No-Kill Tallahassee

The Tallahassee shelter has been congratulating itself on placing 186 pets in new homes at the Mega Match-a-Thon this past Sunday.  They even took a picture of some empty cages (which went viral along with a mistaken message that the shelter was empty).  The photo is dramatic, with the open doors stretching away in the distance:

The pictures of people at the Match-A-Thon, with their “186″ signs, look like everyone was happy and having a great time.  It’s always wonderful when animals find homes, so those people were right to be happy that those 186 pets were saved.

Looking at those pictures, though, I couldn’t help thinking of Miss Piggy.  Miss Piggy was an adorable 5-month old puppy with a great outgoing, friendly, happy temperament.  She was killed by the shelter just a few days before the Match-a-Thon.

Miss Piggy

In looking at that photo of all the empty cages, I wonder why the shelter was in such a rush to kill Miss Piggy?  If they had waited just a few more days, she could have found a home at the Match-A-Thon.  Or if for some reason she did not find a home that day, the shelter workers could have brought her back to the shelter and put her in one of those empty cages they are so proud of, so that someone else could have the opportunity to fall in love with her.

Miss Piggy was not the only highly adoptable dog that the shelter killed in the days leading up to the Match-A-Thon.  A beautiful, sweet dog named Cotton also died, along with many others.  The shelter killed enough animals leading up to the Match-A-Thon to have filled every one of those cages.

If Tallahassee had a shelter director who really cared about saving lives, she would have realized that with the Match-a-Thon coming up she did not need to do business-as-usual killing in the days leading up to it.  A compassionate director never wants to see empty cages in the shelter, because empty cages mean that fewer animals are getting their chance to be noticed, to have someone fall in love with them and adopt them.

I can’t seem to get over Miss Piggy’s death.  And I wonder how it’s possible that the shelter director could have ordered her to be killed, knowing that her salvation was only a few days away.  What kind of person could be crowing about her empty cages while Miss Piggy’s earthly remains are lying in the freezer in a body bag?

The Tallahassee shelter will never become a safe place, a loving place, a no-kill place, as long as the current hard-hearted management is still in power.  They aren’t willing to work to save lives.  All they care about is putting on a happy face and pretending to do a good job while they continue to draw their big paychecks.  Good-bye Miss Piggy.  You were a beautiful and perfect little baby.  I’m sorry they killed you for no reason at all.

The Tallahassee shelter and its ASPCA partners adopted out 186 pets on Sunday in the Mega Match-A-Thon.  Sounds great, right?  It’s good news for those 186 pets, but the news could have been much better.

The Mega Match-A-Thon was a national event originated by the ASPCA, which planned it as a three-day event, March 30 through April 1st.  The Tallahassee shelter participated in only one day, Sunday April 1st.  The ASPCA envisioned the event as extended hours — that’s why they called it an “adopt-a-thon.”  The Tallahassee shelter conducted the event only during their normal Sunday hours.

Compare that to what the KC Pet Project did.  KC Pet Project is a no-kill non-profit that took over management of the Kansas City, Missouri, shelter on January 1.  They are an enthusiastic bunch, and have been doing everything they can to save shelter pets.  They participated in all three days of the Mega Match-A-Thon, and promoted it to the limit of their very creative abilities.  The result?  They adopted out 706 pets.  Check it out.

Today is the day of the Mega Match-A-Thon adoption event.  The shelter has promoted this event better than it usually does — or should I say the coalition of groups involved, along with the ASPCA, has promoted the event.  The event probably has an excellent chance to reach its goal of 100 adoptions.  I hope they hit 200 adoptions or more.  But today is just one day and we need to look to the future.  The shelter can’t rely solely on individual events to promote adoptions, because the shelter’s own history shows that individual adoption events have not increased adoptions overall.  Successful shelters have demonstrated that increasing adoptions overall requires a marketing plan that looks beyond just one day.

How about having a new promotion every month that lasts the entire month, like Manatee County does?  Or an offsite adoption venue like Jacksonville and Manatee County both have?  The Manatee County shelter was able to take over and fix up unused space in a county building right in the middle of downtown Bradenton, very near the Riverwalk, at no cost to the taxpayers.  You can imagine how much that is going to turbocharge adoptions in Manatee County, as the new location will attract volunteers and fosters in droves.  Tallahassee has vacant space downtown that could be used for an adoption center.  I’ve been told by a reader of the blog that she proposed such a plan to the shelter years ago and was turned down.  No surprise there.  While other cities march ahead, Tallahassee shelter management snoozes.

The Tallahassee shelter is making tiny baby steps, as with the adoption event today.  I think the only reason the shelter is taking these steps is because it’s feeling pressure from the citizens of Tallahassee.  Unfortunately, much of what the shelter is doing is merely cosmetic.  They have adoption “events” merely by announcing them, without promoting them.  They appoint a “foster coordinator” who manages to reduce the number of foster homes.  They decide to participate in only 8 hours of the Match-A-Thon, instead of the 16 to 30 hours for most shelters.  They go through some of the motions, but without the dedication, enthusiasm, and imagination that brings long-term success.

It would be so easy to reform the Tallahassee shelter.  All it would take would be to transfer the shelter away from its current management, which consists of people who only pretend to care, and place it in the hands of people who really do care and who have the ability to lead.  If you doubt that, then take a look at No-KillCommunities.com, which lists 31 open-admission no-kill shelters in 31 no-kill communities all over the USA — and counting.  It can be done.  How many open-admission no-kill shelters do we have to have before city and county management wake up to the fact that they can and should be doing better?  The real “Mega Adoption” event that the city of Tallahassee needs is for city and county management to “adopt” a policy of requiring competent leadership at the shelter.

Last September, the ASPCA reached an agreement with four Tallahassee institutions to become an ASPCA “partnership” community.  The partners are the Tallahassee shelter, the Leon County Animal Control Division, the Leon County Humane Society (LCHS), and Be The Solution, Inc., which promotes spay-neuter.  So far, the ASPCA has not done much at all to hold up its end of the “partnership.”  I made a recent record request to the shelter to ask what grants the ASPCA had disbursed to the shelter in 2012 and received this answer: “1/19 Scholarship for the 2 Veterinary Technicians to attend the North American Veterinary Conference” and “2/16 ID Tag Engraving machine & tags.”  Oh well.

Now comes word that the Tallahassee shelter and two of the ASPCA partners — LCHS and Be The Solution — are teaming up for an event on April 1st called a Mega Match-A-Thon, to be held at the Tallahassee Mall.  This promotion is apparently being funded at least in part by the ASPCA, as announced last January.

I’m all for adopt-a-thons, and in fact I have urged the shelter to have one.  So I’m a happy camper, right?  Well, yes and no.  On the “yes” side, the event is being held at the Tallahassee Mall, which is good because it may get more attention from people who don’t usually think about the shelter.  On the “no” side, the event is for one day only, from 10AM to 6PM.  The name “Match-a-Thon” implies an extended-hours event, but these hours are pretty much the usual for Sunday.  Other shelters participating in this event are doing 2 days and extended hours.  Fort Wayne, Missoula, Fairfax, and the Washington Animal Rescue League, for example, are making it a 2-day event, and Miami is doing 24 hours.  Animal Allies is doing 30 straight hours, from noon Saturday to 6 PM Sunday.

It remains to be seen whether the shelter will promote the event effectively.  As of this morning, there is no press release on the city’s website, and no notice of the event on the shelter’s website.  The shelter’s Facebook page has an announcement of the event, but that is preaching to the converted — what the shelter needs to do is get the word out to people who don’t ordinarily think of adopting from the shelter.  We will see.

One of the goals that the ASPCA announced for its partnership with the Tallahassee shelter was to increase the live release rate from its current abysmal low of around 50% up to 62.5%.  That’s certainly a very modest goal given that Manatee County, which started from about the same place as the Tallahassee shelter last summer, has raised its live release rate to 77% — and it didn’t need the ASPCA’s help to do it.  But if the ASPCA expects the Tallahassee shelter to meet even the modest goal of 62.5% and sustain it for a full year, it might behoove the corporate bigwigs at ASPCA to pick up the phone and make sure that Tallahassee shelter management actually takes the trouble to promote this event.

And while they are at it, they might want to suggest that the shelter start up a marketing program, rather than simply having events with no real effort to actually persuade the public to attend.  In the past, statistics have shown that free adoption events raise the shelter’s adoption numbers for the month, but do not lead to a sustained increase.  For that, you need to do frequent adoption events and market them.  For example, the Nevada Humane Society in Reno, Nevada, which is a leader in shelter marketing, has at least one big event per month.  It had over 1200 pets adopted through its shelter’s Home 4 the Holidays Pet Adoption Drive, which ran from November 18 to January 2.  And 73 cats were adopted at the January NHS Cat Convention weekend.  The shelter followed up with a February Mardi Gras adoption event, and a Doggie Palooza on March 10.  It is currently running a “Mini-Panther” promotion for black cats, with a reduced price. The Tallahassee shelter has been having one day events, but the promotion of the events is lacking. Like any business, they need to think about reaching the public and marketing effectively.