Animal Welfare Professionals

Shelter intake seems to be declining on average nationwide as pet owners are now overwhelmingly sterilizing their pets. Managed admission, RTF, and better RTO methods offer still more ways for shelters to reduce intake. In places that have had documented intake increases (dog intake in New Hampshire, for example), it's often because they are known No Kill jurisdictions or transport destinations.

These and other changes are likely to have profound implications for how shelters of the future (10 or 20 years from now) will function. Most professions and civic institutions plan for the future so they won't wind up fighting yesterday's battles. Is anyone doing anything concrete to start studying and planning for the future of sheltering?

Hi Susan,

My name is Jessica Schleder, and I am currently an MBA student at USC Marshall School of Business. My background is in digital product development and marketing, so I have been thinking about how the future of animal sheltering with digital integration. I am currently working on a product that uses machine learning to make faster, better people-pet matches, starting with automating better videos and images at shelter intake. Right now, there are only a few companies working on AI in animal welfare, but with the rapidly growing pet market and interest in pet-tech in the investment world (even in just the past few months), I think we're going to see that change substantially.

What are your thoughts?

There may be more room for digital product development in animal sheltering than in any other city function. Your project sounds like it would help adoption. One thing we need is a national tracking system for transports. Each state has its own requirements for health certs and quarantine, and the needs and availability of senders and receivers is constantly changing. Some transports still use volunteer "legs," and then there are always the emergency situations. It would be a heavy lift to set up a system that could handle all that, but it would save a lot of lives.