Chicago makes changes in animal control

http://www.bestfriends.org/allthegoodnews/nmhpnews_071804_chicago.cfm
The Chicago Shift

The drama is not new to the animal welfare movement. A similar story is playing out in communities large and small across the country. While the actors and the scenery change, and a few new plot twists are thrown in for each production, the theme remains familiar.

Frustrated with the slow-but-steady improvements made by traditional approaches to animal rescue, private humane societies are stepping back from their historic animal control functions to focus on different strategies.

In response, public animal control is left feeling isolated and villainized, abandoned to do the dirty work, while the private organizations don white hats and ride in to take the public glory.

Now Chicago has stepped onto this stage.

Beginning in November, the city's venerable Anti-Cruelty Society will stop holding stray animals during the five-day period when they can be neither adopted nor euthanized. The society will continue to accept pets relinquished by their people, since these pets can be adopted immediately, but will divert the strays brought in by the public to Chicago's Animal Care and Control Department.

In exchange, the society plans to substantially increase the number of legally adoptable animals it transfers out of animal control to its facility, and to direct more resources toward its spay/neuter, feral cat, and anti-dog-fighting programs. The society also plans to construct the Bruckner Animal Rehabilitation Center, which will feature over 100 spaces for the long-term rehabilitation of animals with treatable illnesses and behavior problems, as well as kittens and puppies too young to adopt.

In addition, the society hopes that centralizing all strays in one city facility will help to improve Chicago's dismal redemption rate - with only 6 or 7 percent of stray pets currently being returned to their people.

"This is a huge change for the city of Chicago," acknowledges Gene Mueller, DVM, president of the Anti-Cruelty Society. "But it is obviously not novel in the country, because we have modeled our approach on other successful programs, where private humane societies have made progress by separating themselves from public animal control work."

"This is all about finding a way to do more to help the animals that are our responsibility as society members," he says. "The status quo needs to change. We no longer must continue to 'process' animals. We need to embrace them, and to work together to make the system work to save more lives. This is a big start."

Policy shift greeted with skepticism, concern
Unfortunately, Mueller's new approach was unveiled to the city through a downbeat article in the Chicago Tribune, with a headline announcing that strays were "no longer welcome" at the Anti-Cruelty Society.

The Tribune story asserted that society officials "acknowledge" that the policy change "just moves the problem elsewhere," and strongly suggested that more animals would have to be killed as a result of the change. The article failed to even mention the society's plans to transfer more legally adoptable animals out of the city pound, including many animals who are in need of long-term health or behavior rehabilitation.

The city's animal control department also did not greet the new plan with open arms.

"We are very worried," says Melanie Sobel, animal control's director of program services. "We are already understaffed and underfunded, so to take in another 4,000 to 5,000 animals is going to be difficult for us. We are worried that this is going to shift more of the burden to an organization that already carries too much of the burden."

Sobel says she is concerned that the new policy is going to force animal control to euthanize more animals. However, she says animal control will continue to work with the Anti-Cruelty Society on programs including Homeward Bound, the city program to transfer animals out of the city pound into other adoption facilities.

Although she is not optimistic, Sobel also holds out hope that Mueller's strategy will work as he predicts, and save more of Chicago's animals in the long run.

"I really hope it works out for the best," she says, noting that it would be wonderful if the new strategy helped to save more troubled pets, or brought new funding and resources into the Chicago humane movement.

Organizations have history of cooperation
Sobel fully acknowledges the value of many of the programs run by the Anti-Cruelty Society and other area organizations, particularly their aggressive spay/neuter campaigns. Last year, Anti-Cruelty's low-cost, high-volume program altered about 12,000 animals, including strays, people's pets, and animals from other rescues and shelters.

Sobel says animal control is doing its best to add to these programs, despite limited resources. The city department offers a free spay/neuter clinic once a month for people who live in the Chicago zip codes with the biggest animal overpopulation, and, in March, launched the Animobile, a mobile spay/neuter clinic to go into poor areas.

But while Sobel applauds the idea that the Anti-Cruelty Society will put more resources into spay/neuter and animal rehabilitation, she wonders why that means they have to stop holding strays.

"Why can't they do both?" she asks.

Mueller responds that it comes down to a decision of where to direct a limited amount of resources.

Although the Tribune reported that the society has $29.8 million in assets, Mueller says his group has actually been exceeding its $4.25 million annual budget by about $1 million a year.

By no longer using the society's resources to hold animals that legally may not be adopted, Mueller says the society will save about $200,000 a year and free up approximately 17,000 cage days.

Although the city pound is also short on space and money, Mueller says that implementing the city's mandate for animal control is really its function.

"That's just not our role," he says.

Breaking from history to explore new paths
The Chicago Anti-Cruelty Society was formed in 1899 by people upset with the harsh treatment of the city's working horses. Over the years, the organization has evolved as the city's relationship with animals has changed, and it has become focused almost entirely on improving the lives of the city's 1.3 million companion animals.

The society has never received city funding for animal control, and city enforcement officers take all of the strays they capture to animal control, which takes in 12,000 to 13,000 strays each year. However, the society has accepted between 4,000 and 5,000 strays brought in by the public each year.

Despite the fact that the city has never paid them for these services, Mueller says the society traditionally accepted strays because of the inhumane conditions at the old city pound, and the city's use of the carbon monoxide chamber for euthanasia. Now, this has all changed, with the city's construction of a modern animal holding and adoption facility, and its switch to the use of sodium pentobarbital injections, a more humane form of euthanasia.

As a result, Mueller says it is no longer "morally incumbent" on his society to hold strays, and the group may now focus its resources elsewhere. He credits Best Friends Animal Society and other organizations around the country for providing the models for the changes he is making.

"The models and information that Best Friends provides are exactly the catalyst for making changes like this. We are able to review what worked and what didn't work, and it gives us ideas for things to try," he says.

In recent years, many new programs have been tried by the Chicago Area Shelter Alliance (CASA), a coalition of 10 large and small shelters, including animal control and Anti-Cruelty. For example, CASA has held very successful super adoption events, at one of which animal control placed a record 57 dogs.

But Peggy Froh Asseo, the Anti-Cruelty Society's vice president of external affairs, says that her organization is still the most effective adoption agency, and wants to try to maximize its impact.

"We adopt out more animals than every other shelter combined, including animal control," she says.

Animal control takes progressive, open approach
Mueller gives great credit to the current leadership of animal control for its willingness to be progressive, and its desire to work with other organizations on animal transfers, in order to find homes for the most animals possible.

Sobel acknowledges that many of the positive changes at animal control began about six years ago, during Mueller's 18-month tenure as director of the city department. She says current director Nikki Proutsos has continued that tradition of reform, welcoming with open arms the contributions of volunteers and other rescues and shelters, and trying to focus on preventative measures such as spay/neuter and education.

We have done a complete 180. Before, there were locked doors - no one was allowed here. Now we have completely changed the culture," she says. Now, animal control works cooperatively with the other members of CASA, including the Anti-Cruelty Society.

Sobel says she sees no reason to change the current approach toward homeless pets in Chicago, because it has been working.

"We just have to keep doing what we are doing. Placement through adoption and transfers is up 150 percent, and euthanasia is down 20 percent," she says.

When is some progress not enough?
The real question is whether the current approach is improving the situation fast enough, says Richard Avanzino, president of Maddie's Fund, a private foundation that provides grants to organizations to help bring about the day when every pet is guaranteed a loving home.

"Obviously, if a model in a community is working, there is no need to try to fix it. There is no reason to change for change's sake," he says. "But if animals are still being killed in huge numbers, which I understand is what is happening in Chicago, then to try a new approach is not only courageous, but very appropriate."

Avanzino had no involvement in the Anti-Cruelty Society's policy shift, but notes that it seems similar to the approach that has worked in communities across the country, most notably in San Francisco. Under Avanzino's leadership, the San Francisco SPCA started to phase out its animal control responsibilities in 1984, focusing its efforts on animal sterilization and adoption. The success of this program was made clear in 1994, when San Francisco became the nation's first no-kill city.

"Sometimes it takes a break from the status quo, and leadership in stepping forward to implement change, because that's the only way animals will be saved, and they deserve nothing less," Avanzino says.

Although the situation in Chicago is improving, the prospects for homeless animals there are still quite bleak. According to Mueller, about 40,000 animals enter the shelter system each year, and as many as 24,000 are euthanized. Chicago's euthanasia rate of about 10.6 animals killed for every 1,000 persons is below the national average, but lags far behind the progress that has been made in some other major cities.

It is this comparison that is key to Avanzino.

"One way to evaluate your progress is to look at the rest of the country. I don't think anybody should try to copy in whole cloth what others are doing, but it is smart to take a look at the communities that are making faster progress than you are, to see if there is something to be learned there," he says.

"If we look at each animal's death as a tragedy, then we can't take comfort that we have come a long way, and only about 4.5 million are dying nationwide now. That can tell us that we are doing better, but as long as animals are dying, we haven't done enough."

Controversy endures over who should do the killing
Although the Anti-Cruelty Society is not announcing a switch to no-kill, Mueller does expect that the society's euthanasia of adoptable animals will effectively end with this policy change.

Sobel fears that putting the entire burden of euthanasia onto animal control will make the caring people who work there look like the bad guys. She says this burden is difficult for people to understand if they don't work in shelters that perform euthanasia - and spend every day looking into the eyes of the animals they have to put down.

"We will be viewed as the place animals go to die, and it will be hard to get compassionate people to work here. So how is animal welfare going to progress here with that environment?" she says.

"We want people to support us, to know who we are and what we are, and that we have the largest number of adoptable animals in the city. We are never going to get good people to come down here and work and volunteer if this place is viewed as a concentration camp. I think everyone should play a role and share that burden," she says.

But Avanzino points out that there are huge advantages to taking private organizations out of the killing function - including an increase in volunteers, donations, and other resources.

"The San Francisco SPCA lost out on a lot of opportunities when it was engaging in killing, because volunteers couldn't deal with it," he says. "Once we stopped killing, we attracted more volunteers, more media attention, and a lot more animal lovers supported us and became involved. That synergy compounded the resources we already had, and enabled us to guarantee all animals in San Francisco a loving home."

Avanzino says he just doesn't understand the argument that if somebody in the city has to kill, then all the organizations have to kill, or they are viewed as ducking out of their responsibilities.

"If you save one life, one dog, one cat, you've helped solve the problem. Everyone here has something to offer, and how they offer it is a matter of personal choice," he says. "We all want to stop the killing in animal control, not just the people in animal control."

Cooperation is key to success
Avanzino emphasizes that the key to making things work is cooperation between the agencies, and a commitment that nobody is going to be portrayed to the public as the bad guy.

"Animal control serves an important function, and rescue groups have to acknowledge that, so that they all can work together to create a no-kill community," he says.

An important element of that cooperation in San Francisco was an agreement that the SPCA wouldn't just cherry pick what Avanzino calls the "cute and cuddlies" from the animal control shelter, leaving the city facility with only the "old and uglies." Instead, the SPCA tried to take animals the city facility was unable to adopt, as well as those who needed some form of rehabilitation.

"If rescues only take the cute and cuddlies, and leave the old and uglies behind, then we are just giving up on them, and that isn't acceptable," he says. "You have to sit down at the negotiating table and figure out the best strategy to find the most homes for the most animals."

Although they disagree on the wisdom of the Anti-Cruelty Society's latest move, it is clear that the leaders of the society and animal control share a lot of common ground. Both emphasize the importance of spay/neuter and education as the only way to solve the problem of homeless animals, often using the same language to describe their views.

"Adopting more animals is not the answer. Dealing with the flow from the shelter is not the answer. You have to stop the flow from coming in in the first place," says Sobel.

Mueller makes use of a similar analogy.

"Someone said it was like seeing animals float past you in the river toward a waterfall," he says. "You can sit alongside the river and keep trying to pull them out, or you can go to the top and figure out where they are all coming from and try to stop the flow."

He says he expects the new strategy to produce a radical decrease in the citywide euthanasia rate in the next two to three years, moving toward a time when all of Chicago's pets will be in loving homes. He is hopeful that when the city adjusts to the new approach, everyone will realize that it helps to save more animals, and that they will be able to increase their cooperative efforts to bring more resources into the community.

"Before we can run, we have to walk, and I think we are all walking together now. We all want the same thing - reducing euthanasia rates and saving more lives, so that all adoptable animals will be in loving homes," Mueller says.