How many animal shelters are in the US?

American animal shelter. Utopian image. 😊💕😉

As of 2024, there are over 3,900 animal shelters in the United States. These shelters play a crucial role in caring for and rehoming companion animals. Let’s delve into some additional statistics related to animal shelters:

Annual Intake: 

Approximately 6.3 million companion animals enter U.S. shelters each year.
These animals include both cats and dogs.

Adoptions: 

Around 4.1 million shelter animals find loving homes through adoptions annually.
It’s heart-warming to know that many people choose to adopt and provide forever homes to these animals.

Stray Animals Reunited: 

Of the animals that enter shelters, approximately 810,000 stray animals are successfully returned to their owners.

Reuniting lost pets with their families is a significant achievement for shelters.

Remember, these shelters work tirelessly to provide care, love, and second chances to our furry friends! 🐾❤️.

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Remember to that the US is indebted to Nathan Winograd the founder of the No-Kill movement and North America's greatest advocate for shelter animals.

Here is some information about Nathan:

Nathan Winograd is an attorney, journalist, and passionate animal advocate. He serves a the Executive Director of The No Kill Advocacy Center. Let’s explore more about his impactful work:

No Kill Advocacy: 

Nathan Winograd has been a driving force in creating No Kill communities across the United States for nearly two decades. Under his leadership, Tompkins County, New York, became the first No Kill community in the U.S. This achievement marked a significant milestone in animal welfare.

Background and Expertise: 

Nathan is a graduate of Stanford Law School and has a background as a criminal prosecutor and corporate attorney. His experience extends to various leadership positions, including director of operations for animal shelters.

Legislation and Litigation: 

Nathan Winograd has authored animal protection legislation at federal, state, and local levels. Notable examples include: The first American law making it illegal to kill community cats unless they are irremediably suffering. A law making it illegal to kill animals if qualified rescue groups are willing to save them (saving over two million animals to date). The Delaware Companion Animal Protection Act, credited with reducing state-wide killing by over 90%.

Investigative Journalism: 

His investigative journalism has exposed corruption within prominent animal protection organizations, including PETA, the Humane Society of the United States, and the ASPCA. Nathan’s tenacity has led to legal victories, including extending reporter shield privileges to non-traditional media.

Vegan Advocacy: 

Nathan and his wife Jennifer have co-authored two vegan cookbooks: “All American Vegan: Veganism for the Rest of Us” and “All American Vegan Candy Cookbook”. These books showcase delicious and humane plant-based recipes for America’s favourite foods and confections. Nathan Winograd’s unwavering commitment to animal welfare continues to make a positive impact on the lives of countless animals. 🐾❤️

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Why does the no-kill cat shelter policy mean that 10% of the cats are killed?

You may have wondered why the much vaunted no-kill animal shelter and cat shelter policy results in 10% of the cats being killed. Surely "no-kill" means no killing whatsoever? I'm afraid not. 

What it does mean is that there is no killing i.e. euthanasia of healthy cats but exceptions are made for cats with severe medical conditions that cannot be treated causing significant pain and poor quality of life and cats with severe behavioural issues that pose a danger to life to humans or other animals and where rehabilitation efforts are unlikely to succeed.

These cats are euthanised. The term euthanasia would genuinely apply to a chronically ill and terminally ill cat but under any other circumstances it wouldn't really apply. We have to use the word "kill" under circumstances where the cat is euthanised because of behavioural issues.

There is a muddying of the waters in terms of the language used at cat shelters. However, the no-kill movement - which is the brainchild, as I understand it, of Nathan Winograd, American's greatest advocate of saving the lives of shelter animals in America - has reduced unnecessary euthanasia.

The no-kill philosophy focuses on saving all healthy and treatable animals and with that in mind it can dramatically reduce the number of animals euthanised due to the limits of space at shelter facilities and time limits.

The concept is there to focus the minds of managers and workers to use their best possible practices and imagination to find ways to save lives. And there's been a quite dramatic - I think it's fair to say - increase in the number of no-kill shelters in America over the past decade.

The euthanasia rate has dramatically dropped in America over the past decade too. It's still pretty high but much better. There is still work to do.

Some people decry the no-kill movement. I've read quite a lot about PETA but once again there is misleading language used against them in my view. But they seem to believe that killing feral cats is preferable to looking after them and putting them back on the street under TNR programs. 

I think that is a misleading idea about PETA. But ironically Nathan Winograd is in a running battle with PETA about saving cats and killing cats. Nathan Winograd hates PETA as he thinks that this very high-profile animal charity kills too many cats. Either they promote the idea of killing feral cats or they kill themselves and he consistently says this. It's a shame because both of great animal advocates. We don't want people on the same side fighting each other over policy decisions.

I'm told that in 2017 a milestone was reached when for the first time the total number of dogs and cats euthanised in US shelters fell below 1 million. The actual number is estimated at 800,000. I'm also told that it is difficult to obtain accurate data on the number of cats killed 10 years ago compared to the number of cats killed today at shelters. There's been a reduction though so no-kill has worked to a good extent but more work needs to be done.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

America's animal shelters don't care enough about saving lives (according to a celebrated animal shelter advocate)

The voice of America's displaced pets and the conscience of the animal sheltering industry, Nathan Winograd, claims that "uncaring and corruption are endemic to the [animal shelter] industry [in the US]"

A New York animal control officer was arrested for stealing Hope, a family’s 9-year-old dog. After Hope was found by a neighbor and taken to the local shelter, the officer sold her to people in Ohio. When Hope’s real family came forward, the officer told them that she had died. Hope is now back with her family. While animal control insiders want to pretend that the officer is a rare bad apple, the tragic fact is that uncaring and corruption are endemic to the industry. And though the facts of this case may be somewhat unique, uncaring and corruption aren’t. - Nathan Winograd

Nathan Winograd was motivated to claim that America's animal shelters don't care enough about saving lives and that there is corruption at an unacceptable level within the animal shelter industry, by a story currently on news media which reports that an animal control officer, Casterline, 51, stole a Yorkshire terrier whose name is Hope and then sold the dog to an unsuspecting purchaser.

Hope had been lost in Corning, California, and then found and taken to a local SPCA (Chemung County) from where Casterline picked up the dog and took her home and then eventually sold her to a family in Ohio.

I believe that this is little Hope. So pleased that she/he is back with their true owner. Image: Nathan Winograd's email.

The original owners of the dog became suspicious and telephoned the local police who investigated. Through a telephone number they discovered the family in Ohio who had bought Hope. This family released the dog which must have been difficult to the police.

The true owner of Hope had become very distressed because Casterline had told them that their dog had died.

Hope was then reunited with the original owner while Casterline was arrested for various misdemeanours including theft and he will be tried in the criminal courts. He has resigned his job.

CROSS-POST:  US animal shelter ‘industry’ accused of endemic uncaring attitude and corruption.

The big issue here is perhaps not the story of Hope which ended well, but the statement by Nathan Winograd. He clearly has a very negative viewpoint of America's animal shelters.

And I think it comes from the fact that he is a world expert in no-kill animal shelters and he insists upon high standards and the employment of various methods to ensure that the maximum number of shelter animals are rehomed and their lives saved.

He criticises many animal shelters for failing to use efficient and widespread methods to save lives. He accuses them of being lazy and hiding behind rather feeble excuses such as there are too many dogs and cats coming into the shelter and not enough adopters to take them off their hands. Often this isn't the case. It's just an excuse. An excuse to wriggle out of responsibilities. That would be the argument of Mr Winograd.

Another excuse is that the animal is unadoptable because of their behaviour. But shelters create bad behaviour in animals because they are relatively inhospitable places with strange noises and lots of commotion. A shy animal will become reclusive and difficult. They will be deemed unadoptable. Or the animal might become aggressive when approached because they become defensive thanks to the environment in which they are temporarily incarcerated.

This, too, will allow the shelters to kill the animal being deemed unadoptable. This applies to both dogs and cats. For example, in New York City shelter the authorities deemed it acceptable to kill animals that were 'mentally stressed'. They decided it was better to kill them than to take them out of the shelter and place them with a foster carer where they wouldn't be mentally stressed. It is that kind of thing I'm talking about.

Nathan Winograd should know because he is an expert as stated.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

2023 Carole Baskin and Nathan Winograd are America's two top animal advocates

I am going to have the temerity to name America's two greatest animal welfare advocates as at 2023. They are Carole Baskin and Nathan Winograd. And neatly, we can divide their efforts into two camps. 

Carole Baskin is an animal advocate for cats, specifically the big cats, wild cats in general and even wildcat hybrids (she hates the idea of creating wildcat hybrids). 

And on the domestic cat side, Nathan Winograd, has been and continues to be a tireless campaigner for the rights of rescue animals in America's shelters and pounds.

Baskin and Winograd. Image: MikeB based in images in the public domain.

Carole Baskin

You might know that she campaigned relentlessly for an improvement in welfare of big cats. There were far too many at private zoos all across America. America was and still is - until the Big Public Safety Act fully takes effect - the nation where there were the greatest number of big cat 'pets' in private zoos.

Join us in celebrating the passage of the Big Cat Public Safety Act which banned contact with big cats and their cubs, and phases out private ownership of big cats! We have campaigned for this change since the 90s and on Dec. 20, 2022 it was signed into law!  This is the first step to saving wild cats, in the wild, where they belong. - Carole Baskin on BCR at May 2023.

There are an estimated 20,000 big cats kept in private ownership in the US. Carole Baskin's rescue center in Florida, Big Cat Rescue (BCR), picked up some of the pieces of bad big cat ownership. 

With her job effectively done she is now selling BCR and finding alternative outlets for her passion to improve animal welfare. The substantial money that she will raise will be used in projects I understand.

Carole Baskin, almost single-handedly, instigated and forced through the enactment of the Big Cat Safety Act in the UK. It is she who has saved the abuse of so many cubs from roadside tiger and lion cub petting sessions. 

And the abuse that followed with the adults becoming commercially useless beyond a certain age so what happened to them? They were probably euthanised.

The horrible exploitation of big cubs has ended. Although Carole Baskin is the prime mover and shaker in ending the private ownership of big cats in America, we have to thank indirectly a man who is currently in jail for conspiracy to murder Carole Baskin. His name is Joe Exotic. He was the biggest private zoo owner in America at one time.

He hates Carole Baskin because she was so strongly against his kind of operation. His presence motivated her. He hated her so much that he conspired to kill her. And he was found out and was successfully prosecuted for that conspiracy and animal abuse offences.

Carole Baskin triumphed over the private zoo brigade. What a woman.

Big Cat Safety Act

Registration: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of America announced on 18 April 2023 that individuals who own big cats which includes cougars and hybrids of the species must register them with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service by the end of the day on June 18, 2023. That is in order to comply with the requirements of that act.

Current owners can keep their animals provided they are registered as per the act and provided that they abide by state and federal regulations. But once the animal's life has ended, that person will no longer be able to own and/or possess a big cat.

The act allows existing owners to continue with ownership until their zoo inventory no longer exists because of the end of the lifespans of these animals.  Of course, it does not apply to bona fide zoos and other authorized establishments.  It applies to John Doe, the individual who fancies possessing a big cat.

Nathan Winograd

He is a great man who has fought tirelessly for a no-kill policy in all of America's animal shelters and pounds. He believes that it is possible for an animal shelter to greatly improve their rehoming of animals in their charge. 

He believes that it is possible to not euthanise any or hardly any animals at shelters (90% save rate is the target) provided the administrators use all means possible to both prevent taking in rescue animals and facilitate the adoption of those animals.

By preventing intake, I don't mean physically preventing it. I mean that they should do all they can to improve cat and dog ownership in the area where they operate. There are two sides to the cat and dog rescue situation. 

There are those that abandon their cats and dogs when they don't need to or they shouldn't and there are those that don't adopt those cats and dogs because they're rather buy a purebred cat or not adopt.

It's down to the people involved in organising animal shelters to tackle both those challenges in my view. In the UK, for instance, there has been a surge in adoptions i.e. purchases of purebred cats over rescue cats during 2022. According to Cats Protection, 38% of people adopted cats during 2022 adopted a purebred cat.

The point is this though that Nathan Winograd continues through his newsletters, speeches and website to improve the running of animal shelters in America to save lives.

PETA

There is one aspect of Mr Winograd's argument that I disagree with, however. He hates PETA and believes that it is an organisation which kills cats unnecessarily. Winograd and PETA have entirely different point of view on some important aspects of animal rescue. I think they should work together by finding common ground.

However, both PETA and Winograd have very strong views which means that it is unlikely they will be able to find common ground.

Some American communities place over 95% of rescue animals in new homes

In an email to me, Nathan Winograd, "The voice of America's displaced pets and the conscience of the animal sheltering industry" tells me that in a number of American communities they place over 95%, and as high as 99%, of rescue animals in their care at shelters. He says that they are following his no-kill policies and he has consistently said that it is possible to genuinely place far more animals than is currently the case in many shelters through good management and a progressive and imaginative approach to saving lives through increasing adoptions. This is my interpretation.

Shelter cats needing a quality home. Image in public domain.

He quotes three successful communities:

• Gunnison County, CO, reported a 99% placement rate for dogs, 98% for cats, and 100% for other small animals.

• Flat Rock, MI, reported a 97% placement rate for dogs and 99% for cats.

• Shiawassee County, MI, reported a 97% placement rate for dogs, 99% for cats, and 100% for other animals

He says that these communities prove that animals are not dying in pounds because there are too many rescue animals or too few homes in which to place them, or that people don't want the animals. He said that they are dying in many pounds because people are killing them. What he is saying is that when the focus is on euthanasia of shelter animals (a euphemism for killing) rather than on how to rehome them and a commitment to that second objective, you end up with a higher death rate.

He calls it his "No Kill Equation". He has an enemy in PETA. PETA claim that his thoughts are misplaced. PETA prefer to euthanise animal shelters as a means of dealing with them if there are too many as it is the humane way under tough circumstances. 

And they say that there are too many cats and too many killings at shelters because of bad cat management i.e. through informal breeding and carelessness et cetera. The problem is with people and their ownership of cats not with the volunteers and workers at shelters who are doing sterling work.

And they also say that if a shelter tries to implement Nathan Winograd's 'No Kill Equation' they can end up with big issues and problems. One problem that they seem to point out is that sometime shelters, in an effort to stop euthanising animals, stop taking them in and push the problem back on the general public which can lead to animal cruelty outside of the shelter. They provide examples of that. For example:

"A Virginia woman who was convicted of cruelty to animals in the shooting deaths of six puppies testified that “she was angry and frustrated that even though she tried to do the right thing, she wasn’t able to find a place for the animals.” She reportedly contacted two shelters, but one was full and the other wouldn’t take the puppies because they belonged to her son. The woman said that she then shot them to death and disposed of their bodies."

If that is true then the shelters it seems to me are not implementing Nathan Winograd's policies. I don't think his policies suggest that shelters should reject incoming cats and dogs. I think what he wants people to do is to use more progressive methods to rehome them and focus on that.

Arguably, it is PETA who have misplaced thoughts in this regard. It is possible - and I'm not sure - that PETA don't fully understand Nathan Winograd's no-kill policies. And that may be because he doesn't explain them clearly enough. And perhaps his policies demand a rigour and commitment in shelter workers which is perhaps beyond their capabilities.

Although I am an admirer of Nathan Winograd, I think one problem that he has is communicating through the written word. He is a lawyer and therefore a great legal communicator but his language is tangled up in complexity. I don't think he writes in a clear and concise way which would help to get his message across to the general public at large i.e. to everybody. This I feel is a failing and something which holds him back.