A Look Back at Huntsville Animal Services and Our Community as of January 2022

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.

• The number of animals found running at large has remained fairly consistent since 2015 with an average of about 4,200 animals per year. The number dipped to 3,484 in 2020, likely due to the pandemic. As we have said repeatedly, the animals who enter the shelter all belong to someone. We have asked for more community outreach (to include a community outreach coordinator position) to help prevent some of this intake.
• The return rate has risen steadily since it began being tracked in 2017. It was 115 animals that year and 283 last year. While this number has gone up, it falls well short of rumors that people who adopted during the pandemic have returned animals in droves.
• The owner surrender rate has continued to drop each year from a high of 1059 animals in 2015 to a low of 520 animals in 2020. In 2021, 611 animals were surrendered. The shelter is not obligated to take owned animals and does so on a managed basis while being mindful of capacity of care.

• The number of animals adopted each year has remained fairly consistent since 2015 with an average of 2,800 adoptions per year. Since the area has grown, we thought this number would rise more than it has. We attribute that in part to the fact that our area is rescue-heavy and the fact that the shelter has hours with are not particularly family-friend. We have asked the city numerous times to change the hours to make it easier to adopt or reclaim an animal. It is incredibly difficult for people to get to the shelter if it is only open when most people are at work.

• The return to owner number has been consistently low since 2015 with just under 700 animals being reclaimed each year (this is about 17% of the animals found running at large). This number could rise dramatically if people took steps to ensure their pets can be identified through a registered microchip or a collar or tag with identification information.

• The number of animals transferred to rescue groups has continued to decline. It was over a thousand animals in 2015 when the North Shore Animal League routinely transported animals from HAS to New York and local rescue groups were more focused on saving animals at risk at the shelter.  In 2020, 444 animals were pulled by rescues and it was 491 animals last year. Because most of the areas around Huntsville and Madison County have not followed the lead of Huntsville to adopt more progressive ways of functioning, animals in those areas are considered more "at risk" by rescue groups.
  

• The total intake since 2015 has remained fairly consistent with an average of just over 5,000 animals per year. The intake in 2009 was almost 10,000 animals. As stated above, we have asked the city to create a community outreach position to focus on those areas of the city and county where most animals come from toward reducing the intake number (and the number of animals found running at large or people who become desperate and believe they need to surrender their animals).  The pandemic has shown that shelter that have robust community outreach can drastically reduce intake using a social services model to help people.
  

• The number of dogs destroyed for behavior has continued to drop. When we first began tracking this in 2018, 242 dogs were destroyed for behavior and 44 were euthanized for humane reasons. In 2021, 91 dogs were destroyed for behavior (3% of the dog intake) and 56 were destroyed for humane reasons.  We have asked the city to consider using a behaviorist to help evaluate dogs with behavior issues toward keeping more of them alive, provided they do not present a genuine public safety risk. Shelters are foreign, scary places for dogs most of whom behave entirely differently once they are outside the shelter building. We acknowledge some dogs are dangerous, but others are just fearful and we should not end their lives by behavior created by the shelter environment itself.
  

• When we formed No Kill Huntsville in January of 2012, the live release rate at the shelter was 34%. It rose to 41% in 2012, 47% in 2013 and jumped dramatically to 74% in 2014 when the city began changing the culture at the shelter. The live release rate in 2021 was 94% for dogs and 95% for cats.

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.