Squeezing Sour Problems into Sweet Solutions

What’s the problem? An outdated building? Not enough visibility for shelter animals? Too many kitties and not enough people interested in them? Packs of feral dogs roaming the streets? The eight agencies featured here started out with the same bag of lemons that most other organizations do—little time, scarce funds, lots of animals, not enough people—and squeezed them into tall glasses of tangy lemonade.

THE LEMONS

When the new mayor of Chattanooga surveyed citizens in 1998 to learn what their primary concerns were, number two on the list was “animal problems,” second only to “storm water runoff.” The local humane society was understaffed and overburdened, and residents had come to believe that their calls for help would be answered late—or never.

THE RECIPE FOR LEMONADE

Build a Great Department from the Ground Up

Not long ago in Chattanooga, Tennessee, local bus-taking residents used to walk softly and carry big sticks—in case they encountered a pack of the city’s feral dogs on the way to the bus stop.

At some bus stops, there were actually piles of sticks: People would bring them along, leave them there when the bus arrived, board the bus, and then pick up a new stick from the pile waiting for them at their destination stop. Long praised for being a scenic city, Chattanooga was finding that its beautiful woodlands had a downside: they provided a great hiding place for stray and feral dogs, who had begun to pack up like wolves and roam the streets. With only four field officers covering 124 square miles, the local humane society had been reduced to crisis management, responding to emergencies in the order they arose and unable to do much more.

A task force created by the mayor came to the conclusion that, even though it would cost more money, the city would be better served by establishing a new department for animal services than by giving more work and more money to the existing humane society. Enter Paul Miller, the director of the new Chattanooga Animal Services Division. The division that Miller now heads exists because he helped create it: he spent many months hiring officers and ensuring proper training in everything from court procedures to wildlife handling to dog behavior. In designing the department, he wanted to put service to the public above all other priorities.

Record keeping had been minimal, so Miller first held public hearings to assess problems. The feedback helped set the new division’s top priority: get feral and free-roaming dogs off the street through humane trapping and education. “We had a behavior specialist teach the officers what to pass on to owners,” says Miller. “Stuff like positive reinforcement—explaining why things that owners do every day, like calling a dog to come in off the street and then punishing him when he comes, aren’t a good idea.”

The behavior specialist—who happens to be Miller’s wife—also helped the officers learn how positive reinforcement could make their own work easier. “Unless it’s a fat English bulldog on a hot day, an officer can’t [chase] down a dog,” Miller says. “But we fed dogs from the truck, we used squeakers and clickers. ... We had one officer who’d carry half a pound of hot dogs with him.” The officers and their vehicles became well-known by dogs, who began to associate the men in uniform with food and would come running when the trucks appeared. Between trapping dogs and educating owners, officers greatly reduced the number of roaming packs.

“No one could ever think it was anything other than what it is,” says Paul Miller of the conspicuously labeled Chattanooga Animal Services vehicle. While the department only has seven trucks, those trucks—and the officers inside them—are out helping so many people in so many neighborhoods that some residents seem to think they must be breeding.

“No one could ever think it was anything other than what it is,” says Paul Miller of the conspicuously labeled Chattanooga Animal Services vehicle. While the department only has seven trucks, those trucks—and the officers inside them—are out helping so many people in so many neighborhoods that some residents seem to think they must be breeding.

The visibility of the new team delighted the Chattanooga community. Used to waiting for hours and even days for help, people were shocked when officers responded to calls within an hour. And even though Animal Services has only seven trucks, they were seen so frequently in the community that the public thought there must be a hundred, says Miller.

Miller, who already had a background in cruelty investigations and dog fighting when he came to direct the new division, is quick to say that the humane society is not to blame for the city’s dog-pack crises. The group was doing the best it could, he says, but the efforts weren’t working—a combination of too much to do, too few people to do it, and a management team that never really found its feet. (The society has changed management since then and has provided the department with valuable help.) But the new division has made education and service such top priorities that even human offenders see the error of their ways. “We were going to lunch the other day, and this guy accosted us,” says Miller. “He said, ‘Animal Services—you know, one of your guys gave me a ticket three months ago,’ and I said, ‘Well, are you OK with that?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, you know, he’d warned me three times. I think you guys are doing a great job.’ ”

THE LEMONS

While dogs often command attention in the shelter, their feline counterparts aren’t known for being such squeaky wheels. But just because they aren’t loud-mouthed doesn’t mean they don’t need help. Without a little extra coddling, shy cats may be highly stressed; they also may not reveal their charming personalities to potential adopters.

THE RECIPE FOR LEMONADE

Call in the Kitty Korps Cadets

Last year, many of the animals at the Oregon Humane Society were already getting a helping hand from formalized volunteer programs. The hard-to-place pooches with difficult behavior problems were being trained by a group of dedicated volunteers called Pet Pals. The bunnies were getting the royal treatment from members of another group called Rabbit Advocates.

So why, wondered Kathy Neely, wasn’t anyone rolling out the red carpet for the cats? A beautiful cattery was one of the highlights of the organization’s new facility, yet no organized volunteer efforts existed to help the cats who were housed there.

“While I was a volunteer, I worked more in the cattery, and it just seemed to me that the cats were discriminated against because we have Rabbit Advocates and Pet Pals, but we didn’t have anything for the cats,” says Neely, the shelter’s communications and events specialist.

Neely helped cats get their due through the establishment of a group called Kitty Korps, which devotes many hours to providing “lap time” to cats, assisting staff, and educating visitors about cat care and behavior. Now a year old, Kitty Korps has created a kind of cat-lover camaraderie in the shelter, galvanizing those who want to work with cats but need a centralized program that will help them stay motivated. “We are seeing a lot more people work in the cattery,” says Neely, “whereas they used to just want to work in the kennels.”

Before Kitty Korps came along, retention was low among cat volunteers, says Kitty Korps Coordinator Wendy Daugherty, herself a volunteer. “We were training a lot of the new volunteers in the cattery every month, and for some reason, a lot of the times we just didn’t see them again,” she says.

“I remember when I was a new volunteer four years ago, it took me quite a while to get comfortable,” she says. “The staff are so busy, you almost feel like you’re distracting them by asking them a question. With Kitty Korps, we can make volunteers feel welcome in the shelter.”

Whether they’re counseling an inquisitive adopter about special kitty quirks or providing a little lap time to a scaredycat, Kitty Korps volunteers at the Oregon Humane Society fill in wherever the staff and the cats need them most.

And those volunteers, in turn, can do the same for cats. Whether they’re brushing a needy cat in one of the get-acquainted rooms or counseling an inquisitive adopter about special kitty quirks, volunteers fill in wherever the staff and the cats need them most. “The staff, they’ve got so much to do that they have to look at the big picture of everything,” says Daugherty. “As volunteers, we’ve got the option to look at the small picture, and a lot of times it’s a cat who’s in there for three months and just needs extra help.”

If a volunteer sees a cat lying timidly in his litter pan, she can fetch a clean pan and place a blanket in it so the cat will curl up in there instead. Sometimes Kitty Korps members take on “project” cats who are having a difficult time adjusting to their new environments; one volunteer came in on her lunch hour to spend time with a Siamese/Himalayan mix who was rather shell-shocked after living in a quiet home all his life. “Gradually, he settled down, and finally the right person came in and adopted him,” says Daugherty. “We were all pulling for him. ... We get a lot of cats who are nice cats, and we know that when they get home, they’re going to be just fine, but in the shelter environment, they’re just freaked, and when they’re that freaked, they don’t show well [to adopters].”

“That’s the other thing with Kitty Korps—we can explain, ‘No, he’s not going to sit in his litter box in your house. He’s just scared,’ ” says Daugherty. “A lot of the times those cats need us to speak for them and advocate for them and explain why they’re doing [what they’re doing].”

Monthly meetings give volunteers a chance to hone their customer service skills and cat behavior knowledge; a recent meeting included a cat behavior clinic presented by the staff behavior and training specialist. An e-mail list maintained by Daugherty keeps the lines of communication open; mass e-mailings include meeting minutes, announcements from other departments in the shelter, and updates on organizational policy changes.

The team spirit and friendly atmosphere fostered by the Kitty Korps make the volunteers feel valued and appreciated. “It takes up a certain amount of time, but it’s definitely worth it because ... there’s been a 180-degree turnaround,” says Daugherty. “Our volunteer coordinator ... told me that she no longer has a problem scheduling people in. That’s really a change from over a year ago.”

“As an organization, I think we’re really just in our infancy,” says Daugherty. “Sometimes some of us just get frustrated, [wondering] why can’t we make these changes overnight—why we can’t get everybody to spay and neuter their cats now. But when I look back over the past year, it’s really made a difference.”

THE LEMONS

After the construction of new shelter facilities in the early ‘90s, the Humane Society of Indianapolis had acres of land left over, most of which were on a floodplain that could not be developed. All that property, full of woodsy trails and a creek, was just sitting there. Meanwhile, the city lacked areas where pets and people could frolic around leash-free.

THE RECIPE FOR LEMONADE

Turn Empty Land into Park Place

Just because you can’t build kennels or offices on it doesn’t mean land can’t be used. That’s what the staff of the Humane Society of Indianapolis realized back in 1996, says Marsha Spring, the shelter’s executive director. Indianapolis didn’t have an off-leash area for pets, and during a discussion about how the land could be put to better use, one staff member asked, “Well, couldn’t we just fence it in and have a place where people could take their dogs?”

One idea can fill an enormous amount of space—over 2.5 beautiful, fenced-in acres, in this case. In late 1997, the shelter opened the acreage to the public and started calling it the “Pet Park.” It was the first of its kind in the city, but the organization didn’t stop with walking trails and an off-leash area: The following year, in a separate area, the shelter added a complete agility course.

The Pet Park was a huge hit in the community, and its popularity has only increased over the past few years. While pet owners pay an annual $30 fee to use the park, they’re invited to become humane society members when they sign up, and that’s gained lots of new supporters for the shelter, Spring says. Visitors come to the shelter, leave their car keys, and receive a key to the park; at the end of their playtime, they return the key. “We have people play Frisbee, they bring picnics, they have a great time,” Spring says.

This book on recreational agility for dogs was created by Warren G. Patitz, a dog trainer and supporter of the Humane Society of Indianapolis. The book explains the ins and outs of agility training, and features photos of dogs enjoying the course at the shelter’s Pet Park.

Costs of maintaining the park and repairing the agility course equipment are defrayed by the usage fees, says Spring. The shelter ensures a good time for dogs and visitors by maintaining some basic guidelines: There are only 30 keys, so the park doesn’t become too crowded at any given point. Dogs are required to be up-to-date on their vaccinations, and children under six aren’t allowed in the park. The park also doesn’t admit females in heat, and signs are posted recommending that all animals be spayed or neutered to encourage the best interaction between pets.

“Now, there are some people who’ve got more than one dog, and we’ve certainly been fuller than 20, but we’ve never had a problem,” says Spring, noting that the park’s users are pretty good about policing nippy dogs and warning owners who don’t pick up their pets’ droppings. “If we have a problem with a particular dog, we just tell the owner that they’ll have to leave that dog at home—or we give them information about our obedience classes.”

The park provides the shelter with some great PR and helps introduce community members to the organization. “You know, some of the people who come here—they did not get their animals here,” says Spring, who estimates that about 5,000 people visit the park every year. “For the most part, they become members, and if they want another animal, they’re in the place. ... Even if they weren’t humane society supporters to start with, they get to know each other, and because they see that we offer the obedience training and classes on the agility course, lots of people have taken advantage of that. And it’s not an expensive thing to do.”

THE LEMONS

The animal care and control agencies in Washington, D.C., and the surrounding suburbs have been offering services and programs for years that have a real impact on those living in the shadows of Capitol Hill. But, like many local agencies around the country, they often work in a vacuum; some ACOs and sheltering professionals wouldn’t recognize colleagues from neighboring organizations if they passed them on the street.

THE RECIPE FOR LEMONADE

Start a Tour de Task Force

Police departments do it. Fire departments do it. Health departments do it. Occasionally, despite the bad rap it gets, even the federal government does it.

So why don’t animal care and control agencies in the Washington metropolitan area coordinate efforts, too?

That was the question Steve Dickstein asked when he came on board as a public planner with the Council of Governments (COG), a 44-year-old nonprofit organization that helps local, state, and federal entities network on a host of environmental, economic, and human services issues. “Having lived here all my life and seen what I’ve seen, it did not make sense to me to have animal services personnel or organizations be so close together and yet never interact with each other or never support each other or brainstorm with each other or do projects together,” says Dickstein.

With a background in animal protection at the national level, Dickstein also knew how tough it was to direct the attention of elected officials toward animal care and control issues. As one animal-friendly municipal official told him, “From a political standpoint, the animal issues are out of sight, out of mind.”

Hoping to use the power of collaboration to get those issues on the agenda more often, Dickstein pitched a solution to local animal care and control directors: the formation of an Animal Services Task Force. The monthly meetings began in the spring of 2000 and quickly became a “melting pot of collective thought,” says Dickstein.

“There are no jurisdictional boundaries when it comes to proper care of animals or Canada geese issues or dangerous dog issues—we’re all facing the same problems,” says Capt. Wayne Fryer, who chaired the task force in its first year and who oversees the Animal Services Division of the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland. “Here it gives us an opportunity to put all the minds together in the same room, where we can try to strategize and work together to resolve common issues.”

In just one year, the task force’s member agencies created a brochure educating the public about dangerous dogs, hosted a presentation about Canada geese issues for elected municipal officials, drafted a memorandum of understanding to help each other in disasters or other emergencies, organized a wildlife symposium, and developed a partnership with the American Automobile Association to work together on a public safety campaign providing tips for avoiding collisions with wildlife.

“I’ve been in the field 19 years now,” says Rodney Taylor, associate director of the Prince George’s County Animal Management Division in Maryland and the new task force chairman. “And in 19 years I’ve never seen this much knowledge and excitement in one room.”

For instance, once signed, the disaster agreement will help agencies call upon each other for support during an emergency—whether it’s weather-related or human-generated, says Taylor. “We had a situation in Prince George’s County where we had a citizen with 110 cats in her house,” he said. “If you only have space [in your shelter] for 40 cats, that’s a ‘disaster’ when you think about it.”

The task force is also pooling resources to try to prevent the more common mini-disasters such as dog bites. After a survey pointed to the need for written regional standards to analyze data and implement effective laws, a dangerous dog subcommittee created the brochure, “Biting Dogs: What You Need to Know.” Future plans call for the drafting of a model non-breed-specific ordinance that would have the backing of COG and therefore increased legitimacy with governing bodies such as the Prince George’s County Council, which still has a pit bull ban on the books. There is strength in numbers, Taylor says: Sample language developed by ACOs from around the region, rather than by ACOs from just one agency, will be more effective in convincing politicians that there is a better way to solve dangerous dog problems than through ineffective breed bans.

That’s the philosophy behind all of the task force’s initiatives, says Fryer—to gather collective strength and resources. “Probably the biggest thing to come of it has been the collaboration of agencies, where we’ve never had that before,” he says. “It’s nice to know people on a first-name basis, where if you have an issue, you can pick up the phone or e-mail them and you know who you’re talking to.”

THE LEMONS

In 1999, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Control Bureau received nearly 5,000 anonymous reports of stray-dog sightings. The callers refused to meet with responding ACOs, and in 91 percent of the cases, the dogs were nowhere to be found when officers arrived on the scene. For an agency that served a human population of 600,000 and responded to more than 33,000 requests for assistance that year, the anonymous stray-sighting reports represented a huge waste of time and manpower.

THE RECIPE FOR LEMONADE

Become a Techno-Geek

To begin responding more effectively to anonymous reports of stray-dog sightings, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Control Bureau stopped responding at all.

It may seem a bit un-kosher to leave the public hanging, but the bureau had devised a system that’s proven to be much more effective: a mapping strategy that uses geographic information systems (GIS) technology to identify areas where stray-dog reports are the most concentrated.

Beginning in August 2000, officers used this information to coordinate comprehensive responses that involve canvassing entire neighborhoods. Teams of ACOs visit “hot spots” together, looking for stray animals and educating residents about licensing requirements, leash ordinances, and other animal-related laws. On follow-up visits, they check to make sure that residents who have been warned or cited have come into compliance; those who haven’t receive tickets.

The efforts have saved countless hours that are now better spent on more serious calls involving bites, sick or injured animals, aggressive animals, or cruelty complaints, says Bureau Manager Pat Cox. Studies conducted by the bureau in the past had shown that, based on the number of square miles in the agency’s jurisdiction, each call uses up an average of 45 minutes of an officer’s time. That includes both time spent at the scene as well as travel to and from the area. “Multiply that times the number of [anonymous stray-dog] calls, and look at the man hours right there that [the GIS mapping] has saved you,” says Cox. “Now we go out and do our canvas and spend about two to four hours on it ... and that’s a big difference.”

The animal control bureau is part of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, which was already using GIS technology to identify hot spots in police districts, says office assistant Lysa Crain. Animal control was able to tap into the database for its own purposes—and plans to continue to do so in the future.

“It’s down to the detail of showing what’s the closest street where the calls were occurring,” says Cox. “And of course, we will go out and concentrate on those particular block ranges for those streets, so that we’re not spinning our wheels. ... And what we have found, when you review these maps as our project continues, is that the hot spot locations change. We may have some repeat themselves, but typically they change.”

Public reaction to the use of the system so far has been positive, despite the fact that ACOs are no longer responding to anonymous stray-dog reports. Explaining the decision to use the GIS mapping in lieu of individual responses was easy, since officers had come up empty-handed more than 90 percent of the time when answering those types of calls in the past. The numbers simply speak for themselves, says Cox.

“It clearly demonstrated that it was much more efficient and time-effective for our staff and more cost-effective for the community to do it the way we were proposing to do it,” she says. “And actually, we didn’t get a lot of resistance or criticism of it at all. I was surprised—we had kind of braced ourselves because it was kind of a new concept.”

With the help of shelter management software, the agency hopes to expand GIS capabilities to help track other statistics, such as the number of bite incidents in a given area. “We are having a team of personnel here from animal control that will be sitting down with the ... city GIS team,” says Crain, “to try to determine exactly where it can benefit us and what type of results we’d like to have from something like this.”

THE LEMONS

The “little blue shelter with the big heart,” as locals like to call the Humane Society of Central Delaware County in New York, may be long on heart, but it’s short on cash. A couple of years ago, the organization already had a well-deserved reputation for its training and stress-reduction initiatives, but its facility was outdated, somewhat dreary, and vulnerable to feline upper respiratory infection.

THE RECIPE FOR LEMONADE

Perform a Facelift on the Cheap

Stop by the Humane Society of Central Delaware County these days, and you’ll find what looks more like a daycare center for pampered pooches and coddled cats than a shelter that’s always struggling for more resources. Outside you’ll see a pet memorial garden and a fenced-in area where staff, volunteers, and visitors interact with shelter dogs off-leash. You’ll find up to nine “play groups” of six to ten dogs each, all temperament-tested and matched up according to their personalities. In the completely enclosed outdoor area for cats, you’ll see a kitty basking in the half-hour breath of fresh air that’s allotted to each cat every day.

Walk inside and you’ll see the fun doesn’t stop at the door. Fresh paint and stencils of dogs, cats, and pawprints decorate the once-dreary rooms; curtains, plants, and pictures of animals add a touch of home. The cat adoption area features a kitten motif on the walls, rugs on the floor, a mobile hanging from the ceiling, fleece blankets and toys in every cage, and classical music in the air. Dogs fare just as well in the kennel runs, lying on resting beds and chewing on sturdy toys.

Okay, you might say, all the cosmetic and comfort items are nice, but what lies beneath that surface? How about health issues? What about sanitation and disinfection? Maybe the animals are more emotionally happy, but are their physical needs being met?

Yes. If you’ve been to the shelter before, you might notice a change in its physical structure as well: In addition to the cat adoption area and the cat quarantine room, there is now a sick-cat isolation room. Whereas cats once drank and ate out of plastic bowls that are almost impossible to disinfect, they now dine off stainless steel. Footbaths greet human feet at doorways, and handy wipes have become a staple for staff and visitors, who use them before and after handling each animal.

With the exception of the poochy play groups, which have long been a great source of stimulation and stress relief for dogs at the shelter, all these aesthetic and operational improvements have been made within the last two years. The initiatives were joint efforts of committed staff, volunteers, donors, and board members—all under the leadership of a part-time kennel assistant-turned-shelter manager who had studied at the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Technology at Delhi to become a vet tech. “When I was working here as a part-time kennel assistant, I would just think of all these things that could be done to the place,” says the manager, Deb Crute. “But of course, being a student and working, I didn’t have a lot of time for that.”

Now through with school and in a position to usher in widespread change, Crute doesn’t miss an opportunity to tap into free resources. For instance, the carpentry department at SUNY Delhi helped reconstruct the cat area into separate rooms; the cost of materials was covered by a grant that PETsMART had awarded to the shelter. A community member donated a large dog pen so dogs and humans could play together off-leash. A local author bought new resting beds and truckloads of toys with money earned on the sale of one of her books. Wish lists garnered stainless steel bowls, and requests in the newspaper brought in soothing CDs to play in the cat adoption room. Volunteers built a flowerbox for the front window, added shutters, and helped start a memorial garden for animals who have come through the shelter. And another collaborative project involving the shelter, the nearby historical society, and a SUNY horticulture student resulted in Lilac Lane, a field of lilac trees purchased for $100 each by pet owners wishing to commemorate their deceased pets with a tree and a marker.

All the efforts—inside and out—have paid off for both the animals and the shelter’s public image. “We’ve had an incredibly positive response in the last year and a half,” says Crute. “The first thing I hear people say when they walk into the shelter is, ‘Oh my gosh, this place has changed since the last time I’ve been here, and it smells good’ ... and that’s a huge compliment to me because it means it’s clean. ... And they go into the front cat adoptions room, and they say, ‘It’s so peaceful in there’—and it really is.”

Not to mention spotless. Even though Crute didn’t have $90,000 lying around to spend on a new ventilation system, she improvised with exhaust fans, vents, air purifiers, and dehumidifiers. The grand total: less than $300. “It’s cut down on illness significantly,” Crute says. “That coupled with the fact that now we’re isolating sick cats, and we also changed our disinfection policies—I just can’t even begin to tell you the differences it’s made in the health of our cats.” But most of all, it’s Crute’s great staff and tremendous volunteers and board members who have helped make the biggest difference, she says.

“I wouldn’t trade my job or the place I work for anything,” says Crute. “It’s home, it’s cozy, it’s comfortable, and we’ve made it that way. We’ve taken something that’s really run-down ... and we’ve done a facelift on it. With a little bit of imagination ... we’ve been able to change the way it looks and the way it feels to be here.”

THE LEMONS

After 30 years in the same facility, Salem Animal Control in Virginia had long since outgrown it. The building was cramped and ramshackle in appearance, and while several expansions over the years had made the situation livable, the shelter had reached the limit of what mere additions could do.

THE RECIPE FOR LEMONADE

Ask for More

Salem Animal Control needed a better facility, not just a new room or two. The cat room (which, in its previous incarnation, had been a salt house) had absorbed so much salt that a bacteria-fighting paint job was an impossibility: the walls repelled sealants, and cats continued to get sick. The floors of the kennels were cracked and slippery. And the indoor/outdoor runs made disinfection a real challenge: Dogs had to go outside for the runs to be cleaned, but the drains were also outside, so feces were moved towards the dogs during the cleaning process.

So when local officials came up with the money to fund an addition to the existing shelter, the department decided to send the money back and ask for a better deal. “We told them we needed $500,000 rather than the $35,000 they’d offered—we just didn’t think it made sense to add on to a dilapidated building,” says Sgt. Bill Bandy, director of the division. “It ended up [costing] around a million, but they came through for us. ... I am lucky, I tell people all the time, whenever I go into classrooms or do training, I am so lucky to work in a place that cares about its animals. I hear so many nightmare stories from other officers who say that animal control is always the last item in their city’s budget, but not here.”

With the financial help of a sympathetic city council, Salem now has a state-of-the-art shelter, complete with attractive landscaping, a disease-battling air-conditioning system, a tub for bathing animals, and separate rooms for meet-and-greets.

The new shelter stands only a few feet from the old building, and walking from the old facility into the new is like passing through a bizarre time warp. You move from a cramped and somewhat broken-down (though very clean) arrangement of kennels and cages and into a shelter that can only be described as state-of-the-art. And the very first thing worth checking out is what’s directly under your feet: a floor that promises to make disinfection issues a thing of the past.

The flooring consists of mixed layers of quartz and concrete sandwiched between layers of epoxy, and is sealed with several coats of polyurethane. It’s tough and it dries quickly, making disinfection easier and more effective. Bandy has high hopes that it will serve the shelter well. “This stuff just won’t crack,” he says. In fact, the shelter—which was scheduled to celebrate its grand opening on September 20 with a ribbon-cutting by the mayor and animal crackers for visitors—should be comfortable in this facility for years to come. “With our current intake levels, I can’t imagine us ever needing anything bigger than this,” he says, “and if we did, it would be a sign that our community was taking a turn for the worse.”

Bandy is as pleased as a proud dad over the new facility, and he and his officers certainly have much to be happy about. Among the great features of the new building is a heat and air circulation system that amounted to a third of the total construction bill; the system ensures that the air in various animal-holding areas is flushed out of the building, helping reduce the risk of airborne diseases. “The only air recircled is from the healthy cat area, [where] the cats are up for adoption,” says Bandy. “That air gets pumped into the dog area, but then it’s pumped out of the building. It should be great—in the old place we had bad ventilation and had real trouble getting rid of URIs.”

Along with the physical overhaul, Salem Animal Control is also modernizing its operations. For years, shelter staff have had a Christmas “pound party” during the holiday season, but in their new facility, they’ll be changing that tradition, Bandy says. “We’re going to have our party in June or July from now on,” he says. “That’s when we’re busiest, and it should help discourage people from getting pets at Christmas.”

THE LEMONS

In the age of Sony Playstations and animated computer dogs that require “food” to stay “alive,” it can be difficult to draw people’s attention toward the things that really matter. Sheltering professionals can speak of the plight of homeless animals in their newsletters, at events, and in the schools, but how can they get their messages to a broader audience without breaking the bank on a TV ad or some other costly media spot? And how, wondered staff at the Capital Area Humane Society last year, can they do it effectively in an era of 10-second attention spans?

THE RECIPE FOR LEMONADE

Head for the Mall

When residents of Michigan’s capital city look for a new pair of pants at the local department store or a fruity shampoo at the bath and beauty shop, they can make a quick pit stop to find out who is shopping for something far more important: a new home.

All it takes is a visit to the Lansing Mall doghouse. While there are no live pooches in this larger-than-life structure, virtual animals put their best faces forward in the doghouse “door.” Included in this computer screen display are updated photos and biographies of animals available for adoption, spay/neuter education messages, descriptions of services provided at the shelter, and advertisements of upcoming shelter events.

It’s the pet owner’s version of a video dating service, and it’s nothing more elaborate than a gigantic wooden “doghouse,” a computer, and a PowerPoint presentation that’s updated once a week. But the Critter Kiosk is a refreshing attraction in a place where commercialism is usually the rule of the day. “It is neat—if you go out you see people standing in front of it looking at the animals,” says Alice Smith, director of development and public relations at the Capital Area Humane Society. “It’s a way of keeping us in the public eye, and it’s a way of keeping the incredible selection of animals that we have out there [for people to see].”

Through the Critter Kiosk set up by the Capital Area Humane Society, shelter animals get to put their best faces forward.

The idea for the kiosk was born out of staff frustrations that not enough animals in the shelter were getting a second glance from potential adopters. If you can’t get more people to come to the shelter to see the animals, they wondered, and if you don’t have the resources to truck them all over town, how do you get the animals to the people?

At the time, the public relations strategy for the year included an idea to post framed photos of shelter animals on a big bulletin board in the mall, replacing the photos with pictures of new animals for adoption on a regular basis. “I had circulated that development plan, and someone said, ‘You know, in today’s day and age, I don’t think people would look at a bulletin board. It almost has to have moving pictures or be digital, or nobody’s going to pay attention.’ So we heard that and thought, ‘Well, gee, how are we supposed to make this board move?’ We kind of blew it off and forgot about it but then thought later, ‘Well, how could we make those pictures move?' ”

The shelter had already begun regularly updating photo files of animals for its Web site, so a slide show was a natural progression from there. It was the perfect remedy for reaching a media-saturated public, and many staffers and volunteers pitched in to help. Marnie Hunt, the shelter’s special projects coordinator who was the adoption counseling supervisor at the time, asked her creative family members to build the structure that would display the presentation. Judy Brown, director of volunteers, and Nancy Stupak, a cruelty investigator at the time who is now the shelter manager, worked on acquiring a donated computer for the project. And volunteer Gerry Peterson procured some donated lumber. “I think the other really cool thing about the project was it was just a completely spontaneous effort that grew out of a desire to find additional ways to get our animals out there,” says Smith. “It was just one of those projects that there was no real plan for it to happen; it just kind of came together.”

When it was completed, the unveiling of the Critter Kiosk was truly an unveiling; a local dog trainer had spent a couple of weeks teaching her adopted shelter dog to use his mouth to pull a big tarp off the doghouse. “That got pretty good TV play,” says Smith. “It was a lot of fun.”

In addition to putting shelter animals in the limelight, the kiosk has generated calls about advertised events as well. Standing in different prime locations around the mall, the doghouse has attracted all kinds of shoppers; most recently, its location near a child’s play area drew entire families over for viewing.

While the Capital Area Humane Society contemplates moving the Critter Kiosk to a new venue, such as a movie theater or a bingo hall, Smith is also considering future possibilities: She envisions a Critter Kiosk that would be interactive, giving people the ability to touch a screen to find more information about an animal or to learn whether that pooch they’ve had their eyes on is still at the shelter.