no-kill shelters: are they making a difference?

1SPRING 2012

SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE

S P E C I A L R E P O R T

Shelteredfrom harm?While more and more animal shelters adopt

‘no-kill’ policies, millions of healthy dogs andcats still get put down each year. Why?

2 SPRING 2012

Nathan Winograd calls it the modern Underground Railroad. It’s not for people fleeing persecution, but for dogs and cats escaping extermination. Through phone calls, emails, websites and hand-to-hand connections, friends and strangers are collecting stray, runaway and homeless dogs and cats, then shepherding them to caring new homes — sometimes in other parts of the country. Despite the efforts of people like Winograd — head of the No Kill Advocacy Center in Oakland, Calif. — 4 million dogs and cats are put down every year in U.S. pounds and shelters. In the country as a whole, a dog or cat that goes into a shelter has a 50-50 chance of getting out alive, let alone finding a new home. A decade ago in Upstate New York’s Tompkins County, Winograd helped start one of the first “no-kill” communities in the United States. Now, in several dozen U.S. communities, animal lovers, shelters and government agencies collaborate to find homes for pets that have been abandoned, lost or just down on their luck. The goal is to save at least 90 percent of the animals. The movement is growing, too, with a majority of the nation’s 6,700 shelters and rescue groups dedicating more effort to adoption, spaying and neutering, and training. Regardless of whether these shelters call themselves no-kill, they want to ensure that new owners and pets are a good match. They are funded in part by the $1.3 billion donated to more than 4,000 animal welfare organizations. These are some of the fascinating, and encouraging, findings by Scripps Howard News Service reporter Lee Bowman in his investigation of how animal shelters are changing for the better. We have a long way to go, though. As Bowman discovered in his reporting, everybody loves Fido, but there isn’t enough energy, time, space or money to rescue every pet in need. Almost every week, another community announces that it wants to do a better job of caring for dogs and cats. The death penalty for household pets has by no means been abolished, but good people everywhere are showing what can happen when love meets determination, organization and money: Good animals find good homes. For more information on this and other Scripps investigations, please visit www.scrippsnews.com.

Sincerely, Peter Copeland Editor & general manager

About the special report on ‘no-kill’ shelters

Nathan Winograd calls it the modern Underground Railroad. It’s not for people fleeing persecution, but for dogs and cats escaping extermination. Through phone calls, emails, websites and hand-to-hand connections, friends and strangers are collecting strays, runaways and homeless dogs and cat, then shepherding them to caring new homes — sometimes in other parts of the country. Despite the efforts of people like Winograd — head of the No Kill Advocacy Center in Oakland, Calif. — 4 million dogs and cats are put down every year in U.S. pounds and shelters. In the country as a whole, a dog or cat that goes into a shelter has a 50-50 chance of getting out alive, let alone finding a happy new home. A decade ago in Upstate New York’s Tompkins County, Winograd helped start one of the first “no-kill” communities in the United States. Now, in several U.S. dozen communities, animal lovers, shelters and government agencies collaborate to find homes for pets that have been abandoned, lost or just down on their luck. The goal is to save at least 90 percent of the animals to be placed in new homes. The movement is growing, too, with a majority of the nation’s 6,700 shelters dedicating more effort to adoption, spaying and neutering and training. Regardless of whether these shelters call themselves no-kill, they want to ensure new owners and pets are a good match. They are funded in part by the $1.3 billion donated to more than 4,000 animal welfare organizations. These are some of the fascinating, and encouraging, findings by Scripps Howard News Service reporter Lee Bowman in his investigation of how animal shelters are changing for the better. We have a long way to go, though. As Bowman discovered in his reporting, everybody loves Fido, but there isn’t enough energy, time, space or money to rescue every pet in need. Almost every week, another community announces that it wants to do a better job caring for dogs and cats. The death penalty for household pets has by no means been abolished, but good people everywhere are showing what can happen when love meets determination, organization and money: Good animals find good homes. For more information on this and other Scripps investigations, please visit www.scrippsnews.com. Thank you. Peter Copeland Editor & General Manager

3SPRING 2012

SPECIAL REPORT: NO-KILL SHELTERS

Questions to ask when choosing where to surrender a pet or to adopt one.

An informal transport network delivers unwanted dogs and cats to sometimes-distant places with better adoption prospects.

The “no-kill” revolution promotes the ideal of euthanizing only those shelter animals too sick or too vicious to adopt. Yet millions of pets are still at risk, even in supposed no-kill shelters.

On the cover and above: A dog waits at the Animal Welfare League of Arlington (Va.) shelter. (SHNS photo by Kristin Volk)

Making news across America

EDITORIAL:

CONTRIBUTORSCONTENTS

PAGE 4

PAGE 8

PAGE 12

PAGE 11

PAGE 16

PAGE 18

PAGE 20

CONTACTS

ReporterLee Bowman

Lead editorCarol Guensburg

Editorial writerDale McFeatters

Managing editorDavid Nielsen

Other editorsCarolyn CerbinLisa HoffmanBob Jones

Photo editorSheila Person

Multimedia editorDanielle Alberti

202-408-1484 www.shns.com

Scripps Howard News Service is part of the E.W. Scripps Co.

Graphic: Number of pets / spending on pets

Graphic: No-kill shelters by the numbers

No-kill animal shelters still a work in progress

Growing ‘no-kill’ movement spares more animals

Transports help no-kill groups save cats, dogs

How to evaluate an animal shelter

Graphic: No-kill animal shelters and communities mapSee local shelters and communities in an interactive map at scrippsnews.com/projects/no-kill-shelters.

4 SPRING 2012


The chain stores PetSmart and Petco no lon-ger sell dogs and cats; they host shelter adop-tions. Spay-neuter laws and programs are more common. A loose network of rescue groups, shelters and pet-oriented businesses connects adoptable animals to new homes, sometimes hundreds of miles away, in what some animal advocates call a variation on the Underground Railroad.

“If you can’t turn off the spigot, you’ve got to put the water somewhere,” said Christine Link-Owens, president of Giles County Animal Rescue in southwestern Virginia. Last year, the

group transported more than 600 pets from the county pound to an adoption center outside Washington, D.C.

The no-kill revolution has gone main-stream, promoting the ideal of euthanizing only those shelter animals suffering from terminal illness or injury or too vicious to live among humans. Nevertheless, millions of pets are still at risk, even in supposed no-kill shelters.

With the no-kill ideal, shelters would pro-tect and place at least 90 percent of their wards. The stark reality is that half of the estimated 8 million dogs and cats entering U.S. shelters of

Growing ‘no-kill’ movement spares more animals

In 1994, San Francisco became the nation’s first commu-nity to stop the city’s pound from killing healthy dogs and cats by introducing a radical combination of adoption out-

reach and companion-animal birth control.Now those and other “no-kill” tactics are being embraced

across the country.

BY LEE BOWMANScripps Howard News Service

5SPRING 2012



A cat rests in the shelter run by the Animal Welfare League of Arlington, Va. The league has an aggressive “trap-neuter-release” program for feral cats, a source of overpopulation.

SHNS photo by Lee Bowman

all kinds last year were put down.Roughly 1,200 of the nation’s 6,700 shel-

ters and rescue groups — more than one in six — identify themselves as no-kill, according to the nonprofit NoKillNetwork.org. But no matter how shelters label themselves, a Scripps How-ard News Service examination found shelters’ performances and policies as mixed as a mutt’s pedigree. The label itself has little impact on shelter animals or their outcomes, though it divides people.

Scripps analyzed a national listing of no-kill shelters from NoKillNetwork.org. It showed:

� While the no-kill label signals good intentions, it is no guarantee of an animal’s survival or even good care. Limited space may leave owners no choice but a public pound.

� Two-thirds of all U.S. counties lack no-kill entities, though many still have effective rescue groups. And the nation’s 34 no-kill com-munities — where pounds, rescue groups and civic leaders collaborate to save animals — are concentrated in relatively affluent metropolitan areas.

� Data on shelter intake and euthanasia are limited. Only a few states — including Il-

6 SPRING 2012


linois, Michigan and Virginia — require shelters to report how many animals they bring in or kill. Only a few hundred shelters nationwide voluntarily report their numbers, which critics say can be skewed or incomplete.

� Standards for shelter and pound opera-tions are voluntary in most places, with virtu-ally no accreditation or oversight. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ani-mals says 25 to 30 percent of animal hoarding incidents it probes each year involve sites that started as no-kill shelters.

“Sheltering animals has become much more diverse in this country, from traditional public shelters to sanctuaries to a couple out-fitting their garage with cages,” said Boston veterinarian Martha Smith-Blackmore, who was president of the Association of Shelter Vet-erinarians last year. She helped write the first national guidelines for shelter care and virtu-ally anyone caring for homeless animals. The association issued them last October.

“Sheltering is not just about shoving dogs and cats in cages, but giving them a life that’s worth living,” she said.

Almost all humane groups agree on basic programs needed to reduce shelter killing.

Backed by a growing field of veterinary behavior specialists, shelter workers are so-cializing many dogs and cats whose habits or temperament once doomed them. Many facili-ties also educate owners, trying to stem a 20 percent return rate for shelter pets.

Spay-neuter laws have been strengthened in many states or municipalities, and most shelter and rescue groups either run their own clinics or subsidize the surgery for lower-income pet owners. Feral cats, once routinely killed, are now trapped, neutered and released back to their habitat in hundreds of communi-ties.

“It’s not as if there is resistance to those ideas to reduce euthanasia. There’s a practical problem . . . of getting this done in a very complex world.”

— Wayne Pacelle, Humane Society

of the United States


7SPRING 2012


“It’s not as if there is resistance to those ideas to reduce eutha-nasia,” said Wayne Pacelle, who heads the Humane Society of the United States. “There’s a practi-cal problem of execution, of get-ting this done in a very complex world.”

Whether shelter groups call themselves no-kill or not, most are applying the same tactics to improve the survival rate of creatures in their care.

Disagreement arises over how quickly the changes can be widely implemented.

“This is the defining issue in sheltering all over the place. We know how to make this happen,” said Nathan Winograd, who directs

the No Kill Advocacy Center in Oakland, Calif., and contends any community can end most shelter deaths.

Nearly three dozen communi-ties already have reached no-kill status and dozens more are closing in, reckons Susan Houser of Tal-

lahassee, Fla., who tracks death rates and other milestones in her No-Kill News blog.

These communities report 90 percent sur-vival rates even in their open-admission shel-ters, which must accept any animal, not just those more likely to be placed in an adoptive home.

“There is nothing unusual about limited-

Nathan Winograd, who heads the No Kill Advocacy Center in Oakland, Calif., contends every community easily could implement strategies to reduce shelters’ animal populations and boost adoptions.

SHNS photo courtesy No Kill Advocacy Center

8 SPRING 2012


46.3

78.2 86.4 159.7 16.2 16.0 13.0 7.9

DOGS CATS FISH BIRDS SMALL ANIMALS REPTILES HORSES

U.S. households with petsAmericans love animals. Some 62 percent of all U.S. households have at least one pet, according to the most recent survey by the American Pet Products Association.

38.9

12.6

5.7 5.0 4.62.4

Source: American Pet Products Association

2011 spending on pets (in billions)FoodVeterinary careSupplies/over-the- counter medicationsServices (Groom & board)Live animal purchasesTotal

$19.5$14.1$11.4

$3.7

$2.2$50.8

Number of households (in millions)

Number of pets (in millions)

admission shelters being no-kill. The revolu-tion that is occurring is with open-admission municipal shelters that are achieving no kill,” Houser adds.

While the presence of no-kill shelters sug-gests advocates working to reduce euthanasia, their space limitations mean owners trying to surrender a pet may have no choice but a public pound. And in many places, volunteers aren’t welcome at the pound, adoptions are rare and animals are killed because of illness, undesir-able breed or limited space.

“No-kill is really more about branding than animal welfare,” said Sharon Adams, execu-tive director of the Virginia Beach SPCA, an open-admission shelter. “Our policy is that we do everything in our power to adopt every crit-ter presented to us and not turn any away.” The shelter euthanized 13 percent of dogs and cats in 2010.

The supply of animals available for adoption

9SPRING 2012


46.3

78.2 86.4 159.7 16.2 16.0 13.0 7.9

DOGS CATS FISH BIRDS SMALL ANIMALS REPTILES HORSES

U.S. households with petsAmericans love animals. Some 62 percent of all U.S. households have at least one pet, according to the most recent survey by the American Pet Products Association.

38.9

12.6

5.7 5.0 4.62.4

Source: American Pet Products Association

2011 spending on pets (in billions)FoodVeterinary careSupplies/over-the- counter medicationsServices (Groom & board)Live animal purchasesTotal

$19.5$14.1$11.4

$3.7

$2.2$50.8

Number of households (in millions)

Number of pets (in millions)

far outweighs demand. Although an American Pet Products Association survey shows 20 mil-lion households look for a new companion each year, just 30 percent of new pets come from shelters.

“We simply need to convince a few million more families that a shelter is the best place to get a pet,” said Richard Avanzino, who helped pioneer no-kill tactics in the 1990s in San Fran-cisco. He now heads the pro-adoption Maddie’s Fund in Alameda, Calif.

Money is another challenge. Spay-neuter costs average $40, and though many shelters offer free or subsidized surgeries, “there are many pockets of the country where these pro-grams just haven’t taken hold,” said Ed Sayres, president of the ASPCA and Avanzino’s successor in San Francisco.

Many local governments argue that keeping most animals alive is too costly. But Winograd cites a 2009 study

by the No Kill Advocacy Center that found the opposite: “A community that was saving 90 percent (of animals) was spending $1.90 per citizen for animal control, while another that was saving just 40 percent was spending $6 per capita.”

At the ASPCA, Sayres is working to trans-plant “best practices” for shelter management around the country. The organization, with headquarters in New York, is part of an alliance that has reduced the city’s shelter death rate to less than 30 percent, with a goal of no-kill.

But Sayres stresses lifesaving programs must be durable: “We’re not talking about Olympic moments, we’re looking for sustain-ability.”

Dogs get loaded into an SUV at a veterinary clinic in Giles County in southwestern Virginia. They’re transported in a caravan from the county pound to suburban Washington, D.C.

SHNS Photo Courtesy Giles County Animal Rescue


11SPRING 2012

T oby had issues. The 4-year-old chow’s owners had dispatched him to the municipal shelter in Virginia’s King George County for being aggressive

with their children. He had skin allergies and wouldn’t let anyone near him. Prospects for adoption seemed grim.

But after a few weeks, Toby made friends — first with one attendant, then with the rest of the shelter staff and King George Animal Res-cue League volunteers.

After five months, the dog got a second chance. The league arranged with volunteers from Chow Chow Rescue of Central New York to drive 16 hours round trip to pick up Toby, with another chow, and deliver him to the home of an older couple in New Hampshire.

Transporting unwanted dogs and cats to places with better adoption prospects is a com-mon tool among the nation’s relatively rare “no-kill” communities, which routinely save more than 90 percent of the animals brought to their

shelters.The informal transport network is “our

movement’s Underground Railroad,” says no-kill advocate Nathan Winograd, who helped establish one of the first no-kill communities a decade ago in Tompkins County in Upstate New York.

As of January, just 34 locales around the United States were recognized as no-kill com-munities by the No Kill News, a blog affiliated with a national alliance of shelter reformers.

Two in Virginia — in mostly rural King George and in urban Arlington County, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. — show some of the characteristics these communities share and the challenges they confront.

Most of the communities, Arlington includ-ed, are concentrated in somewhat more affluent metropolitan areas.

The Animal Welfare League of Arlington hosts the only shelter for the county of 200,000. It has a paid staff of 35, including several animal control officers, plus more than 700 volunteers.


Transports help ‘no-kill’ groups save cats, dogs


SPRING 201212

Its $2.5 million budget includes $1.2 million from the county contract.

Even with all its resources and services, the shelter transfers out some pets, working with dozens of rescue groups to place animals like Biscuit, an energetic 60-pound foxhound mix that had limited appeal amid Arlington’s high-rises and small backyards. Biscuit was adopt-ed within weeks of a transfer to the Loudoun County Animal Shelter 35 miles to the west.

Transferring “frees up some space and al-lows us to look at other shelters, perhaps in other parts of Virginia that don’t have the resources,

where animals are essentially living day-to-day, and transfer them to our shelter,’’ said the league’s executive director, Neil Trent.

League policy prevents the shelter from turning away any Arlington animal — or any animal from anywhere — making it the ulti-mate “open-admission” facility. It makes no guarantee of survival, just a commitment to strive for “positive outcomes.” In 2011, the shel-ter, which takes in about 2,000 animals a year, had a “live release” rate of 93 percent.

Owners surrender most of the animals arriv-ing in the Arlington shelter. So the league offers an extraordinary range of services to help people keep their pets, from “canine good-citizen class-es” to keeping tabs on pet-friendly housing in the county. The league also offers temporary shelter for pets whose owners face an emergency and

‘No-kill’ sheltersby the numbers

Estimated number of dogs and cats euthanized each year out of 8 million taken in by U.S. animal shelters.

“No-kill” shelters’ minimum goal foranimal survival rate. Such entities putdown only the most sick, injured orvicious animals.

4 million

90%

Number of the nation’s 6,700 sheltersand rescue groups that in 2011 identi�ed themselves as no-kill. That’smore than 1 in 6.

1,200

Total amount donated to 4,400nonpro�t, animal-welfare organizationsin the U.S. in 2007.

$1.27 billion

Poverty rate in counties with no-killshelters vs. 16.7% among U.S. countiesoverall in 2010. No-kill communitiestend to be more a�uent counties.

Sources: NokillNetwork.org, NokillNation.org,U.S. Census Bureau, Internal Revenue Service

13.8%

“We’re fortunate to have the volunteers that allow us to try and do the right thing for every individual animal.”

— Neil Trent,Animal Welfare League of Arlington


13SPRING 2012

Neil Trent, executive director of the Animal Welfare League of Arlington, in Virginia, shares his office with rescue dog Abby. Innovative adoption efforts and other measures helped the shelter achieve a “live-release” rate of 93 percent, even though it must take in any animal.



14 SPRING 2012

can’t afford a kennel.“We’re fortunate to have the vol-

unteers that allow us to try and do the right thing for every individual animal and put it in the best home,” Trent said.

Although King George’s population nearly doubled to more than 20,000 in the past decade, as subdivisions have sprouted amid farmland, it’s still rural.

“We deal with the barn cats and dog litters right along with the pets given up when folks lose their homes,” said Kevin Eller, the senior animal control officer. He has five full- and part-time staff and a $250,000 budget for the 2-year-old shelter, which can hold 50 or so animals.

Last year, just four dogs out of 422 were euthanized, along with seven of 305 cats, or about 1 percent and 2 percent. As recently as 2006, the shelter put down 41 percent of dogs and 80 percent of cats.

The change has come from gradually stron-ger partnerships between county officials and the hundred or so volunteers with the local res-cue league, which spent about $27,000 last year.

“We’re still a kill shelter, although we’re working to reduce that,” said Eller. “I think the only (animals) euthanized last year were due to injuries or by court order for vicious dogs.”

Last year, local residents adopted more than 100 animals directly from the shelter. But the

Anna Gruszka, president of the King George (Va.) Animal Rescue League, places many animals in homes hundreds of miles away.

SHNS video still by Kristin Volk


15SPRING 2012

league, working with hundreds of rescue groups, arranged for most of the shelter’s animals to be transported to adoptive homes as far away as far away as Connecticut and Florida.

“Most of the time, the orga-nizations we work with have al-ready got a match in mind when they take the animal,” said Anna Gruszka, the league’s president.

“Thankfully, more people are looking to adopt a pet, and they go out to the rescue groups and search through the Web. Our transport coordinator is emailing and Facebooking con-stantly. We’re moving our animals to areas …

that have a better handle on spay-neuter and there’s a better chance for adoption.”

Similar rescues take place all over the country. For example, a group called Colorado Animal Rescue Express last year reported making 151 transport trips that moved 3,143 dogs and cats from shelters with high kill rates — in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Ar-kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska, Wyoming and rural Colorado — to more than 100 rescue groups or adoptive families, mainly in Colorado. Hundreds, if not thou-sands, of similar groups operate nationwide.

Although some transport vol-unteers get money for gas, most pay their own expenses. League dues, adoption fees and fundrais-ers — such as craft fairs and raffles — mostly go toward support med-ical care of animals.

Along with foster care and networking, other key no-kill tactics include promoting spay-neuter programs to curb the number of animals coming into shelters and sponsoring various programs to make sure adopted animals and their new families “stay.”

Gruszka, also the league’s spay-neuter co-ordinator, said along with vouchers to low-cost clinics, “we’re focusing on educating people about how important this is to keep populations down at the shelter and the killing rate down. But it takes time to get that message around, so we have to transport.”

Toby, a 4-year-old chow rescued from Virginia’s King George County, found a new home with Annie and Victor Zammit in Hampstead, N.H. King George shelter staff and volunteers worked with the dog for five months to address behavior and medical problems before helping him reach a new home.

SHNS photo courtesy Zammit family


16 SPRING 2012

If you’re able to choose where to surrender an animal, or select one as a pet, what should you consider? Use the following tips as a guide:

� Does the organization have a website? What are its policies for accepting, caring for or plac-ing animals? Does it have open admission — offering shelter to any animal — or does it place limits on species, breed or size? Or by where an owner lives?

� Does the organization have a facility or shel-ter? If not, how and where are animals cared for?

� Visit the facility. How accessible is it in terms of location and hours? Is it clean and well lit, with adequate space for each animal? Is the staff friendly to animals? And to visitors?

How to evaluate an animal shelter


A cat sheltered at the Animal Welfare League of Arlington, Va.

17SPRING 2012


� How long does it keep strays or animals sur-rendered by owners?

� Does the organization charge to take in, or adopt out, animals? What do those fees cover? Veterinary care and food? Spaying or neuter-ing?

� Is a veterinarian available or on site?

� Does the organization follow the Association of Shelter Veterinarians’ “Guidelines for Stan-dards of Care in Animal Shelters”?

� If the organization can’t accept an animal, will it help you find an alternative?

� If it describes itself as “no kill,” what does that mean? What are its criteria for euthaniz-ing animals?

� How does the organization determine if an animal is adoptable?

� How does it screen prospective owners and pets for adoption placement?

� Does the organization promote animal spaying-neutering beyond the shelter? How? Does it offer assistance, such as financial aid, to low-income families seeking the surgery for their pets?

� Who runs the shelter? How many people are on staff? Does it have a board of directors? Or volunteers?

� Does the organization provide outcome sta-tistics for animals in its care?

� Does it partner with other shelters or rescue groups? Does it transport animals to, and/or exchange them with, other facilities?

— LEE BOWMANScripps Howard News Service


A dog sheltered at the Animal Welfare League of Arlington, Va.


SPRING 201218

Making news across America

THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL MEMPHIS, TENN.

KNOXVILLE (TENN.)NEWS SENTINEL

RECORD SEARCHLIGHTREDDING, CALIF.SAN ANGELO (TEXAS)

STANDARD-TIMES

EVANSVILLE (IND.)COURIER & PRESS

ABILENE (TEXAS) REPORTER-NEWS

19SPRING 2012


NAPLES (FLA.) DAILY NEWS

WPTV WEST PALM BEACH, FLA.

KJRH TULSA, OKLA.

WRTV INDIANAPOLIS

WXYZ DETROIT

KSHB KANSAS CITY, MO.

TIMES RECORD NEWSWICHITA FALLS, TEXAS

CORPUS CHRISTI (TEXAS)CALLER TIMES

20 SPRING 2012


‘No-kill’ animal shelters still a work in progress

EDITORIAL

San Francisco has always been an in-cubator of radical ideas, and in 1994 it came up with another one. The city’s pound would no longer kill healthy dogs and cats but, through a policy of sterilization and an aggressive outreach program, see that these so-called “shelter animals” found welcoming homes.

Since then, Lee Bowman of Scripps Howard News Service reports, the “no-kill” approach has gone mainstream. The idea is to euthanize only those animals too ill, too injured or too vicious to put up for adoption — no more than 10 percent of a shelter’s occupants.

Half of the estimated 8 million dogs and cats entering shelters last year were put down. The no-kill movement has the am-bitious goal of finding adoptive homes for 90 percent of shelter animals.

The concept has worked, after a fashion. About 1,200 of the nation’s 6,700 shelter and rescue groups identify themselves as no-kill. Bowman’s examination of listings with the umbrella group NoKillNetwork.org shows that while the no-kill label sig-nals good intentions, in practice it is a rath-er elastic term.

Limited shelter space may leave the op-erators no choice but to turn an animal over to the public pound and likely eventual

euthanasia. And cases of animal hoarding often turn out to involve well-intentioned people who wanted to start a no-kill shelter and simply became overwhelmed.

Two-thirds of U.S. counties lack no-kill entities, and the communities that do have such shelters tend to be affluent. There are no uniform standards or reporting require-ments for no-kill operations, but the good ones are not cheap. The affluaent Wash-ington, D.C., suburb of Arlington — one of roughly three-dozen no-kill communities — has a paid staff of 35, a network of more than 700 volunteers and a $2.5 million budget. In 2011, it had a “live release” rate of 93 percent.

One hurdle is finding volunteers willing to transport an animal often several hun-dred miles to a new adoptive home. Steps are also necessary to educate the owners, if only to cut the 20 percent return rate of ad-opted animals.

Americans are notoriously pet-loving, and with that comes a certain moral re-sponsibility: to ensure that when a pet loses one home, the animal has a humane chance at finding another, rather than sim-ply being discarded at the point of a needle.

— DALE McFEATTERSScripps Howard News Service

no-kill shelters: are they making a difference?

Documents

love meets

government

modern underground

affluent metropolitan

yorks tompkins

kill advocacy

live release

animal welfare