AUSTIN, TX – As the day winds down for the nine to fivers, some dedicated to saving animals’ lives carry on. It’s a job that doesn’t stop for time.
Amber Rowland is a manager at the Austin Animal Center. The city’s shelter runs on a more than ten million dollar budget a year.
“What you need to recognize, this is not just something that you turn the switch and it happens. It’s not free. It’s not simple,” Rowland said, referring to the no kill movement.
Austin, Texas City Council members passed a proclamation in 2009–no savable stray would be killed. More than 90 percent of the 18,000 animals coming into the shelter every year must leave alive.
“It also took some loud cries in the community that this is something they wanted to move toward and we had some very vocal activists who helped push the ball forward,” Rowland said.
To make this concept work, the city partners with several organizations like the Austin Humane Society.
Ian Hallett, with the local Humane Society, said they help rescue hundreds of animals a year.
He said, “Well it’s been a dramatic difference. When I started in the field, half of the animals were killed or euthanized.”
Using an assembly line set up, a cat can be spayed or neutered in under five minutes — a couple hundred surgeries are performed a week. Then, the cats are re-released into the outdoors.
But still, this isn’t enough to save all animals. There’s another piece of the no kill structure needed.
The goal at Austin Pets Alive is to remove animals from the shelter that would otherwise be euthanized. In other words, if this organization wasn’t here, the animals wouldn’t be either.
There are a couple reasons animals become “unadoptable.” Behavioral and medical issues or breed and size are possible reasons.
Those pets are pulled from the city shelter and brought to Austin Pets Alive, another shelter run mostly by private donations. It’s here animals get a second, second chance.
“It’s a pretty overwhelming model, but it is extremely rewarding. We can save a vast majority of animals that are injured or ill,” said Ellen Jefferson with Austin Pets Alive.
Behavioral and aggression problems are tackled here as well. The misfits, if you will, go into daily play groups with other pups and work with trainers in a K-9 good citizens program.
For the no kill model to work, all three parts are needed. A municipal shelter, in charge of public safety, the Humane Society, which helps to save most adoptable animals and a safety net organization for those pets that would normally be euthanized.
“The benefits of living in this community, where no healthy or treatable pet is killed, is such a feeling of relief,” said Jefferson.
Thursday night at 9:00, on Fox16 News, we bring this concept to Little Rock’s Animal Services director to find out if it could work here.
