Animal Welfare Professionals

Hello,

I am working with our shelters vet team on a better system of pathway planning for our open intake municipal shelter. Unfortunately, there isn't clear system set up by previous administration for the recommended list of negative outcomes. It leaves alot of room for guess work on which animals should be euthanized on days we would need to. These are animals that have been deemed to have behavioral concerns that would be unsafe for public adoptions as is or sick needing long-term treatment or treatment beyond the average adopter's ability to provide. These animals are placed on a list when their stray hold is over and networks to hundreds of rescues that partner with our shelter they have days sometimes weeks or months to pull them from the shelter. If we have open kennels and there is no emergent need to, we do not euthanize & there have been weeks this has happened but there have also been weeks the opposite is true. Anywhere from 2-10 may be chosen on a given day. We have 90 kennels and 180+ dogs on average. We are an evacuation site for natural disasters and often get hoarding & investigation cases. Those circumstances we send out urgent pleas for all of our rescue but often struggle to make space and euthanasia becomes necessary. The uncertainty and unclarity of why certain animals are chosen that day from the rescue list has created distrust and tension with our rescue partners and stress for our rescue coordinators having to try and communicate with them. What the vet team I would like to is create more transparency and clarity in our supervisors' decisions. We hope to do this with the addition of this weighted scale or rating system similar to the color-coded systems.  What I am asking for is feedback positive or negative, do you have something similar, what's your experience working with rescue with a system like this in place. Negative outcomes aren't our goals but they are also unavoidable in our current setting. Our goal is to help indicate what animals are not improving, who are declining, who we recommend over others and why in a clearer way to make the decision easier on those needing to do so. We all understand the burn out working in shelters can bring our goal is to just alleviate that stress a little more for the animals and the humans caring for them.  Thank for your feedback.

Hello,

I am working with our shelters vet team on a better system of pathway planning for our open intake municipal shelter. Unfortunately, there isn't clear system set up by previous administration for the recommended list of negative outcomes. It leaves alot of room for guess work on which animals should be euthanized on days we would need to. These are animals that have been deemed to have behavioral concerns that would be unsafe for public adoptions as is or sick needing long-term treatment or treatment beyond the average adopter's ability to provide. These animals are placed on a list when their stray hold is over and networks to hundreds of rescues that partner with our shelter they have days sometimes weeks or months to pull them from the shelter. If we have open kennels and there is no emergent need to, we do not euthanize & there have been weeks this has happened but there have also been weeks the opposite is true. Anywhere from 2-10 may be chosen on a given day. We have 90 kennels and 180+ dogs on average. We are an evacuation site for natural disasters and often get hoarding & investigation cases. Those circumstances we send out urgent pleas for all of our rescue but often struggle to make space and euthanasia becomes necessary. The uncertainty and unclarity of why certain animals are chosen that day from the rescue list has created distrust and tension with our rescue partners and stress for our rescue coordinators having to try and communicate with them. What the vet team I would like to is create more transparency and clarity in our supervisors' decisions. We hope to do this with the addition of this weighted scale or rating system similar to the color-coded systems.  What I am asking for is feedback positive or negative, do you have something similar, what's your experience working with rescue with a system like this in place. Negative outcomes aren't our goals but they are also unavoidable in our current setting. Our goal is to help indicate what animals are not improving, who are declining, who we recommend over others and why in a clearer way to make the decision easier on those needing to do so. We all understand the burn out working in shelters can bring our goal is to just alleviate that stress a little more for the animals and the humans caring for them.  Thank for your feedback.

Hello,

I am working with our shelters vet team on a better system of pathway planning for our open intake municipal shelter. Unfortunately, there isn't clear system set up by previous administration for the recommended list of negative outcomes. It leaves alot of room for guess work on which animals should be euthanized on days we would need to. These are animals that have been deemed to have behavioral concerns that would be unsafe for public adoptions as is or sick needing long-term treatment or treatment beyond the average adopter's ability to provide. These animals are placed on a list when their stray hold is over and networks to hundreds of rescues that partner with our shelter they have days sometimes weeks or months to pull them from the shelter. If we have open kennels and there is no emergent need to, we do not euthanize & there have been weeks this has happened but there have also been weeks the opposite is true. Anywhere from 2-10 may be chosen on a given day. We have 90 kennels and 180+ dogs on average. We are an evacuation site for natural disasters and often get hoarding & investigation cases. Those circumstances we send out urgent pleas for all of our rescue but often struggle to make space and euthanasia becomes necessary. The uncertainty and unclarity of why certain animals are chosen that day from the rescue list has created distrust and tension with our rescue partners and stress for our rescue coordinators having to try and communicate with them. What the vet team I would like to is create more transparency and clarity in our supervisors' decisions. We hope to do this with the addition of this weighted scale or rating system similar to the color-coded systems.  What I am asking for is feedback positive or negative, do you have something similar, what's your experience working with rescue with a system like this in place. Negative outcomes aren't our goals but they are also unavoidable in our current setting. Our goal is to help indicate what animals are not improving, who are declining, who we recommend over others and why in a clearer way to make the decision easier on those needing to do so. We all understand the burn out working in shelters can bring our goal is to just alleviate that stress a little more for the animals and the humans caring for them.  Thank for your feedback.