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Opening doors to animal adoption Shelter medicine should be seen as an opportunity rather than a problem, US veterinarian Kate Hurley told delegates at the BSAVA congress earlier this month. Gill Harris reports As a veterinary student, when she expressed an interest in working in shelter medicine, Kate Hurley found little encouragement, with one professor remarking that working with shelters entailed little more than knowing the dose of euthanasia solution. ‘Look where we are now – we have a whole day on shelter medicine at BSAVA congress,’ she said. The day’s sessions on April 12 covered shelter medicine in practice, prepubescent neutering, capacity for care, squitty kitties and parvo puppies, plus interactive case discussions. Dr Hurley heads the shelter medicine programme at the University of California, Davis, having worked in almost every capacity of sheltering since 1989. She completed a shelter medicine residency and, as director of UC Davis’s Koret Shelter Medicine Program, and having worked with numerous centres, has become a recognised leader in the field. In a session entitled ‘Shelter medicine today: where are we now?’, Dr Hurley began by giving a brief history, describing the birth of dog welfare in the 19th century, which she said had initially been to deal with nuisance animals and disease control, where most animals were euthanased but at least in a relatively humane way. Shelter medicine now encompassed herd health principles as well as individual care, emphasising prevention rather than treatment of problems. Shelters ranged from primitive to fancy, she said, and although the problem of animal homelessness could seem daunting, the rewards for successful solutions were significant. Vets, she said, helped with herd health and individual patient care, improved staff and volunteer commitment, and facilitated compliance with disease recognition, and they should feel good about their role. It was about being part of a multidisciplinary team that included managers, workers, volunteers, the public, trustees and policymakers, offering challenges for practising diplomacy and communication skills. Infectious diseases, she said, were obviously a part of the job and required knowledge of vaccination, sanitation, parasite control, stress reduction, infection control, air quality and facility design. The result of this knowledge, she said, was the provision of safe shelters, increased adoption, decreased shelter intake, and humane, healthy communities supporting physical and psychological health.

In a second presentation, Dr Hurley discussed capacity for care. The Association of Shelter Veterinarians’ Guidelines for Standards of Care in Animal Shelters state: ‘Every sheltering organisation has a maximum capacity for care, and the population in their care must not exceed that level.’ Dr Hurley said that, although developed by the Farm Animal Welfare Council for livestock in an agricultural context, the Five Freedoms provided a framework that defined the minimum level of care expected for any animal in confinement. She described some barriers to meeting the Five Freedoms, which often involved shelters being overwhelmed with more animals than they could comfortably care for. In such cases, she said, animals might arrive healthy and end up sick, despite the well-intentioned efforts of those caring for them. She had found that by redefining ‘full’ to meet the standards of care that could be provided by the facilities, shelters benefited from a calculated target and the opportunity to work to predicted adoption rates. By cutting the number of animals in shelters by up to a half, one might expect to see a similar reduction in adoptions; however, the opposite had been found. These shelters found the average length of stay dropped substantially, which, she believed, was because the animals were healthier and more social. The centres became welcoming places that adopters wanted to visit, and where staff were happier with more time to do their jobs well. Eliminating unnecessary burdens to adoption were essential, she said, as people who wanted a dog or cat would turn to a more welcoming source if their application for adoption was rejected. There was evidence that owner screening tests such as extensive application forms, home visits, veterinary references, background checks, waiting periods, and visits with the family or their other pets did little more than drive adopters out of shelters. She recommended doing away with home checks and cutting unnecessary holding times for animals by putting them up for adoption immediately; she also suggested that prices and processes should be competitive with other pet sources, and endorsed pet adoption ‘promotions’ (including free rehoming) to get animals moving into new homes quickly. All the shelter required, she said,

Kate Hurley: the end goals for shelter medicine are healthy animals, a healthy population and a healthy community

was proof of identity. When asked about the number of animals returned having being adopted in this way, Dr Hurley said shelters had not experienced a higher percentage of returns, although she acknowledged that not all matches were made in heaven. However, she believed that a temporary stay in a home, even an imperfect one, would benefit the animal’s quality of life, and was better than languishing in a cage. Dr Hurley described the success of the Tree House Shelter in Chicago, which was not only a haven for sick, abandoned and abused cats but provided a number of other health programmes supporting the humananimal bond. Like many other shelters, Tree House offered low cost neutering, but its work also extended to fostering newborn orphan kittens, cats with medical conditions and elderly cats; outreach and education through schools, community centres and libraries; grief counselling; wellness clinics; and a pet food bank for low-income pet owners. It was also involved in animalassisted therapy, with cats for adoption being used as therapy cats and taken to nursing homes, to visit patients in hospitals and to women’s refuges, thereby supporting human health through interaction with animals. The reward of working in shelter medicine was to serve the most vulnerable pets in society, she said. It was not – as some seemed to think – cheap, bad vet work, but an opportunity to support the humananimal bond. It did not divert money from private practice, but rather promoted the relationship between owners and vets. doi: 10.1136/vr.h2159 April 25, 2015 | Veterinary Record | 429

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Opening doors to animal adoption

Veterinary Record 2015 176: 429

doi: 10.1136/vr.h2159 Updated information and services can be found at: http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/176/17/429

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