Category: Animal Shelter Operations

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Maintaining Herd Health

Most veterinarians will tell you that the best way to keep your shelter animals health is to keep your animal population low.  In today’s world of No Kill, people don’t want you to euthanize any animal, even aggressive animals, if you have open cage space.

Some foolish States created laws preventing the euthanasia of shelter animals if open cage space is available.  The people creating those laws did not have the common sense to understand that open cage space is necessary to provide for incoming animals.  Without open cage space, every new animal intake would create a crisis: do you force the doubling of animals in cages or quickly euthanize an animal to make space on every intake?

Maintaining an animal shelter at full capacity creates stress on the animals.  Animals under stress are more likely to get sick.  A shelter full of sick animals is a shelter’s worst nightmare.

Even shelter maintaining the proper population balance will hit a crisis when animals are dumped on them from natural disasters or hoarding cases.  Usually longer holding periods will be required during natural disasters in hope of the pet’s owner returning home.  Hoarding cases often require holding periods to get the owner through the court process; these holding periods could easily exceed months.

The business of animal sheltering frequently forces shelter management to move from one crisis to another.  When tough decisions are made to manage the overpopulation at an animal shelter, the No Kill folks will be first to criticize the those decision when they see an empty cage.

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Practicing Veterinary Medicine

I came across an article that a rescue organization was charged with practicing veterinary medicine in the aftermath of a natural disaster.  Tax funded organization, if property funded, have access to veterinarians.  Most animal rescue organization are not so funded.

In a world of pet owners failing to provide even the minimum level of veterinary care to their pets, I think we can give a break to experienced care givers who is trying to help the animals in their care.

The veterinary profession has engaged in legislation that assures their own survival by forcing pet owners to obtain specific services from them.  In some states, animal shelter workers are not allowed to simply vaccinate animals unless under the direction of a veterinarian.   The their efforts to secure their own profits, the veterinarians hinder the ability of animal caregivers to legally provide medical care for the animals in their care.

One example is the administration of a rabies vaccination.  Veterinarians have attempted for years to restrict access to rabies vaccines to veterinarians only.  They claim that only veterinarians are capable of maintaining the proper refrigeration of the vaccine.  In most states, only rabies vaccinations administered by a veterinarian is considered a legal vaccination.

If you vaccinate your dog for rabies yourself and your dog bites a person, the dog will be considered unvaccinated and your dog will have to undergo the quarantine of an unvaccinated animal.  Only a rabies titer test would be evidence that the dog had been vaccinated.

I don’t fault the veterinarians for drumming up business, they have earned it; but, it doesn’t justify going after our rescue partners who are in the business of doing good.

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Preparing for Hurricanes

One of the nice things about Hurricanes is that you see them coming.  But, in spite of the advanced notice of its arrival, we see emergency personnel rescuing pets that were abandoned by their owners who had evaluated.  This is clear evidence that the pet’s owners had no emergency plan.

Emergency plans are pretty simple, you plan early and you plan for your pets.  With all of the websites available to assist pet owners in making a plan, there is no excuse.  Disasters are rough on pets, especially the ones who have been left behind.

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Preparing for Disasters

One of the greatest outcomes of Hurricane Katrina was FEMA recognizing the importance of pets during a natural disaster.  FEMA opened the door to the creation of pet friendly shelters.  People like the idea of being sheltered with their pets.

Anyone who ever worked with me, knows that I always keep my vehicle stocked with supplies in preparation of providing an emergency response; but, all of the equipment in the world isn’t going to help you if you are not educated in handling disasters.  One of the best ways to prepare your staff and volunteers is to train them as Community Emergency Response Team Members.  The above link will put you, your staff, and volunteers into contact with other community members dedicated to keeping your community safe in an emergency.  If you are working on the public side of a disaster, you will be required to complete FEMA training; this training, is required for most public officials dealing with disasters.

Often preparation is the most important aspect of disaster preparedness; but cleanup after a disaster will aid in being allow back.  I was never able to make headway in opening pet friendly shelters in a county in north Florida because one previous attempt was made, years before my arrival, in a public school.  Whoever organized the sheltering of animals in the school left the cleanup to school personnel.  School administration never forgot that.

It is an important reminder that cleanup after a disaster could be the most important aspect of preparing for your next disaster.  In the Boy Scouts, we always had a rule to leave a campsite better than we found it.  It is a good rule to follow when closing down a pet shelter following a disaster.

One of the tragic part of being the midst of a disaster is the problem of pets being left behind when their owners evacuate.  Not only does a shelter have to deal with the influx of these abandoned pets, you have to deal with the pets that are turned away at sheltering locations that prohibit animals.

In our recent response to the epidemic, we have eyewitness accounts as to our nation getting a failing grade as to our preparation for a disaster.  In the Boy Scouts, our motto was Be Prepared.  Our problem as a nation is that we believe that someone else will assume our responsibility for being prepared.

Preparedness begins on an individual level.  People have looked a preppers as crazy people and now, in the midst of an epidemic, the preppers are saying, “I told you so!”  Being prepared is an ongoing thing, it is not rushing to the grocery store to buy out all of the toilet paper.  We as families should always be prepared.

Every community has a continuity of operations plan (COOP).  The  plan is for every department at the local, county, state, country to continue operations in an emergency.  COOP shows us our weaknesses and allows for us to make preparations prior to an emergency.

It is with great dismay that I watch on the news of the governments of New York screaming for the federal government to respond to their emergency.  The fact that New York is calling for assistance is evidence that they failed in preparation of an emergency.  Fortunately the Feds are there to bail them out, you would think they would show more appreciation.

I frequently get on my soapbox about people seeing themselves as victims.  Now I am seeing governments crying out that they are victims, only because they didn’t have the foresight to be prepared.  Soon, we will see this epidemic behind us, I hope that people see this as a lesson to accept their role in preparing for a disaster.

It is important that prior to a disaster that you stock up on resources such as first aid manuals, FEMA training, and other guides.  I was asked to make this guide available to you:  Natural Resouce Guide and Resources.  Have your staff attend FEMA and CERT training offered in your community.

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No Kill Statistics

I happened to see an article about an ex-employee, from one of the organizations that I ran, running to the media to be a whistle blower about how statistics were doctored to report higher live release rates.  With so much pressure being placed on shelter managers, the risk is high that statistics could be doctored to make the shelter look like it has a higher live release rate that it does.

Often, animal shelters might document that the relinquishing owner has surrender the animal for euthanasia because the animal is sick.  In most cases, the city/county will investigate and find nothing wrong; unfortunately time and effort has to be spent responding to a disgruntled (ex-) employee.

Due to people like this, it is becoming more and more important to track changes to animal intake records to show who is making changes after the fact.  When purchasing an animal shelter software tool, asked about change reporting within the software.

If changes are made to the software entry, they usually occur at the time of disposition (when the decision is made to euthanize the animal).  The intake entry is changed to justify the euthanasia.  Change reporting will track who made any changes to the animal’s record and when.  This reporting ability is equally important to show that no such change occurred.

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Volunteers

I grew up in a profession that believed that our volunteers were the life blood of our organization.  Our volunteers could give our animals the special attention that we didn’t have time to provide.

I continued to believe that throughout my career until I ran into a group of volunteers who believed that their service to the organization gave them justification to have the right to direct the operation of the animal shelter.

It was the first time in my life that I believed that our volunteers were a detriment to the organization.  Sure, they were providing valuable care to the animals, but they became a force of demanding staff to overlook the behavioral problems associated with dogs, so as to push the aggressive animals into adoptive homes.

The volunteers were quite effective.  They complained to the right people, made their plea to the media.  There purpose was to undermine the mission of the animal shelter staff to protect the public.

To some degree the volunteers were success in getting the power players to question the decision of staff.  But, mostly these players didn’t like to be embroiled in conflict.  They saw the volunteers as representing a caring community, instead of their role as inflicting their special interest.

This was a problem that was being experience State wide to such a degree due to the high frequency of aggressive animals being released from animal shelters back into the community, the State had to step in and enact laws to force shelters to tell the truth about the behavior of the animals in their care.

Volunteers have special interest, the care that they provide the animals makes them biased towards those animals.  Many volunteers will try to force a shelter to ignore the shelter’s mission to protect the community.  Our elected overseers should have the foresight to recognize this dynamic.

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Advisory Committees

The animal welfare profession is a very volatile profession.  So many things can and will go wrong.  For this reason, many communities will attempt to provide guidance through citizen committees.  These committees are given birth to help the animal shelter avoid mistakes by assisting the shelter in making policy decisions that reflect the morays of the community.

The hope is that the community members will reflect the values of the community.  Like most communities, people are appointed to these communities after volunteering to be placed on the committee.  Many communities have not figured out that the desire to serve on a committee is evidence that a person has a special agenda that may not represent the will of the community as a whole.

In one organization, it was so rare to have someone volunteer to sit on a committee, that County Commission members selected the first person to come along who wanted to serve.  The Advisory Committee became a group of special interest people wanting to steer the animal shelter in a direction that may not have been in the best interest of the community.

It is no wonder that in recent years that organizations became a place in which unreasonable chances were taken in trying to adopt aggressive dogs.  Staff were placed at risk trying to care for these animals.

For the most part, advisory committees are a feel good thing; allowing community elected leaders to feel that they are practicing good community engagement.  In order to keep the committee effective and providing a service to your community, it is important to know the motivation of the people wanting to serve on your committee.  The best advisory committees are ones that provide a balanced opinion.

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Owner Requested Euthanasia

Many animal shelters provide euthanasia services for pet owners.  I have had some pet owners give horrible reasons for wanting their pet euthanized; such as, “He is my puppy and I do not want anyone else to own him.”  For that reason, when I have worked in an animal shelter, I allow the owner to surrender the pet to the shelter.  Once the shelter takes ownership of the pet, we decide if the euthanasia request is reasonable.

I have had owners wanting to argue with me.  I have explained that they have the option to take their business to their own veterinarian.  Although my shelter exists to service the community, I felt that I had an obligation to protect pets from outrageous owners.

I’ve always tried to maintain a holding period for pet owners to cool off or time for other family members to become aware of the surrender and be able to reclaim their pet that was surrendered in anger.

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Controlling Disease

One of the greatest challenges that we have is to control disease in our animal shelter.  The problem begins with a community that fails to vaccinate their pets and allows them to roam to deposit or collect viruses in the community.  The animals are then brought to the animal shelter.

Most animal shelters vaccinate pets on intake.  The problem is that it takes weeks for the vaccine to take effect.  In that time, the animal can be exposed to other pets entering the shelter to spread of collect disease to or from those animals.

The greatest vector for disease in the shelter is people.  If staff does not take the proper precautions, they may spread disease from animal to animal while cleaning or feeding their animals.  Allowing the public to come in and view animals is the greatest mechanism for spreading disease throughout the shelter; no matter how we instruct our citizens to not touch the animals, they cannot control themselves and feel the need to touch one animal after another, becoming the greatest vector for spreading disease within a shelter.

I often encourage people wanting to surrender their pets to wait until their pet has been fully vaccinated for 30 days, so as to allow the vaccinations to take hold and offer the animal some protection from entering the shelter.

It is a good idea to not move animals around within the shelter.  There is nothing worse that to experience an outbreak in your shelter to find that the carrier of the disease had been moved previously throughout the shelter exposing other animals.  Outbreaks are the most common in shelter that operate at capacity or beyond capacity.  Managing the shelter population aids in managing disease.

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How long do you hold an animal.

Early in my career, I worked out a deal with the local newspaper to accept my photographs of animals that I had in the shelter.  It was not uncommon for me to run the same animals week after week in hopes of finding a home for that animal.

I was approached by the Police Chief claiming that one of the City Council had noted that he was seeing animals listed week after week; he saw that as evidence that I was not “cleaning house.”  The Chief ordered that I euthanize any animal that had been in the shelter over two weeks.

Today, people get upset if your are thinking of euthanizing an animal that has been in the shelter months or years.  Clearly things have changed.  The decision to hold an animal depends of many things: your holding space, the chances of adoption for that animal, the mental and physical condition of the animal, the ability to provide diversions for the animal (long walks, socializing, etc.).  Just as it is inhumane to kill an animal prematurely, it is just as inhumane to keep an animal caged its entire life.