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.

What’s Possible
What’s Possible, Part Two

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.

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.

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.

How will we know when AWLA shifts its raison d’etre to saving as many homeless animals as it can from whatever its top priority is now (fundraising?)

1. AWLA will actively recruit foster homes for its long-tenured cats and dogs, not just its kittens and puppies.

2. AWLA will use its ample resources to pull more dogs from high-kill shelters, and then involve its dogs in community events on a regular basis.

3. Dogs like Leo won’t be stashed in off-view kennels for weeks on end, where adopters can’t meet them and volunteers are prohibited from walking them.

4. AWLA will implement Oreo’s Law.

5. And AWLA will commit itself to outcomes transparency for its homeless animals.

Here’s what transparency looks like at the Humane Society of Berks County in Reading, PA.

HSBC has fewer resources than AWLA, but it handles more cats and dogs and works much harder on behalf of those animals. And it encourages feedback and suggestions from its volunteers and constituents. If you spend 15 or 20 minutes comparing the AWLA and HSBC websites, you’ll realize that the motivations of the two organizations are fundamentally different.

AWLA could learn a lot from peers like this. Let’s hope its next Executive Director agrees.

As recently as a few months ago, volunteers (kitten fosterers for example) were told not to seek help or suggestions from each other when problems arose, but to interact exclusively with the volunteer coordinator — despite the fact that the volunteer coordinator was often unable or unwilling to respond in a timely fashion.

Suggestions or critiques about volunteer programs were discouraged, and the most experienced and knowledgable volunteers were periodically marginalized or dismissed — presumably because they might point out shortcomings in AWLA’s modus operandi.

It would be nice to think that the arrival of a new Executive Director will allow AWLA to reboot its culture, and that the new ED will replace any staffers too invested in AWLA’s traditional circle-the-wagons mentality. We’ll see. This week’s meeting with volunteers provides a glimmer of hope.

Other AWLA critics are hopeful too. Here’s an excerpt from the letter that Arlington-based animal-welfare advocate Debbie Marson sent to AWLA’s Board President last week:

…I wanted to let you know that AWLA released a dog, Justice, to me last week. He is a gorgeous German Shorthaired Pointer mix. He had been in the shelter for about two months and [redacted] contacted A Forever Home (ed: a local rescue organization) to see if we could take him. I was really pleased that she contacted us. It looked like AWLA stopped working with AFH about a year and a half ago. I’m glad that we are working together again.

FYI, Justice is doing great. My pack of dogs are teaching him the life skills he needs. I don’t want to jinx anything, but I do have a pending application on him and will let you know if it goes through.

Also, I want to applaud you and the shelter for some significant events recently. First, I learned that AWLA treated a heartworm-positive dog and she is now better and is available for adoption. She was offered to a rescue group (not AFH) several months ago but they could not afford her treatment. We asked if AWLA would even split the cost of treatment with us and Kay said “no”. The rescue group tried to find a way to take her and I had a friend who was willing to foster her, but it never happened. I just learned that AWLA kept that dog and gave her the treatment she needed. I was VERY glad to see that AWLA saved this girl’s life.

Second, it looks like the kennels have had a lot more dogs than last year. I watch the site regularly and last year it was common to see an average of 5-7 dogs a day there. Now it looks like about 12-15. It appears that AWLA is giving the dogs more of a chance.

I’m truly grateful for these steps.

Debbie

Whether AWLA’s recent willingness to listen to its volunteers and begin collaborating with rescue groups is due to the online criticism the organization has received, to the ongoing change in leadership, or to something else, it’s cause for optimism.

The potential for AWLA to emulate the country’s most successful animal shelters remains, and we hope AWLA’s Board hires an Executive Director who is committed to meeting the standard set by shelter directors in Tompkins County, Charlottesville-Albemarle, Richmond, Reno, Boulder and elsewhere.

Shadow came to the League in March 2009 because his owner could no longer care for him. He was five years old, thin, and had a chronic skin condition that caused patches of fur to fall out. After we shaved down his fur, began treating the skin condition, and neutered him, he became available for adoption. But few potential adopters took interest in him.

Finally, at the end of June 2009, an experienced chow chow owner saw Shadow on our Web site. She came in to meet him and fell in love with his mellow personality. Since July 2009 Shadow has enjoyed a stable and loving home.

So after treating Shadow for malnourishment and a skin condition, AWLA neutered him and put him on view for adoption. An experienced chow owner discovered him on the AWLA website, loved his mellow personality, and took him home. Sounds like a real success story, right? Then what’s wrong with this picture?

To me, the telling phrase in the blog entry is “few potential adopters took interest in him.” Why didn’t Shadow attract more interest? He’s a good-looking boy with a mellow personality and a backstory that would trigger sympathy from many adopters.

In my view, the key reason Shadow attracted few potential adopters is that AWLA makes essentially no effort to attract adopters for its dogs.

While DC-area rescue groups continually stage adoption events, promote their dogs on Craigs List, recruit foster parents (who then promote their foster dogs to their friends), and post flyers on neighborhood bulletin boards, AWLA settles for passively listing its adoptable dogs on its website — via the PetHarbor shelter-management software that does that automatically.

In a region with dozens of rescue organizations and shelters showcasing adoptable dogs, AWLA’s dogs are practically invisible. Day after day they sit in their cinder-block and chain-link kennels, awaiting a trickle of visitors. Luckily, a few dedicated volunteers work hard to exercise and socialize the dogs, but one or two brisk walks per day is no substitute for the attention and support AWLA’s dogs would get in foster homes.

Where is AWLA’s foster program for dogs that have spent too many days on view at the shelter, waiting for a home? It doesn’t exist. No wonder dogs like Shadow become depressed and less adoptable over time.

From the AWLA blog entry, we can infer that Shadow spent about 90 days on view at the shelter, which the entry implied was a long time. But look at three of the 14 dogs currently awaiting adoption at AWLA.

Braxton has been on view at AWLA for the last 58 days.

Cassie has been on view at AWLA for the last 84 days.

And Yali has been on view at AWLA for the last 108 days.

Don’t Yali, Cassie, and Braxton deserve the relief a foster home could provide, or the improved odds they’d gain if AWLA tried as hard to find adopters for them as other organizations with far fewer resources do for their homeless dogs?

Shadow was adopted after three months at the shelter, but that was attributable to luck. Maybe a little effort would be more effective.

That compares with 1,080 dogs and cats adopted from AWLA in its fiscal 2009 and 1,081 from the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria in calendar 2009. (The resemblance between the two AWLAs is eerie, no?)

Lost Dog has less than half the revenue and a tenth of the assets that the two AWLAs each possess, but it does have one critical advantage over its municipally-funded counterparts — a volunteer army of dog and cat fosterers.
Here’s a view.

While the two AWLAs confine their fostering operations to kittens, puppies, and an occasional sick or recovering adult, Lost Dog and other local rescue non-profits (like Homeward Trails and A Forever Home) use fostering as a strategy both to find homes for cats and dogs and to sustain and strengthen the organization. Dogs and cats placed in nurturing foster homes become healthy, confident, and affectionate over time, and that makes them good candidates for adoption.

When one of these animals finds a loving home, its grateful adoptive family often helps promote Lost Dog, and may end up volunteering for or contributing to the organization directly. Success breeds success, and Lost Dog can focus more of its effort on saving dogs and cats and less on soliciting donors.

By contrast, dogs and cats in a shelter environment often become depressed, anxious, less healthy, and emotionally unpredictable. This happens at AWLA despite the best efforts of volunteers to befriend, socialize, and exercise the animals on view for adoption. It’s just difficult for a dog or cat to show its full potential when it’s confined to a small kennel for weeks on end.

And shelter dogs and cats that don’t show well generally don’t get adopted. Ultimately most of these unclaimed animals are killed, much as Nico would have been killed without the intervention of rescuers. And that means the shelter doesn’t gain the advocacy and support that a successful adoption would have generated.

For the AWLAs (Arlington and Alexandria) a full-fledged fostering program for adult dogs and cats is a critical missing ingredient. As the rescue organizations will confirm, building and managing a fostering program is hard work, but it’s work that greatly strengthens the organization and improves the prospects for the animals in its care.

Most importantly, it’s what our homeless and friendless dogs and cats deserve.