Category: Community Outreach

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

1/14/2022

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.

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What a Difference Four Years Makes

7/26/2017

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A significant event took place on July 29, 2013, in Huntsville, Alabama, regarding the animal welfare advocacy of our No Kill Huntsville coalition. It was the date of our No Kill Workshop which we held at the downtown branch of the Huntsville/Madison County public library. It was the first time that we took the phrase "No Kill" to the public and used it in an event to reach more people in our region; not just those people who attended the event, but those people who heard about the event in the media. We held the event to reach the public because we felt the time had come to seek public support for shelter reform in our area. We don't talk about it much now - because it is not our focus - but we went public with our issue only after the city declined free help from subject matter experts three months earlier. We felt we had hit a wall in our efforts to communicate effectively with city officials so we asked those same experts to address the public instead.

The room we reserved at the library was standing room only. The audience was a mix of animal rescuers, animal advocates, members of the public and even some opponents of our vision who said in advance that they opposed our philosophies and planned to cause a scene. Most in attendance likely did not notice the police officer we hired who stood in the back of the room to keep the peace if anyone got out of hand. Before the event started, we briefed him on our worries that some would cause a disruption and explained that he had been hired as a precautionary measure. He knew nothing about our topic, but picked up on the issues pretty quickly. "Why in the world would anyone oppose saving the lives of more animals?" he asked. Exactly, Officer Newby, exactly.

Our workshop speakers were Mike Fry and Kelly Jedlicki. Mike was the award winning director of Animal Ark in Hastings, Minnesota who now leads an organization called No Kill Learning. Kelly is a pediatric nurse by day and also leads an advocacy group called Kentucky Pets Alive. Both did a wonderful job of explaining the phrase "No Kill" to our public and helping them understand some of the elements of the No Kill Equation which we have supported and promoted from the time our organization formed in early 2012. The workshop was scheduled to last 4 hours and could easily have gone on for 8 or 10 hours instead.

We write a lot about our promotion of the programs and services of the No Kill Equation as a means to end the destruction of healthy and treatable animals in our municipal animal shelter. We refer to the equation elements which serve to reduce shelter intake as "keep them out" elements. We refer to the elements which serve to increase shelter output as "get them out" elements. Some elements are dual purpose in nature. Our workshop fell under the element called "Community Involvement and Public Relations." It was intended to put the phrase "No Kill" on the public radar and it did just that.

We see the 2013 workshop as one of a series of factors which led to change at the animal shelter. We had a meeting with city and county officials the next day, including Mayor Battle, and our workshop speakers were present. It was after this meeting that the shelter director (who did not attend the workshop) reached out to a member of our coalition to talk about making changes. The progress in the ensuing months was limited, but it was progress and the conversation was changing. We worked hard in the months and years after the workshop to keep the No Kill topic in the public eye using billboards and the media as we engaged in a series of meetings with city officials to continue to promote the No Kill Equation we still promote to this day. We hosted a showing of a documentary film about the No Kill Movement at Lee High School. A few consultants came and went over time, some paid for by us and some who engaged directly with the city to help fine tune program development and give real world advice to overcome problems.

At the time we held the workshop in July of 2013, the live release rate at Huntsville Animal Services was 41%. Not quite 2 out of every three animals entering the building were destroyed. The healthy and treatable were destroyed along with the seriously injured and the suffering. By the end of 2014, the live release rate had risen to 73%, meaning that it practically doubled. At the end of 2016, the live release rate was 92%. The average monthly live release rate for the first months of 2017 is 95%. We were told by City Administrator John Hamilton recently that the city has not destroyed any healthy or treatable animals purely for space in almost three years.

We would be sugarcoating our process here if we were to say that the last 4 years were easy or have been without conflict. They have not. Our advocacy was a 7-day a week job for years and we found ourselves on the receiving end of a lot of criticism for having the audacity to speak out for the greater good. We were subjected to open hostility by many in the community, some of whom are rescuers, shelter supporters and shelter volunteers. We always went to extraordinary lengths to make our message one of municipal accountability and not one of personal attacks or blame, often arguing among ourselves on word choice in periodic letters to city officials in order to strike the right balance between constructive criticism and respect. That diplomacy was not always returned as some found it necessary to personally attack the messengers for the fact that the message was necessary in the first place.

Once the culture at the animal shelter begin to change dramatically and it took less effort to promote No Kill as a philosophy, we all agreed on one point. If someone had told us in early 2012 when we formed our group that the shelter would achieve and then surpass a 90% live release rate in a short period of time, but that we would end up battered, bruised and vilified in the process, we all still would have signed up for that. In a heartbeat. This has never been about us as individuals and has always been about saving the lives of shelter animals. It remains so today and we hope a time comes when we are no longer needed in this capacity at all.

Congratulations to the City of Huntsville, our city leaders, the animal shelter leadership and to all of the rescuers, supporters, fosters, volunteers, donors and adopters for the tremendous success achieved at Huntsville Animal Service. We are so very thrilled to know that our geographic area is now considered a safe haven for dogs and cats in need and is an example for other communities to emulate.

What a difference 4 years makes. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Kelly.

(workshop crowd image courtesy of WHNT)

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

What a Difference Four Years Makes

No Kill Huntsville

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