Can Shelters Start Back with a New Normal? The Human Animal Support Services Model

Faced with social distancing (increasingly referred to as physical distancing) requirements, animal shelters replaced some of their routine face-to-face encounters with virtual ones. One of the most dramatic transitions was converting the pet adoption process to a curbside or totally online experience. Shelters have long posted their pet profiles online, but now adopters spend more time narrowing down the list in a process akin to a dating app. This matchmaking process has been remarkably successful, with no greater rate of adoptions that don’t work out than with traditional meet and greets.

Kristen Hassen-Auerbach, director of Pima Animal Care Center in Tucson, Arizona, of one the largest open-admission shelters in the country, observed that the COVID-19 pandemic forced an overnight transformation of animal sheltering from a focus on institutionalizing large numbers of animals in a central facility to helping keep families together and calling upon the community to open their homes to animals while permanent solutions could be identified.

“In considering what a different future for homeless pets might look like, we know that ultimately, we must de-institutionalize the work of caring for lost and temporarily homeless pets, create a distributed model of animal social services to serve pets in the neighborhoods where they live, with the ultimate goal of keeping the vast majority of pets home or very close to home. Serious thought and planning around implementing this model would have seemed insurmountable, if not impossible, prior to the emergence of COVID-19. The emergence of this disease, tragically spread through much of the world has profoundly disrupted life and the status quo for many institutions, including animal services.

Over the past five weeks, shelters have had to change their entire operating structures, at lightning speed, shelters have discarded many of the old systems, in an attempt to keep people safe. Shelters have done away with barriers to placement, punitive policies, and discontinued the use of available kennel space to house any pet for any reason. In just a few days, many shelters emptied their kennels, sent most pets to live in foster homes. In addition, they suspended all but the essential intake, embracing a new pilot model that slows or stops the constant flow of animals into the institution. They asked their communities to take collective responsibility for stray and homeless pets, holding pets in homes to avoid bringing them to the shelter. In this one moment, when so much uncertainty, sadness, and fear exists in the world, there is a glimmer of hope for what animal sheltering will be if we let go, once and for all, of the broken pound model.

The solution will require a new ethic for the care of companion animals in our communities. Learning lessons from human child welfare, education, social work, and human services, we will rebuild with the premise that animal services’ primary functions are to maintain, support, and strengthen the bonds between people and pets.”

As communities begin to open up, animal shelters have an opportunity to change their model from an institutional approach that separates animals from their people, to a case-management approach that seeks to keep families together, blending the best of One Health, animal welfare, and human social services.