January 21, 2022 Update: Subsequent to my original analysis, St. Hubert’s-Madison submitted its statistics to the New Jersey Department of Health and the state health department revised its summary report on the state animals shelters‘ statistics.As a result, I updated this blog for the St. Hubert’s-Madison data.
Recently, I wrote a blog discussing decreased killing at New Jersey animal shelters in 2020. This blog will explore the 2020 statistics in more detail and assess the current status of the state’s animal shelters.
Most New Jersey animal shelters voluntarily report detailed data to state authorities. Earlier this year, I shared the 2020 summary statistics for New Jersey animal shelters on my Facebook page. Each year, the New Jersey Department of Health requests each licensed animal shelter in the state to submit animal shelter data for the previous year. Animal shelters voluntarily submit this data in the “Shelter/Pound Annual Report.” The New Jersey Department of Health takes these Shelter/Pound Annual Reports and compiles the number of dogs, cats and other animals impounded, redeemed, adopted and euthanized to prepare its Animal Intake and Disposition report. However, the Shelter/Pound Annual Reports include additional information on how animals were impounded (i.e. strays, owner surrenders, rescued from in-state facilities, rescued from out of state shelters, and cruelty/bite cases/other) and disposed of (i.e. returned to owner, adopted, sent to rescue/another shelter, and died/missing/other outcome). Additionally, the Shelter/Pound Annual Reports include the number of animals in shelters at the beginning and end of the year as well as the maximum number of animals facilities can hold. Thus, the Shelter/Pound Annual Reports include very important data not found in the New Jersey Department of Health’s summary report.
I compiled the data from these reports and analyze the results in this blog. 2020 statistics for each New Jersey animal shelter are listed at this link. You can also view each “Shelter/Pound Annual Report” at this link.
Garbage Data Raises Serious Questions About New Jersey Animal Shelters’ Statistics
Most New Jersey animal shelters do not properly account for their animals. Simple math dictates the number of animals at a facility at the beginning of the year, plus all animals coming in during the year, less all animals leaving for the period, should equal the number of animals a shelter has at the end of the year. Stunningly, 36 out of 66 shelters reporting these dog statistics and 42 out of 65 facilities submitting this cat data failed to get this right. This raises serious questions about the accuracy of these shelters’ reported statistics. 24 of the 36 shelters with flawed dog statistics and 23 of the 42 facilities with incorrect cat statistics should have had more animals at the end of the year than reported. While these errors could have been due to incorrect counts of the number of animals at facilities, these shelters may have not recorded outcomes, such as animals who were killed, died, or went missing. To put it another way, 1,302 cats and dogs should have had outcomes reported and did not. Thus, there is the potential that as many as 1,302 additional dogs and cats were killed, died or went missing from New Jersey animal shelters than were reported in 2020.
Even worse, a number of animal shelters reported having a different number of animals at the end of 2019 and at the beginning of 2020. Obviously, shelters should report the same number of animals at the end of the prior year and the start of the current year. However, 33 of 65 shelters reported different numbers of dogs at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. Similarly, 29 of 63 shelters reported different numbers of cats at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. The worst offenders are listed in the tables below:
Shelters may have failed to classify animals adopted out and sent to rescues properly. Both Paterson Animal Control and Elizabeth Animal Shelter reported no animals were sent to rescues and all dogs and cats leaving their facilities alive were owner reclaims or adoptions. However, intake and disposition records I reviewed at both of these shelters in recent years revealed almost all “adopted” animals are actually rescued. One has to wonder how many other facilities failed to properly classify adoptions and rescues properly. This data is very important as it provides details on the burden rescues and other shelters are taking on from these facilities.
We need better oversight of New Jersey animal shelters’ data reporting. Currently, these statistics are voluntarily reported and most shelters are not taking this seriously. For example, I noticed a large number of reports were submitted many months after the end of the year. This data should be easy to compile since facilities can utilize animal shelter software programs, some of which are free, to do this task. Furthermore, New Jersey animal shelter laws mandate facilities maintain much of the raw data found in the Shelter/Pound Annual Report. Unfortunately, New Jersey Department of Health inspections routinely find shelters do not properly keep records on animals. We need to make the data reporting mandatory for animal shelters as the shelter reform bill, S636, does along with serious penalties for significant errors (especially if deliberate). In order for animal shelters to take data reporting seriously, we may also need to require audits of these reports. Thus, these results show we need stronger laws and the New Jersey Department of Health to play a greater role in ensuring reported animal shelter statistics are in fact accurate.
Despite the errors in these reports, the data provided still reveals important information.
More Animals Losing Their Lives in New Jersey Animal Shelters Than Disclosed in Summary Report
The more detailed data in the Shelter/Pound Annual Reports allows one to more critically examine the percentage of locally impounded animals dying in New Jersey’s animal shelters. The following table summarizes my analysis of the kill rates calculated from the New Jersey Department of Health’s summary report and the data reported in the Shelter/Pound Annual Reports.
The statistics include an estimate to remove animals St. Hubert’s transfers in and quickly transfers out through its Sister Shelter WayStation program. Since St. Hubert’s is effectively acting as a middle man and not holding these animals very long, it makes sense to exclude these dogs and cats from the various kill rate statistics. If I did not exclude these animals, I would understate the dog and cat kill rates due to inflated intakes and outcomes numbers. Therefore, I removed all of St. Hubert’s dogs transferred out from the intake and outcomes figures in the metrics. Since St. Hubert’s primarily uses the Sister Shelter Waystation program to quickly transfer in cats and send them to out of state facilities, I only backed out the cats St. Hubert’s transferred to out of state organizations in the various kill rates. The dog kill rate (intake) increased from 3.6% to 4.1% and the cat kill rate (intake) remained at 9.8%.
The Animal Intake and Disposition report prepared by the New Jersey Department of Health only allows one to calculate the number of animals killed as a percentage of total animals impounded (i.e. intake). I prefer calculating the kill rate as a percentage of outcomes rather than intake as this metric directly compares positive and negative outcomes. Using intake may depress the kill rate since shelters can simply hold animals for a long time to the point of overcrowding. Calculating the kill rate based on outcomes rather than intake caused the dog kill rate to decrease from 4.1 to 4.0% and the cat kill rate to decrease from 9.8% to 9.7%. This decrease was due to outcomes exceeding intakes.
To calculate the statewide kill rate, we must also back out transfers from one New Jersey animal shelter to another state facility to avoid counting animals still in the state’s shelter system or registering two outcomes for the same animal (i.e. one New Jersey animal shelter transfers a dog or cat to another state facility which then adopts out the animal). This adjustment increased the dog kill rate from 4.0% to 4.3% and the cat kill rate from 9.7% to 10.7%.
In addition, we should increase the kill rate for animals who died or went missing in shelters. In the past, I’ve labeled this metric the death rate as these animals are likely dead or in a very bad situation. Unfortunately, the Shelter/Pound Annual Report includes animals who died or went missing in the “Other” outcome category. The “Other” category contains positive live releases, such as TNR for cats, at a few shelters. While including the “Other” category in the death rate for most shelters is appropriate (i.e. those facilities that don’t do TNR or don’t include cats released through TNR programs in “Other” outcomes), I’m no longer doing this due to an increasing number of shelters implementing TNR. Instead, I calculated the kill rate by subtracting out “Other” outcomes from total outcomes. If a shelter specifies the number of animals included in “Other” that left the shelter alive, I count this as “Other Live Release” and do not back these amounts out of total outcomes. After making this adjustment, the dog kill rate remained at 4.3% and the cat kill rate increased from 10.7% to 11.4%. For those interested in seeing the estimated death rates, you can find them in the supporting spreadsheet.
Also, many shelters transport easy to adopt animals from out of state which artificially increases live release rates. To properly calculate the percentage of New Jersey animals losing their lives, we need to adjust for transports. Unfortunately, shelters don’t break out their kill rates by local and out of state animals. However, most likely nearly all of the out of state animals (primarily puppies and easy to adopt dogs and cats) make it out of shelters alive. Therefore, I back out the number of out of state transports from total outcomes to estimate the local kill rate. This adjustment increases the New Jersey dog kill rate from 4.3% to 5.7% and the state’s cat kill rate from 11.4% to 11.6%.
Also, I estimate a maximum local kill rate by including the number of unaccounted for animals described in the section above. Making this adjustment increases the New Jersey dog kill rate from 5.7% to 10.3% and the state cat kill rate from 11.6% to 14.3%.
Some animal shelters quickly return large percentages of their animals to owners. At these shelters, the populations served are typically well-off and animals are licensed and have microchips. To account for the animals facilities actually have to shelter, I calculated a kill rate for non-reclaimed animals and a maximum potential kill rate for non-reclaimed local animals. The non-reclaimed kill rate and maximum potential kill rate for dogs is 6.2% and 18.0%. Non-reclaimed cats had a 12.2% kill rate and a 15.3% maximum potential kill rate. Thus, the percentage of New Jersey animals losing their lives in our state’s animal shelters may be much higher than the state summary report suggests.
Many Animals Killed Despite Low Statewide Death Rates
The goal of any properly managed animal shelter is to save all of its healthy and treatable animals. In some cases, such as selective admission rescue oriented shelters, it is pretty easy to not kill animals. In addition, other animal shelters with easy to service animal control contracts (i.e. few animals impounded, most strays quickly returned to owners) can avoid unnecessary killing due to having lots of extra space. As a result, some shelters may have an easier time than others in preventing killing at their shelters.
The tables below detail how many dogs should lose their lives at each state animal shelter per my model and the actual numbers of dogs that did. The model’s targets have shelters euthanizing 5% of community dogs (strays, owner surrenders, cruelty/bite cases, etc.) and 1% of dogs rescued from other shelters. All missing or lost dogs are assumed “dead” based on the assumption they died or went to a very bad place. Based on my review of a number of shelters’ underlying documents, virtually all of the dogs in the “Other” outcome category died or went missing. Shelters having the number of dogs losing their lives at or below my targets and above my targets are highlighted in green and red in the tables below.
The largest number of dogs unnecessarily dying occurred at a relatively small number of shelters. Overall, 301 dogs needlessly lost their lives at New Jersey animal shelters in 2020 (i.e. the sum of all shelters killing too many dogs). 10 out of 67 or 15% of the shelters accounted for 81% of the dogs unnecessarily losing their lives under the model’s assumptions. Thus, the bulk of the dogs unnecessarily dying at New Jersey animals shelters occurs at a small number of facilities.
If I use a stricter standard of shelters only having 2% of local dogs losing their lives (which a number of higher volume no kill animal control shelters in other places have achieved), the state’s shelters needlessly killed 555 dogs in 2020.
The tables below detail how many cats should lose their lives at each state animal shelter per my model (8% of strays, owner surrenders and other local cats and 5% of cats rescued from other shelters) and the actual numbers of cats that did. All missing or lost cats are assumed “dead” based on the assumption they died or went to a very bad place. Based on my review of a number of shelters’ underlying documents, virtually all of the cats in the “Other” outcome category died or went missing. While a small numbers of shelters could have included some live releases in the “Other” outcome category, it would be misleading to not count these deaths for the overwhelming majority of shelters. Shelters having the number of cats losing their lives at or below my targets and above my targets are highlighted in green and red in the tables below.
The largest number of cats unnecessarily dying occurred at a relatively small number of shelters. Overall, 3,105 cats needlessly lost their lives at New Jersey animal shelters in 2020 (i.e. the sum of all shelters killing too many cats). 10 out of 65 or 15% of the shelters accounted for 86% of the cats unnecessarily losing their lives under the model’s assumptions. Thus, almost all of the cats unnecessarily dying at New Jersey animals shelters happens at a small number of facilities.
Kill Rates Extremely High at a Number of New Jersey Animal Shelters
Dogs and cats are likely to lose their lives at a number of New Jersey animal shelters. Shelters with the highest kill rates for dogs and cats (excluding very low intake facilities) are listed in the following tables:
Thus, both dogs and cats have a very good chance of leaving many New Jersey animal shelters dead rather than alive.
In terms of raw numbers, the following shelters killed the most animals:
Many shelters fail to account for large numbers of their animals. As discussed above, a shelter’s number of animals at the end of the year should be calculated as follows:
Beginning number of animals + animals impounded – animals leaving the shelter
Unfortunately, a large number of shelters take in far more animals than they can explain where they went. Shelters having the highest numbers of unaccounted for dogs and cats are listed in the following tables:
Dog and cat kill rates at many shelters may be even higher if these unaccounted for animals are counted as killed. If we only consider animal shelters which reported transporting few or no animals in 2020, facilities with the highest dog and cat kill rates considering the unaccounted for animals described above are as follows:
Thus, the plight of dogs and cats may be far worse in New Jersey animal shelters when we consider the unaccounted for animals.
Shelters Turn Their Backs on New Jersey’s Animals
New Jersey animal shelters rescue far more dogs from out of state than from other New Jersey animal shelters. Specifically, New Jersey animal shelters transferred in 3,041 dogs from out of state animal shelters and only rescued 870 dogs from other New Jersey animal shelters. While fewer dogs were available for rescue in 2020, the pattern is consistent with past years.
While perhaps some shelters take animals from nearby New York or Pennsylvania animal control shelters, the overwhelming majority of these dogs most certainly came from down south. In fact, New Jersey animal shelters transported more dogs from out of state than dogs who were killed in New Jersey animal shelters. This number does not include additional out of state dogs transported into New Jersey by rescues operating without a physical facility. Shelters transporting the most dogs from out of state were as follows:
In 2020, several New Jersey animal shelters transported many cats from out of state. Its not clear if or how many of the cats EASEL took in from out of state were from nearby Pennsylvania or other places further away.
Shelters Do Far Worse with Animals Requiring New Homes
Since dogs reclaimed by their owners typically have licenses and/or microchips and quickly leave the shelter, its informative to look at dogs shelters have to find new homes for. To get a better idea of how organizations are doing with animals they actually have to shelter, I also examined what percentage of non-reclaimed dogs lose their lives at each facility. Shelters with the highest non-reclaimed dogs kill rates are as follows (excluding shelters taking few unclaimed dogs in):
Shelters with the highest maximum non-reclaimed dog kill rates are as follows (excluding facilities that reported transporting many dogs in and taking very few unclaimed animals in):
Shelters Leave Animal Enclosures Empty While Dogs and Cats Die
New Jersey animal shelters fail to use their space to save animals. Based on the average number of animals at all of New Jersey’s animal shelters at the beginning and the end of 2020, only 52% of dog and 74% of cat capacity was used. Given December is a low intake month, I also increased these populations to an average intake month. This adjustment only raised the dog capacity utilization to 54%. While this adjustment did increase the cat capacity utilization to 92%, it is highly unlikely this happened in reality. Shelter inspection reports I’ve reviewed often did not reveal significantly larger dog and cat populations in the summer and winter months. This is likely due to the influx of highly adoptable kittens having short lengths of stay and shelters killing cats with empty cages.
Many animal shelters with low kill rates failed to rescue animals with their excess space. Additionally, other shelters used little of their available space and still killed a large percentage of their animals. Some examples after increasing the population (and therefore capacity utilization) based on the adjustment discussed above are as follows:
Thus, many New Jersey animal shelters are killing dogs and cats despite having ample space to house these animals.
Shelters Show No Respect for Life for Animals Outside of Those Facilities
As I wrote in my last blog, 2020 was the most unusual year in the history of animal sheltering. The COVID-19 pandemic caused many shelters to restrict animal intake and the public, who were home more, lost fewer pets and fostered more animals. As a result, shelters took significantly fewer animals in and had more open animal enclosures than in the past.
On the other hand, many shelters across the country took it a step further and refused to help animals in need. Therefore, we must differentiate between shelters whose intake decreased due to pandemic related reasons and those who exploited COVID-19 to do less work and put animals at risk outside those facilities’ walls.
The following tables detail the shelters whose dog and cat intake decreased the most in 2020. As you can see, these shelters animal intake decreased significantly more than both the decrease for shelters across the country using PetPoint software (24% and 21% decrease for dogs and cats) and for New Jersey animal shelters as a whole (22% and 13% decrease for dogs and cats).
New Jersey’s animal shelters continue to fail the state’s animals. The state’s animal shelters only impounded 5.9 dogs and cats per 1,000 New Jersey residents in 2020. If we just count animals originating from New Jersey, the state’s animal shelters only impounded 5.2 dogs and cats per 1,000 people in 2020. As a comparison, Florida’s Lake County Animal Shelter took in 10.9 dogs and cats in 2020 and saved 98% of its dogs and 94% of its cats due to it fully implementing the No Kill Equation. Despite New Jersey shelters impounding a fraction of the animals many no kill communities take in on a per capita basis, the state’s animal control facilities continue to kill and allow animals to die under their care and outside their walls. Even worse, many of these shelters can’t even properly keep track of how many animals leave their facilities dead or alive. Our state’s animals deserve far better treatment than this. Contact your local city council members and mayor and demand better from the animal shelter serving your community. We can do so much better and it is time our shelters operate this way.
Cats are losing their lives at an alarming rate in New Jersey animal shelters. New Jersey animal shelters killed 7,255 cats or 17% of those cats having known outcomes in 2019. Additionally, a number of other cats died or went missing. This blog explores the reasons why this tragedy is occurring and whether we can end the massacre.
Model Assesses New Jersey Animal Shelters’ Life Saving Performance
In order to assess how good of a job New Jersey animal shelters are doing, I’ve developed an analysis I call the “Life Saving Model.” While shelter performance is dependent on many variables, such as finances, facility design, local laws, etc., the most critical factor impacting potential life saving is animal holding capacity. Without having enough physical space and foster homes, a shelter might not have enough time to find loving homes for its animals. Shelters can overcome financial limitations through creative fundraising or recruiting more volunteers. Similarly, organizations can save their cats despite having run down facilities if these groups enthusiastically implement policies to get animals into loving homes quickly. As a result, my analysis focuses on making the best use of space to save the maximum number of New Jersey and nearby areas cats.
The Life Saving Model measures the number of local animals a shelter should adopt out, rescue from other facilities, send to rescues or other shelters and euthanize to achieve no kill level live release rates. The targeted outcomes take into account each facility’s physical capacity plus the amount of foster homes it should use and the number of cats the organization receives from its community (i.e. strays, owner surrenders, cruelty cases, etc.). I assume a target euthanasia rate, take the number of cats actually returned to owners and then estimate how many community cats a shelter should adopt out. To the extent space runs out, I then calculate how many cats must be sent to rescue. If the shelter has excess space after properly serving its local community, the facility uses that room to rescue and adopt out cats from nearby areas. The targeted results calculated from this model are compared to the actual results from each shelter below.
The model expands shelter capacity to include the number of foster homes shelters should use. Based on a target I obtained from Target Zero’s now defunct “Humane Dash” tool, which I confirmed is appropriate with American Pets Alive leadership, shelters should have 7.5% of their annual cat intake in foster homes at any one time. These estimates are based on what several no kill animal control shelters already accomplish. Given fostering increases capacity and provides more humane care to animals, it is critical shelters have large scale foster programs. Therefore, I added 7.5% of each shelter’s annual cat intake to the shelter’s physical capacity.
The Life Saving Model requires a more complex analysis for cats than dogs in New Jersey. Generally speaking, New Jersey animal shelters receive few litters of young puppies who are vulnerable to disease. On the other hand, local shelters receive lots of young kittens, particularly during the April to October kitten season. These young kittens are highly vulnerable to disease and those without mothers require bottle feeding every 1-2 hours. Therefore, animal welfare organizations should not hold these kittens in a traditional shelter setting and instead should send these animals to foster homes or a kitten nursery at or outside of the facility. During the months outside of kitten season (i.e. November-March), my model assumes shelters will be able to place young kittens into their volunteers’ foster homes and/or in a kitten nursery run by the animal shelter. In kitten season with many young animals coming in, I assume a certain percentage of the cat intake will need to go to rescues or other shelters. For shelters who rescue cats, I assume a small percentage of the cats are young kittens who are hopelessly suffering and will require humane euthanasia. Thus, my Life Saving Model is a bit more complicated than the analysis I did for dogs.
To read specific details and assumptions used in the model, please see the Appendix at the end of this blog.
My analysis puts a cap on the targeted numbers of cats rescued from other shelters and adoptions. While my unmodified targeted numbers of rescued and adopted animals is achievable, I wanted to provide very conservative goals for New Jersey animal shelters.
My modified analysis capped cat adoptions at 6.2 cats per 1,000 people within each New Jersey county. In the past I used 8 cats per 1,000 people, but I decided to make the target more lenient this year as more shelters practice shelter/neuter return. In other words, the targeted numbers of cats rescued from other shelters and adopted below are the lesser of
Number predicted by model
Number determined by capping adoptions at 6.2 cats per 1,000 people in the county
In simple terms, a shelter is expected to achieve this per capita adoption rate unless the facility lacks enough space and foster homes. If a shelter does not have sufficient room, it won’t have the time to reach all the potential adopters and requires assistance from rescues and/or other facilities.
My model assumes shelters are doing the proper thing and practicing TNR and placing the reasonable number of feral cats received as barn cats. You can read a more detailed explanation of my rationale in the 2018 cat report cards blog.
New Jersey Animal Shelters Contain Enough Space to Save Most of New Jersey’s Healthy and Treatable Cats and Many More from Other States
New Jersey’s animal shelter system has enough space to save the state’s healthy and treatable cats. The table below details the targeted numbers of cat outcomes the New Jersey animal shelter system should achieve. Out of the 43,592 New Jersey cats coming into the state’s animal shelters in 2019, 27,985 and 8,716 cats should have been adopted out and sent to other shelters/rescues by the facilities originally taking the cats in. However, other New Jersey animal shelters had enough capacity to rescue 25,778 cats or about three times the number of cats needing rescue from space constrained facilities. Unfortunately, some of the cats needing rescue, such as very young kittens, should not stay in a shelter and still must go to either kitten nurseries or foster homes. That being said, many adult cats are in fact killed in New Jersey animal shelters and many facilities with excess space could save these cats.
New Jersey animal shelters have enough excess space and potential foster homes to save many cats from out of state as well. Specifically, New Jersey animal shelters had enough physical capacity to rescue 17,063 cats from out of state shelters or New Jersey’s streets after achieving a 92% live release rate for cats coming into the state’s animal shelters. In reality, the New Jersey shelter system could rescue more than 17,063 cats from out of state shelters or from New Jersey’s streets given the 17,063 figure assumes all cats needing rescue from space constrained New Jersey shelters are sent to other New Jersey shelters as opposed to rescue groups. As explained above, some of the cats needing rescue from New Jersey shelters with a shortage of space are young kittens which should not go to most animal shelters. To put this number into perspective, New Jersey animal shelters contain enough space to make both New York City and Philadelphia no kill cities for cats and increase those cities’ cat live release rates to 92% as follows (per 2019 data):
New York City – 619 additional cats need saving
Philadelphia – 917 additional cats need saving
Certainly, some New Jersey animal shelters do pull some cats from New York City and Philadelphia animal control shelters. While some of the 409 cats New Jersey animal shelters rescued from out of state facilities may have come from New York City and Philadelphia shelters, its likely many came from other states since transporting shelters, such as St. Hubert’s, pulled a sizable number of these cats. Even though some of these cats from New York City and Philadelphia animal control shelters are young kittens, which should not go to a normal animal shelter, many other cats could go to New Jersey animal shelters and be adopted out. As a result, the additional number of cats New Jersey animal shelters could save from New York City and Philadelphia is not much lower than the figures above. Thus, New Jersey animal shelters could make New Jersey a no kill state for cats and help other states reach that goal as well.
These adoption goals are quite achievable when comparing the performance of well-run animal control shelters across the country. New Jersey animal shelters would only need to adopt out 5.9 cats per 1,000 people in the state (4.1 cats per 1,000 people if no cats were rescued from out of state and all cats sent to rescue were rescued by other New Jersey animal shelters and adopted out). As a comparison, recent per capita cat adoption numbers from several high performing no kill open admission shelters are as follows:
Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA (Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia area) – 11.0 cats per 1,000 people
Longmont Humane Society (Longmont, Colorado area) – 8.9 cats per 1,000 people
Kansas City Pet Project (Kansas City, Missouri) – 7.6 cats per 1,000 people
Lake County Animal Shelter (Lake County, Florida) – 5.9 cats per 1,000 people
Thus, many communities are already adopting out as many or significantly more cats than the number I target for New Jersey animal shelters.
Cat Deaths Vary Widely at New Jersey Animal Shelters
The goal of any properly managed animal shelter is to save all of its healthy and treatable animals. In some cases, such as selective admission rescue oriented shelters, it is pretty easy to not kill animals. In addition, other animal shelters with easy to service animal control contracts (i.e. few animals impounded) can avoid unnecessary killing due to having lots of extra space. As a result, some shelters may have an easier time than others in preventing killing at their shelters.
The tables below detail how many cats should lose their lives at each state animal shelter per my model and the actual numbers of cats that did. All missing or lost cats are assumed “dead” based on the assumption they died or went to a very bad place. Based on my review of a number of shelters’ underlying documents, virtually all of the cats in the “Other” outcome category died or went missing. While a small numbers of shelters could have included some live releases in the “Other” outcome category, it would be misleading to not count these deaths for the overwhelming majority of shelters. The “targeted” numbers in the table are based on the shelter’s actual cat intake rather than targeted cat intake to ensure an apples to apples comparison with the actual cats losing their lives. Shelters having the number of cats losing their lives at or below my targets and above my targets are highlighted in green and red in the tables below.
The overall results show too many cats are unnecessarily losing their lives at New Jersey animal shelters. New Jersey animal shelters had 6,364 cats needlessly lose their lives in 2019 (i.e. the sum of all shelters with too many cats needlessly losing their lives in the table below).
The largest number of cats unnecessarily dying occurred at a relatively small number of shelters. 11 out of 90 or 12% of the shelters accounted for 80% of the cats unnecessarily losing their lives under the model’s assumptions. Most of these shelters had negative stories reported in the press and/or on my blog or Facebook page over the last several years. Shelters with the greatest numbers of unnecessary cat deaths are as follows:
Atlantic County Animal Shelter (936)
Gloucester County Animal Shelter (881)
Burlington County Animal Shelter (773)
Northern Ocean County Animal Facility (561)
Vorhees Animal Orphanage (410)
South Jersey Regional Animal Shelter (390)
Bergen County Animal Shelter (287)
Associated Humane Societies-Newark (255)
Liberty Humane Society (244)
Homeward Bound Pet Adoption Center (189)
Southern Ocean County Animal Facility (176)
Associated Humane Societies-Tinton Falls (161)
Hamilton Township Animal Shelter (144)
Rescue oriented shelters generally had fewer cats lose their lives than targeted. While saving large numbers of cats is what we all want, some of these shelters may have achieved this result by taking in easier cats. Austin Pets Alive, which is a rescue oriented shelter in Texas, has developed some of the most innovative cat programs and only had a cat live release rate of 87% in 2019. This was due to Austin Pets Alive taking in many cats requiring significant treatment, such as neonatal kittens, from the city animal control shelter. As a result, some of the rescue oriented shelters with significantly fewer cats euthanized than targeted may have avoided taking in many of the more difficult cases.
On the bright side, some medium to large size animal control shelters euthanized fewer cats than targeted. Specifically, Cape May County Animal Shelter, Common Sense for Animals, Parsippany Animal Shelter, Paterson Animal Control, Randolph Regional Animal Shelter, St. Hubert’s-Madison, St. Hubert’s-North Branch and West Milford Animal Shelter performed well. Many of these shelters have TNR programs.
Space Constrained Facilities Not Receiving Enough Support from Rescues and Other Animal Shelters
Some animal shelters will require more support from rescues and animal shelters with excess space than others. If a shelter has relatively high intake and very limited space, it will need more help than other shelters. While sending animals to rescues is a good thing, we do want shelters most needing rescue support to receive that help given rescues have limited resources. The tables below compare the number of cats a shelter should transfer to other organizations per the model and the number of cats actually sent to other animal welfare groups. Shelters marked in green are receiving less than the expected rescue support while facilities marked in red are receiving too much rescue help.
Overall, New Jersey shelters are not receiving enough help from other animal welfare organizations. While New Jersey animal shelters sent more cats to rescues and other shelters than my model targeted, many cats were rescued from facilities which did not require so much rescue assistance. Only 41 out of the 69 facilities needing rescue assistance received the required support. In other words, only 59% of the animal shelters needing rescue help received the amount these facilities require.
We truly need to understand the reasons for this rescue shortfall. While poor data collection (i.e. shelters classifying rescues as adoptions) may explain part of this rescue deficit, the large size of this number points to other causes as well. For example, New Jersey shelters as a whole significantly exceeded their dog rescue needs and a much smaller number of shelters failed to receive enough rescue support, but just 59% of shelters needing cat rescue assistance received the needed support. Certainly, some of these cats are feral and not candidates for most rescues. However, many other cats surely are home-able. Many high kill facilities may not reach out to rescues for cats, such as during kitten season, as much as they do for dogs. This data supports the need for New Jersey to pass shelter reform bill S1834 which requires shelters to contact rescues and other facilities at least two business days before killing animals. On the other hand, shelters with excess capacity may not be doing their part to save cats from space constrained facilities.
Several shelters received too much rescue help. Rescues may want to help these organizations due to rescue friendly policies. Alternatively, these shelters may be relying too heavily on rescues to save their animals. Shelters receiving the most extra rescue support were as follows:
Associated Humane Societies-Newark – 710 more cats transferred than necessary
Gloucester County Animal Shelter – 571 more cats transferred than necessary
Paterson Animal Control – 325 more cats transferred than necessary
Trenton Animal Shelter – 269 more cats transferred than necessary
Elizabeth Animal Shelter – 165 more cats transferred than necessary
Woodbridge Animal Shelter – 160 more cats transferred than necessary
Associated Humane Societies-Tinton Falls – 157 more cats transferred than necessary
Byram Township Animal Shelter – 144 more cats transferred than necessary
Northern Ocean County Animal Facility – 131 more cats transferred than necessary
On the other hand, many space constrained shelters received far less rescue help than needed. Facilities receiving the lowest amount of rescue support in relation to their needs were as follows:
Homeward Bound Pet Adoption Center – 695 fewer cats transferred than necessary
Vorhees Animal Orphanage – 503 fewer cats transferred than necessary
Monmouth SPCA – 222 fewer cats transferred than necessary
Atlantic County Animal Shelter – 215 fewer cats transferred than necessary
South Jersey Regional Animal Shelter – 187 fewer cats transferred than necessary
St. Hubert’s-Madison – 180 fewer cats transferred than necessary
Liberty Humane Society – 78 fewer cats transferred than necessary
Parsippany Animal Shelter – 75 fewer cats transferred than necessary
SAVE, A Friend to Homeless Animals – 41 fewer cats transferred than necessary
Franklin Township Animal Shelter – 37 fewer cats transferred than necessary
The million dollar question is why do these shelters receive very little rescue help? Some shelters may report no cats sent to rescues and incorrectly count these animals as adopted. As you will see below, Homeward Bound Pet Adoption Center, Vorhees Animal Orphanage, St. Hubert’s-Madison and Parsippany Animal Shelter adopted out many cats and are doing a pretty good job. On the other hand, Franklin Township Animal Shelter killed many cats for absurd reasons, broke state law and does not do a good job of reaching out to the public for help. Similarly, local advocates have long complained about regressive shelter management at Atlantic County Animal Shelter and South Jersey Regional Animal Shelter. As a result, shelters receiving too little rescue help may or may not be doing their part to get that assistance.
Rescue groups and shelters with extra space should pull cats from kill shelters with the highest rescue “target” numbers and deficits in the tables below. If shelters not needing rescue support get that extra help, these shelters will not take the steps necessary to properly run their facilities. As a result of enabling poorly performing shelters and not pulling cats from truly space constrained facilities, rescuing cats from shelters with enough space leads to less lifesaving.
Shelters receiving less than needed rescue support should also examine their own policies and performance. Are the shelter’s operating processes allowing too many animals to get sick and therefore discouraging organizations to rescue their animals due to subsequent medical costs? Does the shelter actively reach out to rescues/other shelters and treat them with respect? Does the shelter make it convenient for other organizations to pull their animals?
Given killing animals for space is intolerable, the space-constrained shelters need to expand their effective cat capacity. These facilities could use extra space in their buildings to house cats on a short-term basis. These shelters can enter into arrangements with local veterinarians and local pet stores to house and adopt out some cats. Furthermore, shelters can create or expand foster programs to increase the number of cats cared for. Additionally, creating a pet owner surrender prevention program and an appointment system for owners willing to delay surrendering their cats could free up space in these shelters. Finally, space-constrained shelters with multiple animal control contracts should terminate some of these arrangements to bring their capacity for care in line with the number of cats they take in. Similarly, many shelters can use their bargaining power to require municipalities to allow TNR. As a result, space constrained shelters still need to take active steps to reduce killing rather than simply solely relying on rescue support.
Most New Jersey Animal Shelters Fail to Come Close to Reaching Their Cat Adoption Potential
We can assess each shelter’s contribution to making New Jersey and nearby areas no kill. While a shelter may be able to avoid killing healthy and treatable animals, it still may not live up to its potential for adopting out cats. On the other hand, a space constrained shelter may kill healthy and treatable cats, but still do a good job adopting animals out.
The tables below compare the number of cats from New Jersey and nearby states each animal shelter should adopt out with the number of cats actually adopted out.
Rescue oriented organizations may look better than they actually are. Many rescue oriented shelters likely pull much easier to adopt cats than the bulk of cats needing to get rescued from local facilities.
Few organizations reached or exceeded their adoption targets. Specifically, only 12 out of 90 shelters met the cat adoption goals computed by the Life Saving Model. Thus, the overwhelming number of New Jersey animal shelters need to step up their adoption efforts.
Several rescue oriented shelters reached their adoption targets. Animal Welfare Association exceeded its adoption target by the most of any shelter in terms of total adoptions. This shelter runs reduced and no adoption fee promotions. Animal Welfare Association also waives fees for certain cats who may take longer to adopt out, such as cats who are older or have behavior or health issues. Furthermore, the shelter’s “Best Friends” program allows people who adopt a cat to pay just $25 for a second cat who is 1 year or older. Animal Welfare Association also waives cat adoption fees for active military personnel and veterans in its Pets for Vets program. The shelter also waives adoption fees for senior citizens adopting certain senior pets. Additionally, Animal Welfare Association uses an open adoption process focused on properly matching animals and people rather than an overly judgmental procedure based on black and white rules. To aid its open adoptions process, Animal Welfare Association uses the ASPCA’s Feline-ality program. Animal Welfare Association’s adoption rate increased by 20% and its cat length of stay decreased by 23 days after the shelter implemented the Feline-ality program. Finally, Animal Welfare Association installed perches in their cat enclosures to provide cats more vertical space which keeps the cats happier and more adoptable. Beacon Animal Rescue also exceeded its adoption target and charges a reasonable $75 fee for adult cats and offers military personnel and veterans discounted adoption fees. While Mt. Pleasant Animal Shelter and Tri-Boro Animal Welfare also exceeded their adoption targets, this is likely due to my model’s adoption target cap mechanism in Morris County (see explanation below). Overall, Mt. Pleasant Animal Shelter’s cat adoptions decreased 35% from its 2018 levels likely due to well documented problems at the shelter. Thus, several rescue oriented shelters exceeded their cat adoption targets and Animal Welfare Association used a variety of innovative strategies to adopt out many cats.
Several Morris County shelters exceeded their adoption targets, but this may partially be due to my method of capping adoptions in the county. Since Morris County has many shelters that collectively have a very large capacity (i.e. very high adoption potential), my model reduces all Morris County animal shelters’ target adoptions to my county adoption cap. Thus, some of the shelters, particularly the small ones, had relatively low adoption targets.
Rescues should focus on pulling animals from Homeward Bound Pet Adoption Center and Vorhees Animal Orphanage. These shelters’ cat kill rates are too high and their need for rescues greatly exceeds the amount of animals actually pulled from these organizations. While some of these cats may be feral and therefore not adoptable, many other cats surely could be rescued from these shelters. Given these shelters are adopting cats out at a good rate, rescues and other other shelters should help these facilities out by pulling more cats.
Some municipal animal control shelters may be doing a better job with cats than the numbers below indicate. In some cases, municipalities may frown on government run shelters using taxpayer funds to rescue cats from elsewhere (i.e. leaving empty cat cages). My suggestion to these shelters is to find ways to use more of their capacity to expand their lifesaving work to other areas. For example, these shelters should consider taking in animals from other shelters for a fee or even contracting with other municipalities.
Shelters having the largest cat adoption shortfalls are as follows:
Associated Humane Societies-Newark (2,741)
Bergen County Animal Shelter (2,478)
Gloucester County Animal Shelter (1,567)
Plainfield Area Humane Society (1,310)
Woodbridge Animal Shelter (974)
Liberty Humane Society (969)
Monmouth SPCA (904)
Associated Humane Societies-Tinton Falls (892)
Burlington County Animal Shelter (872)
Montclair Township Animal Shelter (808)
Associated Humane Societies-Popcorn Park (768)
Atlantic County Animal Shelter (759)
Northern Ocean County Animal Facility (728)
Old Bridge Animal Shelter (716)
Hamilton Township Animal Shelter (600)
Unsurprisingly, every one of these shelters with the highest adoption shortfalls killed too many cats. Clearly, these shelters’ inability to properly implement strong adoption programs leads to unnecessary cat killing.
Associated Humane Societies performance is particularly disappointing. Specifically, Associated Humane Societies has the physical capacity to significantly reduce the killing of healthy and treatable cats. Associated Humane Societies’ adoption shortfall of 4,401 cats represented nearly 70% of the 6,364 cats who unnecessarily lost their lives in New Jersey animal shelters in 2019. Associated Humane Societies has the funding to reach these adoption targets as the organization took in $9.0 million of revenue for the fiscal year ending 6/30/19. This works out to $863 of revenue per dog and cat I project the shelter should take in per my Life Saving Model. As a comparison, Florida’s Lake County Animal Shelter exceeded the Life Saving Model’s dog adoption target and met its cat adoption target with just $430 of revenue per dog and cat. Given many no kill animal control shelters like Lake County Animal Shelter take in significantly less revenue per dog and cat impounded, Associated Humane Societies could achieve these adoption targets and end the killing of healthy and treatable cats in its facilities and in many of the state’s shelters. Activists wanting to increase life saving in New Jersey should focus on changing Associated Humane Societies’ policies given the lifesaving potential of this organization and its recent dismal performance.
Shelters Fail to Use Excess Space to Save Cats
To further examine New Jersey animal shelters’ performance in saving homeless cats, I compared the targeted number of cats each shelter should pull from nearby shelters to the number actually rescued from local facilities. I assume all cats rescued from out of state came from nearby areas, such as Philadelphia and New York City. While some of the out of state rescued cats may have comes from far away areas, I believe this is a small number and does not significantly impact the results.
Virtually all New Jersey animal shelters are failing to rescue the number of cats they should. 78 of the 90 shelters should rescue some cats from other local shelters. In fact, 36 of the 78 shelters with targeted excess capacity failed to rescue even a single cat from other animal shelters. Only two shelters with significant amounts of space to rescue cats from nearby shelters met or exceeded their cat rescue targets. Thus, nearly all New Jersey animal shelters with targeted excess capacity are failing to do their share in ending the killing of healthy and treatable cats.
TNR Is Essential, But Should Not Be An Excuse to Do Nothing
TNR must be instituted to end the killing of healthy and treatable cats. While many shelters may potentially come close to or reach a 90% live release rate, feral cats may still be killed. Simply put, New Jersey cannot become a no kill state without TNR becoming the law of the land. The Companion Animal Protection Act (“CAPA”) prevents shelters and municipalities from taking actions to hinder TNR, such as banning feral cat colony caretakers from feeding cats and lending traps out to the public for catching and killing feral cats. Even without an explicit law allowing TNR, the New Jersey Department of Health should encourage municipalities to implement TNR by changing its neutral stance on TNR to an endorsement of the practice. Furthermore, shelters, especially private facilities with animal control contracts, should refuse to take feral cats from places where TNR is prohibited and the shelters cannot place these feral cats as barn cats or send these animals to reputable sanctuaries per recommendations of many national animal welfare groups.
Shelters should not use anti-feral cat laws as an excuse for failing to institute innovative programs. Too many times shelters blame anti-feral cat ordinances for their outrageously high cat kill rates. However, my analysis proves cats are not dying in New Jersey’s shelter system due to too many cats coming in. While TNR certainly would reduce cat intake and make saving lives easier, our state’s shelter system has more than enough space to handle the number of cats that come in. Shelters need to implement key programs, such as foster care, high volume adoptions and vaccination upon intake. Additionally, shelters need to stay open weeknights and weekends when working people can adopt. Similarly, shelters should use innovative marketing, customer friendly open adoption processes, multiple off-site adoption locations, and frequent discounted adoption promotions to quickly move cats into good homes. Furthermore, implementing a program where fearful and aggressive cats are touched gently and spoken to softly likely will significantly reduce the number of cats labeled as “feral” and increase adoptions. Thus, anti-TNR ordinances do not prevent shelters from implementing other life saving policies.
Shelters Do Not Need to Leave Friendly Cats on the Street
Shelters do not need to neuter and release friendly cats or refuse to take these cats in given enough capacity exists within the New Jersey shelter system. In 2013, a group of animal welfare leaders, which included the Humane Society of the United States (“HSUS”) and the ASPCA, prepared a white paper stating a shelter should not impound cats if those cats or other cats in the shelter would subsequently be killed. The evidence supporting this policy, such as cats being more likely to find homes on the street than in traditional shelters, is quite strong. Subsequently, many shelters across the nation implemented these policies. However, my analysis shows the entire New Jersey shelter system does have enough space to handle friendly cats. While certain shelters are space constrained and could benefit from refusing to admit healthy and friendly cats, other shelters in the state have more than enough capacity to step in and find these cats homes. Thus, New Jersey shelters do not need to resort to refusing to take in friendly cats or neutering and releasing friendly cats to avoid killing cats provided these shelters work together and follow best practices.
Kitten Nurseries and Ringworm Wards Key to Saving Vulnerable Cats
Orphaned kittens are typically automatically killed in traditional animal shelters due to the time commitment required to care for these animals. Unweaned kittens require bottle feeding as frequently as every 1-2 hours. As a result, kittens not placed into foster care are typically killed in most animal shelters.
Kitten nurseries or bottle baby wards radically increase the save rate for orphaned kittens still requiring milk. While foster care and rescue programs can save unweaned kittens, kitten nurseries are more efficient and make the job easier. Austin Animal Services, which is the animal control shelter in Austin, Texas, killed 1,200 plus kittens a year before Austin Pets Alive created a bottle baby program. Volunteers work in two hour shifts to feed and care for the kittens. Additionally, nursing mothers are pulled from the city shelter and used to help nurse highly vulnerable young kittens who are orphaned. Kittens are put on antibiotics and treated for fleas and worms immediately to help prevent complications from transitioning from breast milk to formula. Austin Pets Alive pulled 100% of unweaned kittens from the city shelter since 2011. Best Friends created a kitten nursery in South Salt Lake City, Utah and saved more than 1,400 kittens from Salt Lake City area shelters in 2016. Thus, kitten nursery programs can save young and vulnerable kittens.
Ringworm ward programs easily save cats with this skin fungus. In traditional animal shelters, cats with ringworm are killed due to the risk that other animals and humans will catch this skin fungus. Austin Pets Alive created a specific “Ringworm Ward” program to treat and adopt out these cats. These cats are treated both topically and orally in an isolated area. After the cats are no longer contagious, the cats are sent to foster homes to complete their treatment and regrow their hair. Austin Pets Alive uses steeply discounted adoption fees of only $15 along with catchy slogans like “Adopt a Fun Guy (Fungi)”, “Lord of the Ringworm”, and “Hairy(less) Potter” to quickly place these cats and open up space for additional cats with ringworm. 100% of cats entering this program are saved. Thus, shelters can save cats with ringworm.
Regional kitten nurseries and ringworm wards are the practical solution to saving these vulnerable cats. Given the New Jersey shelter system has significant excess capacity to care for cats, certain shelters should convert some of that excess space for use as kitten nurseries and ringworm wards. Creating regional centers to care for unweaned kittens and cats with ringworm would allow the programs to run at a large enough scale to work efficiently. Shelters, such as Animal Welfare Association, Associated Humane Societies-Popcorn Park and Monmouth SPCA appear to have the space and financial resources to implement these programs and should join St. Hubert’s-Madison in this effort. Furthermore, the Animal Welfare Federation of New Jersey (“AWFNJ”) should take the steps needed to create kitten nurseries and ringworm wards in regional centers throughout the state. Surely, the AWFNJ has the connections to convince key decision makers to implement these programs and obtain any necessary funding. Thus, New Jersey shelter leaders must immediately take the steps needed to save the large numbers of treatable kittens and cats with ringworm in our state’s shelters.
Results Require New Jersey Animal Shelters to Take Action
The findings from this analysis mandate New Jersey animal shelters change their ways. While TNR remains a significant issue, most shelters are clearly not taking steps to save large numbers of healthy and treatable cats. Many shelters are not vaccinating upon intake, charging excessive adoption fees, making it too difficult to adopt, not being open when working people can go to shelters, leaving cat enclosures empty, not trying to rehabilitate fearful and aggressive cats and not using barn cat, foster care, kitten nursery and ringworm ward programs. Simply put, too many shelters are not doing what it takes to save lives. With New Jersey’s shelters killing around one in six cats, our state’s shelters are failing these animals.
New Jersey shelters have a cat crisis and it is time for the killing to stop. We have the information and even the blueprints from numerous communities which stopped killing and started saving their cats. It is time the excuses end and action begins. The public is fed up with the killing and demands shelters save their animals. Our state’s animal welfare organizations need to get on board the lifesaving wagon or risk getting run over by it. Which will they choose?
Daily capacity or population = Daily animal intake x average length of stay
Average length of stay = Daily capacity or population/daily intake
Each shelter’s community cat intake (i.e. owner surrenders, strays, cruelty cases), number of cats returned to owners, and maximum cat capacity were taken from its 2019 “Shelter/Pound Annual Report” submitted to the New Jersey Department of Health. Additionally, I added 7.5% of each shelter’s annual cat intake to account for foster capacity shelters should use based on my discussions with American Pets Alive leadership. Thus, total cat capacity equaled the shelter’s capacity plus foster capacity. You can see the full data set I compiled from these reports here.
Community cat intake and cats returned to owners were initially estimated for each month by dividing the annual figures by 12. In order to take into account the extra space in low intake months and reduced space in high intake months, we multiply that number by each month’s percentage of the average month. For example, assume 240 cats were taken in during the year and the average month equals 20 cats (240/12). In July, the cat intake is 120% higher than the average month and we therefore multiply 20 cats by 1.2 to equal 24 cats. If 120 cats were returned to owners during the year, the estimated number of cats returned to owners in July would equal 12 cats (120/12 = 10; 10*1.2). The monthly intake percentages were based off the average of the 2019 cat intake data on New York Animal Care & Control’s and ACCT Philly’s web sites.
The estimated number of community cats returned to owners each month are then assumed to stay 5 days on average at shelters based on data from other shelters across the country.
The number of community cats euthanized (including animals who died or are missing) is set to equal 8% of intake. 8% is a reasonable standard euthanasia rate to use given other open admission animal shelters, such as Austin Animal Services, equal or exceed this target and New Jersey’s much lower per capita cat intake makes it easier to save lives. The average length of stay for euthanized cats is assumed to equal 8 days. I assume these cats have severe and untreatable health issues and are euthanized immediately after their required 7 day hold period.
The average length of stay used for adopted community cats was 42 days. This estimate was roughly halfway between the average cat length of stay figures for a number of no kill animal control shelters. For example, the average length of stay for cats in recent years was 12 days at Texas’s Williamson County Animal Shelter, less than two weeks at Nevada Humane Society 15 days at Montana’s Flathead County Animal Shelter, 24 days at Colorado’s Longmont Humane Society, 32 days at Kansas City Pet Project and 61 days for adopted cats only at New York’s Tompkins County SPCA. While the average length of stay of adopted cats at these shelters other than Tompkins County SPCA may have been slightly higher since this data is for all cats and not just those adopted, the difference is not likely significant given adoptions represent most of the outcomes at these shelters. Unfortunately, I was not able to break down the adoption length of stay figures by age or breed for New Jersey’s shelters like I did in my analysis on dogs due to a lack of detailed cat intake data at New Jersey animal shelters. Upon reviewing cats up for adoption at several New Jersey animal control shelters and a few of the high performing facilities above, I did not see any significant differences in types of cats taken in. In the future, I hope to refine this analysis further.
The average length of stay used for community cats adopted out from rescue oriented shelters was 30 days. Rescue oriented animal shelters typically carefully select animals taken into their shelters. Based on the San Francisco’s SPCA’s 22 day and Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation’s 23 day average length of stay figures reported a number of years ago, I used a shorter length of stay for community cats adopted from New Jersey animal shelters without animal control contracts. I chose 30 days as a conservative estimate.
Cats transferred to rescue or other facilities are assumed to stay at shelters 8 days on average based on the assumption strays can’t be released until the 7 day hold period elapses.
Community cats not returned to owners or euthanized are initially assumed as adopted for each month outside of kitten season (i.e. November-March). However, if the calculated length of stay exceeds the shelter’s required length of stay, cats are moved from adoption (i.e. with a longer length of stay) to rescue (i.e. shorter length of stay) until the calculated length of stay each month approximately equals the required length of stay.
During kitten season (April-October), animal control shelters are assumed to send a certain percentage of cats to rescues even if they have excess space. Due to the large numbers of kittens coming into shelters during these months, I assume shelters will not be able to place all of them into foster homes or a kitten nursery at this time. As a result, I assume animal control shelters will send 10% of their annual community cat intake to rescues based on the shelters’ estimated relative cat intake each month. For example, if a shelter took 100 cats in during the year and August made up 50% of the total cat intake from April to November, 5 cats would go to rescue in August (i.e. 100*10% = 10 cats; 10*50% = 5 cats). I used 10% based off the rescue percentage of cat intake in 2014 (it was only 2% in 2018) at Kansas City’s KC Pet Project. KC Pet Project is a no kill open admission shelter with an inadequate facility and is a good comparison for some of our state’s run down shelters. Shelters requiring rescue support due to space constraints are assumed to send these additional cats to rescues during kitten season.
Shelters are not expected to use the excess space created by fosters taking kittens to rescue and adopt out additional cats. This is based on the assumption that the kittens will return to shelters once old enough to safely stay at the facilities.
Required length of stay = Shelter’s reported capacity/adjusted daily intake for the month. Adjusted daily intake for month = Adjusted monthly intake per first bullet above/the number of days in the month.
Shelters with excess capacity are assumed to use the extra space to rescue and adopt out cats from other New Jersey animal shelters. Given some of these cats will be young and highly vulnerable kittens, I assume 5% of these rescues will be euthanized for humane reasons. I used 5% based off Austin Pets Alive’s and Austin Humane Society’s weighted average cat euthanasia rate in 2014. These two shelters pull many cats from Austin Animal Services, which is the city’s animal control shelter, and their cat euthanasia rate is a reasonable proxy for the percentage of hopelessly suffering cats rescued from animal control shelters. To the extent all healthy and treatable New Jersey animal shelter cats are saved, I assume additional cats are pulled from nearby states. The average length of stay for rescued and adopted cats is the same as the cats taken in by animal control shelters (i.e. 42 days). Similarly, I used 8 days as the average length of stay for rescued and euthanized cats from other shelters.
Each month’s targeted outcomes are added to determine how many cats New Jersey animal shelters should adopt out, send to rescue and rescue from other nearby animal shelters.
Space constrained shelters were assumed to adopt out their easiest to adopt animals first until they run out of space. To estimate the average adoption length of stay, I used cat adoption length of stay data from Perth Amboy Animal Shelter from 2014 and the first half of 2015. I broke the adoption length of stay data into 5 groups that each made up 20% of the data. The average adoption length of stay for each of these 5 groups was calculated. The average adoption length of stay of each group was divided by the average length of stay for all of the adopted cats in the Perth Amboy Animal Shelter data set. Those percentages were then multiplied by the average cat adoption length of stay determined in the model above and used to determine the adoption lengths of stay used for space-constrained shelters.
The targeted number of cats adopted were capped at 6.2 cats per 1,000 people in each county. If the model yielded a higher result than this cap, the targeted numbers of cats adopted were equal to this cap. For shelters in these counties (except Passaic County), I calculated the cap at the county level and then reduced the number of cats adopted for the county to equal the cap. I excluded West Milford from Passaic County due the town’s large distance from the population centers in the rest of the county. Each shelter’s percentage of total targeted adoptions in the county from the unmodified model were applied to the the total reduction in the number of cats adopted in the county to yield the targeted numbers of cats adopted in the modified model. Rescued and euthanized cats for these shelters were reduced based on the modified model’s assumption that shelters adopted out and euthanized 95% and 5% of rescued cats.
Recently, I wrote a blog discussing decreased killing at New Jersey animal shelters in 2019. This blog will explore the 2019 statistics in more detail and assess the current status of the state’s animal shelters.
Most New Jersey animal shelters voluntarily report detailed data to state authorities. Earlier this year, I shared the 2019 summary statistics for New Jersey animal shelters on my Facebook page. Each year, the New Jersey Department of Health requests each licensed animal shelter in the state to submit animal shelter data for the previous year. Animal shelters voluntarily submit this data in the “Shelter/Pound Annual Report.” The New Jersey Department of Health takes these Shelter/Pound Annual Reports and compiles the number of dogs, cats and other animals impounded, redeemed, adopted and euthanized to prepare its Animal Intake and Disposition report. However, the Shelter/Pound Annual Reports include additional information on how animals were impounded (i.e. strays, owner surrenders, rescued from in-state facilities, rescued from out of state shelters, and cruelty/bite cases/other) and disposed of (i.e. returned to owner, adopted, sent to rescue/another shelter, and died/missing/other outcome). Additionally, the Shelter/Pound Annual Reports include the number of animals in shelters at the beginning and end of the year as well as the maximum number of animals facilities can hold. Thus, the Shelter/Pound Annual Reports include very important data not found in the New Jersey Department of Health’s summary report.
I compiled the data from these reports and analyze the results in this blog. 2019 statistics for each New Jersey animal shelter are listed at this link. You can also view each “Shelter/Pound Annual Report” at this link.
Garbage Data Raises Serious Questions About New Jersey Animal Shelters’ Statistics
Most New Jersey animal shelters do not properly account for their animals. Simple math dictates the number of animals at a facility at the beginning of the year, plus all animals coming in during the year, less all animals leaving for the period, should equal the number of animals a shelter has at the end of the year. Stunningly, 47 out of 91 shelters reporting these dog statistics and 50 out of 89 facilities submitting this cat data failed to get this right. This raises serious questions about the accuracy of these shelters’ reported statistics. 31 of the 47 shelters with flawed dog statistics and 32 of the 50 facilities with incorrect cat statistics should have had more animals at the end of the year than reported. While these errors could have been due to incorrect counts of the number of animals at facilities, these shelters may have not recorded outcomes, such as animals who were killed, died, or went missing. To put it another way, 1,934 cats and dogs should have had outcomes reported and did not. Thus, there is the potential that as many as 1,934 additional dogs and cats were killed, died or went missing from New Jersey animal shelters than were reported in 2019.
Even worse, a number of animal shelters reported having a different number of animals at the end of 2018 and at the beginning of 2019. Obviously, shelters should report the same number of animals at the end of the prior year and the start of the current year. However, 32 of 88 shelters reported different numbers of dogs at the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019. Similarly, 37 of 87 shelters reported different numbers of cats at the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019. The worst offenders are listed in the tables below:
Shelters may have failed to classify animals adopted out and sent to rescues properly. Both Paterson Animal Control and Elizabeth Animal Shelter reported no animals were sent to rescues and all dogs and cats leaving their facilities alive were owner reclaims or adoptions. However, intake and disposition records I reviewed at both of these shelters in recent years revealed almost all “adopted” animals are actually rescued. One has to wonder how many other facilities failed to properly classify adoptions and rescues properly. This data is very important as it provides details on the burden rescues and other shelters are taking on from these facilities.
We need better oversight of New Jersey animal shelters’ data reporting. Currently, these statistics are voluntarily reported and most shelters are not taking this seriously. For example, I noticed a large number of reports were submitted many months after the end of the year. This data should be easy to compile since facilities can utilize animal shelter software programs, some of which are free, to do this task. Furthermore, New Jersey animal shelter laws mandate facilities maintain much of the raw data found in the Shelter/Pound Annual Report. Unfortunately, New Jersey Department of Health inspections routinely find shelters do not properly keep records on animals. We need to make the data reporting mandatory for animal shelters as the shelter reform bill, S636, does along with serious penalties for significant errors (especially if deliberate). In order for animal shelters to take data reporting seriously, we may also need to require audits of these reports. Thus, these results show we need stronger laws and the New Jersey Department of Health to play a greater role in ensuring reported animal shelter statistics are in fact accurate.
Despite the errors in these reports, the data provided still reveals important information.
More Animals Losing Their Lives in New Jersey Animal Shelters Than Disclosed in Summary Report
The more detailed data in the Shelter/Pound Annual Reports allows one to more critically examine the percentage of locally impounded animals dying in New Jersey’s animal shelters. The following table summarizes my analysis of the kill rate calculated from the New Jersey Department of Health’s summary report and the data reported in the Shelter/Pound Annual Reports.
The statistics include an estimate to remove animals St. Hubert’s transfers in and quickly transfers out through its Sister Shelter WayStation program. Since St. Hubert’s is effectively acting as a middle man and not holding these animals very long, it makes sense to exclude these dogs and cats from the various kill rate statistics. If I did not exclude these animals, I would understate the dog and cat kill rates due to inflated intakes and outcomes numbers. Therefore, I removed all of St. Hubert’s dogs transferred out from the intake and outcomes figures in the metrics. Since St. Hubert’s primarily uses the Sister Shelter Waystation program to quickly transfer in cats and send them to out of state facilities, I only backed out the cats St. Hubert’s transferred to out of state organizations in the various kill rates. This adjustment increased the dog kill rate (intake) from 5.1 to 5.7% and the cat kill rate (intake) from 15.2% to 15.4%.
The Animal Intake and Disposition report prepared by the New Jersey Department of Health only allows one to calculate the number of animals killed as a percentage of total animals impounded or intake. I prefer calculating the kill rate as a percentage of outcomes rather than intake as this metric directly compares positive and negative outcomes. Using intake may depress the kill rate since shelters can simply hold animals for a long time to the point of overcrowding. Calculating the kill rate based on outcomes rather than intake caused the dog kill rate to decrease from 5.7% to 5.6% and the cat kill rate to increase from 15.4% to 15.6%.
To calculate the statewide kill rate, we must also back out transfers from one New Jersey animal shelter to another state facility to avoid counting animals still in the state’s shelter system or registering two outcomes for the same animal (i.e. one New Jersey animal shelter transfers a dog or cat to another state facility which then adopts out the animal). This adjustment increases the dog kill rate from 5.6% to 6.0% and the cat kill rate from 15.6% to 16.6%.
In addition, we should increase the kill rate for animals who died or went missing in shelters. In the past, I’ve labeled this metric the death rate as these animals are likely dead or in a very bad situation. Unfortunately, the Shelter/Pound Annual Report includes animals who died or went missing in the “Other” outcome category. The “Other” category contains positive live releases, such as TNR for cats, at a few shelters. While including the “Other” category in the death rate for most shelters is appropriate (i.e. those facilities that don’t do TNR or don’t include cats released through TNR programs in “Other” outcomes), I’m no longer doing this due to an increasing number of shelters implementing TNR. Instead, I calculated the kill rate by subtracting out “Other” outcomes from total outcomes. If a shelter specifies the number of animals included in “Other” that left the shelter alive, I count this as “Other Live Release” and do not back these amounts out of total outcomes. After making this adjustment, the dog kill rate increased from 6.0% to 6.1% and the cat kill rate stayed at 16.6%. For those interested in seeing the estimated death rates, you can find them in the supporting spreadsheet.
Also, many shelters transport easy to adopt animals from out of state which artificially increases live release rates. To properly calculate the percentage of New Jersey animals losing their lives, we need to adjust for transports. Unfortunately, shelters don’t break out their kill rates by local and out of state animals. However, most likely nearly all of the out of state animals (primarily puppies and easy to adopt dogs and cats) make it out of shelters alive. Therefore, I back out the number of out of state transports from total outcomes to estimate the local kill rate. This adjustment increases the New Jersey dog kill rate from 6.1% to 7.7% and the state’s cat kill rate from 16.6 to 17.8%.
Also, I estimate a maximum local kill rate by including the number of unaccounted for animals described in the section above. Making this adjustment increases the maximum potential New Jersey dog kill rate from 7.7% to 10.2% and the maximum potential state cat kill rate from 17.8% to 20.7%.
Some animal shelters quickly return large percentages of their animals to owners. At these shelters, the populations served are typically well-off and animals are licensed and have microchips. To account for the animals facilities actually have to shelter, I calculated a kill rate for non-reclaimed animals and a maximum potential kill rate for non-reclaimed local animals. The non-reclaimed kill rate and maximum potential kill rate for dogs is 9.0% and 17.8%. Non-reclaimed cats had a 18.8% kill rate and a 22.1% maximum potential kill rate. Thus, the percentage of New Jersey animals losing their lives in our state’s animal shelters may be much higher than the state summary report suggests.
Kill Rates Extremely High at a Number of New Jersey Animal Shelters
Dogs and cats are likely to lose their lives at a number of New Jersey animal shelters. Shelters with the highest kill rates for dogs and cats (excluding very low intake facilities) are listed in the following tables:
Thus, both dogs and cats have a very good chance of leaving many New Jersey animal shelters dead rather than alive.
In terms of raw numbers, the following shelters killed the most animals:
Many shelters fail to account for large numbers of their animals. As discussed above, a shelter’s number of animals at the end of the year should be calculated as follows:
Beginning number of animals + animals impounded – animals leaving the shelter
Unfortunately, a large number of shelters take in far more animals than they can explain where they went. Shelters having the highest numbers of unaccounted for dogs and cats are listed in the following tables:
Dog and cat kill rates at many shelters may be even higher if these unaccounted for animals are counted as killed. If we only consider animal shelters which reported transporting few or no animals in 2019, facilities with the highest dog and cat kill rates considering the unaccounted for animals described above are as follows:
Thus, the plight of dogs and cats may be far worse in New Jersey animal shelters when we consider the unaccounted for animals.
Shelters Turn Their Backs on New Jersey’s Animals
New Jersey animal shelters rescue far more dogs from out of state than from other New Jersey animal shelters. Specifically, New Jersey animal shelters transferred in 8,197 dogs from out of state animal shelters and only rescued 2,308 dogs from other New Jersey animal shelters. However, St. Hubert’s frequently transfers a substantial number of its transports quickly to its partners in New Jersey and other states. If I back out St. Hubert’s transfers of dogs to out of state organizations, the number of transports decreases from 8,197 dogs to 5,269 dogs. While the state’s local kill rate decreased in 2019, it is likely the local kill rate would have decreased by more if not for the massive number of out of state transports.
While perhaps some shelters take animals from nearby New York or Pennsylvania animal control shelters, the overwhelming majority of these dogs most certainly came from down south. In fact, New Jersey animal shelters transported more dogs from out of state than dogs who were killed in New Jersey animal shelters. This number does not include additional out of state dogs transported into New Jersey by rescues operating without a physical facility. Shelters transporting the most dogs from out of state were as follows:
Shelters Do Far Worse with Animals Requiring New Homes
Since dogs reclaimed by their owners typically have licenses and/or microchips and quickly leave the shelter, its informative to look at dogs shelters have to find new homes for. To get a better idea of how organizations are doing with animals they actually have to shelter, I also examined what percentage of non-reclaimed dogs lose their lives at each facility. Shelters with the highest non-reclaimed dogs kill rates are as follows (excluding shelters taking few unclaimed dogs in):
Shelters with the highest maximum non-reclaimed dogs kill rates are as follows (excluding facilities that reported transporting many dogs in and taking very few unclaimed animals in):
Shelters Leave Animal Enclosures Empty While Dogs and Cats Die
New Jersey animal shelters fail to use their space to save animals. Based on the average number of animals at all of New Jersey’s animal shelters at the beginning and the end of 2019, only 57% of dog and 75% of cat capacity was used. Given December is a low intake month, I also increased these populations to an average intake month. This adjustment only raised the dog capacity utilization to 62%. While this adjustment did increase the cat capacity utilization to over 100%, it is highly unlikely this happened in reality. Shelter inspection reports I’ve reviewed often did not reveal significantly larger dog and cat populations in the summer and winter months. This is likely due to the influx of highly adoptable kittens having short lengths of stay and shelters killing cats with empty cages.
Many animal shelters with low kill rates failed to rescue animals with their excess space. Additionally, other shelters used little of their available space and still killed a large percentage of their animals. Some examples after increasing the population (and therefore capacity utilization) based on the adjustment discussed above are as follows:
Thus, many New Jersey animal shelters are killing dogs and cats despite having ample space to house these animals.
New Jersey’s animal shelters continue to fail the state’s animals. The state’s animal shelters only impound 8.9 dogs and cats per 1,000 New Jersey residents. If we just count animals originating from New Jersey, the state’s animal shelters only impound 7.2 dogs and cats per 1,000 people. As a comparison, Florida’s Lake County Animal Shelter took in 15.1 dogs and cats in 2019 and saved 99% of its dogs, 98% of its pit bull like dogs and 91% of its cats due to it fully implementing the No Kill Equation. Despite New Jersey shelters impounding a fraction of the animals many no kill communities take in on a per capita basis, the state’s animal control facilities continue to kill and allow animals to die under their care. Even worse, many of these shelters can’t even properly keep track of how many animals leave their facilities dead or alive. Our state’s animals deserve far better treatment than this. Contact your local city council members and mayor and demand better from the animal shelter serving your community. We can do so much better and it is time our shelters operate this way.
Lake County Animal Shelter is a large animal control facility in central Florida. The shelter takes significantly more animals in than the largest animal control facility in New Jersey. On a per capita basis, Lake County Animal Shelter impounds more than twice as many animals than New Jersey animal shelters take in from within the state.
Lake County went no kill on January 15, 2017. Before this time, Lake County Sheriff’s Office ran the facility as a traditional kill shelter. After a long shelter reform effort, Lake County (i.e. Lake County Animal Services) took over the shelter on January 15, 2017. Prior to taking the shelter over and for a period of time after, Lake County hired No Kill Learning to ensure the shelter properly operated as a no kill facility. No Kill Learning’s documentary video tells this moving story in greater detail. You can watch that video here.
What kind of job did Lake County Animal Shelter do in 2019? How does Lake County Animal Shelter compare to traditional shelters?
Data Reviewed
To better understand Lake County Animal Shelter’s performance, I obtained detailed shelter intake and disposition records. Intake and disposition records list each individual animal the shelter took in and their outcome. I used the 2019 records to conduct the analyses below. Additionally, I used the 2018 report to calculate the length of stay for some animals that came in during 2018, but had an outcome in 2019. You can find the 2019 report here and the 2018 report here. Also, you can find a summary of the 2019 statistics here.
In order to see if the shelter did not count any animals it euthanized/killed, I also reviewed additional documents. Specifically, I checked the shelter’s Controlled Substance Logs for euthanasia drugs and outside veterinarian bills. These documents indicated the shelter did not euthanize/kill any animals “off the books.”
Lake County Animal Shelter saved virtually every dog that arrived in 2019. Overall, only 1.1% of all dogs, 2.1% of pit bull like dogs, 0.5% of small dogs and 0.7% of other medium to large size dogs lost their lives or went missing at the shelter. In other words, Lake County Animal Shelter saved approximately 99% of all dogs, 98% of pit bull like dogs, 99% of small dogs and 99% of other medium to large size dogs. Even if we only look at dogs who were not reclaimed by owners, only 1.5% of all dogs, 3.1% of pit bulls, 0.8% of small dogs and 1.1% of other medium to large size breeds lost their lives or went missing in 2019. Thus, Lake County Animal Shelter saved almost every dog it took in last year.
To better reflect Lake County Animal Shelter’s pit bull statistics, I included American bulldogs in the pit bull data. Typically, I only include traditional “pit bull” like breeds, such as American pit bull terriers, American Staffordshire terriers, Staffordshire bull terriers and bull terriers. In the shelters I’ve reviewed, the facilities took few American bulldogs in. However, Lake County Animal Shelter impounded large numbers of American bulldogs during 2019 as the following table shows. Furthermore, the American bulldog statistics, which were excellent, were not quite as good as the traditional pit bull data. Thus, I included American bulldogs to provide a more clear picture of Lake County Animal Shelter’s pit bull performance.
Lake County Animal Shelter’s pit bull numbers are especially noteworthy. Despite taking in 811 pit bull like dogs in 2019, Lake County Animal Shelter saved 98% of these animals. On a per capita basis, Lake County Animal Shelter impounded 2.2 pit bulls per 1,000 people in 2019 compared to my estimate of New Jersey animal shelters taking in just 0.9 pit bulls per 1,000 people from the state in 2018. In other words, Lake County Animal Shelter saved 98% of its pit bull like dogs even though it took in around two and a half times as many of these dogs on a per capita basis as New Jersey animal shelters. Similarly, Lake County Animal Shelter adopted out 1.3 pit bulls per 1,000 people compared to the 0.5 pit bulls per 1,000 people New Jersey animal shelters would need to adopt out to achieve a 95% dog live release rate. As a result, Lake County Animal Shelter’s results prove New Jersey animal shelters can do a far better job with their pit bull like dogs.
Lake County Animal Shelter also had excellent cat numbers. Overall, only 7.3% of all cats, 5.9% of 1 year old plus cats and 9.1% of kittens under 1 year old lost their lives at Lake County Animal Shelter in 2019. Even if we exclude cats who were reclaimed by owners and placed through the return to field program, only 9.7% of all cats, 9.4% of 1 year old plus cats and 9.9% of kittens under 1 year old lost their lives in 2019. Thus, Lake County Animal Shelter saved almost all their cats of various ages.
My analysis did not differentiate between older (6 weeks to just under 1 year) and younger (under 6 weeks) kittens due to Lake County Animal Shelter’s innovative “Wait-til-8” program. Under this program, the shelter asks the public to care for kittens until they reach 8 weeks of age. Since young kittens are highly vulnerable to disease in a shelter, especially one with a poor physical design like Lake County Animal Shelter, this makes sense. The shelter provides wellness services every two to three weeks where the shelter weighs the kittens, deworms them and gives vaccinations. Additionally, Lake County Animal Shelter gives the people supplies, such as food, litter and kitten milk replacements. When the kittens reach 8 weeks, the shelter takes them in. Since Lake County Animal Shelter does not impound these animals until they are older than 6 weeks, these under 6 weeks old kittens are not counted in its statistics. Therefore, the shelter only takes a small number of under 6 weeks old kittens that are typically much more difficult animals. As a result, breaking out under 6 weeks old kittens would not provide useful information and would create a misleading picture when comparing to other shelters.
One can view the shelter’s cat sterilization program in different ways when calculating the cat death rates. Under the “Operation Caturday” program, Lake County Animal Shelter neuters and vaccinates “unowned” and “free-roaming” cats and frequently returns the animals to caregivers or the locations where the cats were found without identified caregivers. Per my discussion with shelter director, Whitney Boylston, the shelter impounds these cats and can place some animals through other programs, such as return to owner or adoptions. Therefore, one can make the argument the shelter should include these animals in its statistics based on the Shelter Animals Count data reporting guidelines that state such cats are included if the animals are “admitted for sheltering” and not “only for a service or services (sterilization and/or vaccination).” On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of Operation Caturday cats are brought in by a caregiver and returned to that caregiver (i.e. shelter operates like a clinic assisting TNR efforts and should not count these cats in its statistics).
To provide full transparency, I calculated alternative death rates using two methods to exclude these animals. Under the first method, I reduced returned to field and total outcomes by the 636 cats brought to the shelter by the public under Operation Caturday. The second death rate calculation decreased returned to field and total outcomes by the 678 cats returned to caregivers. This calculation is more punitive and likely overstates the cat death rate since stray cats may be returned to caregivers (i.e. these should always count in the statistics). Even with the more conservative cat death rate calculations, the shelter still had no kill level cat statistics.
Lake County Animal Shelter’s statistics are more impressive given the physical facility is poor and the shelter receives little rescue assistance. As No Kill Learning noted in its March 2017 progress report on Lake County Animal Shelter, the physical shelter presents significant issues relating to disease management and animal behavior. In other words, the physical facility makes it difficult to save large dogs with behavior issues and cats who have medical problems or are vulnerable if they become sick. Additionally, rescues pull few animals from Lake County Animal Shelter (10% of dogs and 4% of cats). While rescues pulling few pets due to Lake County Animal Shelter taking care of business is great news (i.e. rescues can pull animals in danger at kill shelters), it presents a challenge to achieve very high live release rates/low death rates. Thus, Lake County Animal Shelter’s performance is remarkable given these challenges.
Animals Quickly Leave Shelter Alive
Lake County Animal Shelter’s dogs quickly left the shelter. Overall, all dogs, pit bulls, small dogs and other medium to large size dogs left the shelter in 19.2 days, 29.0 days, 7.3 days and 20.2 days. Additionally, Lake County Animal Shelter adopted out all dogs, pit bulls, small dogs and other medium to large size dogs in just 30.0 days, 43.9 days, 10.3 days and 31.4 days. Given this shelter’s extremely high dog live release rate and it transferring few dogs to rescues (i.e. Lake County Animal Shelter adopts out more challenging dogs than most shelters), these short adoption length of stay figures are impressive.
Lake County Animal Shelter’s length of stay data also reveals the shelter makes strong efforts to save all dogs. Overall, the shelter euthanized all dogs, pit bulls, small dogs and other medium to large size dogs in 31.4 days, 40.1 days, 44.7 days and 17.9 days. As a comparison, Animal Care Centers of NYC killed all dogs, large dogs, medium dogs and small dogs in just 3.6 days, 6.0 days, 3.9 days and 0.9 days in 2018. Clearly, Lake County Animal Shelter makes significant efforts to save the small number of dogs it euthanizes instead of just quickly killing such animals.
The shelter’s pit bull length of data looks better without including American bulldogs. As the table below shows, American bulldogs stayed at the shelter longer than the traditional pit bull breeds. If we only look at traditional pit bull breeds, these dogs had an overall average length of stay of just 22.6 days and were adopted out in 36.3 days. Thus, the pit bull length of stay data would look better if I did not include American bulldogs.
Almost all Lake County Animal Shelter dogs left the shelter quickly. The following table shows the distribution of the dog lengths of stay. Remarkably, 69% and 80% of dogs left the shelter within 10 days and 19 days. In fact, 96% of all dogs left the shelter within 96 days. Simply put, substantially all dogs left the shelter within three months or so. While a very small number of dogs did stay a lot longer, this is normal at high performing no kill shelters that strive to save rather than take lives. Thus, Lake County Animal Shelter achieved no kill by quickly placing almost all of its dogs.
Lake County Animal Shelter’s cats also quickly left the facility alive. Overall, all cats, 1 year old and older cats and kittens less than 1 year old left the shelter in 23.6 days, 19.7 days and 28.5 days. Additionally, Lake County Animal Shelter adopted out all cats, 1 year and older cats and kittens less than 1 year old in just 33.3 days, 33.6 days and 33.1 days. Thus, Lake County Animal Shelter achieved a high cat live release rate by quickly placing these animals.
While the shelter euthanized cats quicker than dogs, this make sense. Since the shelter euthanized cats for severe medical reasons rather than for behavior, cats should be euthanized quicker. Additionally, injured cats, such as those hit by cars, often have a much more dire outcome than dogs.
Lake County Animal Shelter’s overall cat length of stay was still short even if we exclude cats returned to caregivers. If we exclude these cats, the overall average length of stay was 29.2 days, 27.9 days and 30.6 days for all cats, 1 year old and older cats and kittens less than 1 year old. Similarly, these figures would only rise to 29.6 days, 28.4 days and 30.7 days for all cats, 1 year old and older cats and kittens less than 1 year old if we exclude all cats returned to field (i.e. with or without an identified caregiver). Thus, Lake County Animal Shelter’s cats quickly left the shelter alive even without its return to field program.
Substantially all Lake County Animal Shelter cats left the facility quickly. The following table shows the distribution of the cat lengths of stay. 57% and 70% of cats left the shelter within 13 days and 32 days. In fact, 96% of all cats left the shelter within 89 days. As with dogs, a small number of cats did stay substantially longer, but this is normal at a high performing no kill shelter that strives to save virtually every animal. Thus, Lake County Animal Shelter achieved no kill by quickly finding live outcomes for substantially all of its cats.
Lake County Animal Shelter Only Euthanizes Dogs for Legitimate Reasons
Lake County Animal Shelter limits behavioral euthanasia to truly aggressive dogs. As you can see in the following table listing the reasons Lake County Animal Shelter used to euthanize dogs in 2019, the shelter only euthanized 0.40% of all dogs for behavioral related reasons (i.e. severe behavior issue, court order and dangerous). Remarkably, Lake County Animal Shelter meets the No Kill Advocacy Center behavioral euthanasia target (i.e. under 1%) that even many no kill shelters claim is too lofty. Thus, Lake County Animal Shelter limited behavioral euthanasia to truly aggressive dogs.
Similarly, Lake County Animal Shelter only euthanized hopelessly suffering dogs for medical reasons. As the table below shows, the shelter euthanized just 0.41% of dogs for medical issues (i.e. severe illness, severe injury and owner requested).
The shelter also limited behavioral euthanasia for pit bull like dogs to truly aggressive animals. Lake County Animal Shelter only euthanized 0.86% of all pit bulls for aggression, behavior and court order reasons. Lake County Animal Shelter also met the No Kill Advocacy Center all dogs behavioral euthanasia target (i.e. under 1%) for supposedly difficult to save pit bulls. As with all dogs, Lake County Animal Shelter only euthanized a very small number of all pit bulls for medical reasons (0.49%).
Lake County Animal Shelter’s separate traditional pit bull and American bulldog data shows the same pattern. The shelter only euthanized 0.95% of traditional pit bull breeds and 0.70% of American bulldogs for behavioral reasons. Similarly, the shelter only euthanized 0.57% of traditional pit bull breeds and 0.35% of American bulldogs for medical reasons.
Lake County Animal Shelter’s reasons for euthanizing small dogs showed it only euthanized hopelessly suffering animals. The shelter euthanized no small dogs for aggression and other behavioral reasons. Given small dogs do not pose a serious danger to adult people who are dog savvy, this is exactly what we should see at every shelter. As the table below shows, the shelter only euthanized 0.39% of small dogs for severe medical reasons.
The shelter also only euthanized other medium to large size dogs for legitimate reasons. Lake County Animal Shelter only euthanized 0.37% of other medium to large size dogs for behavioral related reasons. The rest of the other medium to large size dogs were euthanized for severe medical problems (0.36% of other medium to large size dogs).
Lake County Animal Shelter Limits Cat Euthanasia to Severe Medical Issues
The table below lists the reasons Lake County Animal Shelter used to euthanize cats in 2019. As you can see, the shelter only euthanized cats for severe medical reasons (i.e. severe illness, severe injury and rabies test). Most impressively, Lake County Animal Shelter did not kill a single cat for behavior or aggression. Given shelters should never kill cats for aggression or behavioral reasons, this is an incredible achievement since 3,376 cats had outcomes (2,740 cats excluding the 636 Operation Caturday animals) at Lake County Animal Shelter in 2019.
Lake County Animal Shelter also euthanized almost no cats for rabies risk. As Hound Manor mentioned in its blog, few animals killed for rabies testing end up having the disease. The shelter killed just one cat to test for rabies. Thus, Lake County Animal Shelter did not needlessly kill cats to test for rabies.
Finally, Lake County Animal Shelter’s small number of cats euthanized for medical reasons indicates the shelter limited this to hopelessly suffering animals. The shelter only euthanized 3.17% of all cats for medical reasons. Even if we exclude the 636 cats the public brought to the shelter under Operation Caturday, this figure only rises to 3.91%. As a comparison, Austin Animal Center euthanized 2.75% of all cats for medical reasons in 2018 even with Austin Pets Alive pulling significant numbers of cats with serious medical issues (some of these probably were euthanized by Austin Pets Alive or died). Thus, Lake County Animal Shelter’s data indicates it limited cat euthanasia to hopelessly suffering animals.
Lake County Animal Shelter Uses Many Foster Homes
Lake County Animal Shelter sent 349 dogs, 79 cats and 721 kittens to foster homes in 2019. Overall, 12% of all impounded dogs went to a foster home after arriving at Lake County Animal Shelter. Similarly, the shelter sent 25% of all cats and 31% of all cats excluding cats brought to the shelter by the public under Operation Caturday to foster homes. In particular, the shelter sent 48% of all kittens to foster homes. Thus, Lake County Animal Shelter sent large numbers of dogs and cats to foster homes in 2019.
Significant numbers of dogs went to foster homes for “shelter break sleepovers” and many nursing and underage kittens also went to foster homes. As you can see in the table below, Lake County Animal Shelter sent 336 adult dogs to foster homes under its “shelter break sleepovers” program. Per a 2018 interview with shelter director, Whitney Boylston, the shelter uses this program to 1) allow potential adopters too see if animals are a good fit (i.e. trial adoptions) and 2) to give animals, particularly longer stay dogs, a break from shelter stress. Similarly, Lake County Animal Shelter sent 98 nursing kittens and 584 underage/underweight kittens to foster homes. In other words, the foster program served as a mechanism to save the most vulnerable animals (i.e. young/unhealthy kittens and dogs experiencing shelter stress) and to facilitate adoptions. Thus, the foster program played a significant role in allowing the shelter to achieve high live release and adoption rates.
Lake County Animal Shelter Greatly Outperforms New York and New Jersey Animal Shelters
The tables below compare Lake County Animal Shelter to several New York and New Jersey animal shelters. In the table, I presented Lake County Animal Shelter’s data with and without the 636 cats the public brought to the shelter under Operation Caturday. The New York and New Jersey shelters’ data come from my most recent detailed analyses published last year. The shelters and my prior blogs are as follows:
2018 Franklin Township Animal Shelter: Blog 1 and Blog 2
The tables’ key metrics fall into the following broad categories:
Animal intake: This measures the difficulty a shelter has to handle its animals. For shelters taking a significant number of pets in, the per capita data (expressed here as per 1,000 people in the shelter’s service area) is more relevant since it indicates how many people can help the shelter through donating, volunteering and adopting animals (i.e. higher numbers indicate the shelter has a more difficult job).
Total revenue per animal: This metric measures how much money the shelter has to save each animal. Shelters with lower amounts face more challenges. Lake County Sheriff’s Office’s animal control field services budget was added to Lake County Animal Shelter’s total revenue in the first table to properly compare it with the shelters having field services. The adjusted revenue per dog and cat figures exclude the 636 cats brought to Lake County Animal Shelter by the public under Operation Caturday. For Bergen County Animal Shelter, I included the cats going through its TNR program in the total revenue per dog and cat figure and excluded these animals in the adjusted amount (these cats were not counted as impounded in the shelter’s software report and therefore are excluded from the dog and cat intake figures).
Rescue %: This metric indicates how much rescue support a shelter receives. For no kill shelters, low numbers often indicate rescues choosing to save animals at more risk elsewhere. At high kill shelters, low figures frequently are due to shelters not reaching out to rescues and/or having poor relationships with them.
Death rates and reasons for killing: These metrics show how well a shelter avoids killing animals or not.
Per capita adoption rates: These metrics indicate how well a shelter adopts out animals.
Lake County Animal Shelter Faces Greater Challenges
Lake County Animal Shelter faced a more difficult situation with animal intake. Overall, Lake County Animal Shelter impounded two to ten times (two to nine times without the 636 Operation Caturday cats) as many dogs and cats in total than the New Jersey animal shelters. While NY ACC took many more animals in, this shelter serves a far larger human population. On a per capita basis, Lake County Animal Shelter impounded 6 times (5 times without the 636 Operation Caturday cats), 4 times, 2 times and 3 times as many dogs and cats as NY ACC, Bergen County Animal Shelter, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility. Thus, Lake County Animal had a much greater animal volume challenge than the New York and New Jersey shelters.
The New York and New Jersey animal shelters also received far more funding per animal than Lake County Animal Shelter. NY ACC, Bergen County Animal Shelter, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility received 2.2 times, 1.3 times, 1.5 times and 3.3 times the funding per dog and cat. When we exclude Lake County Animal Shelter’s 636 cats brought into Lake County Animal Shelter by the public under Operation Caturday and the many cats going through Bergen County Animal Shelter’s TNR program, NY ACC, Bergen County Animal Shelter, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility received 2.0 times, 2.3 times, 1.4 times and 2.9 times the funding per animal. Furthermore, Lake County Animal Shelter impounded a much greater percentage of dogs which cost much more to care for. Dogs made up 47% of Lake County Animal Shelter’s intake compared to 36% at NY ACC, 14% at Bergen County Animal Shelter, 32% at Franklin Township Animal Shelter and 32% at Ocean County Animal Facility. When we exclude the cats brought in by the public to Lake County Animal Shelter under Operation Caturday and the many cats going through Bergen County Animal Shelter’s TNR program, dogs made up 53% of intake at Lake County Animal Shelter and 27% at Bergen County Animal Shelter. Thus, Lake County Animal Shelter was massively underfunded compared to the New York and New Jersey animal shelters.
Lake County Animal Shelter also did not get unusually large rescue support compared to the other shelters. While Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Bergen County Animal Shelter (dogs only) got less rescue support, its likely due to these high kill shelters’ dysfunctional policies and processes. On the other hand, NY ACC sent 3 times and 16 times (13 times without the 636 Operation Caturday cats) the percentage of dogs and cats to rescues and other shelters than Lake County Animal Shelter. Similarly, Ocean County Animal Facility transferred slightly more dogs and pit bulls and 6 times (5 times without the 636 Operation Caturday cats) as many cats to rescues and other shelters than Lake County Animal Shelter. Thus, Lake County Animal Shelter’s success was not due to rescues providing unusually large levels of support.
Lake County Animal Shelter’s No Kill Culture
Lake County Animal Shelter’s dog death rates were shockingly lower than the other shelters. NY ACC, Bergen County Animal Shelter, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility had dog death rates 20 times, 9 times, 10 times and 8 times higher than those at Lake County Animal Shelter. Similarly, nonreclaimed dog death rates were 16 times, 11 times, 17 times and 11 times higher at NY ACC, Bergen County Animal Shelter, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility compared to Lake County Animal Shelter.
Pit bulls lost their lives at much lower rates at Lake County Animal Shelter. Bergen County Animal Shelter, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility had pit bull death rates 11 times, 10 times and 7 times higher than those at Lake County Animal Shelter. Nonreclaimed pit bull death rates were 11 times, 18 times and 9 times higher at Bergen County Animal Shelter, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility compared to Lake County Animal Shelter. Thus, Lake County Animal Shelter did a massively better job with its pit bulls.
Lake County Animal Shelter’s cat death rates were like night and day compared to the other shelters. NY ACC, Bergen County Animal Shelter, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility had cat death rates 1.6 times, 4 times, 6 times and 7 times higher than those at Lake County Animal Shelter. Even when excluding the 636 Operation Caturday cats, NY ACC, Bergen County Animal Shelter, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility had cat death rates 1.3 times, 3 times, 5 times and 5 times higher than those at Lake County Animal Shelter. Similarly, nonreclaimed cat death rates were 1.2 times, 4 times, 5 times and 5 times higher at NY ACC, Bergen County Animal Shelter, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility compared to Lake County Animal Shelter. As a result, Lake County Animal Shelter performed far better at saving its cats.
The New York and New Jersey animal shelters killed much greater percentages of dogs for behavior and medical related reasons. NY ACC, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility killed dogs for behavior at 16 times, 10 times and 16 times Lake County Animal Shelter’s rate. Similarly, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility killed pit bulls for behavior at 18 times and 15 times Lake County Animal Shelter’s rate. NY ACC, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility killed dogs for medical reasons at 33 times, 11 times and 4 times Lake County Animal Shelter’s rate. Thus, Lake County Animal Shelter operated with a commitment to not killing while the other shelters frequently used excuses to kill.
Lake County Animal Shelter’s lifesaving ethic also stood out when examining why the other shelters killed cats. While Lake County Animal Shelter did not kill a single one of the 3,376 cats who had outcomes (2,740 cats without the 636 Operation Caturday cats) for behavior in 2019, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility killed an astonishing 18% and 36% of their cats for behavior in 2018. Similarly, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility killed cats for medical reasons at 1.7 times (1.3 times without the 636 Operation Caturday cats) and 2.6 times (2.1 times without the 636 Operation Caturday cats) Lake County Animal Shelter’s rate.
Lake County Animal Shelter’s Adoption Program Stands Apart
Lake County Animal Shelter adopted out far more dogs on a per capita basis than the New York and New Jersey animal shelters. Overall, Lake County Animal Shelter adopted out 15 times, 10 times, 7 times and 9 times as many dogs per 1,000 people as NY ACC, Bergen County Animal Shelter, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility. Furthermore, Lake County Animal Shelter adopted out 13 times, 15 times and 10 times as many pit bulls per 1,000 people as Bergen County Animal Shelter, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility. Lake County Animal Shelter also adopted out 19 times more large and medium size dogs per 1,000 people than NY ACC. Simply put, Lake County Animal Shelter’s dog adoption program blew the other shelters’ adoption programs out of the water.
The New York and New Jersey animal shelters’ cat adoption programs also paled in comparison with Lake County Animal Shelter. Lake County Animal Shelter adopted out 11 times, 4 times, 3 times and 6 times as many cats per 1,000 people as NY ACC, Bergen County Animal Shelter, Franklin Township Animal Shelter and Ocean County Animal Facility.
Lake County Animal Shelter is a Role Model Shelter
Clearly, Lake County Animal Shelter is an elite organization. The shelter effectively limited euthanasia to hopelessly suffering animals and dogs that are truly aggressive. Additionally, it accomplished this by quickly finding live outcomes for its animals. Remarkably, Lake County Animal Shelter achieved this with a terrible physical facility, which will be replaced soon, a large number of animals coming in, meager funding and little rescue support. Simply put, Lake County Animal Shelter steps up and does what it takes to save its animals.
As the comparison with New York and New Jersey animal shelters showed, Lake County Animal Shelter’s challenges were far more daunting and the facility’s performance was on a different planet. In other words, regressive shelters in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere can’t credibly make excuses up for this disparity. Instead of defending the status quo, regressive shelters should study Lake County Animal Shelter and replicate what its doing. If these regressive shelters do this, not only will many animals live, but the organizations and their people will become happier and healthier.
Frequently, New Jersey shelters complain they must kill pit bulls due to no one wanting these animals. Similarly, many rescues and rescue oriented shelters state the same thing when they choose to transport in easy to adopt dogs instead of saving pit bulls who are killed in local shelters. Certainly, pit bull like dogs face legitimate challenges, such as housing restrictions and discrimination from some potential dog owners.
New Jersey animal shelter data suggests some facilities can save their pit bulls. In 2015, I wrote a blog about Perth Amboy Animal Shelter saving 90% of the pit bulls they took in during 2014 and the first half of 2015. Additionally, Old Bridge Animal Shelter data from 2014, which was when the facility was much more progressive, showed that shelter saved 100% of their pit bulls. However, both these shelters took few pit bulls in on a per capita basis and in total. Therefore, these two shelters data were not sufficient to conclusively prove New Jersey people wanted pit bulls.
Do New Jersey residents want pit bulls? Can New Jersey animal shelters adopt out many more pit bulls and stop killing these pets?
Jersey Pits Rescue Adopts Out More Pit Bulls Than Many Local Shelters
Jersey Pits Rescue is a relatively new rescue run by two women, Dani and Kay. Dani and Kay previously volunteered at Associated Humane Societies-Newark and with other local rescues, including ones dealing mostly with pit bulls. In 2018, Dani and Kay started Jersey Pits Rescue to focus on the many pit bulls killed in local shelters. Both women work full time jobs and run Jersey Pits Rescue in their spare time.
While Jersey Pits Rescue does evaluate dogs to determine if they are safe enough to place in foster homes, it still takes in many pit bulls shelters often kill. According to Dani, Jersey Pits Rescue saves many jumpy dogs and a good number of mouthy ones as well. Additionally, they’ve taken in fearful dogs and dogs with barrier aggression. Based on my personal experience dealing with hundreds, if not thousands of pit bulls in New Jersey animal shelters, Jersey Pits Rescue is likely pulling well over 90% of the types of pit bulls in local shelters. Thus, this is not a rescue cherry picking the easy to adopt dogs and neglecting the ones needing help.
Recently, Dani provided me Jersey Pits Rescue’s 2019 pit bull adoption data. The organization rescued dogs mostly from urban shelters and took in a number of owner surrenders. In particular, Jersey Pits Rescue saved a large number of dogs from Paterson Animal Shelter.
To better understand Jersey Pits Rescue’s performance with pit bull like dogs, I compared this information with numerous New Jersey animal shelters’ pit bull adoption figures in the table below. The animal shelters’ data, except for Old Bridge Animal Shelter, in the following tables comes from previous blogs I’ve written. The Old Bridge Animal Shelter figures are in an unpublished analysis I previously did.
Jersey Pits Rescue adopted out significantly more pit bulls than every single shelter. In fact, Jersey Pits Rescue adopted out around twice as many or more pit bulls than most of the other shelters.
Jersey Pits Rescue also adopted out its pit bulls among the quickest. The table below shows the average length of stay for adopted pit bulls from shelters adopting out 10 or more pit bulls. As you can see, Jersey Pits Rescue adopted out its dogs in 43 days on average. If I counted three dogs classified as foster to adopt as adoptions, that figure would drop to 41 days. Several shelters took 50% or longer to adopt out their pit bull like dogs.
Jersey Pits Rescue’s performance is even better than it appears. Many of the shelters on this list killed a large percentage of their pit bulls. For example, Northern Ocean County Animal Facility and Southern Ocean County Animal Facility had 13% of their pit bulls and 25% of their nonreclaimed pit bulls lose their lives. In 2016, Gloucester County Animal Shelter had 28% of their pit bulls and 50% of their nonreclaimed pit bulls lose their lives. From 2015 to 2017, Bergen County Animal Shelter had 31%-47% of their pit bulls and 50%-64% of their nonreclaimed pit bulls lose their lives. Therefore, these shelters likely placed easier to adopt dogs than Jersey Pits Rescue. Thus, many of the other shelters’ adoption length of stay figures make their performance look better than that what it was.
Jersey Pits Rescue’s performance is more impressive considering it lacks many of the advantages animal control shelters have. First, shelters are open to the public and give people the opportunity to walk in without making appointments. Second, the public generally knows about shelters in their areas. In contrast, rescues, particularly newer ones, have to work harder to attract adopters and volunteers. Third, the news media share stories more often about the needs (such as an adoption promotion, volunteer help, donations, etc.) of a shelter than of a rescue. Fourth, Jersey Pits Rescue does not get taxpayer funding that animal control shelters receive. Thus, animal control shelters have many structural advantages over a small rescue that works to save local pit bull like dogs.
Jersey Pits Rescue’s Strategies to Save Pit Bulls
Jersey Pits Rescue uses social media to aggressively promote their dogs. Despite being around just two years, the Jersey Pits Rescue Facebook page has nearly 10,000 followers. Similarly, Jersey Pits Rescue has 12,000 followers on Instagram. The organization frequently makes engaging posts seeking adopters. Additionally, Jersey Pits Rescue posts many “alumni” stories that give a positive vibe. Finally, the organization uses social media to seek donations and sell Jersey Pits Rescue apparel, such as t-shirts, sweatshirts and hats.
Jersey Pits Rescue relies on individual meet and greets and pack walks to introduce adopters to the dogs. The organization prefers this method to doing adoption events, which can sometimes put dogs in difficult situations. Therefore, the rescue is able to attract adopters through social media and make the adoptions happen through individual meet and greets and pack walks.
The organization uses volunteers and no paid staff to care for and place its dogs. Jersey Pits Rescue has a foster/adoption coordinator, merchandise manager and an events manager. Additionally, the organization uses volunteers to organize special events, such as foster dog outings, and transporting dogs to veterinarian appointments. Finally, the rescue has around 10 people that regularly foster dogs.
Jersey Pits Rescue’s success proves people want pit bulls. If a new organization run by individuals with full time jobs can adopt out more pit bulls than large local shelters, this proves people want pit bulls. In other words, local shelters can and should adopt out many more pit bulls instead of killing those pets. Similarly, local rescue oriented shelters and many rescues can save and adopt out far more local pit bulls.
Taxpayers and donors should demand New Jersey animal shelters do far better with their pit bulls. As my blogs over recent years show, many New Jersey animal shelters needlessly kill many pit bull like dogs based on false beliefs about “behavior” and the public not wanting these animals. Clearly, the Jersey Pits Rescue’s data proves we can save local pit bulls. As such, the public must demand taxpayer and other donor funded organizations do the right thing and also save these dogs.
NJ Animal Observer 