Animal Protection Act, Senate Bill 280 amends Chapter 80 of the Delaware Code by specifying how animal shelters must handle unclaimed animals. The new language includes the following mandates regarding euthanasia and outcomes transparency.
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§8004. Euthanasia in Animal Shelters.
(b) Animal shelters shall ensure that the following conditions are met before an animal is euthanized:
(i) The holding period for the animal required by this chapter is expired;
(ii) There are no empty cages, kennels, or other living environments in the shelter that are suitable for the animal;
(iii) The animal cannot share a cage or kennel with appropriately sized primary living space with another animal;
(iv) A foster home is not available;
(v) Organizations on the registry developed pursuant to §8003(d) are not willing to accept the animal; and
(vi) The animal care/control manager certifies that the above conditions are met and that he/she has no other reasonable alternative.
§8007. Record Keeping and Reporting.
Animal shelters shall maintain records regarding the following information:
(a) Intake rate;
(b) Euthanasia rate including age, by animal;
(c) Number of adoptions;
(d) Number reclaimed by owner;
(e) Number transferred to other agencies for adoption;
(f) Number of spay/neuters;
(g) Number of animals in shelter;
(h) Records showing the number of animals that died or were lost/stolen;
(i) Records showing compliance with vaccination requirements; and
(j) Records regarding medical treatment provided.
The information in subsections (a) through (g) shall be posted to the shelter’s website on a quarterly basis. The information in subsections (h), (i),and (j) shall be made available upon request by appropriate authorities.
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For reasons explained in our posts on Oreo’s Law and outcomes transparency, this legislation changes everything. By prohibiting open-admission shelters in Delaware from killing homeless cats and dogs simply because that’s the easiest thing to do, and because that’s what they’ve always done, the Delaware Companion Animal Protection Act will save thousands of animals every year. The new legislation will energize Delaware’s animal-rescue organizations by making them indispensable to fulfilling the requirements of the law, and by highlighting Delaware as the model for other states.
As Delaware demonstrates during the next few years that the foot-draggers are wrong — and that sometimes euthanasia is the most humane choice is a false and self-absolving platitude when shelters kill healthy cats and dogs despite empty cages and foster homes — more legislation like Delaware’s CAPA is inevitable.
It will reach Arlington too, the sooner the better. AWLA should recognize that the future is not far away (in this case, only about 100 miles), and that within a few years its current practices will be both unthinkable and illegal. As AWLA searches for a new leader, it should insist on someone who will get in front of this wave rather than keep trying to resist it.
Posted in AWLA Policies, Principles | 12 Comments »
One of AWLA’s kitten fosterers recently mentioned to us that the shelter didn’t seem to be receiving the steady stream of abandoned kittens that usually begins in April and continues into the fall. We speculated that maybe the winter blizzards had taken a toll on the feral cat population, or that maybe years of spay/neuter efforts by the local animal-welfare community were starting to pay off.
Curious about this absence of kittens, we sent AWLA a written request for their intake and disposition records for cats and dogs for the first six months of 2010. Section 3.2-6557 of the Virginia Code compels AWLA to make these records available for public inspection. AWLA responded by sending the records promptly (probably because when they refused to do this two years ago, they were taken to court by the requester and ordered to comply by the judge.)
The cover letter enclosed with the records provided the helpful information that:
AWLA is a private non-profit corporation founded in 1944 to improve the welfare of stray, abused, and neglected animals in Northern Virginia. AWLA is not a public body under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) and, accordingly, nothing in AWLA’s response to your Request shall be deemed to subject AWLA to the requirements of FOIA.
OK, we get it; AWLA will fulfill the minimum requirements of the law when Arlington residents inquire about the welfare of the animals it is entrusted to care for with taxpayer funds — but don’t ask for any additional information. When we asked AWLA to include the animal ID numbers with the records, they refused. That makes analyzing the intake/disposition records much more difficult.
As we flipped through the records, the sad truth about this year’s crop of kittens emerged. Between March 28 and June 21, AWLA received 40 kittens that were younger than two months old. Three of them died at the shelter, and the other 37 were euthanized. How many of the 40 kittens were transferred to foster care? None.
During the same time period, AWLA also received 17 kittens that were two or three months old. Of these, one was euthanized and the other 16 were adopted, all within 10 days of their arrival at the shelter. The 16 survivors were old enough to be offered for adoption without spending time in foster care. Since losing one kitten out of 17 is a casualty rate that approximates the survival odds most rescued kittens face, we’ll give AWLA the benefit of the doubt with that kitten.
But when 40 out of 40 young and newborn kittens perish, the word “euthanization” no longer applies — especially when the vast majority of them were dead within hours of their arrival at the shelter. Some of these kittens may have been sick, but my five years of kitten fostering has taught me that most sick kittens recover fully with basic TLC and common medications — the very treatment that foster homes are happy to provide. I’ve seen ten-ounce kittens recover from diarrhea, vomiting, hypoglycemic shock, 107-degree fevers, and severe upper-respiratory infections. What they need is encouragement and a chance.
The likelihood is that most of the kittens entrusted to AWLA’s care were healthy. They just weren’t weaned yet, and they needed to be bottle-fed. That’s what kitten-fostering programs are for. AWLA has over 30 kitten fosterers, yet it couldn’t manage to actually utilize them when the need arose. Maybe because AWLA’s volunteer coordinator left her job earlier this year and the position remained vacant for a while.
Whatever the reason, AWLA’s indiscriminate killing of this year’s bottle-babies represents both a sickening step backward from prior years and an insidious betrayal:
- of the citizens who thought they were “rescuing” kittens by bringing them to the Arlington shelter;
- of the kitten fosterers who trusted AWLA to let them help save orphaned and abandoned kittens;
- of the donors who contribute based on the false belief that AWLA tries to save needy kittens;
- of AWLA’s own asserted mission to improve the welfare of stray, abused, and neglected animals in Northern Virginia.
One fosterer said that when she inquired about the dearth of kittens recently, a shelter staffer told her that they’d been referring kitten-finders to other shelters or rescue organizations. If that’s true, then AWLA wasn’t just betraying its constituents — it was also lying to them.
Clearly, the culture of stonewalling, elision, and path-of-least-effort at AWLA didn’t entirely disappear with the departure of the former Executive Director. When her replacement arrives, we retain some hope that the culture can be converted into one that truly values the lives of Arlington’s neediest companion animals.
That will take a leader who is willing to perform a thorough house-cleaning at AWLA. Any staff member who can rationalize AWLA’s recent treatment of bottle-baby kittens has no place in a well-managed open-admission shelter. Too many innocent animals pay for that ambivalence and lack of compassion with their lives.
Posted in AWLA Policies, AWLA Stories, Principles | 4 Comments »
In its fiscal 2009, AWLA received $1,229,326 from Arlington County to perform animal control and manage Arlington’s open-admission animal shelter.
But as a private non-profit organization, AWLA also raised $1,031,897 in charitable contributions. Along with depreciation of $91,162, those contributions resulted in positive cash flow of $500,000 in fiscal 2009. If AWLA were a for-profit organization, its EBITDA would be an enviable 20% of revenue.
What is AWLA doing with the $500,000 it generated in fiscal 2009 (or the $632,000 it generated in fiscal 2008?) Is the money being used to save more homeless animals?
Based on the number of cats and dogs that AWLA found homes for or transferred to rescue during the last four fiscal years…
2009 — 1,098
2008 — 1,029
2007 — 1,049
2006 — 1,073
…it’s hard to see a correlation between positive cash flow and improvement in animal outcomes.
Could that be because fundraising is AWLA’s top priority, and saving homeless animals comes second?
I think this is an endemic problem when a private SPCA, humane society, or animal-welfare league handles animal control and manages an open-admission shelter under contract with a municipal government. The league (or SPCA, or HS) views every action it takes through the lens of how it might affect fundraising efforts.
Animals successfully placed in adoptive homes help the league generate contributions by providing happy-ending anecdotes and adding potential donors (the adopters) to the mailing list. But animals the league can’t find homes for — and ultimately kills instead — represent failure. If publicized, these killings diminish the league’s reputation and undermine charitable contributions. So it’s no surprise that happy endings are trumpeted on the league’s website and in newsletters sent to donors, while euthanasia statistics are buried in obscure tables, if they’re provided at all.
Domino is off-view at AWLA. What happens next?
Why doesn’t the league encourage rescue groups to take animals that it can’t or won’t adopt out? As municipally-run shelters have learned, the best way to get the attention of resource-constrained local rescue groups is to broadcast an e-mail with a picture of Rosie the coonhound saying “Rosie’s time is up tomorrow! Can anyone PLEASE give her another chance?”
If the league did that, its fundraising appeals would trigger cognitive dissonance. They would be heard in the context of stories about death-row dogs being pulled from the league-managed shelter, rehabilitated by a rescue group, and adopted into a loving home… anecdotes demonstrating that due to their willingness to invest time and money, the rescue groups were succeeding where the league had failed. Why wouldn’t the charitable contribtutions then start swinging toward the rescue groups instead of the league?
Taken to an extreme, if rescue groups were given access to all stray and surrendered cats and dogs received by the league’s open-admission shelter, maybe a network of these groups would eventually pull all the healthy and treatable animals, leaving the league essentially responsible for animal control and euthanasia of the least adoptable animals. That’s a hard story to sell to potential donors.
So at some level, non-profits that handle animal control and manage an open-admission shelter have an incentive to hold rescue organizations at arm’s length, and to simultaneously hide statistics on the number of animals they end up killing.
By contrast, an open-admission shelter funded entirely by the municipal government doesn’t pursue charitable contributions, so it doesn’t have the same motivation to hide euthanasia statistics. It can blast out Rosie’s picture with the caption “only three days left!” to spur a response from rescue groups that already have their hands full.
Knowing that it has limited ability to find homes for the animals in its care, a municipal shelter has every incentive to offer animals to any rescue group willing to take them; each cat or dog pulled is one fewer animal the shelter has to care for, or eventually kill. The municipal shelter doesn’t have to worry that transferring an animal might also mean transferring a possible happy ending — and a possible stream of charitable contributions — along with it.
This perceived conflict between the goals of maximizing charitable contributions and saving as many homeless animals as possible is, in my view, a core reason that non-profits like the AWLAs of Arlington and Alexandria and the Montgomery County Humane Society save a much lower percentage of their homeless animals than organizations that collaborate closely with the municipal pound but don’t manage it — like Richmond SPCA and the Nevada Humane Society.
RSPCA and NHS don’t have to worry about killing unwanted surrenders or strays. Instead they focus on pulling as many animals as they can from the pound, then use proven programs like foster care and adoption events to find homes for them, on the assumption that if they save enough animals, the fundraising will take care of itself.
That seems like the best approach. Let the local government manage animal control and maintain the municipal shelter. And give a full spectrum of animal welfare organizations — from SPCAs and humane societies managing limited-admission shelters to foster-care networks to breed-specific rescue groups — access to all the stray and surrendered cats and dogs, so they can pull, nurture, and promote any animal.
Killing animals without giving anyone a chance to save them is inhumane. Every homeless cat or dog consigned to a shelter that kills unwanted animals at least deserves the chance to be seen by everyone who might be willing to help.
Posted in AWLA Policies, County Contract, DC Area Rescue Orgs, Principles | 3 Comments »
From the About Us page of the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals:
Founded in 2002, The Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals is a non-profit, public-private partnership of over 160 animal rescue groups and shelters working with the City of New York toward the day when no New York City dog or cat of reasonable health and temperament is killed merely because he or she does not have a home.
Since the Mayor’s Alliance was formed in 2002, the publicly-funded Animal Care and Control of New York City has received roughly 40,000 homeless cats and dogs each year — and managed to cut its euthanization rate for cats and dogs by more than half, thanks to its partnership with the Mayor’s Alliance.
According to ShelterWatch.org, NYACC and AWLA now have almost identical live-release rates for homeless dogs (68.8% for AWLA, 68.7% for NYACC.) But AWLA has made no progress on its live-release rate since 2006, so NYACC should surpass AWLA this year as it continues working toward the Mayor's Alliance goal of making NYC a no-kill community by 2015.
Here are links to the Mayor’s Alliance 2009 progress report, and a recent edition of their E-Newsletter.
The essential difference between organizations like those participating in the Mayor’s Alliance in New York (or in similar alliances in San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and elsewhere) and municipally-funded non-profits like AWLA (Arlington), AWLA (Alexandria), and the Montgomery County Humane Society is one of vision, commitment, and effort on behalf of homeless animals.
Open-admission shelters in New York and other forward-looking cities have it, while their counterparts in the affluent suburbs of Washington, DC still do not.
Posted in Principles, Yardsticks | Leave a Comment »
