I've been really impressed with the things Hilton Cole, Director of Animal Control here in Baton Rouge, has done lately. After the city cancelled the scheduled construction of a new (much larger) animal control shelter a few months back, he managed to get them instead to allow CAA (Companion Animal Alliance), an animal welfare group, to take over housing and adopting out the animals, confining the actions of Animal Control officers to investigating cruelty cases and other legal processes. As a result, the animals are not only fostered instead of confined to small, old-fashioned cages and runs, but are available for adoption on the weekends, making it much more likely that they will get adopted! Animal control only used to be open during regular business hours due to a shortage of employees. But people want to go adopt a pet when they are off work and their kids are out of school, obviously! So this new arrangement is a vast improvement.
Unfortunately, because people are now aware that Animal Control has become a "no kill" facility, the number of animals dropped off there has exploded! CAA had been handling housing and adoption for two months and had already gotten to the point of overflowing! So they are about to make a change in the adoption procedures.
Another organization that works with CAA (SOS Rescue) is going to begin a program for them called "Meet Your Match" this weekend.
"Meet Your Match is a program that was developed by the ASPCA and it uses behavior assessment surveys for the pets and adopter to try to make a match using a color coded system to match that adopter's lifestyle and expectation with the right pet."
That news story says that the number of animals who get returned after adoption (currently about 10%) drops significantly with the use of that Meet Your Match process, and surprisingly, the adoption rate itself increases by about 40%! People no longer adopt animals just because they're a particular color or breed. Folks check out animals they might not even have noticed otherwise if they are the "color" (type) best suited to them according to the questionnaires they were required to fill out and the testing done on the animals.
I'm so pleased that Hilton has finally gotten the city to allow Animal Control to be a "no kill" organization. Great job!
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