No-Kill Made Possible Only By Rescues

It was 6am and I huddled next to the air pump at the Shell station, waiting for Melisa, the president of the Humane Society of Shenandoah County. She would drive my four foster kittens an hour south to be neutered. She was a few minutes late and apologized as she popped open her van, already stacked with crates of cats and kittens to be spayed/neutered.

We talked for a few minutes about the overwhelm of rescue. She echoed what I’ve heard from so many shelter and rescue directors — It is worse than she has ever seen it. Melissa had 22 kittens at her own house, in addition to over 100 cats and kittens in foster homes. She fields daily pleas for help. One elderly woman with over twenty cats is desperate for her to come take her animals.

Exhaustion is clear on Melissa’s face. All she does is work and rescue, catch a little bit of sleep and do it again. The Humane Society is a nonprofit; so, in addition to saving so many lives (thousands), they have to raise the money to do it. Despite the county shelter referring the majority of their calls to the Humane Society, they do not pay a single penny toward their work.

All of the animals in the rescue are FIV tested, vaccinated, dewormed, and spayed/neutered before they pass them along (for free) to another rescue further north, or sometimes adopt them out locally for less than the money they’ve invested in them.

This model is typical. There is so much talk of the United States becoming a no-kill nation, but if that ever happens, it will happen because of women like Melisa. She will sacrifice her personal life, her money, her time, and every scrap of her heart to save these animals. And she won’t be paid for it or given credit for it.

Striving to please the public and local leadership by becoming ‘no-kill,’ many shelters practice a policy of ‘managed intake.’ Shelters used to all be ‘open intake’ which means that the shelter will take any animal, any time, for any reason. ‘Managed intake’ means just that — managing which animals come in, when they can come in, and from whom they can come in.

Some won’t accept strays, pit bulls, sick animals, pregnant animals, puppies or kittens, forcing the person trying to find a place for them to turn elsewhere. Managed intake is great for a shelter’s numbers. If they only take in a limited number of highly adoptable animals that don’t require expensive veterinary care, they can save every animal, offer first class care, and operate within a reasonable budget. But what happens to the animals that are turned away?

Many people who don’t want a cat or dog (or the kittens or puppies that animal produced) feel a public shelter should have to take their animals. Their tax dollars support it. (More on this in a moment.) Some will kill the animals out of spite, some will dump them elsewhere, but all too often they end up at a rescue. Because it is the rescues, often run by people like Melisa whose hearts can’t turn away an animal in jeopardy, no matter how furious that animal’s owner makes them, or how unreasonable their reason is for abandoning it.

Surrender fees, commonly collected by shelters (but not rescues) are meant to offset the cost and discourage people from giving up their animals. But as one resident of Tennessee said when confronted with the $10 fee to surrender an animal, “A bullet only costs thirty cents.” Rescues charge even less.

Some progressive shelters work with owners to try to help them keep their pets in their home — offering assistance in the form of veterinary care, training, food, and supplies. A number that isn’t tracked, but should be, is how many pets are kept out of the shelter because shelter staffed assisted the owner. That’s an important number and one a shelter should be recognized for and encouraged to raise. Counseling owners to prevent them giving up their animals can often be successful and should always be the first step.

Not long after I moved to our town in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, I found a beautiful bluepoint Siamese cat. I’d scooped her up after she was nearly hit right in front of me while I was walking in town. Not knowing what else to do, I took the cat to the shelter. I hoped the cat would be microchipped and they’d be able to return the cat to its owner (it wasn’t). I explained this cat was a stray and they explained that they couldn’t take it. Maybe they assumed I was making up the ‘stray’ description because the cat was so affectionate and sweet in my arms.

I took the cat home, posted its picture and description everywhere I could think of hoping to find her owner, and I attempted to rehome her to no avail. So I turned to a local rescue who adopted it out (after I fostered it and paid to have it spayed, vaccinated, and microchipped because they were full up and out of money). But ever since that experience, I’ve wondered, ‘What if…?”

I had the ability, money, and space to feed and care for that cat for two weeks until it was adopted. I had a local rescue willing to take on the responsibility for it. But if I hadn’t, what would I have done?

I honestly don’t know. Put it back out on the busy sidewalk where I found it dodging traffic?

I have toured over 100 shelters and rescues in twelve states, and in many of those places, animal control officers, rescue coordinators, shelter directors, and volunteers talk about their save rate (or live release rate). They are focused on being able to save every adoptable animal that comes into their building. But what about the ones they turn away?

It’s the rescues that save those animals, often the most challenging and the sickest. The animals that might consume a lot of a shelter’s time, money, and resources, and potentially drag down a shelter’s live release rate.

It’s a hard truth that we cannot save every animal. Every shelter and rescue has to euthanize animals for behavioral or medical reasons. There is no way around that and any organization that says they save them all is lying.

But too many that can be saved are only being saved because of private individuals and nonprofit organizations that step into the gap created by public no-kill shelters.

We cannot rescue our way out of the current crisis. And it is a crisis.

Shelters, not just in the south, but all over this country are full and overwhelmed. Rescues that have been pushed beyond anything they ever signed up for, are breaking down from compassion fatigue, bankruptcy, and the impossibility of the situation.

Why is it so bad now? Lots of reasons. But it starts with the fact that the current system of managed intake shelters dependent on rescues to care for the animals they turn away is not sustainable. With numbers swollen as a result of the pandemic, the economy, the unstable housing market, the veterinary shortage, and breed-specific policies and laws, we are reaching a breaking point.

So what is this animal-loving country to do? How do we fix this?

It starts with our government and community responsibility. These animals belong to all of us. Long ago dogs and cats were domesticated. We tamed them, brought them inside as pets and into our lives for companionship, protection, and assistance. They cannot survive on their own. It is our obligation to take care of them.

We need good munipal shelters, run by trained staff with strong protocols for animal care, plus reasonable adoption policies. We need shelters that do not adopt (or rescue) out any animals until it is spayed/neutered. Shelters that offer education and support to pet owners and potential adopters. And these shelters need a mandate to help all animals (and their owners) whether that means offering support (training, veterinary, or resources) to keep the pet in the home or taking the animal into shelter custody.

There are hundreds of ways to change the narrative so that a shelter becomes a community resource, rather than an eyesore. Training classes, kids programs, dog parks, walking trails, and volunteer programs are just a few of the ways a shelter can become an engaged and beloved part of a community. The shelter should be an integral part of a community’s life.

The other way that government can help turn this tide is to create and enforce strong dog laws. At a minimum requiring dog/cat licensing (with a significantly larger fee for unspayed/unneutered animals) would create an income stream to help pay for better equipped and maintained shelters. Anti-cruelty laws and the repeal of breed-specific legislation are two powerful ways to send a strong message that we value our pets and our people.

I don’t know of any organization that has tallied the amount of money spent by private rescues to save the animals turned away because of a public shelter’s policies or because there is no public shelter. No doubt it is much more than any county or city government spends on animal shelters.

And I get it. No one wants to pay more taxes, but it is unfair to expect private citizens and local nonprofits to take on that burden, exploiting them because of their enormous hearts. There are innovative ways to cover the cost of sheltering animals like licensing and adding sales tax to luxury pet items, rather than leaving it to nonprofits to get the money through car washes and bake sales. Communities are paying to save or kill their animals one way or another. Make no mistake, it costs us either way.

As Aubrie Kavanaugh says in the title of her book about the No-Kill movement in Huntsville Alabama, it’s ‘Not Rocket Science.’ Saving every adoptable animal whether that animal is in Texas or North Dakota, is possible. But first we have to decide to save them.

Those are the exact words of Dr. Kim Sanders, the director of PAWS of Anderson County, South Carolina, a public shelter that takes in as many 500 animals a month. The shelter had been killing 90% of the animals they took in, but six months after Dr. Sanders arrived they achieved ‘no-kill’ status (saving 90% of their animals). When I asked her how she did this, she said, “We just decided to stop killing animals.”

When killing an animal is not an option, you find another one. Yes, the challenge is great, but in so many places, it has been met. We cannot simply shirk our responsibilities and leave it to the rescue organizations. Not only is it unfair and unreasonable, it is not sustainable. Rescues are struggling and too many are reaching a breaking point. It is long past time we step up and decide to find fair and humane solutions for the animals in our communities. We cannot rescue our way out of this crisis.

I met a Humane Society volunteer later that same day to retrieve my kittens. Another volunteer who had taken four hours out of her day to help animals that didn’t belong to her. My kittens eventually were transferred to another rescue further north.

I already have another litter of seven kittens sharing my office. There is an unending supply. The Humane Society still has over 100 in foster care. I checked the public shelter records for the month — the shelter took in eighteen cats/kittens this month. Eighteen.

Gosh, the County sure is getting a great deal, but at what cost?

Cara Achterberg is the author of One Hundred Dogs and Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey Into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues. She is also the founder of Who Will Let the Dogs Out, a non-profit organization that raises awareness and resources for homeless dogs and the heroes who fight for them.