Animal Welfare Professionals

This is the right question, and it does not get asked enough. We designed shelters around cleaning efficiency and warehousing capacity, then acted surprised when the dogs fall apart in them. The dog's day is the thing we engineer last, when it should be the thing we engineer first.

The design you are describing already exists in pieces, it just rarely gets built into a public shelter. Indoor-outdoor runs with a pass-through door, a guillotine door, let a dog move to a covered outdoor run and potty on its own without a staff member leashing it up. Boarding kennels have run this way for years. Drop that into a shelter and you have handed back an enormous number of staff hours that currently go to leashing and walking, and those hours become the enrichment you never had time for. The design is not separate from the enrichment problem. The design is the answer to it.

A few other moves worth talking through. Group play yards, the Dogs Playing for Life model from Aimee Sadler, get dogs exercising and socializing in groups instead of one leash at a time, which is better welfare and far less labor per dog. Real-life rooms, home-like spaces with a couch instead of a cage, give a dog a place to decompress and give adopters a real read on it. And the most overlooked one, sound. Concrete and steel turn one barking dog into fifty stressed dogs. Sound-dampening surfaces, natural light, and kennel layouts that break the dog-to-dog line of sight so they are not constantly triggering each other do more for welfare than people expect, and they cost less than a rebuild.

Here is the part I cannot leave out, because it is the whole reason I am on this forum. The biggest welfare improvement for a dog waiting in a shelter is to not be waiting in a shelter. Foster-centric care moves medical and behavior cases into homes, foster with training sends dogs out steadier, and fast, honest adoption matching shortens the stay. A kennel that holds fewer dogs for less time makes every design idea above easier and cheaper to pull off. A half-empty modern kennel beats a packed perfect one every time.

So I would build it from both ends. Design the building so a dog can potty itself, move, and play without a staff member as the bottleneck, and at the same time run the prevention and foster programs that keep the building from filling in the first place. Those are not competing priorities. They are the same priority.

We have an architect in our network who designs vet and shelter facilities, and we are writing the in-the-shelter piece of this up as part of a prevention handbook, so I am glad you opened it. What are you working with, a renovation you are trying to make humane, or a clean sheet?

This is the right question, and it does not get asked enough. We designed shelters around cleaning efficiency and warehousing capacity, then acted surprised when the dogs fall apart in them. The dog's day is the thing we engineer last, when it should be the thing we engineer first.

The design you are describing already exists in pieces, it just rarely gets built into a public shelter. Indoor-outdoor runs with a pass-through door, a guillotine door, let a dog move to a covered outdoor run and potty on its own without a staff member leashing it up. Boarding kennels have run this way for years. Drop that into a shelter and you have handed back an enormous number of staff hours that currently go to leashing and walking, and those hours become the enrichment you never had time for. The design is not separate from the enrichment problem. The design is the answer to it.

A few other moves worth talking through. Group play yards, the Dogs Playing for Life model from Aimee Sadler, get dogs exercising and socializing in groups instead of one leash at a time, which is better welfare and far less labor per dog. Real-life rooms, home-like spaces with a couch instead of a cage, give a dog a place to decompress and give adopters a real read on it. And the most overlooked one, sound. Concrete and steel turn one barking dog into fifty stressed dogs. Sound-dampening surfaces, natural light, and kennel layouts that break the dog-to-dog line of sight so they are not constantly triggering each other do more for welfare than people expect, and they cost less than a rebuild.

Here is the part I cannot leave out, because it is the whole reason I am on this forum. The biggest welfare improvement for a dog waiting in a shelter is to not be waiting in a shelter. Foster-centric care moves medical and behavior cases into homes, foster with training sends dogs out steadier, and fast, honest adoption matching shortens the stay. A kennel that holds fewer dogs for less time makes every design idea above easier and cheaper to pull off. A half-empty modern kennel beats a packed perfect one every time.

So I would build it from both ends. Design the building so a dog can potty itself, move, and play without a staff member as the bottleneck, and at the same time run the prevention and foster programs that keep the building from filling in the first place. Those are not competing priorities. They are the same priority.

We have an architect in our network who designs vet and shelter facilities, and we are writing the in-the-shelter piece of this up as part of a prevention handbook, so I am glad you opened it. What are you working with, a renovation you are trying to make humane, or a clean sheet?

I love this, it is exactly what I have in mind for my PETZ HOUSE facility I am working on. I was thinking the same way, and the confirmation of how to build it is such a relief. Since I haven't even started the actual building of the kennels, it is perfect timing.  Thank you for this!

Kerri Allen

This is the right question, and it does not get asked enough. We designed shelters around cleaning efficiency and warehousing capacity, then acted surprised when the dogs fall apart in them. The dog's day is the thing we engineer last, when it should be the thing we engineer first.

The design you are describing already exists in pieces, it just rarely gets built into a public shelter. Indoor-outdoor runs with a pass-through door, a guillotine door, let a dog move to a covered outdoor run and potty on its own without a staff member leashing it up. Boarding kennels have run this way for years. Drop that into a shelter and you have handed back an enormous number of staff hours that currently go to leashing and walking, and those hours become the enrichment you never had time for. The design is not separate from the enrichment problem. The design is the answer to it.

A few other moves worth talking through. Group play yards, the Dogs Playing for Life model from Aimee Sadler, get dogs exercising and socializing in groups instead of one leash at a time, which is better welfare and far less labor per dog. Real-life rooms, home-like spaces with a couch instead of a cage, give a dog a place to decompress and give adopters a real read on it. And the most overlooked one, sound. Concrete and steel turn one barking dog into fifty stressed dogs. Sound-dampening surfaces, natural light, and kennel layouts that break the dog-to-dog line of sight so they are not constantly triggering each other do more for welfare than people expect, and they cost less than a rebuild.

Here is the part I cannot leave out, because it is the whole reason I am on this forum. The biggest welfare improvement for a dog waiting in a shelter is to not be waiting in a shelter. Foster-centric care moves medical and behavior cases into homes, foster with training sends dogs out steadier, and fast, honest adoption matching shortens the stay. A kennel that holds fewer dogs for less time makes every design idea above easier and cheaper to pull off. A half-empty modern kennel beats a packed perfect one every time.

So I would build it from both ends. Design the building so a dog can potty itself, move, and play without a staff member as the bottleneck, and at the same time run the prevention and foster programs that keep the building from filling in the first place. Those are not competing priorities. They are the same priority.

We have an architect in our network who designs vet and shelter facilities, and we are writing the in-the-shelter piece of this up as part of a prevention handbook, so I am glad you opened it. What are you working with, a renovation you are trying to make humane, or a clean sheet?

The way we shelter dogs keeps me up at night. It was meant for a dog to spend a week there - and they're spending months, even years, in these kennels. It is, in my estimation, simply inhumane; and we really aren't talking about alternatives. 

I work in a limited-admission shelter with the advantage of having a fairly sizeable piece of land. My next step is to build little cottages to house dogs - think like the pre-fab sheds from Lowes, with a fenced in outdoor run immediately behind it. We are going to co-house most dogs this way, because I think our efforts to single-house dogs was the wrong direction. We're going to try it on a small basis at first, because obviously you need a lot of space to pull that off. It isn't really replicable, though, for city shelters, shelters with limited resources. 

Another Director I know is pursuing turning an abandoned nursing home into a dog shelter - so the dogs have little rooms. It doesn't solve the ability for the dog to go in and out on their own, but does replicate a living space for them. 

Best Friends Animal Society has some of their more challenging dogs in a space that's octagonal, with indoor-outdoor runs that are long, running like spokes around the building; and there's something in the center of it, so dogs aren't constantly staring at and agitated by other dogs. But basically, it's the same design as current shelters. 

I don't have the answer. But I agree with you that we need to immediately start blowing up the current design. 

Hi Anon - I have been involved in 4 shelter design projects and am doing an expansion now.   I would be happy to chat with you and there are some architects that can help you with this type of design...happy to connect you