High hopes abound as CAA takes over the EBR ACC shelter

On August 1, a new management team took over the East Baton Rouge Parish Animal Control shelter for the first time in almost 25 years. Only four days earlier, the Metro Council approved an agreement with the non-profit Companion Animal Alliance (CAA) to care for the shelter animals. The enforcement of ordinances regarding animals and public safety including investigations into bite, cruelty and other cases remains the responsibility of the City-Parish agency under longtime director Hilton Cole.

After two years of negotiations, the change in shelter leadership represents a hard-fought victory for local animal welfare advocates.

“It’s really been part of an awakening that’s happened all over the country,” says CAA executive committee secretary Nancy Jo Craig, who has been involved in animal rescue since founding the Krewe of Mutts Parade 12 years ago. After decades of trying to make difference, Craig says, animal welfare advocates had begrudgingly conceded that shelters’ poor living conditions and high euthanasia rates were the justifiable result of too many unwanted animals, too few homes and too few dollars in municipal budgets.

Then, in 2007, shelter director Nathan J. Winograd published Redemption, The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America, a seminal book that refuted typical shelter excuses and documented the best practices with case studies.

Slowly, Craig says, “[communities began to realize] there is another way to treat the animals more humanely. Even though they are in a shelter, it doesn’t have to be a horrible experience.”

In the summer of 2009, Baton Rouge Area Foundation (BRAF) convened a meeting of animal welfare agencies to discuss the creation of a citywide initiative to insure that no healthy, adoptable animal is euthanized.

Even before a comprehensive No Kill agenda could be inked, BRAF’s Commercial Properties Realty Trust CEO Carolyn E. Martin, Petz Plaza owner Michael Hackett and other sponsors began immediately showcasing shelter dogs at shopping centers to make them more accessible to potential adopters. A few months later, dermatopathologist Peggy Polk, M.D., launched the kitty component, Project Purr. These groups aimed to create foster networks to remove pets from the shelter, rehabilitate and rehome them.

Speech and language therapist Paula Schoen created Friends of the Animals. The non-profit works with pets who remain in the shelter, awaiting reclamation by an owner, adoption, rescue or even euthanasia. For example, Friends raised $20,000 to purchase a freestanding veterinary clinic t-building and invested in the installation of ceiling fans, elevated dog beds with fleece covers, insulation in the open-air kennels and expensive grates for puppy kennels that keep tiny animals dry after kennel cleaning.

Since they were founded, Yelp, Purr and Friends have collectively saved an estimated 1,500 animals from certain euthanization and improved the shelter experience for animals and visitors. Still, despite the three groups’ efforts, some management problems persisted, which routinely resulted in unsanitary conditions and diseased animals. The groups and other animal advocates sought the privatization of sheltering functions as the best way to address the deficiencies. So, on the day of the Metro Council’s vote, CAA named Laura Hinze—formerly of PAWS Chicago, that city’s largest No Kill Humane organization—as the shelter’s executive director.

CAA not only has high expectations of Hinze but the community as well.

“It’s [the new shelter management] a big, wonderful incredible step for the Baton Rouge community,” says Craig. “[But], it will take the whole community to make it better for the animals here. It’s a matter of the community working with the non-profit and the City-Parish.

“People can get involved in a lot of ways,” she says. “They can give $5 or $50 to the shelter, volunteer in the kennels or foster.”

Once CAA establishes aggressive retention and support programs that give owners alternatives to surrendering their pets to the pound, Craig asserts reducing the euthanasia rate is matter of simple math and a strong reclamation and foster program.

“There are 450,000 people in East Baton Rouge Parish and over 6,000 animals are euthanized a year,” she begins. “If 1,0000 of those are redeemed and we could recruit 250 to 500 foster families [who each] take in 10 to 20 animals a year. Then, you’re not euthanizing any animals.”

Some animal lovers are hesitant to foster because they harbor the misconception that they will be required to house high volume of cast-off critters indefinitely.

However, Friends already offers holiday and weekend “furr-loughs” for families willing to take a single animal just for the weekend or even holiday break. Furthermore, Craig says, “The bottom line is: These animals are at Animal Control not because they are bad. They’re at Animal Control because a person has failed it in its life in some way. If you open your heart to an animal [as a foster or adopter], you get lifelong satisfaction when that animal is placed and they get a home for the rest of their lives.”

To see some of the spectacular pets available for fostering and adoption, click here for this week’s Creature Feature.

Click here for this week’s City Lynx.