In Part 2 of a six-part series exploring what it would take to stop euthanizing healthy, behaviorally sound animals and ensure a home for every dog and cat, Animal Sheltering examines the disparities among communities rich and poor, urban and rural, animal-friendly and not-so-animal-friendly. Exploring their goals for the future, shelters are emphasizing the importance of assessing the needs of human and animal populations, tailoring services toward those needs, and ensuring that animal comfort and care is not sacrificed along the way to the proverbial paradise.

In Part 3, we’ll bring you ideas for laying the groundwork of a good shelter, gleaned from interviews with people all over the country who have managed to procure a healthy dose of government funds and garner support from their communities through effective outreach strategies.

In case you missed Part 1, “We’re All in This Together,” Animal Sheltering explored the dynamics behind the debates over euthanasia and profiled groups that are working hard to bridge the philosophical gaps that have divided the movement for so long. If you didn’t receive your copy of the January-February issue that included this article, or if you would like extra copies to distribute to reporters or other members of your community, contact us at 202-452-1100; asm@hsus.org.

Last year in northern California, the Marin Humane Society and local animal activists were fighting to save off-leash areas for canines and their two-legged companions. In media reports, Web postings, and petitions regarding “off-leash dog rights,” they touted the importance of providing exercise to stave off aggression, curb anxiety, and enhance the relationship between pets and their people. At the same time, the nearby San Francisco SPCA was making similar arguments in its community, leading the charge to preserve pieces of city and national parklands as doggie playgrounds.

Meanwhile, a continent and another world away, an animal group in Taylor County, West Virginia, was struggling to convince local officials of the need to connect the local “pound” to a running water line. And in the neighboring state of Virginia, officials in another county were questioning why shelters should have heat; after all, they reasoned, it’s only natural for animals to live outdoors.

The dogs and cats in all four communities are lucky enough to have caring, humane people working to ensure better living conditions for both owned and homeless animals. In small towns and big cities across the United States, advocates like these are responding to the specific needs of animals and people in their regions. But while some operate in places so advanced and so blessed with responsible pet owners and forward-thinking public officials that they can actually afford to lobby for off-leash areas, others live in areas so behind the times that letting animals roam is standard practice and few if any leash laws exist.

They are often beginning at vastly different starting points, but headed toward the same finish line: a day when there will be a lifelong, caring home for every companion animal. Culturally, politically, and economically, the idyllic, progressive California communities that have the time and resources to debate the importance of dog parks might as well be on another planet—one that seems far, far away to those who live in a place where many dogs see no more of the outdoors than their backyard chains allow and cats are treated like “nuisance” animals.

In the mid-’90s, while the well-established and better funded shelters around the country were just beginning to debate the finer points of who was adoptable, who was treatable, and who was “nonrehabilitatable,” the animals in Taylor County weren’t being adopted at all. Those left unclaimed lived out their last days in a facility with no running water and a “euthanasia” chamber fashioned out of a leaky old freezer.

And even now, as community after community sets a goal to stop euthanizing “adoptable” animals within the next five to ten years, there are vast stretches of this country where the animals are all but forgotten—places where dogs are shot instead of humanely euthanized, where shelters are not shelters but just collections of wooden crates, concrete blocks, and chicken wire. As the national and big-city media celebrate the achievements already made for animals in areas like San Francisco and Marin County, the local press in many of America’s rural areas have been uncovering a different side of the story—like that told by the dog warden in Casey County, Kentucky, who, on $400 a month, is expected to feed the animals, pay for gas, and use whatever’s left over for his own salary.

Bridging the Wide Divide

While many dream of the day when animals around the country have good homes, some areas still lack shelters that meet even minimum standards. In parts of Virginia, for example, equipment and resources as basic as running water, heat, gloves, and euthanasia drugs are considered a luxury.

There is no better illustration of this contrast than the range of work performed by The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), publisher of this magazine. Recognizing the marked achievements that many communities have made in reducing intake numbers through spay/neuter campaigns and progressive animal care and control programs, the organization is focusing on helping shelters face a new challenge: keeping pets and their people together through behavior helplines, in-shelter training and socialization programs, and other forms of intervention designed to curb preventable relinquishments.

But as The HSUS graduated the third class of sheltering professionals from its Pets for Life National Training Center at the Dumb Friends League in Denver, Colorado, in October 2000, animal sheltering experts back at HSUS headquarters in Gaithersburg, Maryland, were preparing to embark on a different mission: a tour through the economically depressed areas of Virginia to find out what shelters in that state needed most. The journey was revealing, the divide wide: Unlike their northern Virginia neighbors, one of which just retrofitted its old facility into a state-of-the-art shelter, some of the shelters in the less populated areas of the state lack even the basic necessities: litter pans, for example, or heat for the frigid winters of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“When we went down there, our idea was to hook up struggling animal control officers with mentors to help them deal with cleaning issues, euthanasia issues, anything they might have a question about,” says Kate Pullen, director of animal sheltering issues for The HSUS. “But when we got there it was pretty clear how far some of these groups were from being able to work with a mentor or finding that useful. We expected it to be bad, but we had just no idea exactly how poor and underfunded these places were ... and how much knowledge and support they lacked.”

A mentor couldn’t help with sanitizing the crumbling floors or create more space in the cement buildings that are often less than 500 square feet. Nor could she supplement the salary of a part-time animal control officer expected to cover a 400-square-mile area on top of his other municipal responsibilities—which in some cases include both code enforcement and local landfill management.

Most of the shelters Pullen and her staff visited rarely took in cats and usually offered adoptions by appointment only. Yet it was clear that, for the most part, what the people working in these environments lacked was not the will but the way; in one dilapidated facility in need of equipment as basic as gloves and traps, the shelter’s sole caretaker had decorated the entrance with a banner proclaiming October as Adopt-a-Dog Month. For Pullen, the hopeful image was the most striking example of the difficulty of doing humane work in a community that lacks the resources to address even the most pressing human-related problems. “The poor conditions I saw in my travels were compensated for, for the most part, by seeing the compassion and seeing what these guys were trying to do in spite of the lack of funding and lack of community support,” she says.

Traveling with Teresa Dockery, past president of the Virginia Federation of Humane Societies, Pullen also saw many county shelters where animals were euthanized outside in makeshift carbon monoxide chambers. More than a year later, she and Dockery are providing guidance on training, retrofitting, and basic operations, working with both local animal caretakers and county administrators to improve the status of animals in Virginia. A new law levies fines against facilities that don’t comply with minimum standards set by the state; while the law provides powerful backup in situations where local officials are unwilling to budge, Pullen and Dockery would rather see enforcement as a last resort so that communities can spend what little money they have on improvements. In one county facility, The HSUS is funding the construction of new walls that will allow for a cat holding area, a cat adoption room, and a euthanasia room; the officer in that shelter will now be able to perform euthanasia by injection instead of by the carbon monoxide method previously used.

To Pullen, who spent years directing shelters in nearby northern Virginia and Maryland, witnessing the conditions of agencies in the forgotten pockets of the country has come as something of a shock. The economic divides are not particular to any region, nor are they limited to rural areas. Even in California, the picture is more mottled than many imagine; the state that’s often seen as the Promised Land for animals is home to shelters that still take in litters of baby animals and fight to obtain even basic funding and support. And Californians need only drive an hour or two out of San Francisco to find facilities struggling to bring their operations up to minimum standards.

“The rift is really a range of haves and have-nots,” says Julie Morris, vice president of the ASPCA’s National Shelter Outreach division. “It seems to me it gets bigger and bigger ... in the sense that the haves at this point are now building some incredible facilities, upwards of 8, 9, 10 million dollars, that have all the bells and whistles, and there are still people who are operating out of sheds and Quonset huts and hooking cars up to the exhaust and euthanizing by exhaust.”

Progress in the Space Between

Somewhere between all those haves and have-nots are the hundreds of animal shelters that, while not quite prepared to declare victory in the battle against animal homelessness, have experienced gratifying progress. Even as human populations grow, shelter staff in many regions report reduced intakes, a commitment to spay/neuter that was unheard of two decades ago, and reduced euthanasia rates. But as Anne Irwin points out, the latter is the result of years of attention to basic needs of animals in the community. “We’ve been trying to reduce suffering, and who knew that by plugging away at it, our percentages for euthanasia [would go] down? And the real numbers are down,” says Irwin, who has been the executive director of the Bucks County SPCA in suburban Philadelphia for 30 years. “There are days—we never thought we’d have days—where we don’t have to euthanize anything.”

“We plugged away for a long time and we said the animal overpopulation would get better if people didn’t let their pets run free and got them neutered,” she says, “but I don’t know that I really believed that we would see the results.”

Irwin has been around long enough to remember when the shelter did not require neutering of male animals—and to recall local veterinarians’ resistance to the idea when the humane society first proposed it. Since then, she has watched her shelter’s intake shrink from 15,000 animals a year in the mid-’70s to fewer than 5,000 now. The SPCA has a shortage of “regular, friendly, mixed-breed dogs,” says Irwin—to the extent that she actually seeks them out from other agencies in Pennsylvania that welcome her help with placements. And where once the 5- or 6-year-old dogs were considered “old,” the shelter is now placing 7-, 8-, and 9-year-old pooches.

“I like that we are able to place a whole pool of animals who would have been unplaceable before,” says Irwin. “Even when we operated on a real shoestring, we always had some special cases that we fixed up. But now it’s far more routine that animals that have treatable conditions get treated. We’re doing temperament testing. We have a much better health program for animals. It was all we could do [before] to afford the minimal vaccinations. Now we do leukemia tests.”

Irwin knows that her situation is by no means universal, however. As the president of the Federated Humane Societies of Pennsylvania, she is familiar with the challenges faced by agencies in less wealthy areas. Some shelters in Pennsylvania’s rural communities are still trying to cope with the kinds of problems the Bucks County SPCA was dealing with two decades ago—far too many puppies and other healthy, behaviorally sound animals for the number of homes available. “[These communities] might have one or two vets in the whole county. They don’t really have any kind of animal control program, and they are operating on a shoestring,” Irwin says. “No one could expect them to get much closer to the goal of ‘no kill’ any time soon.”

Everyone has to start somewhere—even in San Francisco, where former San Francisco SPCA President Richard Avanzino started his quest to create a model shelter with no volunteers, only a few employees, and an annual budget of less than $1 million. During that era, the concept of spay/neuter was practically unheard of, says San Francisco Animal Care and Control (SF/ACC) Director Carl Friedman. “I remember 30 years ago, if you wanted a puppy or kitten, [you would] just go to the park any Sunday during the summer months,” he says. “There would be people with boxes of kittens and puppies, trying to give them away. ... It was just a tremendous overpopulation problem. ... There was a lot more breeding going on in those days. Now I think people are more responsible.”

As One Door Closes, Another Opens

In Baltimore, the Bureau of Animal Control is trying to help animals and protect people in a city where nearly one-third of residents live at or below the poverty level and an estimated one in ten are hooked on heroin ... ©Mike McFarland/ moxiecreations.com

Though San Francisco has come a long way since Friedman’s younger days, even that city hasn’t reached “zero euthanasia” in the sense that the shelter system still takes in animals who—because of aggression or for other reasons—cannot or should not be placed. But its progress is undeniable. Of the 8,600 animals who entered its two shelters from July 2000 through June 2001, almost 80 percent were either returned to their owners or placed into new homes. Since 1985, the shelters’ intake of cats and dogs has dropped by 58 percent; last year alone that number dropped by more than 1,000. “We are very proud of the fact that we saved the lives of 77 percent of them ...” says Ed Sayres, executive director of the SF/SPCA. “But the real achievement is that we only had 8,600 to start with.”

The city’s widely reported successes have brought the SF/SPCA and SF/ACC the sincerest form of flattery: imitation from others who want to achieve the same results. Citizens and government leaders often read about the “San Francisco story” and assume that the methods used there will work in their own communities—and practically overnight. But the San Francisco SPCA, a 134-year-old organization with more than 1,000 volunteers and a $12 million budget, didn’t spring out of the earth fully formed. It owes much of its success to years of sterilization and outreach efforts, a progressive community that is receptive to social change, and a strong partnership with a well-funded animal care and control agency.

That agency came into being only after the SPCA forced the hand of city officials by relaying its plan to drop its chronically underfunded animal control contract; San Francisco was fortunate to have a city government that responded appropriately by providing the financial support necessary to build a second shelter and a proactive field services agency. Funding for animal control increased tenfold over what the SPCA had received during its tenure as the animal control services provider, says Avanzino.

... while in San Francisco, one out of three households contributes money or services to the well-staffed, well-funded, and well-appointed San Francisco SPCA. ©Photo courtesy of SF/SPCA

“Anybody can close the door,” says Ed Sayres, who took over the helm of the SF/SPCA about three years ago. “The origin of this is the door didn’t close, the door was not closed here until the other door was open. And the group opening the door had competency and an adequate facility. The process to get there, unfortunately, requires collaboration and meetings and shared goals. It’s not magic.”

Under San Francisco’s “Adoption Pact,” signed by the SF/SPCA and SF/ACC in 1994, “non-rehabilitatable” animals are guaranteed refuge at the open-door animal control agency and “adoptable” animals who cannot be placed by animal control are transferred to the SPCA. Partnerships of this nature are impossible to sustain in communities unwilling to fund adequate animal control services. Consider the case of Pike County, Ohio, where government officials who were willing to consider construction of a $1.3 million government services center recently refused to increase the local abuse/humane agent’s $25-a-month compensation—a salary that has not changed since the position was first created in 1875. Or look at the cases of many of the areas Pullen visited in Virginia; in these places, there is no distinction between the functions of animal control and humane societies because the only provider of hands-on care, field rescue, animal control, or basic sheltering to the county’s animals is one compassionate person employed by the county itself.

The Cultural Gap

Further illustrating the economic divide, a recent Associated Press article detailed a real-estate survey that puts San Francisco at the top of the list of the most expensive places in the country to set up a large high-tech business. A hot spot for the wealthy, the Bay Area is home to a generous lot, too: Around the time that Avanzino left the SPCA in the late ‘90s, one out of every three households in San Francisco was donating money or services to the organization.

On the other side of the country and at the bottom of the national real-estate ranking was Baltimore, Maryland, where one-third of the people can barely afford to feed themselves, let alone their pets, says Baltimore’s Bureau of Animal Control director, Bob Anderson. Lack of funding for Anderson’s agency stems not so much from indifference on the part of local government as it does from cash-poor coffers; the budget left over for animal care and control is dismally low. The one private open-admission shelter in the city, the Maryland SPCA, is already maxed out, taking in 10,000 animals a year, while Baltimore’s Bureau of Animal Control takes in 14,000. The animal control budget is just over $2 million a year—and that’s supposed to cover all expenses related to field services, shelter operations, and cruelty investigations.

“Right now I have 33 people—[HSUS] tells me I should have 42 people just for the shelter alone,” says Anderson. “[The National Animal Control Association] tells me I should have 32 officers on the street. Combined, I’ve got 33 people at this time.”

Adding to the pet homelessness burden in Baltimore is an attitude toward animals that some of Anderson’s West Coast counterparts haven’t had to contend with in decades: While San Francisco was recently named by the Fancy publications as the best place in the country to be a pet, in Baltimore animals are so low on the totem pole in some people’s minds that they think the only purpose of cats is to keep the rat population in check. And as recently as eight years ago, "fishing" for rats and then beating or impaling them was a popular annual event at a local bar.

Almost 30 percent of Baltimore’s residents live at or below the poverty level, says Anderson. In recent years, the city has been dubbed the heroin capital of the country; it’s home to about 60,000 drug addicts, the majority of whom are hooked on heroin. And Baltimore’s population has continued to fall dramatically every decade since the 50s, from a height of nearly 1 million to only 651,000 today. “The city is in trouble,” says Anderson. “The tax base is dwindling. The people who earn the money are moving out; we’re losing population every year.”

“If you compared me to Reno, Las Vegas, San Francisco, I would look like the worst city in the world, like we really didn’t care,” he says. “But if you’ve got a city that is growing, you got a city that’s vibrant and healthy, it’s got a good tax base and they’ve got the money to spend on animal control, they’re going to look good.”

In his dream world, Anderson would build a symbiotic relationship with the nearby Maryland SPCA; his agency could then focus on investigations and protection, and the SPCA could devote more energy towards adoptions and education. Leaders from the two organizations already meet and talk regularly, and Anderson is committed to bringing change, one step at a time, to an agency that has for years been at the bottom of the list of priorities for city managers.

“The ideal place where I would like to be is in the park, right next door to the Maryland SPCA. ... The reason why? It’s just like San Francisco. I would like to partner with them. You let us handle all the vicious dogs, the cats who have bitten people. And I’ll give you every adoptable animal you can adopt.”

The Maddie's Magnet

About sixteen years ago, the Humane Society of Chilton County in Alabama was relegated to a WWII-era Quonset hut. But the undeterred executive director had bigger plans: homemade construction of a modern facility that would provide a comfortable, clean environment for animals. ©Photos courtesy of HSCC

In northern Virginia, the Animal Welfare League of Arlington has experienced similar success, even though it also serves as the local animal care and control provider. Executive Director Linda Willen says dropping the contract just wouldn’t make sense in her area; including both functions under one roof, she says, creates an “us” mentality rather than the “us versus them” feeling that a separation of services could end up fostering.

The unified delivery of services ensures consistency in the core messages the Animal Welfare League wants to send to the public. When a warden meets someone who can’t or won’t pay for a spay/neuter surgery for his pets, for example, he has the authority to designate which pet owners are eligible for the shelter’s free sterilization program. Or when members of the public need assistance with animal issues, they know which agency to call; the League’s mission statement, as relevant today as it was when first written in 1944, includes sheltering, educating the public, preventing cruelty, and finding homes for animals.

“We’re in an ideal place, and it took decades of pushing spay/neuter,” says Willen. “It took decades of education, of being in public schools. ... If you asked me what our ‘product’ here was, I wouldn’t say it was animals; I would say it was education. Every person, every volunteer who works here, that’s mostly what they do, and they do it constantly.”

There aren’t any shortcuts on the road to animal homelessness—an unfortunate reality that even Richard Avanzino considers in his discussion of potential solutions. Though he sits at the helm of Maddie’s Fund, an organization that aims to create a “no kill nation” through large grants to local coalitions, Avanzino says, “There is no panacea. ‘No kill’ is not the magic answer.” And instead of trying to create “mini-San Franciscos” across the country, Maddie’s Fund would rather support programs that weave “safety nets of care” for all cats and dogs by addressing regional needs, he says.

That goal has helped breathe new life into the sheltering field, providing hope to those who have been struggling for years to gain public recognition for their cause. Who could have predicted 10 years ago that a wealthy software entrepeneur with a soft spot for animals would donate $200 million—more than the total combined budgets of most other national organizations that work with shelters—to the nation’s cats and dogs? And the fund just keeps growing: Dave and Cheryl Duffield recently added another $37 million to their original gift, and Avanzino expects that the Maddie’s purse will grow to $1 billion by the end of this decade.

The magnitude of Maddie’s Fund has made its grants the brass ring in the minds of shelter directors eager to get the money to put towards their organizations’ life-saving programs. But the infusion of cash has also bred confusion and skepticism. Some are disappointed by the foundation’s unwillingness to give grants to government agencies, while others question its insistence on funneling money only through organizations that call themselves “no kill.” And some believe that too many shelters are putting all their eggs in one basket by relying on the tantalizing prospect of obtaining a Maddie’s grant, when in fact, a very small percentage of groups seeking funding will actually succeed.

Last year, Maddie’s awarded $10.3 million in grants and committed another $17.7 million for ongoing projects—a considerable amount, to be sure, but not the cash cow that thousands of needy organizations across the country are hoping to tap into. Out of the dozens of local coalitions interested in obtaining Maddie’s money, about eight received grants in 2001, and another 30 potential projects are in the hopper. The three-year-old foundation receives about 20 formal applications a year and about 20 more “pre-applications,” says Avanzino, who spends much of his time speaking with organizations in the exploratory phase of the process. And obtaining a grant is only the beginning. Like increasing numbers of granting organizations, Maddie’s Fund is placing a premium on results; the foundation demands that project participants meet stringent requirements for the life of the grant, usually demonstrating ever-increasing adoption numbers and spay/neuter rates while also decreasing euthanasia figures.

The fund’s emphasis on spay/neuter and adoptions as the means to reduce euthanasia rates is considered simplistic by some in the field who see the picture as more complex. National studies and local anecdotal evidence point to the effectiveness of education and intervention programs such as pet-behavior counseling and animal-friendly rental housing initiatives; in areas that are taking in more adolescent and adult animals than babies, the solution to animal homelessness lies in an array of services designed to help pet owners overcome the issues that often lead to homelessness in the first place.

For his part, Avanzino recognizes the importance of a holistic approach to the problem; his own history as a shelter director is testament to his respect for a wide range of shelter services. At the SF/SPCA, Avanzino was one of the early campaigners for animal-friendly rental housing; he also instituted mobile adoptions, a shelter animal behavior program, free services for senior pet owners, and a doggie daycare center. But Maddie’s Fund is trying to maintain a narrow focus on what its leaders believe to be the primary driver of reduced space-based euthanasia: sterilization and adoption, he says.

“If [an organization is] bent on education as an important way of helping our movement, we applaud that, we congratulate it, we praise to the highest that kind of effort,” he says. “But that’s not what we fund, and it would be wrong for an education organization to decide to do some adoption, too, just to get some money. ... This should come from the heart. This should come from what you really think is the answer, and if there is alignment, [the grant] will probably work out for everybody’s best interest.”

From the Ground Up

“When this humane society started, it was a joke to the county,” says Fridley, executive director of the humane society. “And they sort of stuck us over in the Quonset hut and waited for us to fail.”

The only shelter for homeless animals in a four-county area, the humane society had a budget of only $13,000 but a staff determined to construct a facility that was disinfectable, comfortable, and clean. With her own bare hands and a little help from some friends, Fridley built the shelter from the ground up. After begging for county land and asking the city to dig the footings, she filled the foundation herself. Contractors erected the concrete block walls and finished the slab for the floors, but all other projects—including the roofing, plumbing, electricity, and fencing—were homemade jobs.

Fridley lived, breathed, and dreamed about the shelter—at least, that is, when she actually had time to sleep. During the construction, she was not only manning the project but also still running the Quonset-hut facility. The job could not have been done without her commitment; the organization simply didn’t have the money to hire builders. “To have it built by a contractor would have cost about $300,000,” says Fridley. “We built this building for $90,000.”

In the ensuing years, Fridley addressed one of the biggest problems in her area: unsterilized animals. Since most counties in Alabama, including Fridley’s, have no leash laws for dogs—let alone cats—unchecked breeding was resulting in ever-increasing numbers of animals coming into the shelter. About five years ago, with the help of foundation grant money, Fridley instituted the Spay/Neuter Assistance Program.

Originally available to people living on an income of $25,000 or less a year, the program was later opened up to anyone wanting to use it. Pet owners pay $25 for a cat surgery and $40 for a dog surgery, and the humane society’s fund matches that amount so that local veterinarians receive $50 or $80 depending on the animal.

Since the program’s inception, Fridley’s small shelter has financially assisted in the sterilization of about 1,000 animals from Chilton County and the surrounding area. Annual intake numbers at the shelter have dropped from 5,500 to 4,100, the euthanasia rate has dropped by 25 percent, and adoption numbers have increased. The 60 to 80 animals the shelter used to see coming through its doors in a single day during the summer months is only a memory; daily intake is more like 25 to 30 in the hottest season now.

The numbers, says Fridley, are a direct result of the spay/neuter efforts. “After working in this for so long, I hadn’t seen a drop,” she says. “In fact, every year the numbers of animals coming into the shelter increased—every year until we started the spay/neuter program.

“Five years ago, if you had told me we could do this, I wouldn’t have believed it. I would have been skeptical. ... You just can’t believe it would make such a difference.”

Seeing such tangible results of spay/neuter efforts in her community encouraged Fridley to go a step further and try to expand the program statewide. As the president of the Alabama Humane Federation and a board member of the Alabama Animal Control Association, she was already familiar with the needs and dynamics of the 40-some shelters in the state; many of them had been coming together for the better part of a decade to try to push for a felony animal cruelty law. “So I really already had the collaboration, the coalition built,” she says. “I didn’t have to start opening doors to do that; they were already open to me.”

After meeting with the Alabama Veterinary Medical Association to garner its support as well, Fridley decided to approach Maddie’s Fund. She knew how much money Maddie’s had to give and thought its emphasis on sterilization programs was in line with her own philosophies, so Fridley went to the foundation armed with statistics that included baseline data from every shelter in the state. “Maddie’s Fund came back and wanted more information from all those places,” she says. “They do not make it easy for you—I can tell you that.”

That original proposal would have had Maddie’s money being funneled through Fridley’s organization, but it was turned down because Maddie’s wanted to see a “no-kill base” whereby “no-kill” shelters would assist animal control agencies and shelters that euthanize in placing animals. “We didn’t have that base to support the shelters in all those counties here,” says Fridley. “For instance, in my county, I’m the only shelter in a four-county area. There isn’t even any other nonprofit organization that deals with animals in these areas.”

“The animal problem in the Southeast is worse than any place in the country,” says Fridley. “If Maddie’s Fund wants to be a ‘no-kill nation’ by the year 2010, they have to address the situation in the Southeast. I posed that to them: ‘You have to do something here. This is not like New York or Michigan or California. This is Alabama.’ ... I have posed a lot of these questions to them, and I think I got them thinking.”

The Reward for Elbow Grease

As a shelter for all animals, the Humane Society at Lollypop Farm is a Noah’s Ark of critters—from the hooved to the long-eared. ©Photos courtesy of Don Franklin

Fridley was delighted with the plan, which has come to be known as “Maddie’s Big Fix for Alabama.” “As long as it was going to spay or neuter, I think it’s great,” she says. “I’m really thrilled with it because it’s doing exactly what I wanted to do to begin with, which was spay and neuter. The only reward that any of the shelters in the state will get from this is fewer animals and less euthanasia.”

Fridley's proposal is not typical of those Maddie's Fund has so far chosen to accept; most have been concentrated in the western half of the country. But the future may hold more Maddie's projects in regions further east, says Avanzino. Since Maddie's Fund considers itself something of a "startup" that's still on a learning curve, grant requirements are continuously evolving, he says.

Avanzino readily acknowledges that applying for a Maddie’s grant is a rigorous process. It’s designed to be, he says, because Maddie’s Fund wants to attract only those organizations that have already assessed the needs in their communities and established formalized coalitions to address those needs.

The “reactive” funding approach ensures that the process is driven by the community and by a genuine desire on the part of all the animal groups in a given area to pursue a grant, says Avanzino. “This should not be a way to just get money. It should be a way to get help to do something that they wanted to do anyway but just needed resources [to do],” he says. “It is not a perfect answer for anybody, and it is not something that we consider to be the only model. It is just an approach that Maddie’s Fund is investing in to try to achieve our goals and fulfill our mission.”

Many potential grantees study other projects Maddie’s has funded when designing their plans and proposals, but there is no single blueprint, says Avanzino. “Just because this works in Salt Lake City or Lodi [California] or Austin or wherever, we don’t want you to follow their model,” he says. “Look at their model, yes, to find out what they’re doing. But don’t look at it with the idea that it’s going to be the solution for [your] own community.”

“I think that there has to be a self-analysis as to whether it makes appropriate sense,” Avanzino says. “Maddie’s Fund is not for everybody. ... And if what we are asking for doesn’t make a good fit, then they should look for other alternatives to achieve the same result, if in fact that is where they want to go.”

The Power of Teamwork

Self-analysis is just what Debra Griggs is trying to foster in her approach toward collaboration and planning in Norfolk, Virginia. As the founder and president of Animal Rescue of Tidewater, Griggs has built up a coalition of 50 people representing animal care and control agencies, private shelters, rescue groups, and the veterinary community. Even though the group is considering pursuing a Maddie’s grant, not all the members are convinced that Maddie’s guidelines and requirements are the appropriate solution for their area’s goal of ending euthanasia of healthy, behaviorally sound animals, says Griggs.

And regardless of whether the participants obtain a Maddie’s Fund grant, the coalition is here to stay—and it’s only going to help animals in the long run. For one thing, a primary focus of the group is to ensure that the work of area agencies isn’t redundant, freeing up resources that can be spent better elsewhere. Griggs is quick to give credit to the existing agencies in Norfolk; her entire approach to the field began with the desire to help.

Instead of criticizing the animal control department for aspects of its programs and methods she disagreed with, Griggs says, “the first thing I personally did with Norfolk Animal Control three years ago was walk in and say, ‘How can I help you?’ I think that the people who deliver service in our publicly funded animal control facilities have the hardest job. ... It’s easy for a lot of people to call them the bad guys. But ... I really think ... that the most important role of those of us who think we have the solution is to go to the people who have been doing this for many years and say, ‘Tell us what’s the solution.’ ”

That desire to help existing agencies do a better job has been at the core of the group’s mission as an unsheltered humane group. “The role we fill in this community is to not duplicate the services of others. We are really committed to supporting and augmenting existing services ... because we have really great people offering really great service to homeless animals. We simply need to help them do what they do with more resources.”

At the time of Animal Sheltering’s interview with Griggs, she was applying for a grant to help fund a thorough study of community needs—the resulting data will be, Griggs hopes, an invaluable resource for the groups to continue determining where specific services should be targeted.

The site of a large military base, Norfolk is home to a population that is always on the move. The high turnover means that attempts to educate the public typically have a two-year life expectancy—people move in and out so quickly that awareness must be built and rebuilt constantly. Griggs plans to try to survey pet owners in the military as well as other segments of the Norfolk population; assessments of the region will include telephone surveys of citizens. “We’ll assess behavior and attitudes, knowledge of the constituents,” says Griggs. “It’s a model of needs assessment that is used in the healthcare industry over and over again to decide about service delivery—based on actual need, not on assumption of need.”

Using Statistics to Challenge the Status Quo

Even though the job seems daunting some days, Baltimore’s Bureau of Animal Control Director Bob Anderson is making progress. Because of his persistence, ACOs like Andre Woolford (above) now receive professional training and drive state-of-the-art vehicles that help keep animals comfortable in Baltimore’s hot summers and cold winters. ©Mike McFarland/ moxiecreations.com

Some organizations have discovered firsthand the pitfalls of heading towards the goal of reduced euthanasia without a detailed roadmap. From Pennsylvania to Texas to California, community leaders have declared that local animal protection organizations will become “no kill” by a certain year; some have gone so far as to make that goal a mandate. But without a long-range plan for changing attitudes, instituting comprehensive services, and gaining necessary resources, a community that tries to move toward the goal of ending euthanasia will always come up short—in some cases choosing quantity over quality just to be able to get animals out the door and into as many homes as possible.

In other cases, the rush to reach the goal without actually running the race has led to confusion—both externally and internally. When Jim Bonner took over leadership of the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society in Pittsburgh last year, he was startled by the lack of forethought behind the organization’s earlier decision to join the citywide “No Kill by 2005” initiative.

“What I think I found was that there was no true consensus as to what this meant,” says Bonner. “Even during the interview process, in talking to the board, there were some who really didn’t think it was possible, no matter how it was defined to happen. I think they thought it was a great goal, but they really had no plans or visualization of how it could come to fruition.”

Drawing on his background as the former operations director of the Aviary in Pittsburgh, Bonner posed questions to his staff and his board that he thought seemed fairly obvious: How many animals need our services? How bad is the feral cat problem? What are the scientific estimates of how many are out there in the community? Nobody could answer him. “We didn’t collect the data before figuring out how to solve the problem,” Bonner says. “Therefore, our chances for success are somewhat low.”

Bonner emphasizes that he is committed to eliminating “space-based euthanasia,” but only by addressing the causes of the problem rather than treating its symptoms. When it comes to dogs, that goal is not so far off on the horizon; intake of pooches was down to about 300 last year, Bonner says. But cats are another story. Last summer, the shelter took in more cats than it had in the last five to 10 years. Bonner believes part of that increase derives from the decisions of groups in other counties to limit their admissions. “So if you look at what have we done to the population as a whole, we’ve not changed it,” he says. “We’ve just shifted who is doing what. And that doesn’t seem to be a very fair or ... proactive way of dealing with it.”

In studying the needs of the region, Bonner has discovered that large segments of the human population are unable to access a shelter; he is interested in stepping up the organization’s mobile and off-site adoptions. He’s also looking into the possibility of partnering with other area shelters to set up kiosks listing animals available for adoption throughout the region.

Like Griggs, Bonner is trying to avoid further duplication of services in his area. The existence of veterinary clinics and full-adoption programs at all three of the big shelters in Pittsburgh has already confused the public, he says. “We have people leaving us money in their will with one organization’s name and the other one’s address. So even our benefactors, even our people doing bequests to us, are confused as to who we are,” Bonner says. “Perhaps if we had all determined what our particular unique strengths were, we could say, ‘You know what? You guys are doing really well at this. We’re not going to go there.’ So as we go forward, I’m hoping to engage my colleagues in saying, ‘You know what? We’re going to step away from this. How about if you step away from that?’ And see if that helps us.”

A Mission: A "No Suffering" Nation

And if an organization doesn’t start off with a full tank of gas by first addressing basic, humane care and conditions for its animals, dreams of reducing euthanasia will certainly flounder. Attempting the goal of “zero euthanasia” when shelter cats are getting sick because of poor disinfection practices and dogs are going kennel-crazy is neither possible nor desirable—“zero suffering” must be a priority above all others.

While some have been resistant to the “no kill” movement because of the harmful language and false dualisms the term “no kill” perpetuates, other detractors have well-founded fears that treating the zero-euthanasia goal as an immediate solution rather than an eventual outcome could result in increased suffering for animals in long-term holding facilities. Without increased socialization, exercise, and human contact, no creature can stay healthy, comfortable, behaviorally sound, and “adoptable” for long.

The concern has been expressed by even so-called “radical” groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Many members of the public mistakenly equate PETA’s goal to end suffering with the concept of saving life at all costs. But while PETA’s focus has brought the group into conflict with some of the obvious culprits like fur retailers and fast food restaurants, the organization has also found itself at odds with some groups that claim to have an animal agenda at heart but are actually contributing to cruelty. Cofounder and President Ingrid Newkirk, who started her work in the field as a kennel cleaner and an animal control officer, says she’s witnessed animal suffering at organizations that refuse to euthanize even when it is the most humane option; on the other hand, some communities are at the opposite end of the extreme in that they are ending animal lives inhumanely. As long as stories still surface about communities where cats and dogs die by gunshot or by car-generated fumes, the current dialogue will remain simplistic and inadequate. “This is the 21st century and we are still trying to stop people from ... electrocuting animals to death in painful ways,” says Newkirk. “It’s a dream world out there.”

Providing cats and dogs with a humane death is far preferable to subjecting them to an inhumane life, says Ken White, who recently left the Arizona Humane Society to head up the Peninsula Humane Society in California. The debate over human suffering versus death continues in the context of physician-assisted suicide, says White, but in the animal field, any thoughtful discussion on the subject is often overtaken by a sole focus on ending euthanasia. White’s arguments stem in part from something he once witnessed at a shelter that held animals indefinitely—dogs running to the end of the cage, barking, leaping, and landing in a continuous pattern. “And I’m not a psychologist, but it sure seemed like something to me that would be described as ‘psychotic behavior.’ And that to me is suffering, induced by the industrial warehousing of those animals. ... And what I’ve said ... in relation to the ‘no kill’ movement is we are frankly more committed to not allowing an animal to suffer than we are to ending euthanasia.”

White’s concern is echoed by those working in both open-admission and responsible “no kill” shelters. But the growing trend of coalition-building among humane societies, animal control agencies, and breed-placement groups is creating, in some cases, the potential for such comprehensive partnerships that it may not always be necessary to choose between preventing animal suffering and preventing animal deaths: it will be possible to do both.

A Shelter of Hope For All Animals

A couple of years ago, this Taylor County, West Virginia, facility had no heat and virtually no adoption program. The dog warden had to collect water in buckets from a tank outside that was filled only sporadically by the fire department. Now, thanks to the dedication of the all-volunteer Taylor County Humane Society, local officials have paid to have a well dug on the property, and the warden and the volunteers can hook up a hose for kennel cleaning. While the facility is still without heat, the animals are more comfortable, and community outreach efforts have helped find homes for dogs like Baxter. ©Photo courtesy of Theresa Bruner

Providing refuge to homeless animals is the mainstay of the Humane Society at Lollypop Farm’s mission. But even as an open-admission oasis for all creatures great, small, treatable, and unadoptable, the Rochester, New York, organization is still setting high goals for the future. Already at a point where staff never have to euthanize healthy puppies, the humane society has rejected “no kill” terminology and instead nicknamed itself a “Shelter of Hope.” Aiming to reach the end of euthanasia of healthy, adoptable dogs within the next few years, the shelter first has some formidable hurdles to overcome: an impoverished inner city where dogfighting and cruelty are rampant, and surrounding farmlands where dogs are frequently left neglected at the ends of chains and people have a much more utilitarian attitude towards animals.

Yet the shelter’s spay/neuter, education, behavior, and animal care programs have helped lower the euthanasia rate in recent years. “There are still huge problems and big issues to deal with,” says President Jim Tedford, “but if I didn’t think it was ultimately fixable, then I’d probably throw in the towel.”

To Tedford, fixing the problem involves more than his own community; even if his shelter reaches “zero euthanasia,” he won’t consider the battle won until the counties surrounding him achieve the same results, and the counties surrounding them achieve the same results, and so on. He doesn’t limit his approach toward ending animal homelessness to just cats and dogs, either: The day of Animal Sheltering’s interview with Tedford, his office was also occupied by three chatty birds, a hyperactive pooch, and a wild weasel who’d been caught harassing the shelter’s fowl; his plans for the afternoon included helping his staff rescue 50 neglected goats from a goat hoarder.

It’s a comic image, but the sad reality is that many species are left out of plans to end animal homelessness; domesticated birds, rodents, and farm animals may need different kinds of homes, but good homes nonetheless. Even those who aren’t very likely to be adopted often must be held for legal reasons by government agencies or shelters with government contracts; in Baltimore, for instance, Anderson was recently holding a pet fish during eviction proceedings. But in the race to demonstrate glowing statistics for cats and dogs, some shelters don’t factor small animals into the euthanasia equation, says Lisa Smith, adoption specialist at the Animal Welfare League of Arlington.

Whether it’s a mouse or an Akita who comes through the door at any given moment, the Virginia shelter will find a place for him, says Smith. But whereas dog kennels in the shelter often sit empty, four months could go by without a single adoption application for a rabbit, she says. “If I had one hundred critter cages, it wouldn’t increase my critter adoption rate. ... There just isn’t the market for those kinds of animals,” says Smith.

Sayres of the SF/SPCA notes that his community has yet to give equal treatment to small mammals; the “Partnerships for Life” report released by San Francisco’s shelters doesn’t include euthanasia statistics for these critters. “We haven’t reached ‘no kill’ in small mammals,” he says, “and that’s an issue for intake for open-door facilities. There are gerbils and rabbits and guinea pigs and all those kinds of animals. We haven’t done a whole lot in terms of supporting, housing, and sheltering those animals.”

Making A Difference—One Spaghetti Dinner at a Time

Of course, in many of the country’s rural communities, cats aren’t part of the equation either—at least not officially. Even cat holding areas are a luxury in places like Taylor County, West Virginia. But that doesn’t mean cats aren’t on the radar screen of local animal welfare advocates: As part of her efforts to collaborate with neighboring counties, Theresa Bruner of the Taylor County Humane Society is putting together a plan to seek funding for spaying and neutering of feral cats in the region—a formidable task in itself, since Taylor County has only one part-time veterinarian.

But making a difference often starts with one committed individual like Bruner whose passion is contagious. And even small things can change the life of that dog shivering in an unheated facility or that sociable kitty longing for human contact. In focusing on the goal as a way to define the problem, Bruner has been able to take a dire situation in her community and turn it on its head. Taylor County doesn’t have a lot of things going for it: it’s home to a large senior population, no industry (the school district is the largest employer), and a negligible tax base. But in just nine short months, Bruner’s all-volunteer organization turned an old-style pound into a true animal shelter.

In other communities, the group’s victories might seem small, but in West Virginia, they are milestones—achievements no less extraordinary than the glowing statistics in Marin or Rochester or San Francisco. Because of the volunteers’ efforts, the old freezer that once served as the euthanasia chamber has been laid to rest in favor of a more humane chamber donated by a businessman, and the shelter will soon switch to euthanasia by injection after the part-time dog warden and two humane society volunteers receive training in the method.

Because of Bruner’s persistence, the county and city have paid $1,800 to have a well dug on shelter property, rendering the old routine of retrieving buckets of water from a tank outside the municipal facility a thing of the past. And the first adoption program in county history placed 55 dogs—or 35 percent of impounded animals—into new homes between April and November. By March the humane society had found homes for 30 more.

“What communities need to realize is that even with very little, you can still do something,” Bruner says. “I think that’s what we had to arrive at. It seemed overwhelming. We just had to get started.”

For Baltimore’s Anderson, even the little things make the job seem daunting some days: for instance, even though he had a $50,000 grant to install a new computer system in the shelter, he had to sit on a waiting list for two years to get the job even partially done. Roof and ceiling repairs can also take several years from the time of a requisition to the time of fulfillment. But Anderson still has big plans—a volunteer program is in the works, and he’s looking for resources to hire a part-timer who can do community outreach through newsletters and public relations efforts. He’s managed to procure $350,000 in grants and bequests over the course of just a few years, and he scrounges for whatever free help he can get. As he walks through the shelter, Anderson points out an industrial dishwasher that didn’t match the electrical system of Baltimore City schools but pumps out water hot enough to wash and disinfect food bowls; a generator purchased with money donated by a senior citizen; a donated washer, dryer, and cat cage bank; and storage shelves built with extra care by a sympathetic city carpenter. “As you can see, we’re trying our best, but the place is falling apart,” Anderson says. “I’m not proud. I’ll ask, I’ll beg.”

Anderson’s commitment has helped his staff, too: Baltimore ACOs finally have the chance to receive professional training and certification. They now drive air-conditioned vehicles that Anderson affectionately calls “our Cadillacs,” and they carry basic tools in their trucks that they’d never had before—safety gloves, cat graspers, and snake tongs, to name a few.

Bruner and her fellow volunteers need only to drive past the old freezer sitting abandoned in the brush on the side of the road to be reminded of how far they’ve come. “When we have our meetings, we do a lot of crying, but we do a whole lot more celebrating of things that we feel we do right,” Bruner says. “And we talk about it a lot, [wondering], What if we weren’t there? What would this be like for these guys if we weren’t there? ... Our goals are mostly short-term in the sense that we just need to get this facility fixed so that it is acceptable and the dogs are comfortable. And they are real comfortable now—they are happy as can be. The place smells good. It’s clean every day. We are having a spaghetti dinner [fundraiser next month]. Our goals are pretty simple.”