# City Shelter Trying To Go No Kill Route



## Gharrissc (May 19, 2012)

Our city shelter is trying to get support from the community to make their new shelter no kill. There have been a few city council meetings about this and there is going to be another one on Tuesday. I haven't had the time to go to the meetings,but have seen in the paper that there is an outpouring of positivity from people so far. Based on some of the comments from locals though about going no kill, it seems like most people are in sort of a fairy tale belief that no kill solves everything. 

I just wanted to know if anyone's shelter in their city has joined the no kill movement and what issues came about? 

I really need to try to get to one of the meetings,but have a feeling that I will be a black sheep of sorts if I voice some of the cons about no kill. Not saying it's bad,but I feel that a lot of people think it will solve everything which is not true.


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## msvette2u (Mar 20, 2006)

It's a good concept. 
What are your concerns about it?


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## Gharrissc (May 19, 2012)

Based on what I've seen in the papers and on the news, the shelter will have a very stringent guideline when it comes to intake as far as the animal being very friendly when it comes in from the beginning. I know they aren't going to take aggressive animals,but some dogs/cats need a few days to acclimate in order to show their real personalities. The shelter does currently allow new animals some extra time to settle before they temperament test but according to the director, they are going to have to be near perfect when they walk in the door in order to be considered. I just feel that a lot of good animals will be turned away just because they aren't extremely friendly right off the bat. I'm not talking about dogs who are aggressive here. 

Our adoption center is no kill,but we also have a huge network of foster homes and most of the dogs are in those homes until they are adopted. 

The city shelter does struggle to get regular volunteers/foster homes and I imagine they will have to have a pretty small intake number. Like I said I probably need to go to one their meetings.


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## Magwart (Jul 8, 2012)

Go to the meetings, and try to put them in touch with the shelter director of the public shelter in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which is *open-intake *and currently transitioning to no-kill. We just marked the 1-year anniversary of going this route in Baton Rouge. It's been a rocky year with a steep learning curve, but it was a good decision and good things are happening. 

It started out _very_ badly. There was an initial debacle that's well documented in our city paper, which you can find by Googling. The mistake was trying to go "no kill" immediately with no plan. In a public, open-intake shelter where no dogs are turned away, dogs and cats started stacking up (we sometimes get 10-30 of them in a day). Within just a few weeks, they were overflowing, and the conditions became terrible quickly. However, that episode didn't last long, and everyone learned from that mistake. They started euthanizing again, and the goal became _reducing _the e, not eliminating it.

Now we have a (great) new director, and she's recruiting an excellent professional staff, and they have a realistic plan: no-kill will take at least 3 years (and for the record: in the national shelter parlance, "no kill" means "90% save rate"--there are likely always going to be about 10% who are too aggressive, psychologically damaged, injured, sick or otherwise beyond help). Any shelter that gets to 90% saved is understood to be "no kill."

For an open-intake shelter, having a plan means having all the pieces in place to get dogs out to fosters, rescues and adopters at least as fast as they come in. It requires an army of volunteers and community support--not just at the beginning, but forever. It means building bridges to private rescue groups so that they regularly pull dogs to get them out of the shelter and into private networks. It means recruiting foster homes (lots of them!). It requires an organizational structure for weekly offsite adoption events at a busy shopping mall, farmer's market or other location (and that structure needs to be able to determine which dogs are eligible and ready to leave, and which aren't yet)--and that means more volunteers. It requires an infrastructure to train the army of volunteers, too. 

My city's mistake was trying to become no-kill before the pathways were in place to get the dogs moving out of the shelter to adopters, fosters or private rescues as fast as they were arriving. We learned that building the pathways had to come first. We've now had _several hundred people_ go through the mandatory training program required to volunteer with the animals--they do everything from walk dogs to transport dogs to off-site adoption events to assist with transports.

Last Spring, I decided I wanted to be part of my city's progress toward a more humane future rather than just jawboning from the sidelines about the mistakes that had happened. I _love _the work I do there. 

I foster, and I volunteer as a breed advocate for the GSDs. They have entrusted me with access privileges to the impound hold area, and I photograph, evaluate, and get to know every GSD whose stray-hold is expired. If they are scared or stressed, I work with them. I will gladly spend an entire hour (or more) working with a single shut down, terrified dog in order to get coax it to come out of the kennel and walk outside with me. I haven't had a single one yet that I couldn't eventually reach--and then once outside in the fresh air, and quiet, it's almost like waves of stress roll out of them, and they slowly start opening up. This breed can be _so _sensitive (esp. after being separated from their beloved person), so they need someone to help them find their way back. The staff doesn't have time to do it, so I do.

I exercise all the GSDs, check out what training they may already have, make some decisions about the kind of homes they might do best in, and then I write bios, get them posted on Petfinder, sometimes advertise them on other sites (I've posted some here, too). It all takes about 3-4 hours a week--usually on a Saturday. 

I'm proud that we haven't had a GSD get euthanized to make space since I've been doing this. Lots of other volunteers work with lots of other dogs. We've collectively taken a shelter that had an 80-90% kill rate when the city operated the shelter, and reduced it in one year down to 40% over all, and a few months we've been as low as 20%. In the best months, only the very sick and aggressive dogs were killed (no adoptable dogs to make space). Not all months are like that, but the fact that we are seeing those months at all this soon is a good sign. Next year will be even better.

It's _not _a no kill shelter yet. Far fewer adoptable dogs are dying, and we're making progress. All this has happened while also raising the standard to adopt (screening more carefully).

We're also creating a nice sense of community for the animals. I constantly run into volunteers and fosters and "canine alumni" all over town--at the vet, play care, training, the dog park...and it's _lovely. _We're slowly changing the perception of what a "shelter dog" is. 

My training group's socialization field had at least five very happy GSD "shelter alumni" out today, and it was _awesome_. Those are some very loved dogs who would likely not still be in the world, but for this endeavor. 

Here's my best argument why I support my city's transition to no kill: my current foster dog. Faith is a friendly, smart, gentle, psychologically sound 18-month-old GSD with good nerves and nice drive. As a black dog, she would have been a euthanasia statistic under our old shelter system. I just have to look into those eyes to know this community enterprise is _totally _worth it!


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## msvette2u (Mar 20, 2006)

IME, looking around here, people have no idea how to actually go no kill.
Shelters have dogs piling up, because they are open intake, but the dogs are suffering for it.

I'd love to see it actually work but so much has to be in place before it does.
MANDATORY s/n. I'd love to see a law instated where any intact animal (even owned) is altered before release back to owner...or adopted out.

And working liberally with rescues and fosters is integral.


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## sitstay (Jan 20, 2003)

I think a lot depends on how many animals the shelter is working with, and how many community resources there are. A municipal shelter that has high intake numbers and little or slow outside help from private rescues just can't go the no kill route. The numbers are simply overwhelming. 

Look what happened in Las Vegas in 2007. What was the shelter's name? Lied? Lie? Something like that. They were an open admission shelter, had the animal control contract with the county and couldn't keep up with the numbers. Their no kill policy was heart felt, but poorly executed and thousands of animal suffered and died because of it.

The no kill movement is great, in theory. But in practice, not so much. For every dog that can sit in a no kill shelter indefinitely until adoption, there are countless others that will get dumped on the side of the road by owners who will not do the right thing and won't figure something else out when the no kill shelter won't or can't take their dogs because of health or temperament or simply no room in the kennels. 

For many (maybe even most) shelters who decide to go no kill, they aren't changing the reality on the ground in their community at all. They are simply keeping that reality from entering their shelter. That would be my question for the city council as they ponder the plan. What steps has the community taken to pick up the slack once the shelter goes no kill? Where will those animals who can't get into the no kill shelter go?
Sheilah


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