Indianapolis shelter animals celebrate Independence Day in new homes
By Christie Keith
July 8, 2009
When it comes to ending the killing of animals in America’s shelters, you can go in one of two directions: Blaming your community for its irresponsibility and the subsequent death of animals in shelters, or reaching out to the animal lovers in that same community and using innovative, aggressive adoption programs to get pets into homes. The first one fails, spectacularly, although that doesn’t stop a lot of shelters from getting stuck in the blame game, anyway.
The second one, however, works. Take what Indianapolis Animal Care & Control did over the Fourth of July weekend. From the Indy No-kill Initiative blog:
With news coverage from all the local TV stations, Indianapolis Animal Care & Control’s $4 adoption event on July 4th was a smashing success. People could come to the shelter, or to any of the Petsmart stores where IACC animals are available for adoption and adopt a dog or cat for $4. That price includes spay/neuter, vaccinations and even an identification microchip! At noon it was reported that the IACC parking lots were full and cars were backed up all the way out to Harding Street! The lobby was packed and the kennels were crowded with people eager to pick out a new member for their family….
When the day was done over 150 cats, dogs and even fish had been adopted! Humane Society of Indianapolis held a similar event running for several days and adopting animals for $17.76. While Humane Society for Hamilton County wasn’t running any adoption specials, a volunteer there reports that people came in asking if they were running the special and many of them stayed and looked at animals anyway.
Turns out IACC broke their record for most adoptions ever in a single day. Not everyone thinks programs like this are good things, however:
There are always critical voices, particularly within the animal welfare community that claim that these kinds of events send the wrong message by saying that pets’ lives aren’t worth more than $4 or $17.76. The mantra for adoptions from the animal welfare community has long held that the higher the adoption fee the “better” the quality of the adoption. While it’s an interesting theory, it is just that — a theory. It’s also a theory that many people do not believe, and many people find offensive. Making such a statement implies that somehow a person’s capacity to love and provide quality care for a pet is somehow tied to their willingness or ability to pay larger amounts of money for adoption fees.
Recently a story came to me of an owner wanting to surrender for reasons of convenience, a “purebred” dog for which she paid over $800. At the same time, there are people out there denying themselves medical care, food and even necessities to ensure their pets are provided with care.
There will always be some portion of people who will not care for their pets well or responsibly. There are people who do not provide proper care for their children, or have trash-strewn properties. There are people who drive unsafe vehicles in an unsafe way. There are laws in place to prevent many bad things, but they still happen. But to cite examples of “irresponsible” pet owners as a reason to promote policies that make adopting a pet unreasonably difficult or expensive does more harm than good. Animals do much better in homes than in shelters.
When it comes to a great Independence Day tradition to celebratate, I like that better than fireworks. Keep up the great work, Indianapolis!
This is a fabulous example of what a positive approach and attitude can do.
Here’s the opposite http://www.lakecountyanimalservices.org/
this is a private shelter in economically depressed, poor and rural Lake Co.
After reading through this site, I would not
bring a dog there
Adopt a dog there, as if they’d let me!
recommend anyone to them
Talk about hostility! I felt like taking a shower to wash the hate off, and the stink of Blame the Owner, you MADE us kill this pet!
Comment by JenniferJ — July 8, 2009 @ 6:23 pm
Looks like they’re convinced that the way to increase adoptions is to horrify people with scenes of abused animals.
I wonder how well that’s working out for them?
Comment by Pai — July 9, 2009 @ 12:29 am
Oh, my, what an appalling attitude Lake County has!
And aside from the in-your-face hostility, getting to the adoption applications, if you haven’t been turned off and decided to look elsewhere, requires going through a spam filter to prove you’re a person and not a ‘bot.
Their app was written by someone who believes that the only kinds of fences are “chain link”, “privacy”, and “invisible.” And it’s a mandatory question; can’t submit the app with choosing one of those three, or “none.” Are picket fences and rail fences and all the other varieties of fences I see in my neighborhood, illegal or unheard-of in Lake County?
The available adoption forms are Cat, Dog, and “Coffee and Donuts.” Really? They put buying coffee and donuts as part of a fundraiser on the same level with adopting a dog or cat? There was really no way to put their Krispy Kreme fundraiser link in a different spot, maybe with the Krispy Kreme logo making it a bit clearer what this was about, rather than including it in the list of “Adoption forms” ?
Really, aside from the waves of hostility flowing off of their site, these people are idiots.
Comment by Lis — July 9, 2009 @ 5:34 am
“When the day was done over 150 cats, dogs and even fish had been adopted!”
That’s great - but were all those cats and dogs (and fish!!) adopted to the best matched family for them? No home checks, probably no one-on-one family-pet meetings (since how could the shelter manage that with 150 adoptions in one day?), etc.
I’m all for getting pets out of shelters ASAP, and I’ve run into my own problems trying to get a dog from a rescue with insane regulations (their rule was never to give a dog, any dog, to someone who had never owned a dog before), but events like this always make me wonder how many of those pets will end up back in the shelter in the next few months.
Comment by K. B. — July 9, 2009 @ 5:43 am
On the other hand, how much screening are they doing on their NON-event days? I recently adopted a new cat, and the shelter pretty much had me sit down and read and fill out the forms, asked me if I had any questions (as in a “What is the best brand of food to feed her?” kind of way) and sent me along. A monster adoption day MIGHT have managed this much. Or not. Hard to know without being there.
However, the shelter I adopted from DOES have follow-up programs such as call-in helplines and post-adoption training classes and such. Which in some ways might be even more important for a lot of folks.
So I’m kind of with you in being torn. However, here’s a thought-provoking statement from the end of the article Christie linked to:
“No amount of screening or background checking will guarantee that an adoption will end up well. It is guaranteed, however, that animals that are adopted into a home have a 100% better chance of staying in a home than animals that don’t leave a shelter alive.”
Comment by The OTHER Pat — July 9, 2009 @ 6:12 am
As for the screening process, we go through that with our rescue. We have an app, a home check. But we try to be flexible and give the benefit of the doubt.
I think with large municipal and county shelters, volume is an important key. If you send out 50 pets, and get 10 back, you have gotten 40 out of the system. If in the same time period, you use stricter criteria, don’t place with out intensive screening etc… and place 25 ( and still get 3-5 back,) you have still saved more and given more a chance.
Comment by JenniferJ — July 9, 2009 @ 7:51 am
Lis, that one’s a private shelter in Lake Co. I suspect the name causes no end of confusion. The attitude of employees at the county shelter is much much better, they have been easy to work with from a rescue POV, but it is located behind the county jail, poorly marked, hard to find. Open M-F from 10:30-4:30 and ONLY open from 1:00-3:00 on Saturday.
Comment by JenniferJ — July 9, 2009 @ 7:58 am
Christie, thanks for posting this. We have great hopes for the homeless animals of Indy.
At the Humane Society of Indianapolis, we had a record holiday adoption weekend as well (kudos to IACC!), with 65 pets finding homes. So far, with barely a week having passed in July, more than 140 pets have found homes, even after the holiday. A lot of them were adults who’d been with us for a long time - Piper and Ryker, two FIV+ kitties, had been here nearly all year, and Virginia, a Shepherd mix, had been with us for 5 months and treated for heartworms during her stay. These pets found homes through our regular adoption process and with the help of a simple holiday promotion. We’re thankful to the families who’ve welcomed new pets into their lives this month, and we also hope other shelters find similar success with simple promotions and lots of TLC for their animals!
Comment by Tristan — July 9, 2009 @ 8:09 am
Hi Tristan,
Do you have any sense of what your “return rate” is?
Overall, I’m not sure if that’s one of the standard statistics used by shelters or rescues or not. It could - however - certainly be a useful piece of information in evaluating the true effectiveness of screening procedures.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — July 9, 2009 @ 10:40 am
The OTHER Pat: year-to-date, our return rate is about 10%. It is a statistic we value and helps us to gauge successful matches between pets & families.
I don’t know off the top of my head what the average across the country is, and imagine that overall statistics might be hard to come by. We hope to improve our numbers though and are always looking at how to improve our followups, behavior resources, etc.
Comment by Tristan — July 10, 2009 @ 9:54 am