Our dreams are big, our reach is far, but the shelter we call home still leaves a bit to be desired.
For years we have run the Santa Cruz SPCA, a private non-profit and no-kill shelter, from a small home built in the 1930s. We’ve completed full-scale international and national rescues, including the fifth largest animal airlift during hurricane Katrina/Rita, and currently adopt out an average of 150 animals a month.
Looking at our facility, you might think these accomplishments are impossible. Staff members greet visitors from the home’s original living room area, where desks are nestled between walls lined with dog crates. Small bedrooms have been converted into cat rooms and offices, the bathroom serves as a sleeping space and grooming/isolation room, and the front yard enclosure is where our adoptable dogs play during the day. The building’s age is plainly visible and although we’ve worked hard to make it a cozy and home-like environment, the lack of functional space severely limits how many animals we can save.
We’ve been as creative as possible with the space we have, filling every nook and cranny with the things needed to run a shelter. The house is tattered but not nearly as tattered as our nerves when we leave the dogs at night in a house with no sprinkler system or security. We take comfort in the fact that a tenant living behind the facility keeps an eye on things when we are away. The dream of a real shelter is always with us and recently our director, Lisa Carter, took the first steps to make that dream a reality. A plot of land has been selected and we are searching for an architect.
With the new-year coming, exciting plans for a new shelter are underway and we are hard at work raising funds. Our new shelter will provide 5,000 square feet of indoor space plus large and spacious yards, better sanitation, more state-of the art xxx, and much more space for the animals and our important community programs such as the free Friday food bank, humane education programs, free dog training class, and pet loss grief support work.
This are all massive improvements, but there is one thing we plan to bring with us from the old shelter: its home-like environment. One way we currently avoid a cold and sterile atmosphere is by allowing our dogs to be cage-free during the day, interacting with each other and potential adopters as they please. When the weather is fair, you’ll find them sunbathing or playing together outdoors. When it rains, they come inside and are assigned to different areas of the house.
In this type of environment, dogs learn valuable social skills and tend to behave naturally, which allows us to more accurately evaluate their behavior. Our high rate of adoption retention shows that this is an effective approach. The dogs sleep and eat in open-air wire crates and learn to view them as safe havens. Most of them leave the shelter completely crate trained.
Recently, we received a call from another shelter alerting us that a young Border Collie named Jerry was scheduled for euthanasia. He was traumatized by the traditional shelter environment and would not allow anyone to touch him, but we decided to give him another chance. When he arrived, Jerry was kept in a quiet room for a few days to reduce his anxiety-level. By the second day he had settled down considerably and was allowed to roam the office, seeing the other dogs only through a glass door. By day three, he was out with a mellow group basking in the sun on a doggy cot, looking as relaxed as could be. Two weeks later he trotted off with a new mommy and a new home. His story is not unique. We receive many animals deemed “unadoptable” and within days they begin to blossom, proving that they deserve to be alive.
As advantageous as this home-like setting can be, there are some serious hurdles and drawbacks. When allowing multiple animals to reside together, behavior issues do arise. Not all dogs get along with each other and the risk of altercations resulting in injury is higher than in traditional shelters where dogs are kept apart. We address these risks by strategically grouping dogs in different yards based on their temperament and behavior. From the desks inside, staff members have full view of the yard and can quickly step in as needed.
Another downfall of a free-roaming environment is the communicability of illness. We sanitize regularly, but it’s nearly impossible to completely avoid the spread of illness between animals. Every dog is vaccinated upon arrival and puppies are kept in separate areas. Animals that show signs of illness are immediately separated from others until they finish medication and are symptom-free.
Happy, well adjusted, and more adoptable animals are worth the extra work it takes to supervise, separate, and sanitize.
Fortunately, we are not the only organization that has caught on to this beneficial type of shelter environment. A good number of private and public shelters around the nation are implementing similar settings because it is obviously a very positive direction to take for the animal’s sake.
We will soon be leaving our old home behind, but we’ll take our home-like atmosphere along. From our new facility, we will be able to save even more canine lives by providing relief for California shelters experiencing animal overflow.
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