Saw this online and thought it was just great. The memo is on how to run a no-kill shelter and the trials and tribulations involved. His response to any questions of what to do and options available to his sometimes less than supportive employees was pretty simple: “stop the killing, stop the killing, stop the killing.” He made no killing the only option and it was interesting all the other options they figured out to stop euthanasia: http://catnet.stanford.edu/articles/nokillcommunity.pdf
There are a lot of great ideas in this memo with other articles involved. The first article is particularly good in that the head of the shelter really got the community involved, got vets to agree to low cost spaying and neutering, got air time for the pets, even put the puppies up by the front desk, etc. The result was that the volunteer rate in the community went through the roof and they even had to turn away vounteers; donations also went through the roof. This article is a must read.
I am less sure than the author of this article that we have enough homes in this country to have every shelter be no-kill without spay and neutering programs but we could probably do so with a combination of policy. In other words, if we stopped allowing pet stores to sell pets and charged breeders a surcharge or something to disincent overbreeding and then offered everyone low cost spaying and neutering or mandated it than we could find homes for all the extra pets we have today. However, if we do not do this, it becomes a bit of a treadmill as we will constantly have an overpopulation.
The one thing we can’t figure out about this is that it seems inexcusable that people who run shelters across the country do not take the time to read about best practices from other shelters. This article for instance has some great ideas. Most of this stuff should be table stakes and frustratingly many are still poorly run today. We are forever hopeful the internet will hasten the transition to a better world for animals.