pet connection

After some technical difficulties this afternoon, my computer is up and running. All it took was Jerry glaring at it, and it begged forgiveness and promised not to give me any more trouble. So now that we’ve had dinner with Christie, I’m here with a late-night report of the first session I attended this morning (after breakfast with Christie and Terrierman at my infamous Eliot Spitzer- and J. Edgar Hoover-linked hotel, the Renaissance Mayflower). This session was aimed primarily at shelter workers, so rather than blogging it verbatim, I’m doing a little editing and occasionally adding commentary.

The two-hour session featured three speakers: Sue Cosby, executive director of the Animal Welfare Association in New Jersey (and fellow Twitterer); Bonney Brown, executive director of Nevada Humane Society; and Mike Fry, executive director of Animal Ark in Minnesota. They shared their strategies for keeping animals moving through the shelter system, limiting disease, increasing adoptability through socialization and marketing, and keeping animals with their people.

Here’s Cosby:

The most important thing you need to think about with no-kill sheltering is a sense of urgency for the animals coming into your shelter. Decide on a shelter model. Who are you taking in? Come up with a business plan on who you can/must take in and who else can take them. Work with rescue groups to take animals off your books, so to speak.

That’s a radical change from so many shelters that aren’t willing to work with purebred or other rescue groups. I can hear them screaming now that shelters working with rescue groups aren’t playing fair and are manipulating their numbers by doing so. Fail. Anyway, back to Cosby.

Feral cats don’t have any option when they come into your shelter. If you’re not re-releasing them because you’re not allowed to by law, you need to proactively get into the community and prevent those cats from coming into your shelter to begin with.

When I spoke with Alley Cat Allies a couple of years ago, Becky Robinson estimated that 70 percent of the cats in shelters were feral. That’s what helps to drive up the numbers of animals euthanized–when communities don’t institute TNR programs and instead prefer to euthanize feral cats. As a side note, one of the books in our goodie bags included TNR Past Present and Future: A History of the Trap-Neuter-Return Movement by Ellen Perry Berkeley. I’ve just skimmed it, but it looks like an excellent read and, among other things, addresses the belief that feral cats are a danger to songbirds. Check it out. Next, Cosby addresses the issue of vaccination. We’re all aware of the concern over excessive vaccination, but for shelter animals she has a different point of view.

Vaccinate immediately upon entry. Animals are not dying in shelters from overvaccination. Vaccination keeps them healthy. Shelters are often shut down from vaccine-preventable diseases. Put effort into keeping the shelter clean and animals healthy.

Toward that end, she recommends using disposable litter boxes and disposable food and water dishes. French fry trays make good food dishes and styrofoam soup cups make good water containers. What about the environment? Cosby would rather save a cat’s life today and figure out later how to do it in a more environmentally friendly way. She notes that no one likes to scrub litter boxes, so using disposable ones is a better way to prevent the spread of disease. Another favorite disease-prevention tool: gloves, gloves and more gloves.

We’d rather buy gloves than antibiotics and euthanasia solution. Handle every animal as though it’s diseased when it comes into your shelter. Spend your efforts on keeping animals safe, healthy and happy. Provide opportunities for people to stay clean in your shelter.

In Cosby’s shelter, cleanliness is next to catliness. Her advice sounds obvious, but of course that’s where most of us run into problems with anything: thinking that what we know is obvious to everyone else as well. She advises using appropriate disinfectants–Lysol is harmful to cats, for instance–and keep hand sanitizer everywhere. At this point, she demonstrated just how long it was necessary to rub sanitizer on damp hands for it to be effective. It went on for at least a minute. Good to know in these flu-ridden times. She goes on to discuss privacy issues, and no, we’re not talking Roe v. Wade or the constitutionality of school strip searches.

Don’t house dogs and cats together; the dogs will scare the cats and they won’t act adoptable. Give cats a nice, quiet room and blankets, towels and hiding places like boxes. This is for animals just coming in; give them some chill time. Teach staff how to recognize stress and disease and when there might be a problem. Be creative in coming up with ways to give animals privacy.

Other factors to consider: The question is not is this animal adoptable but is this animal savable? Upper respiratory infections, fungal infections, injured/hit by car, mange, parvovirus, panleukopenia, FIV/FeLV–Cosby says in most cases these animals are savable. Her goal is to build an isolation area with lots of big windows so the public can see all the animals that are available and show them what their donations are doing.

Be able to say to the public: Look at the animals we’re saving right now. Make those animals available for rescue and adoption. The power is not what you do in the four walls of your shelter; it’s what the community does.

After discussing her shelter’s Free to Great Home program, which adopts animals older than 8 years or that have expensive medical problems at no charge, she ended with advice on how to know when to euthanize. Hint: it’s not when animals look bad or sound bad. It’s only when they’re diagnosed bad: they are irremediably suffering, or their condition is unmanageable or has a poor or grave prognosis.

I had hoped to finish this tonight, but it’s almost midnight, I’m tired, and I want to do justice to Bonney Brown and Mike Fry, so more tomorrow.