The Chicago Shift
The drama is not new to the animal welfare movement. A similar story is playing out in communities large and small across the country. While the actors and the scenery change, and a few new plot twists are thrown in for each production, the theme remains familiar.
Frustrated with the slow-but-steady improvements made by traditional approaches to animal rescue, private humane societies are stepping back from their historic animal control functions to focus on different strategies.
In response, public animal control is left feeling isolated and villainized, abandoned to do the dirty work, while the private organizations don white hats and ride in to take the public glory.
Now Chicago has stepped onto this stage.
Beginning in November, the city's venerable Anti-Cruelty Society will stop holding stray animals during the five-day period when they can be neither adopted nor euthanized. The society will continue to accept pets relinquished by their people, since these pets can be adopted immediately, but will divert the strays brought in by the public to Chicago's Animal Care and Control Department.
In exchange, the society plans to substantially increase the number of legally adoptable animals it transfers out of animal control to its facility, and to direct more resources toward its spay/neuter, feral cat, and anti-dog-fighting programs. The society also plans to construct the Bruckner Animal Rehabilitation Center, which will feature over 100 spaces for the long-term rehabilitation of animals with treatable illnesses and behavior problems, as well as kittens and puppies too young to adopt.
In addition, the society hopes that centralizing all strays in one city facility will help to improve Chicago's dismal redemption rate - with only 6 or 7 percent of stray pets currently being returned to their people.
"This is a huge change for the city of Chicago," acknowledges Gene Mueller, DVM, president of the Anti-Cruelty Society. "But it is obviously not novel in the country, because we have modeled our approach on other successful programs, where private humane societies have made progress by separating themselves from public animal control work."
"This is all about finding a way to do more to help the animals that are our responsibility as society members," he says. "The status quo needs to change. We no longer must continue to 'process' animals. We need to embrace them, and to work together to make the system work to save more lives. This is a big start."
Policy shift greeted with skepticism, concern
Unfortunately, Mueller's new approach was unveiled to the city through a downbeat article in the Chicago Tribune, with a headline announcing that strays were "no longer welcome" at the Anti-Cruelty Society.
The Tribune story asserted that society officials "acknowledge" that the policy change "just moves the problem elsewhere," and strongly suggested that more animals would have to be killed as a result of the change. The article failed to even mention the society's plans to transfer more legally adoptable animals out of the city pound, including many animals who are in need of long-term health or behavior rehabilitation.
The city's animal control department also did not greet the new plan with open arms.
"We are very worried," says Melanie Sobel, animal control's director of program services. "We are already understaffed and underfunded, so to take in another 4,000 to 5,000 animals is going to be difficult for us. We are worried that this is going to shift more of the burden to an organization that already carries too much of the burden."
Sobel says she is concerned that the new policy is going to force animal control to euthanize more animals. However, she says animal control will continue to work with the Anti-Cruelty Society on programs including Homeward Bound, the city program to transfer animals out of the city pound into other adoption facilities.
Although she is not optimistic, Sobel also holds out hope that Mueller's strategy will work as he predicts, and save more of Chicago's animals in the long run.
"I really hope it works out for the best," she says, noting that it would be wonderful if the new strategy helped to save more troubled pets, or brought new funding and resources into the Chicago humane movement.
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