shelter housing plays a pivotal role in determining disease risks and spread. The quality and setup of the housing unit will impact every aspect of the animal's experience, from how well they eat and sleep to the quality of the air they breathe. In turn, these factors will in large part determine the animal's susceptibility to disease. Something as simple as separate areas for feeding/resting versus elimination can have a profound effect on animal health and well‐being.
The elements of adequate housing to support shelter animal health are described in more detail in Chapter 2 on Wellness, as well as in the ASV Guidelines for Standards of Care in Animal Shelters and other resources. For instance, a comprehensive description of cat‐housing considerations in shelters was recently published at the time of this writing. As shelter housing best practices evolve, they should be given priority and attended to meticulously. Though animal health can be preserved even in a dilapidated facility, if the housing units themselves impede an animal's ability to exhibit normal behaviors, are cramped or poorly ventilated and exacerbate noise or stress, infectious disease control will be an ongoing struggle.
1.3.4 Balancing Intake and Positive Outcomes
Right‐sizing the population, actively managing LOS and providing high‐quality housing will go a long way toward maintaining a shelter population within the organization's capacity to provide care. However, there may still be times when the incoming population exceeds the organization's ability to provide appropriate outcomes. While even the most successful shelter health program may not be sufficient to fully remedy such an imbalance – especially when substantial funding or policy barriers to life‐saving programs exist – interventions other than euthanasia are more likely to be effective and accepted, as well as being an end in themselves.
Fortunately, it is increasingly recognized that methods to regulate intake and increase live outcomes are appropriate for shelters of all types, whether publicly funded/municipal or private/non‐profit and regardless of the terminology by which they are described (e.g. “Open admission,” “Adoption guarantee” or “No‐kill”). For instance, at the time of publication of the first edition of this text, scheduling intake, in coordination with available space, was a relatively uncommon practice at municipal shelters. However, it is now more widely recognized that this represents a responsible policy and indeed a best practice to better serve both animals and the public.
This does not mean that intake is limited, only that it is coordinated with available space in order to maintain safe and humane conditions in the shelter. For instance, the intake of an animal presented on a Friday might be deferred until after an adoption event over the weekend in order to make space without resorting to euthanasia. In fact, just as public health is often best served by preventive programs designed to keep people out of hospitals, more shelters and communities are investing in safety net programs that serve many animals without requiring shelter entry at all (HSUS 2012).
On the other side of the equation, more strategies have been developed to increase live outcomes for those animals that do enter the shelter's care. For instance, high fees and restrictive policies were once widely considered imperative to protect animals from ill‐prepared or uncaring adopters. However, it is now known that animals adopted through a conversational rather than a strict, policy‐based adoption process, acquired without a fee and even received as gifts receive equal levels of care and enjoy equal levels of owner attachment (Weiss and Gramman 2009; Weiss et al. 2014). The negative consequences of high adoption fees should never be underestimated: the resultant increases in LOS, crowding and subsequent illness and even euthanasia far outweigh any adoption revenue that would have been gained. Fee‐waived events, adoption promotions and a welcoming adoption process are as integral to maintaining animal health in shelters as any medical treatment or vaccine.
Finally, as described earlier in this chapter in the case of RTF, shelter animal health as well as outcomes can be dramatically improved when adoption is not the only live pathway out. Transport programs provide an interim solution to move animals from higher to lower risk shelters, and detailed guidelines and regulations have been developed to minimize the risk associated with this practice by various states, the ASV and National Federation of Humane Societies, among others (National Federation 2019; Newbury et al. 2010). Ideally, in the longer term, shelters and communities will continue to explore and expand other avenues for increasing live outcomes. In addition to RTF, this includes increasing the number of animals reunited with their owners through non‐punitive approaches mirroring the “adopters welcome” approach that has enjoyed such success by not only encouraging members of the community to adopt shelter animals, but by also offering ongoing support (http://www.animalsheltering.org/topics/adoptions).
1.4 Conclusion
When the first edition of this book was published in 2009, the urgency of bringing a systematic and tailored approach to infectious disease control in shelters was clearly evident. The focus in the first text was on the management of individual diseases and included chapters on vector‐borne, dermatologic and gastrointestinal (GI) diseases. Those chapters have been eliminated in this edition because the information is available elsewhere and has not changed substantially. As shelter medicine and the profession of animal sheltering continue to evolve, the rewards of population‐oriented strategies have become ever‐more apparent and thus have received more attention in this second edition. By combining the traditional methods of veterinary science with a growing understanding of the unique needs and opportunities in this complex field, the holistic vision of the shelter practitioner as an essential cog in the “Production Medicine” model – where the “product” is healthier animals, shelters and communities, with more animals leaving shelters alive and fewer needing to enter the shelter at all, is closer to being realized.
References
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