Category: Animal Shelter Operations

Posted on

The Curse that Comes with Working in the Animal Welfare Profession

If you ever cross paths with a person in the animal welfare profession and you ask them what they do, you might face a rather long pause before they answer you.  The pause gives them time to decide if they are going to tell you their real profession or if they are going to make one up.

For some reason, announcing that you work with animals causes people to think that they want to hear about all of the stories associated with their pet.  People in our profession drown in pet stories.  Pet owners are more likely to tell you about their pets than to tell you about their children… probably because the pet is better trained.

It isn’t that we don’t want to hear about your pet, but after working day in and day out with pets, we already know all about pets and what your pet does is really no different that what any other pet does.  So the next time you come face to face with an animal shelter worker, instead of telling them about your pet, tell them about your last fishing trip… it will be greatly appreciated.

Posted on

So you want to Surrender your Pet

People have all kinds of reasons for surrendering their pets to their local animal shelter.  We have heard them all, well most of them anyway and they are usually bad reasons that come down to the pet either taking too much of your time or costing you too much money.  If you feel guilty about giving up your pet, you should.

Many animal shelters will try to talk you out of your decision, not because they think you can become a better pet owner, but because they are over crowded and may have to kill another pet to make room for your pet.  I want you to feel guilty as hell, so that you will do the right thing.  When pet owners come to the decision to give up their pet, they usually don’t back down from that decision.  An animal shelter will attempt to talk you out of your decision and they think they made a breakthrough when you walk away with your pet.  But, most of you will just drive to another shelter and try different answers when undergoing the next interrogation.

If you are going to give up your pet, then give your pet a fighting chance at getting adopted.  Many pets do not make it to adoption because their previous owners were too negligent to provide basic veterinary care.  Well in advance of surrendering your pet (usually 30 to 45 days) have your pet examined by your veterinarian and have the pet given all of the regular vaccinations.  Explain to your veterinarian that the dog may be in a long term kennel environment.  Giving your dog the vaccinations and giving the vaccines sufficient time to become effect in the dog will increase the dog’s chances of staying healthy in the kennel.  The only thing that might diminish the dog’s chances is that if the dog is a pitbull breed or a history of aggression.  Having your pet first sterilized (spayed or neutered) will earn good points with the animal shelter.

Pitbull are not necessarily a bad breed, it is just that the breed makes up half of the dogs in any animal shelter and many, if not most, apartment managers restrict the breed.  Many home insurance policies exempt pitbulls as well.  Due to the problems associated with the breed, an owner of a pitbull is a fool to not have the animal serialized.   There are FAR TOO MANY pitbulls and they are difficult for animal shelters to find new homes.

Finally, to increase the chances of your pet getting adopted, offer to pay the adoption fees for the new owner.  This little financial encouragement might be the driving factor of a person picking your dog over another.  Offer to share puppy photos, so the new owner knows that the dog had a real family and was not just picked up as a stray.

If you decide that the time is right for another pet… make sure that it is the right thing to do and that you intend to keep the animal the rest of its life.

 

Posted on

Pet ID Tags

It has always amazed me at the lack of identification that is found on pets running loose.  Pet owners go out of their way to make it impossible for animal shelter workers to locate them.  Although most jurisdictions require that pets (mostly dogs) wear a local pet license, few owners actually place the license on their pet.

In an effort to keep pets out of local shelters, many shelters provide free identification tags so as to return an animal back to its owner.  Even with free tags, it is amazing the number of pets that repeatedly return to the shelter without identification.  Fortunately, shelters have staff with good memories and can recognize a repeat customer.  But given the volume of pets that pass through the doors of an animal shelter, it is unreasonable for owners to expect staff to remember their pets… that is why ID tags are so important.

Cats are a different story.  Most shelters only return 11 or 12% of the cats coming into the shelter to their owners.  Cat owners just don’t go looking for their lost cats.  Like dog owners, they choose to not place identification on their pets.  But unlike dog owners, cat owners generally do not begin the search of their lost pet until way after the hold time expires at the animal shelter, so the cat is either adopted or euthanized by the time the cat owner begins the search.

Microchips are a partial solution, but cats that have been trapped by a neighbor are so freaked out inside the trap that the cat appears feral.  Most shelter personnel will only make a cursory scan so as to prevent the loss of their fingers.  It may be several days before the cat calms down enough to attempt another scan for a microchip.

Many shelters have only a 72 hour holding period for stray pets.  That isn’t much time to figure out that your pet is lost, if you are not paying attention.  This short timeframe is a perfect reason to keep visible identification on your pet at all times.

Every city and county that I have ever worked has the cleanest pets in the world.  The excuse for a pet not wearing a collar or tags is that “I just gave him (her) a bath.”  That excuse is getting old.  Very old.  And to be honest, judging by the mud on your pet, we don’t believe you anyway.

Posted on

Race to No Kill

The live release rate has become the number one statistic that governmental elected staff use to evaluate the performance of their animal shelter.  These folks are deaf to the obstacles that prevent a 90% live release rate, like their citizens breeding their pets like crazy.

One path to No Kill is to get your elected folks so worked up about saving all of the animals that you get them to make a declaration of No Kill.  That commitment now opens all of the doors to fund a solution.  Austin Texas is a good example as to declaring its intent and then being forced to build a new shelter and add new personnel to maintain their No Kill status.  They even experienced the side effect of citizens from neighboring cities and counties bringing their pets to Austin.  After all, if your want to feel good about abandoning your pet, take the pet to a no kill facility.

Most communities cannot afford to keep throwing money at their animal shelter to boast of being No Kill, so an alternate solution is to begin training your citizens to become responsible pet owners: to encourage pet licensing and spaying and neutering.

Pet laws should be geared to impacting the owners who allow their fertile pets from running at large.  Some shelters offer programs that reduce the reclaim rate of bailing your pet out of the shelter if the owner allows the pet to be sterilized.  Those shelters frequently demand that owners who continuously allow their pets to run loose without identification must microchip their pets.  The purpose of these laws are to force bad pet owners into taking responsible measures for their pets.

Posted on

Where Credit is Due

Every animal shelter has a volunteer who works from the comfort of his/her home computer using social media to move animals.  This person develops a gift of embellishment that portrays the animal in such light that anyone familiar with the animals would not recognize it as the same animal.

Not only do these folks misrepresent the animal, they want credit for all of the animals that have been placed as recognition of their salesmanship.  To them, it doesn’t matter that there is a high return rate, their job is to push animals out of the shelter.  Their placement rate is more important than finding a good permanent home for animals.

It is important for an animal shelter to recognize that having someone like this representing your organization is a detriment and although their enthusiasm is contagious, they place you at risk.  More and more animal shelters are being sued because volunteers or staff have misrepresented an animal to a prospective adopter.

Posted on

Anchor

I was working in a facility in Florida that evolved very fast.  We had become a shelter with a high release rate as the result of a Maddie’s Fund grant.  We were all feeling great.  I felt that I wanted to feel that experience/ again.

I accepted a position with an organization with a low live release rate and wanted rolled up my sleeves to begin the task of directing the evolution of that shelter.  I was unprepared for the anchor.  An anchor keeps a ship from moving.  Our anchor was in the form of a supervisory position within the organization and had been with the organization long before the organization was founded.  An anchor is an effective tool to keep the ship from moving in a storm, but in calm waters, it prevents the ship  from getting to its destination.

Nothing I could do could persuade our anchor from opposing change.  The anchor didn’t want volunteers in the shelter or rescue groups.  Although our board of directors wanted to see the organization move forward, they wanted this employee to be happy.  It was clear that I had made a mistake in taking this job.

I saw all of the clues in letters being written about this individual in the media, but maybe my ego got the best of me.  When taking on an organization, it is critical that you research the organization to make sure that the organization is ready to evolve, to move on.  I discovered that even one individual can prevent the organization from moving forward.

Timing is everything.  This organization would have to remain stagnant until such time as this person retires.  Do not take on an organization that is not ready for you.

Posted on

Good Ole Boys

I never ran into a “good-ole-boy” group until I worked in northern Florida.  I thought the world of the mayor, but his office wanted the mayor’s friends to be treated differently that anyone else.  I am a firm believer that every citizen should be treated the same, but you might be hired by a community (usually in the south) that subscribes to a system of good-ole-boys.

When taking a job, it is important for you to preplan as to how you will deal with situations in which the mayor’s office will call you and ask that you treat an individual differently than what your ethics dictates.

The program became so severe in this city, that they created an Ethics Office to help head off complaints.  I think when the budget got tight, the Ethics Office was first to disappear because it became an inconvenience for the mayor. As I see it, ethics is a lot like integrity, you either got it or you don’t and if you need to create an office to keep you straight, then your value system is all screwed up.

When dealing with ethics issues from those that hire you, you become very good and distinguishing between the letter of the law and the intent of the law.  Although you can be bullied into acting against your belief system, you can find ways to that those decisions uncomfortable for those who direct your activities.

For some mayors, it is hard for them to believe that some of us answer to a higher calling.

Posted on

Special Programs

It is always exciting to develop a community program, but some programs only work on the drawing board.  One of the local women’s shelter approached us to assist with the police department on dealing with incidents involving battered women.  That sound like a wonderful program, right?

The idea was that some women will not leave their abusive situation because of a pet in the household.  So the police would arrive and pick up the battered woman and her pets to take them to safety.  It was a feel good program for everyone; except for the pets.

When the program was first developed, I had to constantly rewrite the program weekly.  We needed a bailout clause because once rescued from the abusive situation, most of the pets were abandoned.  In the first case, the woman jumped aboard a passing 18 wheeler truck and was never heard from again.  That incident forced us to set holding times and create abandonment clauses.

Just because a program feels good doesn’t make it a good program.  I hate to admit it, but I have created similar programs in many localities, only to help one or two women.  Although the program always ended in failure, I felt it was worthwhile for the one or two women that the program helped.   And given a choice, I would do it again and again.

Special programs are a good idea, but it is important that when creating programs to help people, you need to look out for the welfare of the animals that are involved.

Posted on

The Problem with Microchips

Technology is usually a good thing.  From the beginning, microchips seems to be just that; a way to identify our pets without the worry of misplaced collars and tags.  But, at best, microchipping your pet is a poor secondary form of identification.  It is better than nothing, but not much better.  The fact that your pet is microchipped, is no excuse for failing to place  identification on your pet or to actually physically search for your dog..

From the beginning, microchip companies did not want to share their microchipping secrets.  One company even encrypted their microchips to prevent other microchip company scanners from being able to scan for their chips.  Then microchips began entering the United States from Canada and new microchip frequencies began to enter our market.  It became increasingly difficult for animal shelter to find the implanted chips due to the lack of universal scanners.  Even today, with universal scanners on the market, microchips remain unfound because of frequency issues.  The issue has become so great, that many animal shelters refuse to scan for microchips because of the difficulty of finding the chips.

Responsible animal shelters believe that if a pet owner is going to microchip their pet, then the shelter should, at least,  perform the scan.  Animal shelters should make every effort to return a pet back to its owner.  Because microchips are elusive to find, animal shelters will scan for the chip three times: upon intake of the animals, during the medical examination, and at disposition.  Microchips can migrate within the pet; I once found a microchip that had migrated from the injection site (in the shoulder blades) to the front paw, for this Great Dane, that was a migration of three feet.  It is so critical that every inch of the animal is scanned.   If you realized the number of microchips that are discovered just prior to euthanasia, you would understand why I state that the microchip is a poor secondary form of identification.

Animal shelter personnel get so very excited to find a microchip, only to find that few microchips are traceable.   The most common cause of an untraceable microchip is from microchips that are purchased from veterinarians, where the veterinarian expects the pet owner to register the microchip with a national registry.  Many veterinarians just sell and implant the chip, but fails to associate that chip with the owner and those that do, might purge the records of pet owners who fail to return for follow up medical examinations.

We are a mobile society.  Pet owners fail to keep current their pet’s microchip registration.  Some animal shelters have to go to great lengths to trace an owner through their microchip.  Originally, it had been the hope of our profession to find lost pets in the field and return them home before the owner even discovered the pet was missing.  That happens infrequently, but those occurrence are occurring even more rarely.

One of the most frustrating things that animal shelter personnel face is that pet owners with microchipped pets feel that it is not necessary for them to look for their lost pet because the microchip will guarantee the animal’s return.  With this mindset, the pet owners might have to wait a year or two to see their pet again.

Microchipping your pet is no excuse to be lazy.  Buy an ID tag, purchase your local pet license and be proactive in finding your lost pet.

Posted on

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.