Not all "hoarding" cases are alike
The most recent case in Mesilla is the most common example of animal hoarding and the detrimental conditions in which animals are sometimes found. It is obvious to us all that these animals must be impounded and rescued from these conditions -- where not even the basic minimal care for multiple (in this case hundreds) of animals are being met, and cruelty and neglect have been allowed to sadly flourish. These extreme cases point to persons with severe mental illness who are in denial about what they have been doing. It is a sad, horrible case where most of these animals will and have met their death already, but many more are attempting to be saved by our shelter putting out an emergency plea for foster home help. That is something ... it is refreshing to see our shelter do that. I urge anyone who can help to please do so!
That said, not all hoarding cases or groups of animals brought to the shelter are in these conditions. Case in point is another incident from about a month ago where the County AC department answered a "free kitten" classified ad in order to try to catch hoarders in the act. What they found in that case was 30+ cats in relatively good condition and care; however, that's not to say there was not a dire need for some kind of intervention, especially to stop the reproduction of these animals. In this case, the cats could have been saved a trip to the shelter--where some probably met sure death or caused the death of cats already housed at the shelter at that time--if other, creative options would have been exercised ... such as offering to spay and neuter all these cats and help the people find homes for their excess cats and dogs in exchange for pet number compliance from these people in the future.
In other words, a big part of working toward no kill is thinking and working outside of the normal box that animal sheltering and animal control departments have been operating under for decades. If animal control gave the shelter a heads-up about an incoming case, maybe the shelter could start working on creative problem solving before the animals even end up at their facility.
This excerpt is from an interview by Maddie's Fund with Bonney Brown in 2007; she's the director of the Nevada Humane Society, who talks about the benefits that can be reaped from both the animal control and the shelter adopting the philosophy and programs that lead to more lifesaving (see the list of programs and services at the left of this blog posting):
"Our relationship with the county is very good. The county program is very well run and they are in sync with our goal of achieving a no-kill community. Their field officers work hard to reunite animals in the field so they don't have to bring them into the shelter. For example, all officers are equipped with scanners to look for microchips and cell phones to make calls while they're out on patrol. If they pick up a dog, they post notices in the neighborhood. They work with the local TNR group, Community Cats, to return ear-tipped cats to their colonies and allow the group to do feral surgeries in their clinic two days a week.
Here's a great example of how we work as a team: officers gave us a heads up recently when they picked up over forty orange cats who had been abandoned in carriers in a field. They gave us time to plan for and tell the public about the "Great Orange Cat Rescue" and to line up potential adopters before the cats even came to our shelter."
When a shelter is led by people who embrace creative problem solving, you can see the possibilities, even with a hoarding case as horrendous as the new one out of Mesilla. I know I'd be on the phone all day looking for people who could help. You could call on all the horse owners and experts in the area as well as local farmers to see who would be willing to take and care for the livestock. You could be on the phone asking all area kennels and groomers and vets to provide services and support for the cats coming in. Ask them if they have space for one or two of these animals ... organize a clean-up the matted cats day ... etc. If you ask the community to come forward, especially with a personal call, you might be surprised by the response.
Since these animals came from Mesilla, call up the contacts you have there to see what land/space might be available for short-term housing as you assess all the animals coming in. You could also ask the county to provide their emergency housing space available on their Mark Van for a short period of time until you can find alternatives. If you look and work at it, you might be able to save all but those that are seriously too sick and suffering and who might be better off with euthanasia.
In other words, even the worst of hoarding cases should not put a stop to your lifesaving, no kill efforts, and those cases that can be resolved in the field should be handled just as creatively and supportively -- where animal control is still protecting people from animals but finds solutions besides impoundment/immediate death to make sure animals are protected and well-cared for as well.
I hope this has somewhat answered the comment from "cat hoarder".
Facing reality does not mean accepting defeat
A comment from "hardfacts" shows what operating from the standpoint of defeatism yields. This person says that even if you get to an 80-90% save rate, it means that we are still euthanizing 10-20%, and this person asks that I or we face the fact that euthanasia is reality and that it is time to deal with it.
I took great pains in a recent post to distinguish killing from true euthanasia, so I won't repeat all of it here. Suffice it to say that just because euthanasia and killing are still a fact we all have to face and live with, it does not mean that you give up and stop trying to reach the day where you make your community as safe as possible for all homeless animals abandoned or brought to the shelter. To do that (give up and shrug your shoulders) is to accept defeat, and I, for one, refuse to do that ... not without exhausting all alternatives first and never peacefully accepting death as the only option.
A shelter at the no kill status would not be killing any animal that can be saved. Yes, euthanasia would still be carried out and necessary for those roughly 10 percent of animals that come in either irremediably suffering from illness or injury and those few dogs that are dangerously vicious and pose a real threat to the community. In these cases, euthanasia is something I accept and support.
Nevertheless, "hardfacts", how could our shelter and community not be proud and happy on the day we actually see our save rate going from the 30-35% it has been in recent history to a rate of even 50%? That would be a milestone and something to celebrate. Now, we kill roughly 11,000-12,000 of the 16,000 to 17,000 animals that pass through our system each year. Imagine how good it would feel to drop that kill rate to 8,000 ... then 7,000 ... then 6,000, etc. To me, that is worth fighting for and working toward.
I'll let Bonney Brown, the 2007 Animal Shelter Director of the Year, end this thought for me with a passage from the same Maddie's Fund 2007 interview I quoted previously. Keep in mind that Reno and Washoe County, NV, are similar in population and growth to Las Cruces and Dona Ana County. When asked how the community was responding to their success in just one year, here's what Ms. Brown had to say:
"From January 2007 through August 2007, our community euthanasia is down 54% for dogs and 41% for cats. Adoptions are up over 70% for dogs and 100% for cats over the same period in 2006. Our live release rate for the first eight months of 2007 is 91.8% for dogs and 72.8% for cats. I think one thing helping to drive our numbers is that we now set monthly adoption goals. For August [2007], the goal was 800, and we exceeded it by three. Goals excite the staff, public, and volunteers.
The response has been overwhelming. We've gone from 25 to 900 volunteers and from 12 foster families to 220 foster families -- without really trying! People are flocking to join our lifesaving mission. We have new volunteer dog walkers and cat socializers. There are teams who post animals on craiglist.org and volunteers who make posters of animals needing homes. Volunteer carpenters have made new cat trees for colony rooms. One couple knits and crochets dog and cat beds -- they made 100 last month."
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
No Kill is more than "noble"; it's doable!
I have heard this phrase many a time in the past months from different people: "No kill is noble, but it can't be done here because of _____." Insert one defeatist reason or another, and this is the main obstacle to reaching something doable. It is being done at this time in places like Charlottesville, VA and Reno, NV--where save rates of more than 80-90 percent have been reached in the past year alone.
The closet comparison between homeless animal intake numbers in a very high growth area such as Las Cruces is Reno. I have picked up the phone and talked to Bonney Brown myself, the director of the Nevada Humane Society, and she is very responsive and willing to share ideas and information. She came to Nevada via Best Friends Animal Society, so of course she has that positive drive. She just sent me a copy of their Animal Help Desk manual, and I plan to use it as a basis for a pet help line program being developed here by the Humane Society of Southern New Mexico. Pet retention efforts are also part of the entire no kill solution base.
Oftentimes, shelter leaders will hear of another area experiencing success, and they will automatically look for the holes in what is being done or reported or for excuses of why it isn't possible in their areas and completely dismiss/distrust the success. Instead, you'd hope they'd do something uncharacteristic--like perhaps pick up the phone and talk to another shelter leader in another area experiencing success to see what they have been doing and how they are reaching that success. After all, if euthanasia is just a reality and given, why not take some chances and try things differently? What's the worst that can happen?
The comment received from "dog lover" is much appreciated, and I agree that spay/neuter is one of the most important elements in the No Kill Equation. Education for adults and children alike; research and programs to reach high volumes of surgeries; and providing many services and opportunities for people to do this very right thing is something we need to strive toward and start working on today. I have already written about this subject more than once in this blog, and it will be a main theme throughout. We'll explore all ideas regarding spay and neuter.
However, the reason shelters need an entire equation and many kinds of efforts and programs to help solve the issue is that the problem is not simple. If it were a simple 1 minus 1 equals 0 kind of equation, then simply raising awareness and volumes of spay/neuter surgeries would be the only answer. However, any shelter professional can tell you it isn't that simple. There are issues with animal behavior that people have no idea how to deal with (hence,the need for pet help lines and Dog Whisperer episodes!); there are issues with people's expectations of animals despite more and more animals being openly welcomed into homes as family members; there are issues of people being unable to care for their pets after loss of life or health; and there are issues of finding better ways to work with animal control departments and educate them as the first responders in the field that can work with and not against people at every turn. If the issue were that simple, a 10 or more step solution would not be necessary.
I am also sure that for shelter staff, euthanasia is never an easy decision nor an enjoyable/rewarding experience. You'd have to be sadistic for that! There is nothing more tragic than the fact that humane organizations are in the business of killing the very beings they are sworn to protect. My heart goes out to people who carry out this awful work. I suspect that is what causes so much conflict--it starts internally. Most shelter workers also do not receive the kind of emotional support and counseling they need.
This struggle dates back to the founder of the first ASPCA in America in 1866, Henry Bergh. He was a powerhouse animal savior and advocate of one. Although he tried to change and modify pound practices from the outside, he refused to accept the City of New York's offers to run the pound under contract because he deeply understood the great divide between protecting animals and the business carried out at the city pound. Though things have progressed since the days pound animals were drowned or clubbed to death in mass killings and the public spectacles of these killings, things have also stagnated in this country in the area of animal sheltering since humane societies took the reigns of pounds--which happened shortly after Bergh's death.
For a stark example of the stagnation, it is only now that shelter medicine has come out as a "new, emerging" field in the world of veterinary medicine. It has taken that long for shelter animals to merit that kind of attention, which is odd. After all, it is understandable that humane organizations took the reigns of shelters to provide better care and opportunities to homeless animals and more humane deaths, but what took so long to merit good vet care? Shouldn't the main priority be care of and lifesaving for these animals? Well, that is what no kill is all about. It even adds opportunities for behavior modification to help an animal become more "adoptable".
So, back to that hero of long ago ... Henry Bergh fought until the very end to not take over pound operations. This is from a passage of "Redemption", which offers a rich and detailed history of sheltering in our country: "He [Bergh] believed the ASPCA was a tool to champion and protect life, not to end it. He believed that its role to protect animals from people was fundamentally at odds with that of a pound. Bergh understood implicitly that animal welfare and animal control were two separate and distinct movements, each opposing the other on fundamental issues of life and death. To this day, that tension can be bridged somewhat, but never eliminated."
It is because this work is hard on the minds, hearts, and souls of shelter staff that you'd think they'd be on the path to exploring other alternatives. It is hard to explore or try other avenues, however, when leaders have accepted and completely internalized the myths of there being more homeless animals than available homes and that the best we can hope to do is save a few lucky dogs and cats and kill the rest. This is a vicious cycle for our shelters and their staff, which is why a complete change of heart and mind is required from the top down. Imagine the power of success, even in bits at a time? Imagine the power of negativity and defeatism being replaced by a resolve to accept and fight the challenges with a positive, can-do attitude?
That said, I end this post with an assurance to "dog lover" that this blog will definitely talk about the importance of spay and neuter and the various ways to raise awareness and volume of this important part of no kill. But, I also will pose challenges to our leadership to raise the bar for our shelter as I believe that despite the fact that killing may be reality for shelters, this should not stop us from trying to reach higher goals.
This reminds me of one of the monthly meetings our City and County managers were having with area animal advocates during the shelter's transition time and when they were first forming the newly-coined Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley (ASCMV). They kept assuring us that we'd be soon moving past the pound mentality our shelter had been operating under. At one point, they presented their mission and vision statements for the ASCMV. They said they had sat and discussed these with each other at length, and we anxiously waited to hear what they came up with, hoping for something progressive and visionary.
Instead, they repeated the same mantra ... that no kill was a noble idea of a very far, far future, but the ASCMV's mission was to adhere to state statues and laws regarding the running of an animal shelter. That was a real letdown ... at least for myself. I wanted to stand up and say, "With all due respect, Mr. Moore and Mr. Haines, but that is not either a vision nor mission statement ... that's a given."
Of course our shelter has to adhere to state and local laws. When and if no kill does oppose laws or the way they are enforced, it does so from a legal point-of-view. If your current laws, such as ours, are in opposition to implementation of good programs for feral cats--for example--you lobby and fight for the laws and ordinances to be changed in such a way to allow for these programs. If, for another example, your current laws don't allow the shelter to fix dogs and cats found roaming at large until they are in the system the third time and the owner comes to claim them and pay their dues, you work to change that law, too, so that you can automatically spay and neuter any dog/cat coming into the facility.
One by one ... one law at a time ... one attitude at a time ... one animal at a time ... you work toward saving more lives until you start to turn the tide. You don't just shrug your shoulders and say it cannot be done.
The closet comparison between homeless animal intake numbers in a very high growth area such as Las Cruces is Reno. I have picked up the phone and talked to Bonney Brown myself, the director of the Nevada Humane Society, and she is very responsive and willing to share ideas and information. She came to Nevada via Best Friends Animal Society, so of course she has that positive drive. She just sent me a copy of their Animal Help Desk manual, and I plan to use it as a basis for a pet help line program being developed here by the Humane Society of Southern New Mexico. Pet retention efforts are also part of the entire no kill solution base.
Oftentimes, shelter leaders will hear of another area experiencing success, and they will automatically look for the holes in what is being done or reported or for excuses of why it isn't possible in their areas and completely dismiss/distrust the success. Instead, you'd hope they'd do something uncharacteristic--like perhaps pick up the phone and talk to another shelter leader in another area experiencing success to see what they have been doing and how they are reaching that success. After all, if euthanasia is just a reality and given, why not take some chances and try things differently? What's the worst that can happen?
The comment received from "dog lover" is much appreciated, and I agree that spay/neuter is one of the most important elements in the No Kill Equation. Education for adults and children alike; research and programs to reach high volumes of surgeries; and providing many services and opportunities for people to do this very right thing is something we need to strive toward and start working on today. I have already written about this subject more than once in this blog, and it will be a main theme throughout. We'll explore all ideas regarding spay and neuter.
However, the reason shelters need an entire equation and many kinds of efforts and programs to help solve the issue is that the problem is not simple. If it were a simple 1 minus 1 equals 0 kind of equation, then simply raising awareness and volumes of spay/neuter surgeries would be the only answer. However, any shelter professional can tell you it isn't that simple. There are issues with animal behavior that people have no idea how to deal with (hence,the need for pet help lines and Dog Whisperer episodes!); there are issues with people's expectations of animals despite more and more animals being openly welcomed into homes as family members; there are issues of people being unable to care for their pets after loss of life or health; and there are issues of finding better ways to work with animal control departments and educate them as the first responders in the field that can work with and not against people at every turn. If the issue were that simple, a 10 or more step solution would not be necessary.
I am also sure that for shelter staff, euthanasia is never an easy decision nor an enjoyable/rewarding experience. You'd have to be sadistic for that! There is nothing more tragic than the fact that humane organizations are in the business of killing the very beings they are sworn to protect. My heart goes out to people who carry out this awful work. I suspect that is what causes so much conflict--it starts internally. Most shelter workers also do not receive the kind of emotional support and counseling they need.
This struggle dates back to the founder of the first ASPCA in America in 1866, Henry Bergh. He was a powerhouse animal savior and advocate of one. Although he tried to change and modify pound practices from the outside, he refused to accept the City of New York's offers to run the pound under contract because he deeply understood the great divide between protecting animals and the business carried out at the city pound. Though things have progressed since the days pound animals were drowned or clubbed to death in mass killings and the public spectacles of these killings, things have also stagnated in this country in the area of animal sheltering since humane societies took the reigns of pounds--which happened shortly after Bergh's death.
For a stark example of the stagnation, it is only now that shelter medicine has come out as a "new, emerging" field in the world of veterinary medicine. It has taken that long for shelter animals to merit that kind of attention, which is odd. After all, it is understandable that humane organizations took the reigns of shelters to provide better care and opportunities to homeless animals and more humane deaths, but what took so long to merit good vet care? Shouldn't the main priority be care of and lifesaving for these animals? Well, that is what no kill is all about. It even adds opportunities for behavior modification to help an animal become more "adoptable".
So, back to that hero of long ago ... Henry Bergh fought until the very end to not take over pound operations. This is from a passage of "Redemption", which offers a rich and detailed history of sheltering in our country: "He [Bergh] believed the ASPCA was a tool to champion and protect life, not to end it. He believed that its role to protect animals from people was fundamentally at odds with that of a pound. Bergh understood implicitly that animal welfare and animal control were two separate and distinct movements, each opposing the other on fundamental issues of life and death. To this day, that tension can be bridged somewhat, but never eliminated."
It is because this work is hard on the minds, hearts, and souls of shelter staff that you'd think they'd be on the path to exploring other alternatives. It is hard to explore or try other avenues, however, when leaders have accepted and completely internalized the myths of there being more homeless animals than available homes and that the best we can hope to do is save a few lucky dogs and cats and kill the rest. This is a vicious cycle for our shelters and their staff, which is why a complete change of heart and mind is required from the top down. Imagine the power of success, even in bits at a time? Imagine the power of negativity and defeatism being replaced by a resolve to accept and fight the challenges with a positive, can-do attitude?
That said, I end this post with an assurance to "dog lover" that this blog will definitely talk about the importance of spay and neuter and the various ways to raise awareness and volume of this important part of no kill. But, I also will pose challenges to our leadership to raise the bar for our shelter as I believe that despite the fact that killing may be reality for shelters, this should not stop us from trying to reach higher goals.
This reminds me of one of the monthly meetings our City and County managers were having with area animal advocates during the shelter's transition time and when they were first forming the newly-coined Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley (ASCMV). They kept assuring us that we'd be soon moving past the pound mentality our shelter had been operating under. At one point, they presented their mission and vision statements for the ASCMV. They said they had sat and discussed these with each other at length, and we anxiously waited to hear what they came up with, hoping for something progressive and visionary.
Instead, they repeated the same mantra ... that no kill was a noble idea of a very far, far future, but the ASCMV's mission was to adhere to state statues and laws regarding the running of an animal shelter. That was a real letdown ... at least for myself. I wanted to stand up and say, "With all due respect, Mr. Moore and Mr. Haines, but that is not either a vision nor mission statement ... that's a given."
Of course our shelter has to adhere to state and local laws. When and if no kill does oppose laws or the way they are enforced, it does so from a legal point-of-view. If your current laws, such as ours, are in opposition to implementation of good programs for feral cats--for example--you lobby and fight for the laws and ordinances to be changed in such a way to allow for these programs. If, for another example, your current laws don't allow the shelter to fix dogs and cats found roaming at large until they are in the system the third time and the owner comes to claim them and pay their dues, you work to change that law, too, so that you can automatically spay and neuter any dog/cat coming into the facility.
One by one ... one law at a time ... one attitude at a time ... one animal at a time ... you work toward saving more lives until you start to turn the tide. You don't just shrug your shoulders and say it cannot be done.
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