By William Kearns

My name is William Kearns, I have been on the frontline fighting for our shelter pets for the past 8 years. I started out trying to use social media to network one pet at a time trying to find a local rescue or an adopter to save them. This grew into working successfully with a group of advocates who fought to remove a Director who ran a turn and burn method of high kill and later discoveries of inappropriate and even brutal methods of euthanizing pets. The horror stories of Amarillo’s past could fill a book.

It was about five years ago a controversial accidental shelter pet killing occurred, a dog named Penny. It was a catalyst for me to get more involved, so animal transport became my path. KARTS or Kearns Animal Rescue Transportation Services is a 501(c)3 and has worked with APHS and many other local rescues to transport well over 3000 shelter pets from our City facility to rescues all over the country. I am a former member of the APHS Board of Directors, former member of the Amarillo AM&W Advisory Board and even spent a year as the chairman. I run a Social Media page called Amarillo Shelter Friends- ASF, which profiles shelter pets with weekly albums. You may also have heard me on two of the leading Amarillo radio stations once a week with the APHS media dog specials.

I say all this not to brag, just the opposite. I know I am just an undereducated loud mouth, but I love these shelter pets. I am not a keyboard warrior or just a guy writing about the way things ought to be. I have been on the inside of these meetings and know how things work and sadly don’t work in Amarillo. There are plenty of others who also devote their lives doing the same things many more than I ever will. We refer to our little world as the rescue community.

In general, there has always been low expectations set for our municipal animal shelter because it’s always been run the same way. The City of Amarillo has a belief system passed on since the shelter doors opened. This includes a belief that the process of killing shelter pets for space although regrettable and ugly, is necessary. This mindset reaches to the highest levels of our local government. I don’t want this to sound like a political piece, so I will refrain from using names and stick to titles.

We do have wonderful people working at the city shelter, but if killing adoptable pets is still not only accepted but expected from the powers that be, it will continue to occur. No matter how much the staff cares and even loves these pets. They have a job to do and the City directs them to kill for space. So, what have shelters all over America done and more importantly what can we do to change this? Well, I can say we have all the pieces in place to become a true no kill shelter, but we must work to get past the obstacles and old narratives keeping us from what should be the goal. We must hear an absolute commitment from the City of Amarillo to becoming a 90% facility.

What is a No Kill shelter? To be a No Kill shelter, a facility must maintain a 90% or better Live Release rate. This means at least 90% of the pets leave the facility through adoption, rescue or reclaims. The goal of a No Kill shelter is to only euthanize animals if they are too sick or dangerous to be adopted out. This is accomplished by using rescue partners both local and out of area, community volunteers for networking, adoptions from both internal and external sources and most importantly a mindset that option A through D should not include killing an adoptable pet. It DOES take a mission statement that clearly defines the shelters goal to achieving and maintaining this level of success.

There are people critical of this way of thinking because they don’t agree by simply saying we will no longer kill pets for space, it can be accomplished. But volunteers and community help are the key ingredients necessary for success. The general public can’t be asked to work with an animal hands on, walking it, playing in the yard, and take pictures/videos for rescues and social media only to see it killed suddenly for space. I have been there, I have wanted to quit so many times because of this. The faces of many pets still haunt me after this world had done its dirty deed and extinguished an innocent life. Every pet in the shelter is there because somebody let them down, its difficult to not personalize the death of a pet you are working with. But a shelter committed to doing whatever it takes will bring so many more people out to help.

The most common question always asked when we bring up No Kill is – Where are we going to put them all? We have such a large intake in our city, at times there is a line waiting out the door to surrender pets. This overwhelming factor is not lost on animal advocates. But we want to be clear, no kill does not equate to warehousing animals. The answer is not building more kennels, these pets need to be with families of their own and out of the shelter as quickly as possible. I think we can all agree on this. Adoption is the main goal, but rescue is the best tool and cooperation along with transparency from the city is a must. There are rescues in other areas that need our pets, we certainly can fill the order.

Getting past the narratives... Example: If you bring up Austin Pets Alive and their success working with the City of Austin to bring their Live Release Rate to 98% or better consistently, they go to what I call the “Red Tape Narrative”. They will show you Austin’s intake numbers, budget, population, volunteer count and usually throw in private contributions APL receives for good measure. Then point out our intake is almost as high as Amarillo’s and our budget is ridiculously low in comparison. This automatically loses political figures who fear signing on to pet saving programs may cost the city and require taxes to go up. I remember a meeting I had with the Mayor a couple of years back where I explained the “No Kill Equation” and pointed out the success of municipalities similar in size to Amarillo and how it did not increase their budgets. She listened to all I had to say (to her credit) but as soon as I was done, she looked me in the eyes and said, “what about the costs?” then started reciting the “Red Tape Narratives” using Austin as the reason we can’t instead of the example we could follow. It can be very frustrating.

Let’s put this narrative to bed. Austin started out in worse shape than Amarillo, to compare their numbers as they stand today after years of hard work to Amarillo’s is like comparing apples to oranges. Austin had a 45% LRR and before Austin Pets Alive came along they did NOT have an army of volunteers, lower intake or community support that grew their success. They had to fight hard to get the city to attempt the No Kill Equation, thankfully they had advocates that would not take no for an answer. I invite everyone to look up Ryan Clinton’s YouTube video when he addressed Austin’s City Council over No Kill 12 years ago. What he was saying back then is 100% applicable to Amarillo today.

Our shelter and most of the workers at AM&W do not want to kill pets. I see so many good people working at the shelter, they are not evil and most of us fighting for change hate they are caught in the middle. Please understand criticisms of policy and procedures are NOT meant to be attacks on the people who work at AM&W. They only have a certain number of kennels and cages, there is only so much that can be done without the support they need to help them. But when we can’t get fosters, volunteers and outside rescue help to get more involved, it's time to look at why.

There are policies in place at AM&W that can and should be changed immediately to push us off high center and back on track to 90%. Here is a sampling of changes they can make right away, without the need to change any ordinances.

The public needs to be more involved, nothing should be hidden. An EU list is currently only distributed to APHS and the responsibility becomes theirs to make it public. Nothing against APHS here, but this list should not be distributed to a limited audience. I’m as involved as anyone and I have a hard time finding the list of at-risk pets. It is also not complete; owner surrenders are often killed right after intake. Almost daily pets are suddenly listed as critical often with only hours or minutes to save. Social media is a great tool, but the audience that currently sees these posts is far too limited. The Onus should belong to the City to post this list on a regular basis. We should have adequate time to save the pets on the list with days, not hours to save them. It should be published on both AM&W’s Facebook page as well as the City of Amarillo’s all citizens should know what is happening in this tax funded facility. They should also post a follow up post with the outcomes for all the pets listed. This can be done with minimum effort by current staff.
A PASS Program- “Positive Alternatives to Shelter Surrenders” was floated as an idea back when I was on the advisory board and largely ignored. But recently I saw a local news story that indicated the new Director was looking into a managed intake with surrender councilors. This has me excited, if we can get someone in the role of working with shelter surrenders and not just someone at the front desk handing them paperwork, we can slow the intake. Sometimes all that is needed is a cooling off period for someone surrendering. If they must make an appointment, are given alternatives like pages to post for re-homing or maybe offered some options for help. This may include anything from fence mending to a bag of dog food, they might keep their pet at home instead. We make it far too easy to surrender, these animals deserve a chance. Please do not use the “Red Tape narrative” and say we can’t do this because people will simply leave them in the country. I dare say, MOST people would not do this, and we can’t drive policy based on the worst-case scenarios. Bad people will always exist, folks will dump pets and they already do. But we must write policy based on best practices, not a million “what if or they will just” statements.
Rollback ANY and all policies that hinder rescues after the 3-day stray hold from tagging a pet. Policies like holding pets for 10 days if the shelter alters them are counterproductive and are killing our relationships with some great rescues. If you must recoup the money spent doing these surgeries, charge the adoption rate to the rescue. Most rescues would be fine paying the $35 for dogs and $25 for cats if they are fully vetted. The City manager assured me the shelter just needs to be asked and they will allow certain ones to be released. This is not good enough, we can’t get rescues we lost back based on the possible exceptions. All pets off stray hold should be allowed to leave if a valid rescue tags, no exceptions.
Continue to grow the rescue program- Huge props to AM&W for starting their own rescues, things seem promising. If you follow AM&W’s page or even KARTS, you will see they are working with rescues and saving many of the hard to place pets. This is more proof that they do care and don’t want to see the negative outcomes. I have seen with my own eyes some of the top levels at AM&W going above and beyond.
Work with the rescue community- Why not have open partnerships with groups like SASD- Saving Amarillo Shelter Dogs, to promote the pets at the facility in the most need? I was shocked to speak to individuals inside AM&W that thought SASD was nothing more than a hate page, they did not understand the value of this group or see the money they raise to help our rescue partners vet these pets and transport them to safety. Without SASD our LRR would have never hit some of the high points in the past few years.

There was one month during a very high intake period that we hit a true 80% LRR and this was way before we had vets on staff, adoptions at AM&W or many other programs. It was just hard work from APHS, KARTS, volunteer transporters like Ingrid Stockwell, Kim & Kinsley Smith and Terry Hale. With groups like SASD, behind the scenes workers Radonna Hale and LeAnn Babcock working constantly to save lives. It was just before some policy changes and a new SOP (standard operating procedure) set us back. Although It’s true we may never adopt, spay or rescue our way out of this problem. We will also never legislate or kill our way out.

Amarillo, we have ALL the pieces in place. I am a firm believer in private entities being able to succeed where the often-over-burdened governmental entities struggle. PETS clinic is a solid example of this, their efforts for low-cost spay/neuter and vaccinations will have a huge impact on Amarillo as it continues its impressive mission. Dacia Anderson is a warrior for our shelter pets and she and her outstanding staff are addressing the root causes. The number of surgeries they have performed will eventually help with the crazy shelter intake numbers. Rescues like Gracie’s Project, TPPS and Lost Pets Amarillo just to name a few, are other great examples of what this community is actively doing. But communication and cross promotions with the City are still a major issue.

We need everyone to come to the table, all our ideas should be heard, and this does not mean a quarterly meeting where you get 3 minutes to speak. We need a true dialogue with feedback and better understanding of everyone’s roles and talents. We can do this; these shelter pets deserve our best efforts, and this means putting trivial differences (I include myself here) aside to speak in one voice and create a shelter we can all be proud of. We can- #SaveThemAll.