Shelter article by Merritt Clifton

[Guest guest]

How far behind are you?

 

The measure of an organization's accomplishment is not

in what it has, but in what it does. So says Animal

People's Merritt Clifton in this provocative essay

originally published by the Trixie Foundation. Clifton

argues that providing animal control services, humane

education, or other programs often found at

full-service animal shelters are relative luxuries.

The real keys to saving animal lives are high-volume

adoptions, low cost neutering and care-for-life

sanctuaries.

 

HOW FAR BEHIND ARE YOU?

 

By Merritt Clifton

 

A fellow reporter from a major metropolitan newspaper

in a region with a notoriously high rate of killing in

the local shelters recently badgered me for an hour

trying to get an estimate of how far behind his region

might be in terms of getting to a rate as low as that

of San Francisco.

 

San Francisco finished 1999 with a dog-and-cat-killing

rate of just 3.9 per 1,000 human residents--by far the

lowest rate ever achieved in any big U.S. city. Many

southern cities are still killing dogs and cats at ten

times that rate, or even more.

 

This particular region doesn't just have a high

killing rate. It is also seriously deficient in

providing basic humane services. The handful of humane

societies serving the area are more than an hour's

drive away from each other. Many communities don't

even have a dog pound, let alone a full-service humane

society, low-cost neutering clinic, high-volume

adoption center to help rehome animals, and

care-for-life facilities for animals who cannot be

rehomed.

 

Elsewhere around North America, most regions had a

reasonably complete network of animal control shelters

by 1960, had full-service humane societies by 1980,

and began adding low-cost neutering clinics,

high-volume adoption centers, and care-for-life

sanctuaries by 1990, at latest.

 

I explained the history to my colleague, and then he

pressed me again:

 

" Well, are we 40 years behind? Twenty? Ten? What is

it? "

 

But history alone does not answer his question.

Consider a tortoise-and-hare race in which the hare

not only starts out at a much faster clip, but also

gallops in the wrong direction. By the time he circles

back to the right route, it may not matter whether

he's tired out or not: the tortoise might already have

finished.

 

The reporter's community may be starting well behind

other communities of comparable size in the U.S. and

Canada, yet it is not necessarily behind at

all--because so many of the older humane agencies have

galloped off the wrong way. Because animal control

shelters were killing animals by inhumane means, such

as shooting or gassing or decompression, or were

selling animals to laboratories to help meet their

operating costs, humane societies all over North

America bid on the animal control contracts, took them

over often at a net loss, found themselves having to

kill animals in high volume too, and tended to keep

quiet about it, as the donating public tended to

respond badly to finding out that the humane societies

were killing.

 

Because the humane societies were having to put their

resources into killing animals, they were not putting

their resources into saving animals' lives and

preventing unwanted pet births. And so the problem got

worse, and worse, and worse.

 

In New York City, the American SPCA was decades ahead

of most of the rest of the humane community when in

1895 it took over the city pound contract. But the

number of animals the ASPCA killed rose annually until

by 1962 it was killing a quarter of a million animals

a year.

 

It took a long, long time for the ASPCA and other

humane societies to realize that getting the numbers

down would require going in a totally different

direction. To New York City's credit, shelters there

are now killing only 40,000 to 45,000 animals per

year--still too many, but an enormous improvement. The

San Francisco SPCA pioneered the direction to killing

no healthy or recoverable animals by giving up its

pound contract in 1984. The city formed its own animal

control department, and the SF/SPCA focused on doing

low-cost neutering and adoptions. By 1994 it was so

successful that it was able to guarantee a home for

every dog or cat whose time had run out at the animal

control shelter.

 

That's why San Francisco now has the lowest over-all

dog-and-cat killing rate in the U.S.: it is the legacy

of 16 years of dedicated effort, moving the right way

finally instead of the wrong way.

 

Other cities have followed. Some whole states have

followed. But not all, by any means.

 

How far behind any location may be is not a matter of

when it acquired animal control, or a humane society:

it is a matter of when the people running animal

control, or the humane society, or who just plain

cared about animals, finally realized that if you

really want to solve the homeless animal problem,

eliminate strays, and eliminate all the problems that

go with them, you need to start with the low-cost

neutering clinic, the high-volume adoption center, and

the care-for-life sanctuaries. Those are the real

essentials. Conventional animal control shelters and

full-service humane societies are the relative

luxuries.

 

You need the low-cost neutering clinic, or an

equivalent service, because whether or not pet owners

are able to afford neutering, or are responsible

enough to do it, it still needs to be done. There are

all sorts of ways to make sure that it gets the job

done without cutting into private veterinary incomes.

In fact, such clinics tend to increase veterinary

incomes in the long run, because when dogs and cats

are harder to come by, people not only spend more

money to get them but also spend more money to keep

them healthy--and that's a truth verified by survey

after survey after survey.

 

The important part is, going in the right direction

means getting the animals fixed, via whatever approach

works. If you don't get the animals fixed, the problem

won't be fixed either.

 

You need the high-volume adoption center because in

order to find homes for adoptable dogs and cats, you

need to have them in a convenient location where it is

easy for them to attract people's attention, where the

animals can be happy and healthy and comfortable, and

can get whatever training they may need to succeed in

a home while they await adoption.

 

None of that can be done effectively in dreary rows of

steel-and-cement cages out beside the town dump. Going

in the right direction means treating these animals as

if they have at least as much value as inanimate

merchandise. Treat them as if they have value, and

people will want them. This too has been proved time

and again.

 

Finally, you need care-for-life sanctuaries as a

backup, for the animals who cannot be adopted out,

because many people will not bring a dog or cat to a

shelter if they think the animal might be killed.

Instead, they will abandon the animal somewhere " to

give him a chance, " or " give her a chance. "

 

People give up pets for all sorts of reasons. Whether

or not we think the reasons are " valid, " giving up

pets is a fact of life which must be accommodated. It

must be understood that many of these pets are given

up not because they are not loved, but because

desperate people feel they have no choice: they have

lost their job, lost a home, an animal has bitten or

scratched a child, the spouse hates the animal, the

landlord is threatening to evict them, or someone has

died and the pet-keeper is so depressed he or she just

can't cope.

 

If these people feel the pet is going to either find a

home or be well looked after at a sanctuary, they will

bring the animal into the adoption-and-care network.

The animal will not end up having " accidental " litters

out on the streets, further contributing to the

homeless animal problem.

 

Animal control agencies that can respond immediately

to nuisance animal complaints and act as a dog-and-cat

lost-and-found are very nice to have--but they are not

what it takes to end pet overpopulation and shelter

killing.

 

Full-service humane societies that can also provide

emergency veterinary care, do humane education, do

animal rescue, and investigate cruelty complaints are

also nice to have. Yet they are not what it takes to

end pet overpopulation and shelter killing either.

 

A community placing the first emphasis on developing

animal control agencies and full-service humane

societies, in short, is going in the wrong

direction--except to the extent that it may need some

agency to collect animals and tabulate statistics for

a while just to show the public the extent of the

problem that needs to be addressed.

 

If a community has no animal shelters at all, it may

have little or no public recognition of the immense

amount of expense, nuisance, and suffering that can be

prevented by reducing pet overpopulation and animal

abandonment. The homeless strays may be costing the

community hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in

post-exposure rabies vaccinations, working time lost

because of dog bite, automobile accidents caused by

swerving to miss an animal, time spent looking for

lost pets, time spent training replacement animals,

etc., yet because the total cost isn't being

tabulated, no one will see it as a lump sum and

realize that everyone is losing in the long run. The

homeless animals will be the biggest losers of all.

 

If a community has no animal shelters, it may truly be

behind-but only in the sense of not yet seeing or

being able to see what needs to be done.

 

How fast it can catch up is a matter of how fast it

can recognize what really needs to be done to beat pet

overpopulation and animal abandonment once it does see

the problem. Almost any community should be able to

get started in the right direction with a lot less

risk of making false starts now than was the case 10

years ago, 20 years ago, or 40 years ago. All that

time lost can now become time saved.

 

So, how far behind is your community, or any

community?

 

It all depends on when you get going.

 

About the Author

 

Merritt Clifton is the editor of Animal People, the

leading independent newspaper and electronic

information service covering animal protection world

wide, from animal care-and-control to zoological

conservation. This article was originally published by

the Trixie Foundation, a no-kill dog shelter in rural

Kentucky.

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