Support Access to Free and Low-Cost Vet Care
Spend a day at an open-intake animal shelter in the U.S., and it probably won’t be long before a call comes in or a person and their pet walk in the door, desperate for low-cost or free veterinary care. And not just for spay or neuter services, which often (and for good reason!) gets the most attention in the animal welfare community. HASS conducted Community Values Surveys (CVS) in eight cities in the U.S. and in every city lack of access to preventative, sick, and emergency veterinary care is among the top 4 resources pet owners have...
Beyond the Save Rate: Integrating People into the Sheltering Equation
[embedded content] Having a 90% or higher save rate has become the gold standard for measuring the success or failure of an animal shelter or rescue, and it will continue to be an important metric. The problem is that the save rate focuses only on a singular point in a complex societal issue. The more the animal welfare industry learns about people and pets, the more we realize that the trouble is less about the pets in the shelter and more about the “people problems” that put them there to begin with. In this webinar, Dr. Ellen...
Data Insight on Reducing Returns: Help Adopters Let Dogs be Dogs and Cats be Cats
Highlights Behavior is a leading cause of returns, second only to owner/household preferences. Nuisance behavior is the most common type of behavior-related returns. The median time out of shelter for animals returned due to nuisance behavior is only 3 days. Data on returns suggests an opportunity to provide more behavior and training education and support for adopters. Recommendations are provided on how to support behavior needs in pet adoption journeys. What’s Happening Why are adopted pets returned? HASS pilot shelter data...
Building Bridges: The Intersection of Black Activism and Animal Welfare with HASS
Do Black people like animals? Hell yes, they do! I’ve been thinking a lot this Black History Month. I did a Google search using the first part of this article’s title. What I found ranged anywhere from the offensive to the absurd. Opinions are all over the place regarding whether an entire group of people have a connection with animals, and the worst opinions are usually propagated by non-black people, who lack no understanding of black people or black culture. I don’t speak for all black people, so the best I can do is tell...
How Supporting Self-Rehoming Helps Your Community and Your Shelter
Owner surrendered pets make up the second largest category for shelter intake, contributing over a quarter of intake cases annually in national data, and over 14% in HASS pilot shelters. They are an important population to address if shelters are to alleviate the overcrowding many have seen since the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic began to fade. The data on owner surrenders also shows a pattern that likely contributes to the extra strain on resources and space that shelters typically see in the summer months. Both in Shelter Animals Count...
Human Animal Support Services (HASS) Announces Highly-Anticipated Launch of the HASS Playbook
(AUSTIN, TX) January 23, 2024–Human Animal Support Services (HASS), an international project revolutionizing the animal welfare industry by uniting the human and animal welfare approach, announced today the launch of the HASS Playbook–a FREE comprehensive portfolio of how-to guides aligned with the HASS pathways. The HASS Playbook aims to provide animal welfare organizations with innovative programming and best practices to rise above existing sheltering system challenges and increase capacity for care within their...
Data Insight: Advocating for Court Case Animals
Confiscate, court order, cruelty, protective custody, evidence hold—these are some of the intake subtype designations used by HASS pilot shelters to notate that an animal has been impounded on suspicion that a law has been broken by a human caretaker. Sometimes referred to in the animal welfare industry as “Court Holds” or “Court Case Holds,” these are the animals that are potential victims of cruelty, neglect, animal fighting and hoarding. If you’ve worked in the animal welfare industry long enough,...
Sheltering Beyond Shelters: Housing Justice Advocacy and its Role in Animal Welfare
[embedded content] Housing is a necessity that impacts all families in the United States, and believe it or not – it also profoundly affects animal shelters. Watch this webinar on the state of housing and the history of housing justice advocacy efforts in the U.S. (and why animal welfare advocates should care). Lauren Loney, Staff Attorney & Policy Specialist for HASS, shares highlights from the HASS shelter intake reasons database, which details more than 20,000 housing-related intakes across the country. Joining Lauren is Megan...
Data Insight: The Potential Power of Intake Data to Keep Pets with Families
One of the sadder things we see in shelter intake lobbies is when someone arrives to surrender the beloved pet of a deceased family member or of a loved one unable to care for a companion. HASS believes there are other solutions to consider before a shelter surrender, especially in sensitive moments such as these, that can benefit both the family in need and a shelter’s ability to manage intake in a positive way. But how can shelters still support this need? It begins with intake data. At HASS, it’s increasingly clear there...
Paws for Celebration: A Look into Resources, Tools, and the Year Ahead From the HASS Division Leads
[embedded content] Watch this webinar that promises a celebration of the work done by the HASS community and valuable insights into tools, resources, and the work shaping the future of supporting people and pets! Hear from HASS division leads: Maggie Lynch, Senior Director of Research and Development, and Amanda Foster, Assistant Director of Implementation Analysis, share our Social Return on Investment (SROI) in Supporting Human-Animal Bonds research collection and examples of data dashboards that help HASS pilots improve their operations....
