We have not blogged on our website for almost two years. We have been in a monitoring mode during that period now that the city has changed the culture at Huntsville Animal Services, more lives are being saved than ever before and our advocacy is no longer necessary on a daily basis. This blog is a look back at what has happened a the shelter and in our community over a period of years leading up to the end of 2021. We seek shelter reports from the City Attorney's Office monthly and have for many years. The monthly and yearly shelter reports are here (and link from here). We share the euthanasia reports on our Facebook page. We took at look back at the data we have to develop a list of highlights for our followers. Huntsville Animal Services provides services to both the City of Huntsville (now the largest city in the state) and Madison County, but not the City of Madison.
Saving the lives of animals is a responsibility which falls to all of us as a community. We applaud the progress made by the shelter, hope some of our recommendations to city officials will be seriously considered in the coming year and we encourage everyone to become personally invested in the shelter operation. We simply cannot go back to a time when 10k animals entered the building each year and 2/3 of them were destroyed. That is not who we are. We can continue to improve and continue to be the Star of Alabama we call ourselves.
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No Kill Huntsville formed in January of 2012. The original group was a couple dozen nonprofit shelter leaders, nonprofit leaders, rescue group leaders and animal advocates. The mission of the organization is, and has always been, to encourage the City of Huntsville to adopt progressive animal shelter programs and to end the archaic practice of destroying healthy and treatable pets using tax dollars. We had no idea if we would succeed when we first met, but we knew we had to try. A number of us had been working independently of each other to seek change and we felt we would do better by combining our efforts. There were numerous places across the country where the lives of shelter animals were being saved and we knew Huntsville could do the same. Prior to the formation of No Kill Huntsville, the live release rate at Huntsville Animal Services had been incredibly low for a very long time. Although most city officials and members of the pubic presumed the shelter would not needlessly destroy animals, that is (unfortunately) exactly what happened for many years. The animals being destroyed were not just those who were suffering or irremediably ill, but animals who were perfect healthy and treatable. We spent approximately a year preparing to make our pitch to the City of Huntsville to adopt the programs and services of the No Kill Equation which we still promote to this day. We had contacts across the country who had used the equation to reform their own communities and we knew the same methods would work here. The equation is a series of programs which work in concert with each other to both reduce shelter intake (what we call “keep them out” programs), to increase shelter output (what we call “get them out” programs) and which both reduce intake and increase output. The genius of the equation is that it can be adopted in any community regardless of resources and bring about change not in years but very fast. Some places have become No Kill Communities literally overnight by using the equation. We realized it would take some more time in Huntsville simply due to the number of animals who had been destroyed over a period of years and due to prior resistance on the part of city officials to embrace the programs themselves and without the need for our political advocacy. We hit some high walls and some big speed bumps along the way. In early 2013, the shelter leadership was offered free help by subject matter experts which we would have paid for. This would have been confidential, hands on help inside the shelter to examine policies, procedures and programs in order to determine how to implement the equation quickly by building on current operations. This help was refused. It was only when we hit that wall that we had no alternative but to take the subject to the public and began our public information campaign which continues to this day. We held a free public workshop, we used the media to reach people, we paid for Lamar billboard space around town to introduce people to the concept of No Kill, we showed a documentary film at Lee High School, we used social media and our fully developed website to reach more people and we engaged in a series of meetings with city officials. Our group became smaller over the years; a core group of 6 members remain to this day. We had a lot of opposition and much of it came from a surprising source: people in the rescue community. It was not easy and we lost friends along the way, something we were told would happen. At one point a shelter employee set up a hate page on Facebook which was encouraged by people in the rescue community as well as members of the shelter staff. The page was ultimately removed with the help of the city. Things began to change quickly in 2014 when we met with newly appointed City Administrator John Hamilton. He was on board with the No Kill Equation from our first meeting with him in March of 2014 and for that we remain incredibly grateful. Due to a combination of animal welfare advocacy, city leadership and public participation, the live release rate at the shelter began to improve over a period of time. It reached the 90% benchmark in 2015 and has remained essentially at that level for the last three years. In April of 2016, we began promoting a CAPA – a Companion Animal Protection Act – which we later called the Huntsville Animal Protection Act. We promoted the HAPA in earnest during 2018 in meetings with city council members and candidates for city council. For us, the HAPA is about maintaining legacy to ensure that the shelter does not go back to the old ways of functioning no matter who leads the city or who runs the shelter. The HAPA would have set measurable standards for the shelter to achieve and would have required certain standards for animal housing, care and placement and prior to euthanizing animals. Because work was already taking place to revise the entire animal code for the city, the city chose to not implement the HAPA and to instead incorporate much of the spirit of the HAPA into the revisions to Chapter 5 of the City Code. This was not the outcome we had hoped for, but it is the outcome chosen by the city. We are left with no alternative to accept the city’s decisions and celebrate the aspects of the ordinance used to change the city code which reflect the intent of the city moving forward and expectations regarding the operation of Huntsville Animal Services. The City's statements of intent are here. The City's expectations of the shelter policies are here. In light of the revisions to the city code, we have suspended our promotion of the HAPA for the foreseeable future. Should a time come when we feel the city is open to codifying more of the aspects of the shelter operation, we will consider promoting the HAPA again.
We will continue to maintain our website and obtain copies of the shelter statistics and euthanasia reports from the City Attorney’s Office each month to ensure the city does not back slide and to continue our work monitoring the number of dogs destroyed for behavior and kennel stress. We will also promote Chipathon events twice a year (in March and July) to encourage people to have their pets microchipped to prevent them from entering the shelter (or to get them back home quickly). We will no longer maintain our Facebook page; it is a 7-day a week platform. It will go dormant unless a time comes when we see the need to use it to reach people. Any questions or comments about our group, the No Kill Equation or the state of animal welfare in Huntsville and Madison County can be addressed to us using our website and our email account. There is still much work to be done in Huntsville and city officials are the first to acknowledge that fact. We hope you will join us in congratulating city leaders on the progress made to date. We also hope you will join us as we continue to hold the city accountable while stepping back into the shadows for now. We are told that the shelter will continue to develop policies and programs which promote life-saving in our community and that we are not limited by the 90% benchmark which ordinarily is an indication of progressive programs. We hope a time comes when the city decides that it can call itself a No Kill community and will do so with pride. As we wind down 2017, No Kill Huntsville takes a look back at the year as a whole to hit on some of the highlights which have taken place like we did last year. The Bad News • The city has yet to make a public declaration of intent that it will no longer destroy healthy and treatable animals. We were told by City Administrator John Hamilton during a September 2017 meeting that the city has not destroyed any healthy and treatable animals purely for space in three years. Based on this milestone, we see no reason for the city to delay in making a commitment to the No Kill model moving forward. Although the city faced some challenges in 2017 and did not quite match the level of success achieved in 2016, it is in an ideal position to make a public commitment and say that Huntsville is a No Kill Community in both culture and in spirit moving forward. We believe that the city can in good faith commit to a standard and live up to that standard. • We believe that otherwise healthy and treatable dogs are destroyed in the shelter having been labeled as a aggressive or a public safety risk when there may be ways to avoid destroying them. We realize that many dogs do not do well in a shelter environment. We also realize that some dogs are broken and really do present a public safety risk. The National Canine Research Council has stated that, "shelter evaluations may tell us as much or more about the effect of the shelter as they do about the individual dogs. Shelters are noisy, alien environments, filled with strange smells, unfamiliar people, and dogs they may hear, but not see. We should not be surprised that some dogs may. . behave differently when confined in a shelter, with its barrage of stressors that the dog cannot control, than they will in the safe, secure, predictable environment of a home, cared for by people with whom they are able to form positive attachments." We took our concerns about this issue to the city and we offered to pay for a subject matter expert to help the city for free. Our offer was declined. The city has instead decided to retain an expert of its choosing to help train the shelter staff. This training will take place in April. We are hopeful the training will result in fewer dogs being destroyed each month for behavior issues (which are categorized as fearful, aggressive, public safety and high arousal). We will be promoting a fundraiser to help offset costs of the training. • The shelter still has yet to fully embrace the No Kill Equation and develop programs which will serve to both reduce intake and increase output. Many of these programs cost nothing and some actions take very little time. We have included the list of things we have recommended to the city in the Looking Forward section of this blog below. We genuinely hope they will be considered in 2018 or that the shelter leadership will network with national organizations with which they are aligned to seek assistance to fine tune programs. Only when all of the programs of the No Kill Equation are fully embraced with the shelter be able to save more animals. The Good News • The city continues to do an impressive job saving the lives of animals as compared to those saved during the years before we took this issue to the public. We fully realize that saving the lives of animals is incredibly difficult and challenging work and that it is an ongoing struggle. The statistics for 2017 were not quite as good as for 2016. The highlights from our analysis are as follows:
• Plans to improve the shelter building are progressing. The first phase of shelter renovations happened last year with the opening of Cat World. We were told by Mr. Hamilton that renovations will be made to the dog housing area this year which will help reduce the number of dogs getting sick after they enter the shelter and which should also reduce some issues with negative behavior. The kennels in which dogs are housed are currently separated by low walls and fencing. We are told that the renovations will fully enclose each dog kennel. This will allow for dedicated air exchange for each kennel (to avoid the spread of disease and bacteria). This will also reduce the level of stimulation dogs experience from seeing and hearing other dogs to the extent they do now. • Huntsville Animal Services is now active on Petfinder. For a period of time there was no way that someone looking for a pet from the shelter could go to one location to see what pets are available. Some were on a Pet Harbor website and some were on Facebook. We asked the city to consider posting all of the animals on a single website and recommended Petfinder because it is considered the gold standard when people are looking to adopt a pet and want to view pets online. We are hopeful that in the months to come, all of the shelter pets will be shown on Petfinder whether they are in the shelter building or are in foster care. • More pets in our community are microchipped. We held a Chipathon over the summer to promote microchipping and hundreds of pets were microchipped. We are promoting another Chipathon for the month of January of 2018. The goal of these events is to get more pets microchipped so they can be returned home quickly and spend either no time in the shelter or less time in the shelter. • The shelter now has a sound system just for the animals. A Facebook group called Lost and Founds Pets of Huntsville/Madison County, led by Jeananne Jackson, promoted a You Caring Fundraiser to get a sound system installed in the shelter to help calm the shelter animals. The system was installed in July at no cost to the city. It plays soft rock during the day and classical music at night. Studies have shown that shelter animals show signs of reduced anxiety and anxiety-related behaviors such as barking, scratching, pacing and whining when exposed to music. Looking Forward No Kill Huntsville has been in a monitoring mode of sorts during this year and we plan to continue in that capacity in 2018. We look forward to the facilities upgrades which are being planned and we look forward to the training which will take place in April to help the shelter do a better job of evaluating dogs toward keeping more of those dogs alive. We have made a number of recommendations to the city regarding community outreach and program development. Although we have been told that our suggestions are considered after those of employees and volunteers, we hope the shelter leadership will consider implementing those programs which do not cost more, which take very little time and which would not require additional staffing. Some of our recommendations are listed here. If you support any of our recommendations, we ask that you communicate that support to Mr. John Hamilton and to Dr. Karen Sheppard. • Hold monthly community outreach meetings in the city council districts and county commission districts (one meeting a month in a different location) to address issues in those geographic areas to help reduce shelter intake while increasing adoptions through direct contact with the public being served. Many people don’t think about the shelter operation or how it is affected by their personal behavior. Community outreach can be used to educate the public to make better choices while making it clear what services the shelter does and does not provide. • Consider enacting a Companion Animal Protection Act like that enacted recently in Muncie, Indiana and which has also been acted in places like Austin, Texas, St. Paul Minnesota and the State of Delaware. A CAPA would be an ordinance to codify some of the standards for the shelter, regardless of who oversees the shelter. Enacting a CAPA would serve to preserve the legacy of Mayor Battle and other city leaders moving forward by ensuring the shelter does not destroy animals when there is open kennel space, by ensuring the shelter does not destroy animals without first networking with rescue groups and by ensuring the live release rate does not fall below 90% (among other provisions). • Improve the method by which adoption surrenders are handled so there is a mechanism for adopters to return animals within a set period of time rather than having them go to rescues for help or otherwise feel compelled to abandon them (which is illegal). • Improve surrender counseling to work harder to keep pets in existing homes and establishing a waiting list for owner surrenders (as opposed to just turning people away). • Hold periodic off site adoptions at city parks in various locations to interact with a wider segment of the public and make it easier for people to adopt a shelter pet. (An off-site event was held on December 29th at Big Spring Park and a small number of dogs were adopted.) • Stay open late one more night a week (in addition to Tuesday night) to make it easier for owners to find lost pets or adopt. • Implement Pets for Vets and Seniors for Seniors programs to reach certain segments of the population and to place larger dogs and older animals. • Implement a Pet Help Desk managed through a combination of email and phone using volunteers to help augment the staff in order to help people keep pets in their homes and out of the shelter. • Enact city anti-chaining and humane tethering ordinance similar to the one enacted in Arab last year to reduce problems associated with resident dogs who are not properly socialized to people or who may be subject to abuse and neglect (causing them to end up in the shelter). No Kill Equation Report Card
Huntsville and Huntsville Animal Services have come a long way. When No Kill philosophies were first shared with city officials in November of 2008, the Live Release Rate at our municipal animal shelter was 25%. Three out of every four animals entering the building were destroyed. When we formed our coalition in January of 2012 and began our research phase, the rate had risen to 34%. Some progress had been made, but it was incredibly slow and thousands of animals continued to die each year. When we took our topic to the public in the summer of 2013, the rate had risen to 41% and by the end of that year it had reached 47%. Again, progress had been made but it was slow. More than half of the animals entering the shelter building continued to be destroyed not because anything was wrong with them, but because that was just what had been done for so long. Those who lead the shelter felt they were doing the best they could with limited resources, felt they were doing a great job and were happy with the progress which had been made in a few short years. We, as a coalition, have always sought one thing: for the destruction of healthy and treatable animals in the shelter to end. We have always promoted the No Kill Equation to achieve that goal because it has been proven to work everywhere it has been fully embraced. Some elements of the Equation serve to keep animals from entering the shelter at all. Some serve to move animals through the system quickly if they do end up in the shelter. Some elements serve both purposes. The genius of the No Kill Equation is that it is a DIY type solution to changing how an animal shelter operates. It is very important to learn what has worked well (and what has failed) in other communities, but the No Kill Equation can be examined element by element and then implemented using the resources available in any community. When we first began interacting with the newly appointed City Administrator, John Hamilton, about our No Kill purpose and vision, he said, "you had me at hello." He listened to our input about use of the Equation and even took the elements of the Equation to create his own diagram which looks similar to the Parthenon in Greece. It did not matter that he viewed the elements in different ways. What mattered is that he understood how they worked together and still does to this day. The City of Huntsville and Huntsville Animal Services is about to mark a milestone and we think it is incredibly important to share it not only with the people who live and work in Huntsville, but with those across the country who have watched our progress and who may look to our community for guidance. No healthy and treatable animals have been destroyed in our municipal shelter strictly for space since September of 2014. That means that it has been almost 3 full years since the city engaged in population control killing. We have written before about issues with dogs being described as aggressive and then destroyed for public safety purposes. We fully realize that dogs who may be dangerous to people cannot be adopted out into the community and risk having someone injured or, worse yet, killed by a dog. We believe that for a period of time following September of 2014, some dogs were destroyed after either having been labeled as aggressive (when they were simply scared or traumatized) or after having deteriorated behaviorally from being in the shelter too long. Having said that, we know that the shelter leadership has taken steps to better evaluate dogs in the shelter environment (by having staff and volunteers trained by subject matter experts). We also know that the shelter leadership has developed enrichment programs for dogs to prevent them from deteriorating while in the shelter environment. We have also seen social media posts which clearly state that a certain dog is not doing well in the shelter as a means to market that dog more aggressively to get him or her out of the shelter in order to save a life. We know that there are still issues to be fine tuned at Huntsville Animal Services. We met with Mr. Hamilton on September 15th to talk about some of those issues and to offer some suggestions which may help the city. This is truly a work in progress and there is no such thing as being "done" with improving the shelter. Saving the lives of shelter animals is incredibly hard work and there are no days off. It takes committed city leaders like Mayor Tommy Battle and City Administrator John Hamilton. It takes a passionate Shelter Director like Dr. Karen Sheppard. It takes energized and educated shelter staff like Karen Buchan and Will Roberson. And it takes a huge number of volunteers, fosters, adopters, donors and supporters to help us maintain the current level of progress so that we never, ever go back to the way it was before. This is not an Us and Them solution. It is a We solution.
Congratulations to the City of Huntsville and to Huntsville Animal Services. We look forward to continued improvements in the shelter building and in program development. You have much to be proud of and we are incredibly pleased to have played a role in this process. Stay tuned. Things just get better from this point on. In March of 2016, we posted a blog called “Transparency and the Public Trust.” We were having some issues getting records from the City Attorney’s Office related to Huntsville Animal Services. Since that time, we have had periodic struggles getting records from the City. The Alabama Open Records Act is pretty comprehensive in scope and provides for only certain exceptions which make records protected from public disclosure. It is our position that the only shelter records which may be subject to redaction prior to disclosure are those which contain personal information regarding the identities of people who surrendered animals to the shelter. All other records, whether kept in paper form or electronic form, are public records as set forth in Code of Alabama, Section 36-12-40 and are to be disclosed to anyone seeking them, regardless of where they live. The law states: “Every citizen has a right to inspect and take a copy of any public writing of this state, except as otherwise expressly provided by statute.” We do an Open Records Act Request letter which we send to the city every month to seek both the monthly statistics and to seek a document called the “euthanasia” report which sets forth details regarding which animals were destroyed and why. We have received those records fairly regularly, although we often have to ask two or three times to receive them. When we sought copies of kennel cards for dogs destroyed in 2015 for issues related to behavior, we were told that the cards were not public record. When we pushed back, we were told months later that we could have the cards but that it would cost $5 to get each card because they had to be reviewed by an attorney. We disagreed with this process completely. It is not uncommon for advocates to seek and get kennel cards, none of which contain any confidential or proprietary information. We gave up on our pursuit of the cards (like the one shown below which is from Houston) due to cost and due to age; by the time the city agreed to produce them for a fee, the information was too dated to be of much value. (click on the image above to view a pdf copy; this is an example from Houston) As of today, the following requested public records regarding Huntsville Animal Services have yet to be provided to No Kill Huntsville or otherwise made available to the public: -data regarding animal intakes and outcomes in 2016 specific to dogs (intake date, perceived breed, age, gender, outcome date and outcome type) -data regarding animal intakes and outcomes in 2016 specific to cats (intake date, age, gender, outcome date and outcome type) -monthly statistics for March of 2017 -monthly statistics for April of 2017 We can only speculate as to why this information has not been forthcoming. The city was doing a fairly good job of keeping the monthly statistics posted on the shelter website, but if you go there now, you will see the last reported month is February. Because we have obtained the euthanasia reports for each month going back to October of 2015, we know that the data on the monthly statistics forms often does not match the euthanasia reports. For example, the monthly report for February indicates that 17 dogs were destroyed. The euthanasia report shows that 16 dogs were destroyed. From November of 2016 through January of 2017, monthly reports show that 81 dogs were destroyed. The euthanasia reports, however, show that 74 dogs were destroyed. We cannot explain these discrepancies, but it is possible that we have not been provided the annual data we seek for dogs and cats for 2016 because the data has not been audited and there are more discrepancies to be found. So. Why does any of this matter? There are two reasons. The first reason is that the City of Huntsville has made claims about progress by relying on statistical data. As we have said numerous times before, we focus not on the math, but on the method. We honestly don’t care what the “stats” say as long as healthy and treatable animals are not being destroyed. That may result in a Live Release Rate of 98% one month and 88% the next month (if there truly were a lot of animals who were suffering and had to be euthanized or a large number of dogs who presented a genuine public safety risk, as opposed to just being scared or traumatized). The City has made a big deal out of having a Live Release Rate above 90%, a number which can be a positive indicator of progress. We recognize the progress that has been made and we continue to applaud that progress regularly. Animals in our shelter are now safer than at any time in the history of the city as other communities look to Huntsville in their efforts to reform their own shelters. The second reason this matters relates to public trust. Put simply, in order to keep the level of public trust which has been established through positive change, the shelter operation must be completely transparent. There is a new phrase going around these days about whether or not there “is a there there.” We think it is entirely appropriate for the shelter to be fully transparent regarding its operations because it is a city department which is funded by tax dollars and because there really should be nothing to hide. The Live Release Rate in January was 94%. It was 96% in February. Absent some catastrophic event regarding shelter animals of which we are not aware, we presume that the statistics for March and April are equally strong. The ASPCAs Position Statement on Responsibilities of Animal Shelters speaks to this very point: Goal 4: Animal sheltering is increasingly transparent The ASPCA strongly supports a requirement that key records and data be maintained by all shelters, both public and private, routinely reported to an appropriate central entity, and made available to the public. While much of this information, for public shelters at least, may already be considered a public record under various state laws, the ASPCA believes that standardizing the information that must be collected and extending these requirements to private shelters is not only an important step toward transparency, but also an effective way to gain a fuller picture of the community’s at-risk animals. When the only information available concerning intake and outcomes is that which must be provided by public shelters through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the public is receiving an incomplete and perhaps distorted representation of these matters. The shelter director herself blogged on the subject of transparency a couple of months ago in an article called “The Never Ending Challenge to Save Shelter Pets.” She spoke of the need for shelters to report data, stating, "The City of Huntsville has been sharing data since 2000, and we’ve become even more transparent. Now, there’s a fear and anxiety with being transparent, because you’re talking about taking the lives of animals. But being open is part of the process. . .It’s going to be painful when the data comes out, but shelters that do that will be surprised how quickly things can change because it helps them do their job better and it’s something to share with community leaders and elected officials to get more help." She went to to issue a challenge to all counties in Alabama to get "on board" to be transparent in record keeping. We could not agree more. Now all that we ask is that the City of Huntsville and Huntsville Animal Services follow their own advice by posting the statistics for the months of March and April on the shelter website and by providing us with the data we seek for 2016 regarding intakes and outcomes. If there is "no there there" the city should having nothing to hide and should share this data without hesitation as it demonstrates through actions that transparency is vital to improving operations and keeping the public engaged. (images courtesy of the City of Huntsville)
As we wind down 2016, we wanted to take a look back at the year as a whole and hit on some of the highlights which have taken place. We’ve categorized them into "bad news" and "good news" categories. The Bad News • We are still not a no kill community as a philosophical way of functioning because the city has yet to make a commitment to no longer destroy healthy and treatable animals. When we asked for that commitment during a meeting with City Administrator John Hamilton in June, we were told "no. The city will not commit to that." We presume this decision serves to give the city an "out" should some crisis arise or should there be some collapse of programs which have led to the current level of progress. We still believe that the city is in a perfect position to make a commitment in light of the progress which has been made. We do believe that the shelter needs to develop a disaster plan in the event of a mass-intake event (from a collector, puppy mill or dog fighter), but we believe that the city can in good faith commit to a standard and live up to that standard. • Healthy and treatable animals are still destroyed in the shelter. We honestly do not know how many savable animals were destroyed this year, but we have no doubt that this practice continues on at least a limited basis based on posts on the shelter's Facebook page and based on information we have from sources inside the shelter. We think that the number of healthy and treatable animals being destroyed is incredibly small compared to the numbers from the past, but the practice has not ended completely. The problem with this is that the shelter is reporting on euthanasia reports that animals were destroyed for reasons related to health or behavior. Not one "euthanasia" report we obtained this year honestly reported that healthy dogs were destroyed for space. The issue with this lack of transparency is that people presume ours is a no kill shelter when pets who are simply lost may actually still be at risk. Some would argue that we should not focus on individual instances of dogs being destroyed for space. Our counter to that argument is that it may not seem important until the dog destroyed for space is your beloved dog who simply got out of your fenced yard accidentally when you were out of town on vacation. • Dogs continue to get sick after entering the shelter. The shelter has a history of dogs entering the shelter healthy and then acquiring upper-respiratory problems dating back many years. We have been told on multiple occasions that the inability to keep dogs healthy relates to the HVAC system. Our reply to that has been pretty clear: fix it. We see it as part of the ordinary functioning of any city department to seek and acquire funding for facilities upgrades. There have been no upgrades to the shelter related to the issue of sick dogs even though the problems have existed for years. Because the shelter is managed by a veterinarian, we know there is a public expectation that animasl will not get sick after entering the building. • People from outside our community continue to revise history, doing so unfairly and to the detriment of communities like ours. We have blogged on the topic of our history a few times this year not so much for the benefit of Huntsville but for the benefit of other places. We are contacted on a regular basis by people from other states asking how Huntsville got to this point and what steps we recommend others take. Florida, Illinois, California, Hawaii. As grassroots advocates, we do our best to help people not only understand what steps we took to help ours work toward becoming a no kill community, but what mistakes we made along the way. As Ryan Clinton, the Founder of FixAstin once said, "it's important not to change history because then you learn the wrong lessons." An organization called Target Zero which was active here for less than a year (and in a remote capacity) has declared that it got Huntsville "to zero" in less than a year and they can do something similar for other places as it goes around the country seeking new clients and using our city as an example. Target Zero did play a role here. What Target Zero fails to tell people is that by the time they arrived at our airport for a 2-day visit, the live release rate had gone from 34% to more than 70% in less than a year, all without their involvement and after we took the no kill subject to the public and to a new city administrator. Change was already taking place. There will always be disagreement about what led to that change. We are absolutely certain that but for the advocacy of No Kill Huntsville very little would have changed at all and the city may still be destroying the majority of the animals in the shelter while being answerable to no one. We point this out not related to a desire to receive any type of credit. We really could care less about that. We talk about it because we don't want people in other places to think our history lacked conflict or think that Target Zero saved us from ourselves. The Good News • More animals are being saved than at any time in the history of the city. When we look at the statistics for the shelter for this year (through November), we cannot help but to be impressed. Although the numbers vary by month, the city has managed to keep the live release rate above 90% for all but one month and that month was just below 90%. While we do not agree that a live release rate of 90% = a no kill community (as some believe), we are sincere in our applause and congratulations to the shelter leadership and the city leadership in achieving this progress. As recently as 3 years ago, only half of the animals entering the shelter made it out alive. This progress demonstrates that the shelter culture has changed drastically. The shelter is no longer a place of despair and death and is now a place of hope and new beginnings. • Dogs have a better chance of being evaluated fairly. We have been tracking data regarding dogs destroyed in the shelter for more than 2 years, using reports we seek and obtain through the Alabama Open Records Act. We saw some disturbing numbers related to dogs being destroyed for a variety of behavioral issues from aggression to fear to high arousal. After recommending to the city for some time that it engage the services of someone who could train the staff and volunteers on evaluating dogs in a shelter environment, that training happened in March of this year. The city secured a grant and was able to bring Diane Blankenburg -of Humane Network - back to town as well as Kelley Bollen of Animal Alliances who has a Master's Degree in Animal Behavior and who is the former Director of Behavior Programs for the Shelter Medicine Program at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. The shelter staff and volunteers were provided with 2 days of training on how to assess shelter dogs and members of our coalition were also invited to attend. We believe that the decrease in the number of dogs being destroyed for behavioral issues relates directly to this training. • Cat World is open and the shelter is getting upgrades. Thanks to a grant from Petco, the shelter converted what was a classroom into an area called Cat World. The cats are now housed in new and better kennels and are no longer sharing space with dogs (which can add to their stress levels). The newly renovated space has its own ventilation system which will keep the cats healthier. Removing cats from the traditional shelter area also means that the city can proceed with plans to renovate the area where dogs are housed, hopefully taking positive steps to house dogs more safely and to prevent dogs from getting sick. We were told by John Hamilton earlier this month that the Cat World project was phase 1 of a series of phases to upgrade the building. Mr. Hamilton said, "we are currently working on design for the rest of the building and I would expect the next round of construction to start by mid-2017. In addition to better segregating and ventilating the dog spaces, we also need to address the veterinary space and the laundry/housekeeping spaces." Looking Forward No Kill Huntsville has been in a monitoring mode of sorts during this year and we plan to continue in that capacity in 2017. We look forward to the facilities upgrades which are being planned and we look forward to the city embracing more programs of the no kill equation which can serve to both reduce shelter intake and increase shelter output. There are some who say that becoming a no kill community isn’t possible. That it costs too much money or that it leads to institutionalized hoarding or lack of adequate care. Those naysayers need look no further than to Huntsville, Alabama, to see what happens when the public and municipal leaders come together and commit to doing better for the sake of the companion animals we value in our society. It can be done. Is it hard work? Absolutely. But we presume that those who lead our shelter, work in our shelter, volunteer at our shelter, donate to our shelter, foster our shelter animals and adopt from our shelter would say that every action taken to save a life is worth the struggle and is incredibly rewarding. (images courtesy of the No Kill Advocacy Center, Bryan Williams and Peace and Paws Dog Rescue)
Let's talk about words today. More specifically, let's talk about one word: euthanasia. We read a number of media reports late last week about the fact that our shelter planned to euthanize animals for space if people did not come to adopt them. We fully understand that the shelter needs to communicate with the public about placing animals when the shelter is near capacity. In that regard, we encourage Huntsville Animal Services to be completely transparent about what is happening. We find improper use of The E Word related to population reduction to be both offensive and irresponsible.
The dictionary definition of euthanasia is simple: the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals (as persons or domestic animals) in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy. When we destroy animals who are suffering or are irremediably ill, that is, in fact, euthanasia. Destroying healthy and treatable animals is not euthanasia. It is not merciful, it is not beautiful and it is not necessary. It is not "putting them down" or "putting them to sleep" or preventing "a fate worse than death." We use those phrases - and many use the word euthanasia - to sugar coat the reality of the act. And because we have allowed ourselves to become callous to, or complacent about, killing of shelter animals, we accept that word because it makes us feel better somehow, as if we did a good thing. When we destroy healthy and treatable animals we are doing just that. We are destroying them and we are killing them. If you have ever made the heart-wrenching decision to euthanize a beloved pet which was genuinely suffering or so ill that any treatment would likely causer more pain or suffering, you know exactly what euthanasia means. To compare the euthanasia of your companion to the destruction of a healthy or treatable animal for space or convenience serves only to devalue both of those lives. And any person who ever lost a beloved pet to an "oops" killing at an animal shelter would not say their dog or cat was euthanized. In No Kill communities, healthy and treatable animals are not destroyed. Period. They are saved. And words are used for what they mean. Let's stop calling this anything but what it is. Once we do that, we can have a realistic conversation about what takes place in our shelter and we can take a look at why population control killing is still an option here even though many people believe that Huntsville is already a No Kill Community. It is not. When we met with a city official in early June to ask the city to commit to no longer destroy healthy and treatable animals, the answer we received was, "no. The city will not commit to that." We later wrote a letter to the Mayor and City Council to ask for a commitment. Our letter has gone unanswered. Our coalition was formed in January of 2012 and we first took our vision of Huntsville as a no kill community to the public not quite three years ago. We did so only after we had hit a wall in our efforts to get the city expert and confidential help to end the outdated practice of destroying healthy and treatable shelter pets. Although our website and social media presence had been on line for a while, our first public event was a free workshop we held at the downtown branch of the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library on July 29, 2013.
We have written before about the process which has led to present day functioning at Huntsville Animal Services and our role in that process. Although some from both inside and outside of our region have declared us "there" or "done," we are not yet a no kill community. Tremendous progress had been made and we look for every opportunity to applaud that progress. Our coalition, and others like ours, are often seen in a negative light just because of our outspoken nature. Some may label us as purists who simply advocate from the sidelines and who are too set in our beliefs. That label really doesn't fit out group at all. Since the time we held the workshop, we have engaged in a series of meetings with city officials over the course of a period of years. We have shared our research and helped the city engage with organizations like Humane Network which provides on-site real world help based on experience. One of our many meetings was held on July 25, 2016, with City Administrator John Hamilton. We had asked for the opportunity to talk to him regarding our June 20, 2016, challenge to the city and to cover some of our compliments and concerns. In order to keep you informed, the highlights of our meeting are set out here. "The Ask." We have challenged the city to commit to no longer destroy healthy and treatable animals using our tax dollars on more than one occasion over a period of years and we did "the ask" in person again. We were initially told that if we are looking for a promise that the city will never destroy an animal for space that no, the city will not agree to that. Rather than making an absolute promise, we asked again that the city make a public declaration of intent to the standard as a way of functioning moving forward and that it adopt a Shelter Disaster Plan to be ready for a mass-intake event at the shelter. Mr. Hamilton stated that he would take the issue back to the mayor for further consideration. Compliments. We were very complimentary about the progress made by the city as reflected in the monthly shelter statistics. We do not believe that achieving some percentage should be the goal and we continue to be more focused on a standard of functioning. Having said that, those numbers are an indicator of progress and are to be applauded. We complimented the city on more effective use of the media and social media to connect with the public. We had long criticized the animal shelter for being disconnected from the public it serves by not engaging proactively. We mentioned the recent PSA in which Mayor Battle appeared to promote an adoption event on July 23d. Concerns. We expressed concerns about the shelter becoming limited admission, as opposed to managed admission, and having times when it simply tells the public, "no. We cannot help you." We understand that intake must be managed to control it and that the city is not obligated to take owner surrendered animals. We suggested that instead of just saying, "no," that the shelter should still be willing to engage in pet retention counseling and pet surrender counseling. We also expressed concern over continued issues with dogs becoming sick after entering the building, with lack of "bread and butter" adoption programs to place animals between large adoption events and with the fact that the shelter's website is outdated. Our final point of discussion related to how the policies and functioning of Huntsville Animal Services is affecting other local shelters and rescue groups. There have been numerous times when people have had an issue with the city shelter and have turned to nonprofit shelters and rescues for help without really resolving the underlying issues. Because our local nonprofits receive no city or county funding and function solely on donations (and most with no paid labor at all) this reliance on them to be an extension of the city shelter creates a tremendous burden. All of our comments were well received and there was quite a bit of discussion on all points. City Issues. Mr. Hamilton told us that the city's progress has led to some problems. Because people presume that Huntsville Animal Services is a no kill shelter, they are now bringing animals into the county from outlying counties expecting help. In some cases, people have been less than forthcoming about where they live. This will likely lead to a new policy related to owner surrenders where proof of residence will be required. We were told that the sick dog issue remains a concern and that it is likely some modifications will be needed to the existing building to house animals in different ways in order to resolve issues with air quality. We remain hopeful that the city will make a public declaration of intent to make Huntsville a no kill community and will not simply be satisfied with doing better than most. We truly believe there is no better time in the history of Huntsville for our leaders to draw a line in the sand and declare proudly that ours is and will continue to be one of the safest places for animals not only in our state, but also in the entire region. Stay tuned. We are not going away and we plan to remain on subject. No Kill Huntsville was formed in January of 2012 when a group of local nonprofit shelter directors, rescue group leaders and animal welfare advocates decided to come together to speak with one voice with one mission: to seek a time when Huntsville becomes a No Kill Community. We had been working independently of each other on this issue for years and felt that we could accomplish more if we banded together. We felt that the City of Huntsville was not taking enough action with enough of a sense of urgency to save the lives of healthy and treatable shelter pets so we took on the responsibility of speaking out to seek better. We have always sought to become irrelevant not because we are being ignored or have been dismissed as zealots, but because we are simply no longer needed in this capacity. Despite rumors to the contrary, we have also approached this issue as one of municipal accountability. We have taken great pains to make our communication with the city both respectful and empowering in spite of having been subjected to personal attacks against us for having the audacity to be outspoken. Change is hard and it makes people uncomfortable. We get that. We have a page on our website called Our Vision which paints a picture of a time when Mayor Battle stands at a podium and makes a public declaration of intent that Huntsville will, in fact, become a No Kill community. Over the course of the years of our advocacy, we have done what is called “the ask” multiple times. The concept is simple: we have asked the city to draw a line in the sand and commit that from that point forward, savable animals will no longer be at risk in our municipal animal shelter. That every animal will be treated as an individual life with value and that we will not destroy healthy and treatable animals for space or convenience because doing so is just not consistent with our culture here. The City of Huntsville has not yet committed to this standard. The city has absolutely made a lot of changes in the way our animal shelter functions and we have seen a shift in how the shelter is referred to. The mind set has gone from one being resigned to the destruction of animals to working hard to save those same animals and have the shelter be a place of hope and new beginnings. Some mistakenly believe that Huntsville is already a No Kill Community. It is not. Although the statistics for the shelter show marked improvement from a statistical standpoint, the measure of a No Kill Community is not achieving some numerical standard. It is a matter of saying “we just don’t do that any more” and ensuring animals are not at risk. That may mean that the “live release rate” for animals is 97% in one month and then 87% in the next month, provided that the decline was due to a large number of animals entering the shelter who were suffering, irremediably ill (as opposed to entering the shelter healthy and then becoming very sick due to being housed there) or genuinely aggressive to people and which constitute a public safety risk. On June 20, 2016, we sent a letter to Mayor Battle and the members of the Huntsville City Counsel to again do “the ask.” You can read the letter in its entirety here. We also issued a press release on our challenge to the City on July 5, 2016. It is found on al.com and it was distributed to our local television stations. As we state in our letter, we fully acknowledge the tremendous progress made by city officials to change how our shelter operates and how animals are cared for using our tax dollars. This has become a point of pride and Huntsville is being watched by people in other areas of the country who are hoping to make similar changes. We genuinely believe that the progress made to date demonstrates that the City of Huntsville is in the best possible position to make a public declaration of intent. Once it does so, this will encourage people who live and work here to become even more involved in the operation and success of the animal shelter than they are now and it will be a wonderful addition to our community resume when we talk about all the things which make this City great and make it the “Star of Alabama.: Becoming a No Kill Community is a choice. It is an act of will. We have absolute faith that the City can do it. We just hope the City will share our opinion, draw that line in the sand and that the answer to “the ask” will be a resounding, “Yes.” (image courtesy of Bryan Williams)
We have a page on our website where we post shelter statistics. They go back to 2008. The most recent statistics we have on the site are the monthly figures for December of 2015. We were asked yesterday why we don't have the year end numbers for 2015 and the monthly numbers for January and February of this year. We don't have them posted because the city has not provided them to us.
In Alabama, records related to the operation of the government are public records which can be sought by any person and for any reason under the Alabama Open Records Act. There are some exceptions to the Act, but it is pretty broad in terms of access and the records can be sought by anyone, whether they live in Alabama or not. When it comes to Madison County, seeking animal control records is a pretty simple process. We call or email the Animal Control Director and he provides the records, normally within a matter of minutes or hours. When it comes to the City of Huntsville, the process is not so simple. We have been given very clear instructions that we are not to communicate directly with the Animal Services Director and that our records requests must be submitted to the City Attorney's Office to be processed. This means that we prepare a letter each month which we submit to the City Attorney's Office setting forth the records we seek. We have been trying to get records regarding dogs destroyed in the last quarter of 2015 for months. We have been trying to get the 2015 year-end statistics since January. Our last letter to the City Attorney's Office was sent on March 7, 2016. We have considered speaking to an attorney for help in getting the records we seek. We have also considered getting the media involved. We have not yet decided what we plan to do about this issue. The records we seek don't have to be created. They already exist and it is a matter of printing them off of a computer or otherwise saving them as a .pdf file. In spite of the opinions of those who oppose us for our advocacy, we have worked incredibly hard since our coalition formed to be both diplomatic and respectful in our communication with and criticism of the city and Huntsville Animal Services. We have made a concerted effort to applaud progress made by the city even when we have been under attack on social media. In the fall of last year, a "hate" page was created about our coalition on Facebook. We didn't talk about it publicly we didn't want to draw attention to it. It contained content which was juvenile, vulgar and libelous, much of which was "liked" and commented on by city employees, shelter volunteers and prominent members of local rescue organizations. We took steps to try to have the page removed while refusing to stoop to the level of those who felt that type of behavior was appropriate or productive. As they saying goes, we just would not "go there." The city has made enough progress in the last year that there is little point in remaining overly critical and risk having people think we won't be satisfied with any level of progress. Although ours is not yet a no kill community, Huntsville has made a great amount of progress in a short amount of time and the value of that cannot be overstated. We remain hopeful the city will make a commitment to make ours a no kill community and declare that healthy and treatable animals are not at risk under any circumstances. We believe that with increased progress and increased expectations by the city that the public will both be part of change and fully support change comes the need for complete transparency in record keeping. It is vital in order to both get and maintain the public trust. The ASPCAs Position Statement on Responsibilities of Animal Shelters speaks to this very point: Goal 4: Animal sheltering is increasingly transparent The ASPCA strongly supports a requirement that key records and data be maintained by all shelters, both public and private, routinely reported to an appropriate central entity, and made available to the public. While much of this information, for public shelters at least, may already be considered a public record under various state laws, the ASPCA believes that standardizing the information that must be collected and extending these requirements to private shelters is not only an important step toward transparency, but also an effective way to gain a fuller picture of the community’s at-risk animals. When the only information available concerning intake and outcomes is that which must be provided by public shelters through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the public is receiving an incomplete and perhaps distorted representation of these matters. There is a video on the city's Youtube channel which shows Mayor Battle interviewing Dr. Sheppard about the operation of Huntsville Animal Services and talking about the tremendous progress made at our shelter in recent months. At one point in the interview, Mayor Battle calls Dr. Sheppard a star. Although we have been quite complimentary of that progress, it is somewhat difficult for us to be quite as thrilled with the progress because of the city's lack of transparency regarding the shelter records. Once we have been provided the records we seek, we will post them on our website. The City of Huntsville should have nothing to hide. And we look forward to seeing that with our own eyes very soon when we are provided the records we have sought not just for us but for our entire community. |
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