This tip comes to us from Rutherford County PAWS, a municipal organization in Rutherford County, Tennessee.
We were in the midst of an online shelter consultation discussing managed intake for owner surrenders when I made some off-handed (and arguable lame) joke about, "Wouldn't be great to schedule your STRAY intake, too?!" Without skipping a beat, Michael Gregory, Rutherford County's director, said to me, "Oh, we do that too." I was -- to say the least -- intrigued. I'll let him explain it in his own words:
We were not looking for managed intake when it hit us in the face. We were simply trying to solve our number one customer complaint- why is the wait so long when I show up to surrender my animal or to bring in a stray? The process evolved into managed intake for surrenders, but still did not specifically address how to best manage strays. We felt that the best system for us was to schedule appointments for strays as well.
We keep it simply for now, all appointments are written in a book- we schedule owner surrenders (around 2 weeks out) on the top of the hour and leave the bottom of the hour open so that strays can be scheduled the same day. We do receive a little push back from our citizens, but not near as many when folks were waiting for several hours in the parking lot when we had no clue who would be showing up on a particular day or how many animals they would have with them. Better yet, I don’t look out my office window and see people sitting in their lawn chairs waiting their turn or the occasional altercation when someone was accused of trying to skip the line!
For our staff, it takes a lot of stress off of them as they have a much better idea of what is coming in the door and allows them to focus on the person and animal in front of them versus worrying about the five in the parking lot.
As a side note, by scheduling appointments, we found that we have more appointments than the number of animals we had previously taken into the shelter. This allows us on most days to schedule in lunch breaks for the staff and not having to pull staff from other areas to cover their breaks.
In addition, the shelter does get photos of the animals as soon as people call with them, so if a pet is lost, they can be found on the shelter's lost-and-found page.
One of the things I love about this -- other than the obvious reduction in overall intake -- is the way in which this was rolled out to the community. By positioning this program as a way to solve a problem (i.e. citizens waiting in long lines to surrender pets and turn in strays), the shelter was able to get almost immediate support from the community with rare exception.
Do you have any experience putting a "flow control valve" on your over-the-counter stray intake? Let us know!!
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