I meant to add one additional comment about the little male cat - to me that’s what ‘no kill’ means. If you can’t place the animal he has a home at the shelter for the rest of his life.

And don’t worry, its a cageless shelter so he gets to run around all day and play, play, play.

I still well up when I see that episode—what a great and gentle spirit, and how excited he was at his first outing. He was a little love-bug and cuddler, with no malice whatsoever toward humans or others. In a follow-up episode, he had been adopted by a family with a big backyard and lived another year before passing on.

The biggest problem I see are cats being returned for litter box issues. The no-kill cat shelter I mentioned earlier had a wonderful little 11 year old male cat. He had some pretty bad dental issues but was sweet and as playful as a kitten. He was adopted out three times to experienced adopters and even though they really worked with him, he would not use a litter box. Everytime he was returned to the shelter he’d go back to using a box no problem. The staff finally decided that he wanted to stay with them at the shelter, so he is now one of the official greeter cats (along with another cat with similar issues). He’s as happy as can be and he will have a good home and medical care for the rest of his life.

Good points, thanks. And promoting collaborative rather than competitive efforts within communities would surely (one would think) help the situation.

By the way, that situation I mentioned was either at the Miami or Houston site … I can still see the second attack by that one dog after he had been through weeks of behavioral training to reduce his aggression: the animal control guy, with bandaged-wrapped arm from the prior attack, met up with the dog in a park. The initial greeting was okay, then the dog lunged at the guy, knocking him down and taking another big bite. ouch! But the guy continued to assert that he was going to make sure that dog would be saved at all costs. It was very strange in the balance.

Sandy

I have a good friend that used to manage a shelter in town. She never had a good word for anyone else in the rescue business. She did a very good job, but you couldn’t say that there weren’t issues at her facility as well. Anytime she’d say something negative about another shelter (generally another pretty good one), I’d reply “everyone is working towards the same goal, so let’s focus on that and not on each of our defects”.

And Christie you are so right about the manipulation of adoption figures. How many placements you have is not, in itself a measure of how good a shelter is. If you take the cute puppies an kitties your job is going to be a lot easier than placing middle aged or special needs animals. There is one true no kill shelter here that finds homes for almost 300 cats a year - the shelter holds only about 100 cats - to me that’s pretty amazing. And they have a fair number of cats who have lived at the shelter for years - some that can’t/won’t be adopted out and some that haven’t found their forever homes.

A lot of the anti-no-kill rhetoric is aimed at “selective facts,” such as looking at one shelter that doesn’t take in strays or owner surrenders and saying “well, that’s why they don’t have to kill animals,” but you can’t just look at ONE shelter, you have to look at the entire region and what different niches can be filled by different organizations with different resources and philosophies.

The problem is when you get into the trenches, those with a PETA perspective don’t want to give any credibility to groups that, say, work with breed rescue, and breeders don’t want to work with groups who are trying to pass legislation that restrict them, and the best interests of the animals get lost.

I’ve been in shelters that refuse… absolutely refuse… to let breed rescue groups into their kennels. I’ve had a director of a shelter look me in the eye and tell me that feral cats are BETTER OFF DEAD than living as barn cats. “The lucky ones die under the wheels of a car,” she said.

Some shelters won’t even let their own excess pets be taken to shelters that have room and better adoption opportunities, EVEN THOUGH IT MEANS KILLING THOSE ANIMALS, or others to make room for them, all because they are philisophically opposed to “no kill” as a movement.

Every time I come across a shelter where everyone is demoralized and they have high kill rates, and few volunteers, and a hidebound staff who insists they are already trying everything and their area is just too… big, urban, rural, southern, scattered, suburban, mobile, whatever … to change, I also see a shelter director and sometimes board that would rather cling to their failing strategy than try something new, something that challenges their current belief system.

Trying to sift through the opposing viewpoints takes time and energy, but as long as I keep the “live release rate” as the goal, I can work towards deciding which strategies I want to align my time and money towards. I’m happy to see Sally’s post about the shelter at Charlottesville/Albemarle being open admissions AND having a live release rate over 90%. This is a problem that has bothered me since dumped dogs crawled up to me as a child many years ago. I’ve always been “part of the solution” by taking in strays, but I’m sick of hearing about tens of thousands dying yearly in my state and I want to part of a REAL solution — 90% or higher live release.