Exploring No-Kill Strategies: A Path to Reducing Euthanasia in Animal Shelters

In the quest to create more compassionate and humane communities, animal shelters play a pivotal role. One of the most significant shifts in recent years has been towards achieving “no-kill” status, wherein shelters aim to save the lives of all healthy and treatable animals. This ambitious goal is not only attainable but also essential in fostering a society that values the welfare of all its inhabitants, furry or otherwise.

Here are some key strategies that animal shelters can employ to move towards becoming no-kill facilities. I will expand on each of these strategies in the coming days:

  1. Comprehensive Adoption Programs: Creating robust adoption programs that focus on matching animals with suitable families is fundamental. This includes thorough screening processes, adoption counseling, and post-adoption support to ensure successful placements.
  2. Foster Care Networks: Establishing and expanding foster care networks can significantly alleviate overcrowding in shelters. Foster homes provide temporary care for animals, offering them a nurturing environment outside the shelter setting while freeing up space for other animals in need.
  3. Community Engagement and Education: Educating the community about responsible pet ownership, the importance of spaying and neutering, and the value of adopting from shelters can help reduce pet overpopulation and relinquishment rates.
  4. Medical and Behavioral Rehabilitation: Investing in medical and behavioral rehabilitation programs enables shelters to address the needs of animals with treatable illnesses or behavioral issues, increasing their chances of adoption and long-term success in homes.
  5. Spay/Neuter Initiatives: Implementing low-cost or subsidized spay/neuter programs can help prevent unplanned litters, thereby reducing the number of animals entering shelters in the first place.
  6. Collaboration with Rescue Groups: Partnering with rescue organizations and other animal welfare groups can expand resources and opportunities for animals in need, including specialized care and placement options.
  7. Transparency and Accountability: Maintaining transparent reporting on shelter statistics, including intake, adoption, and euthanasia rates, fosters accountability and trust within the community. It also allows shelters to identify areas for improvement and measure progress towards no-kill goals.
  8. Innovative Outreach and Marketing: Leveraging social media, community events, and creative marketing campaigns can help shelters reach a broader audience and increase adoptions.
  9. Volunteer Engagement: Volunteers play a crucial role in providing enrichment, socialization, and support for shelter animals. Engaging volunteers not only enhances the quality of life for animals but also strengthens community ties and support for the shelter’s mission.
  10. Alternative Placement Programs: Exploring alternative placement options such as relocation programs, transfer partnerships with other shelters, and working with breed-specific rescues can expand opportunities for animals that may not thrive in a shelter environment.

By implementing a combination of these strategies and continuously evaluating and adjusting their approaches, animal shelters can make significant strides towards achieving no-kill status. It’s a journey that requires dedication, collaboration, and unwavering commitment to the welfare of every animal in their care. Together, we can create communities where every animal has a chance at a loving and fulfilling life.

Contact ed@edboks.com for more information.

What “transparency” looks like by Ed Boks

LA Animal Services is one of the few, if not the only, animal control program in the United States that posts and updates a comprehensive set of statistics every month.

In fact, LA Animal Services was recognized by The Maddie’s Fund, the well known pet rescue foundation established in 1999 to help fund the creation of a no-kill nation, for our “transparency,” (i.e., the ready availability of information to the public). Of the over 5200 animal control programs in the United States and the tens of thousands humane societies and other animal welfare organizations, Maddie’s identified only five organizations for their transparency. LA Animal Services was at the top of this list and was the only municipal animal control program recognized.

Over the past six years, LA Animal Services has been able to boast one of the most impressive records for reducing pet euthanasia as a methodology for controlling pet overpopulation in the nation.

However, the first quarter statistics for 2008 have recently been posted, and they are disappointing. Despite the fact that live placements (adoptions, New Hope placements, and redemption’s) continue to rise to unprecedented levels historically and unequaled levels nationally (27,565 in the past 12 months for a 59% live release rate [70% for dogs and 44% for cats]) the euthanasia level also rose.

There are many possible reasons for this increase, and it is important that we understand all of them if we are to address and correct this anomaly as a community going forward.

Preface

1. I want to preface this discussion by reminding everyone that LA Animal Services’ statistics showing increased euthanasia and animal intakes during the first quarter of 2008 demonstrates that the department does not “fudge the data” or “manipulate the process to spin the numbers” as some critic’s suggest.

2. A second preface is to acknowledge that we at LA Animal Services are as disappointed with these results as are our critics. To have both the intake and kill rates drift upward in four of our shelters over the past quarter is not acceptable and we are taking steps to reverse this disturbing trend.

To be fair, it should be understood that when you normalize* the statistics and compare the intake statistics to the euthanasia rates in the first quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2007 there was only a 1.49% increase in euthanasia.

But no matter how you assess the numbers, everyone agrees that no increase in euthanasia is desirable, and we will continue to do everything we can to return to our long standing trend of reducing the killing. As was explained in my last message, we have hit the proverbial “wall” and will need the help of the entire animal loving community going forward.

(* Normalization is the process of removing statistical error in repeated measured data. For us, that means comparing the euthanasia rate relative to a fluctuating intake rate.)

3. Statistics do not exist in a vacuum and there are reasons why things are as they are, some reasons are more subject to department control than are others. The bottom line, however, is that there is a lot of work to do and hysteria, hand-wringing and finger pointing does not save lives.

Operational Circumstances

4. The department recently completed a major shelter management reassignment that has impacted almost every shelter. This was done to match the abilities of some of our most experienced managers with jobs we feel they can do well. These changes bring with them adjustment periods as managers learn about their newly assigned, and in some cases, newly opened facilities. These managers must determine how they want to tackle the many challenges they face in their respective shelters. I will soon announce the selection of a new Assistant General Manager of Operations who will work directly with them on these challenges. In the meantime, we started posting statistics by shelter in the hope this information will help the community better target its resources to help the animals most at risk.

LA Animal Services opened three new facilities in the last ten months and we are scheduled to open two more in the next three months. This is the fastest and largest increase of any City Department in LA City history and represents a significant learning curve during a time of intense scrutiny and fiscal instability.

5. Center managers are responsible for determining the optimal animal capacity for their shelter. This is a delicate balance between wanting to save lives and not wanting to be perceived as “warehousing” animals. If a shelter experiences a short-term surge in new arrivals, it could lead to an urgent need to move more animals out of the shelter one way or another. Unfortunately, when that doesn’t happen via adoption, New Hope rescue, or transfer of animals within our shelter system or partnering shelter systems, it’s likely to happen via euthanasia.

Adoptions and Rescues

6. There is a spirited national debate going on about whether shelters can “adopt their way” to No-Kill status. Perhaps we can, but it takes the whole community working together. As noted earlier, adoptions at LAAS shelters were also up during the first quarter of 2008 and, on a month-over-month basis, has been up for 12 consecutive months by a range of from 10-30% depending on the month. That is encouraging.

7. The numbers of dogs and cats placed by our wonderful New Hope rescue partners during the first quarter of ‘08 is up by about 5% over last year. This is also encouraging coming after a year in which New Hope rescue placements were down. Our New Hope partners do all they can to help save animals but sometimes they run out of capacity too, so any month when they are able to increase the number of transfers that is a plus.

8. Increasing animal adoptions can be a challenge when the most easy-to-adopt animals, such as puppies, kittens and purebreds, are scooped up almost immediately after they come into the shelters. That leaves the harder to adopt big and older dogs, so-called aggressive breeds and injured or sick animals that place a larger burden on the casual would-be adopter.

These animals must be marketed more aggressively and creatively, and the simple fact is that marketing is not our strong suit at the moment. We don’t have a public relations staff, nor do we have a volunteer coordinator at the moment to run our mobile adoption program. These tasks are being done on an ad hoc basis by extraordinary employees whose primary responsibilities lie elsewhere.

We’ve been struggling to find a new PR person and volunteer coordinator through the City’s civil service system and have yet to turn up a suitable candidate with the requisite experience and skills. We’ll keep trying to rectify that as soon as we can, and under the new pressures of a deficit-driven City hiring freeze. But in the meantime, getting the word out about our shelter animals, and getting those animals out to a wider public, remains a challenge. The importance of doing so, however, was made very clear by the 52% jump in adoptions at our shelters in the week following Oprah Winfrey’s April 4 show on puppy mills which featured our South LA Animal Care Center.

Ed Boks and Riester Advertising Agency
Riester Advertising Agency generously donated creative ads to Ed Boks in Maricopa County, NYC and LA

Riester Ad Agency has generously donated a series of adoption campaign ads that are downloadable from our website. LA Animal Services asks everyone with access to a neighborhood newspaper, LA animal blog, local or business bulletin board to help us get the word out by posting these ads.

Intakes

9. Some have pointed to the first quarter upsurge in intakes as indicative of some systemic failure on the department’s part, though they offer no logical explanation for this allegation. It is impossible at this point to know if this increase in intakes is a reversal of a long standing trend or if it is a short term reaction to the recent housing market collapse.

To be sure, we are dealing with a unique phenomenon this year – widely documented in the media – and that is the unprecedented upsurge in pet relinquishment’s resulting from families losing their homes to foreclosures or evictions. Many are finding that they are unable to afford to keep their pets or, alternately, to find a new home they can afford where pets are allowed. Intakes system wide were up by 447 animals in March 2008 over March 2007, and it makes sense that housing and economic displacement contributed substantially to that increase. People leaving their pets at our shelters have made that clear.  The solution: A House is not a Home without a Pet program.

10. Spring and early summer is traditionally a problem for every animal shelter, as kitten and puppy season brings more neonates through our doors. Hundreds of orphaned neonate kittens are taken in every month at this time of year, and they are the primary focus of our life saving efforts. They require careful around-the-clock care that no shelter is equipped to provide, either in terms of facilities or available staff. Dozens of staff members have, however, stepped up to take on the challenge of fostering litters of kittens, as have more than 100 volunteers, but if a dedicated caregiver can’t be found for an orphaned litter of neonate kittens, they will probably be euthanized. We don’t make excuses for this, and we welcome every new volunteer foster caregiver we can recruit.

It should be understood that LA Animal Services is not the only organization in the greater LA region facing this crisis. All our sister jurisdictions and rescue partners are inundated with hundreds of neonate kittens at the same time. We are all exhausting our limited resources as we take in, care for, and try to place these animals.

11. Apart from a regularization of the real estate market which is probably a number of months away, one thing that must be done to arrest this trend is to create more opportunities for people to keep their pets when they have to move. The local humane community has been discussing this issue and is working on ideas that might help, including providing landlords with financial indemnification against pet-related damage, and/or other incentives that would motivate them to allow pets in the units they own and manage. In a city where 62% of the residents are tenants, increasing the availability of pet-friendly rental units is an issue that deserves much more attention than it is getting.

Spay/Neuter

12. Some blame the upsurge in intakes on the department’s alleged failure to spay and neuter everything in sight, as if that were possible. But LA Animal Services is doing what it can, and may well lead the nation’s shelters in our commitment to provide spay/neuter as a tool for reducing pet overpopulation.

With the generous support of the Mayor and City Council, we’re able to fund upwards of 40,000 surgeries a year, using our two currently operational spay/neuter clinics, the Amanda Foundation and Sam Simon Foundation mobile clinics, and the network of private veterinarians who take our discount vouchers.

As this is written, we have a Request for Proposals (RFP) soliciting operators for the five new spay/neuter clinics nearing completion in our new shelters. Additionally, others in the humane community who have an interest in spay/neuter are preparing to launch new community-based spay/neuter efforts in and around Los Angeles.

The City’s pioneering spay/neuter ordinance that became law on April 8th is already generating a surge in voluntary compliance at various clinics. We have begun to gear up the information and enforcement efforts that will be needed to make the ordinance effective and we expect it to generate results that will become clear in our statistics over the next few years.

13. All that being said, we definitely have not been able to sterilize all the feral and stray cats we want. This is because of a lawsuit threat from an environmental group opposed to the Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) methodology used to control feral and stray cat populations in many locales, including cities contiguous to Los Angeles. This has forced LA Animal Services to undertake a lengthy environmental study process before trying to establish a formal TNR program here. This could take up to another year to accomplish.

In the meantime, valiant community TNR volunteers do what they can to manage the problem in various locations, but untended, unsterilized stray cats can undo much of the progress these diligent volunteers achieve. Many of the neonate litters we see come from this source and, absent the ability for the department to legally conduct TNR, unadoptable feral adults and their kittens will continue to account for hundreds, if not thousands, of the unfortunate cats who are euthanized every year.

Finally…

14. I don’t offer these explanations as excuses for what we have experienced in our shelters so far in 2008. We share the frustrations of the entire humane community when statistics don’t trend positive, and we should be held accountable when all is said and done. But our larger job is to bring the community together to find solutions, to seek new resources when the City budget can’t provide them, and find new ways to overcome the challenges few communities have ever had to face on the scale we see in Los Angeles.

We hope to soon gather the community together to try to do just that. We will continue to work on identifying new resources to help us meet the challenges posed by the spay/neuter law, make more homes welcoming to pets, get the word out that big, older dogs and neonate kittens make lovable pets, and provide adopters with the support they need to ensure that is the case.

If you would like to help, please consider joining our Volunteer Program or make a donation towards one of our many life saving programs.

A New Level of Transparency by Ed Boks

LA Animal Services is striving to make further advancement toward our No-Kill Goal, a goal we define as our being able to use the same criteria a compassionate veterinarian or a loving pet guardian uses when determining if/when an animal is to be euthanized. In other words, no animal would be euthanized or killed because of a lack of space, time or resources and only irremediably suffering and dangerously aggressive animals would be euthanized.

Over the past several years, the City of Los Angeles has demonstrated one of the nation’s steepest declines in dog and cat euthanasia. The dog and cat kill rate fell over 17% in 2002, over 10% in 2003, over 17% again in 2004, over 11% in 2005, over 6% in 2006, and an unprecedented 22% in 2007.

According to the industry standard for calculating a community’s euthanasia rate, in the year 2007 the City of Los Angeles euthanized 4.3 dogs or cats for every 1,000 human residents. This is one of the lowest euthanasia rates of any community in the United States with the exception of San Francisco, New York City, and a couple of smaller communities.

In the drive to achieve No-Kill there are two commonly recognized hurdles to clear. A community’s progress towards No-Kill will usually stall at the first hurdle which is typically found when its pet euthanasia rate is reduced to between 12 and 10 shelter killings per 1,000 human residents annually (12.5 is the current national average).

Once a community achieves this rate, further significant reductions are stalled until the community decides to implement aggressive spay/neuter programs to achieve further euthanasia reduction goals. With effective, targeted spay/neuter programs progress to the second hurdle can be steady. This has been the case in the City of Los Angeles.

The first hurdle becomes apparent after a community has successfully persuaded all the people who are likely to fix their pets to do so. The challenge then is to persuade the more difficult populations, which include the poor, the elderly on fixed income, individuals with negative attitudes about spay/neuter, people who speak languages other than English, and those who live in relatively remote areas.

To break through the first barrier, the City passed a differential licensing ordinance to provide an incentive and LA Animal Services developed free and low-cost spay/neuter programs for our community’s needy pet guardians, and free spay/neuter for the pets of our low income senior citizens and disabled residents, as well as cat specific spay/neuter programs. These programs account for well over 40,000 spay/neuter surgeries annually. We have two spay/neuter clinics in operation today and five new clinics coming on line in the coming months. In addition, the City of Los Angeles recently enacted a spay/neuter ordinance that requires all dogs and cats to be spayed or neutered unless they qualify for an exception.

Animal People magazine conducted a survey in 1994 that found transportation problems represent 40% of the total reasons why pets are not fixed, equal to monetary considerations. This data suggests that providing spay/neuter transportation or mobile spay/neuter clinics can play an important role in a community’s breaking through the 10 shelter killings per 1,000 humans barrier. LA Animal Services used this data to provide over 12,000 mobile spay/neuter surgeries annually throughout the City’s underserved areas by partnering with the Amanda and Sam Simon Foundations, along with the Coalition for Pets and Public Safety and others since the program’s inception several years ago.

The second hurdle in the drive to achieve No-Kill has been characterized as “the wall”. Few communities have been able to break through “the wall”. A community hits “the wall” when it reduces its pet euthanasia rate to between 5 and 2.5 shelter killings per 1,000 human residents annually (LA City further reduced its euthanasia rate to 4.0 as of December 31, 2007).

Hitting “the wall” tells a community it has come to the point where most of the animals dying in its shelters are irremediably suffering due to sickness or injury, demonstrate dangerously aggressive behavior, or are feral or neonate cats, or pit bulls.

Hitting “the wall” signifies the success of an earlier generation of effectively targeted programs. To break through “the wall” requires a new generation of programs to address the needs of special populations not met by earlier programs. The paradigm remains the same: comprehensive data collection, assessment, and implementation of programs targeted to meet the special needs of residual populations. Finding more creative and effective ways to reach out to the public and market the adoption of hard-to-place pets becomes an even greater priority, and keeping the spay/neuter programs humming along remains paramount.

Breaking through “the wall” requires taking the information-based targeting approach to the next level. As a result, LA Animal Services is focusing its efforts on saving at-risk animal populations on a community by community basis. To do this more effectively, LA Animal Services is expanding its monthly reports to show the adoption, New Hope, redemption, died, and euthanized rates in each of its Animal Care Centers. It is our hope that anyone interested in helping LA achieve its No-Kill Goal will have sufficient data to help us identify the problem areas and assist in developing meaningful programs.

LA Animal Services is committed to continuing the positive trends of recent years and doing even better in 2008 and beyond, and we recognize we need everyone’s help to do that. More information on how more individuals, groups, and communities can be involved in finding solutions will be coming soon.

Keep your eye on the No-Kill Goal by Ed Boks

Achieving No-Kill is not an easy undertaking. Everyday something seems to happen that could side track us from this goal. But LAAS has to be an organization that can walk and chew gum at the same time. We have to be both tactical and strategic. As we deal with each daily “crisis” it is important we not lose sight of our efforts to achieve our strategic No-Kill goal. As we progress, we will transition more and more from crisis management to managing and solving the problems resulting from pet overpopulation and irresponsible pet owner/guardianship, the problems that prevent us from achieving No-Kill immediately.

Let me remind everyone what I mean by “No-Kill”. No-Kill will be achieved in LA when LAAS is able to use the same criteria that a loving pet owner/guardian or a compassionate veterinarian uses to determine if an animal should be euthanized. In other words, when LAAS no longer kills healthy or treatable animals because of a lack of space or resources we will have achieved “No-Kill.”

So, is No-Kill even achievable? Well, the evidence suggests LAAS is at least moving in the right direction. During the first quarter of 2006 Dog and Cat Adoptions were up 9.36% compared to the first quarter of 2005. That represents 3,248 dogs and cats placed into loving homes in three months. That is the highest first quarter adoption rate in five years.

Dog and Cat Euthanasia was down 37.31% compared to the same quarter last year. That represents 2,091 euthanasias. Still too many, to be sure, but it still represents the lowest quarter ever. In fact, LAAS had three record low euthanasia rate months in a row, compared both with the last twelve months and when comparing January, February, and March 06 to the same three months in any other year (http://www.laanimalservices.com/Statistics.htm).

Big Fix: Part of this success is certainly due to our community’s aggressive spay/neuter programs, including Los Angeles Animal Services’ Big Fix programs (a “branding” developed by Best Friends Animal Sanctuary and used by LAAS with their permission) (http://www.laanimalservices.com/bigfixspayneuter.htm).

As a result of all our spay/neuter efforts, Dog and Cat Intakes were down 13.60% during this past quarter compared to the same quarter last year! LAAS has experienced a 24% decrease in intakes over the past five years. This is due largely because of The Big Fix Spay/Neuter Voucher Program for dogs and cats. LAAS shows a 35% increase in spay/neuter coupon redemption during Fiscal Year 05/06 so far compared to the first three quarters of Fiscal Year 04/05. We also see a 50% increase in Operation FELIX Voucher redemptions (for feral cats) during the first three quarters of Fiscal Year 05/06 compared to the first three quarters of Fiscal Year 04/05 (July – March respectively).

Also, we can’t thank the Amanda Foundation and the Sam Simon Foundation enough for the incredible work they do to bring spay/neuter services into our neediest communities. The thousands of surgeries they and their predecessors have done in mobile clinics over the last several years have made an important contribution to the declining intake and kill rates.

Plus One/Minus One: Another reason for the lower euthanasia rate this past quarter is a new program called Plus One/Minus One. This program compares the adoptions and euthanasia rates of dogs and cats on a day-to-day basis to last year. Comparing the first Monday of March 05 to the first Monday of March 06, etc.

Plus One/Minus One is an internal program designed to encourage staff, volunteers, and partners to place more animals and kill fewer animals every day compared to the same day (not date) as last year. These statistics more accurately compare apples to apples. This is how this program worked in our six shelters:

Plus One, Minus One –
YTD 06 Results Compared to January through March 05:

East Valley
Intakes: Down 10.68%
Adoptions: Up 18.36%
Euthanasia: Down 36.71%

Harbor
Intakes: Down 18.76%
Adoptions: Up 72.19%
Euthanasia: Down 5.60%

North Central
Intakes: Down 15.32%
Adoptions: Down 0.62%
Euthanasia: Down 32.51%

South LA
Intakes: Down 15.37%
Adoptions: Up 5.35%
Euthanasia: Down 31.99%

West LA
Intakes: Down 16.47%
Adoptions: Up 10.14%
Euthanasia: Down 15.56%

West Valley
Intakes: Down 20.80%
Adoptions: Down 6.55%
Euthanasia: Down 36.21%

Return to Owner/Guardian Program: LAAS also has a high success rate for returning lost pets to their frantic owner/guardians, four times higher than other comparable cities. LAAS returns over 4,500 lost dogs and cats to their grateful owner/guardians every year. (Still, we have room to improve, as shown by a recent incident when a dog’s microchip was not properly scanned that led to an unfortunate situation in which a person’s beloved pet was adopted by someone else. It was a graphic opportunity to impress upon staff that EVERY animal needs to be properly scanned for microchips, but one which I hope will not be repeated. It also highlights to the dog owning public the importance of a dog license as the primary form of identification.)

Seniors for Seniors Program: This program was implemented on February 1st, helping to improve adoptions by placing senior animals with our community’s senior citizens. To date over 100 animals have been placed through this important program.

Mobile Pet Adoptions: LAAS also doubled its off-site adoption and special event efforts during this last quarter, resulting in 661 adoptions compared to 224 in the same time frame last year and 29 off-site events this year compared to 15 last year. And we are looking to increase our efforts even further!

Keeping our eye on the ball is so very important. Will LAAS continue to be challenged with our own shortcomings? Indeed, we see that every day. People may become frustrated with what they perceive to be the slowness of our progress. But it took LA a long time to get into its current situation and it will take some time to turn it around.

But we are turning it around. Over the past five years LAAS reduced dog and cat euthanasia 45.7%. LAAS significantly reduced dog and cat euthanasia every year since 2002 (17.7%); 2003 (10.3%); 2004 (17.3%); and 2005 (11.1%). And with a 35% decrease in the first quarter of 06, I’m hoping this demonstrates we are doing everything we can to step up the pace.

But make no mistake, LAAS cannot do this alone. We need your help. If you would like to help LAAS and its many partners and friends make Los Angeles a No-Kill City I encourage you to consider volunteering to help our Foster Program or our Mobile Adoption Program. Donations to our Big Fix and other programs are also greatly appreciated.

Together we can make LA the safest city in the United States for our pets.