Empowering Animal Welfare: Behind the Scenes at Auburn Valley Humane Society

Auburn Valley Humane Society opens its doors for an in-depth discussion on their multifaceted programs. Join us as we navigate through veterinary assistance, temporary fostering, and the compassionate initiatives that define their role in the community. 

What You’ll Learn:

• Innovative Veterinary Initiatives: Explore how Auburn Valley Humane Society fosters an environment conducive to teaching and mentoring, allowing aspiring veterinarians to gain hands-on experience in shelter medicine.

• Evolution of Shelter Medicine: Understand the shift in veterinary practices towards shelter medicine, including certifications and conferences focused on the specific challenges and needs of animals in shelter environments.

• Pets for Life Program: Discover the scope and impact of Auburn Valley Humane Society's Pets for Life program, extending support to pet owners facing financial challenges and providing resources to keep pets in their homes.

• Temporary Fostering during Crises: Learn about the Pets in Crisis program, offering temporary foster care for pets when their owners face housing or medical crises, showcasing a commitment to keeping pets and families together.

• Public Veterinary Assistance Fund: Understand the role of the Public Veterinary Assistance Fund, which provides one-time financial assistance for veterinary care, supporting Auburn residents in need.

• Holistic Approach to Animal Welfare: Explore how Auburn Valley Humane Society goes beyond the conventional shelter role, offering not just physical shelter but also addressing the diverse needs of pets and their human companions.

• Social Media and Community Engagement: Recognize the importance of community involvement and social media in promoting adoptable pets, spreading awareness, and building a network of support for animal welfare.

• Collaborative Efforts for Humane Euthanasia: Understand the collaboration between different departments within Auburn Valley Humane Society to address cases where humane euthanasia is considered, emphasizing a thoughtful and compassionate approach to end-of-life decisions for pets.

Ideas Worth Sharing:

• "We have our public veterinary assistance fund, which existed prior to the Pets for Life program that specifically can be used to help cover veterinary care." - AVHS Staff

• "We don't want people's pets to come and sit in the shelter if they don't have to, especially if it's for a temporary foster to go back home."

  - AVHS Staff

Resources From This Episode:

Auburn Valley Humane Society Website
AVHS Facebook
AVHS Instagram
AVHS Twitter

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Read The Transcript:

Dr. Sugerman: Hi everybody. Welcome back to Vetsplanation. Today we have some very, very special guests with me. I'm super excited about this. We've talked about this a couple times. I've alluded to it but we have a couple guests from the Humane Society of Auburn here today. So I'm going to kind of introduce everybody and just have you talk about like what your job is first, if that's okay.

All right. So we'll start with the veterinarian Michelle.

Humane Society Staff: Yeah. Happy to be on. Thank you for having us. My job, I'm the lead veterinarian for the shelter. So I basically oversee all the medical care and the welfare of the animals coming in and out of the building. As well as actually sharing some responsibilities for the foster side things too.

Keeps me busy.

Dr. Sugerman: I'm sure, yes.

Humane Society Staff: In a nutshell, that's, that's my job. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Sugerman: All right. And then we have Tori here as well.

Humane Society Staff: Yeah. I'm Tori. I'm the director of special programs for the shelter. The biggest part of my job is community support. So providing financial support for people who can't afford [00:01:00] veterinary care or certain supplies.

Basically trying to keep pets out of the shelter and in their homes is the focus of my job.

Dr. Sugerman: That's amazing. Awesome. And then we have Emily here as well.

Humane Society Staff: I'm Emily. I'm the animal welfare coordinator at Auburn Valley. I wear a lot of hats so I'm in charge of the pathway planning for all of the animals in the shelter. I work very closely with Dr. Michelle and really handle all that welfare aspect and behavior aspect of the animals.

And I also , I'm in charge of intake. So I do all the owner's and their phone consultations, and work with animal control and help with foster. I do all the transferring of animals from other organizations or to other organizations. And probably some other things I'm forgetting off the top of my head.

Just try and keep us all afloat.

Dr. Sugerman: Right.

Humane Society Staff: I think that's what we're getting from that. Yeah.

Dr. Sugerman: You seem like the rock, then, is what it is.

Humane Society Staff: I don't know [00:02:00] about that. I think I just fill in like more like all the little gaps a little bit.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Nice. Perfect. All right. Well, we're just going to be talking about, just like what you guys do and, all the things you do to help out pets here because that's such an important job that you guys have. So can you kind of tell me, like, what, what do you do, Michelle, as the veterinarian here?

Do you do procedures? Like, what do you do here?

Humane Society Staff: Yeah, that's a great question. I do medical exams for all the pets that come in, as well as some of the some other staff members too.

We do surgical procedures. Spay and neuter is the most obvious one that probably people think about. But we do pretty much most soft tissue surgeries. Some eyelid surgeries, foreign body surgeries, cystotomies, taking bladder stones out. We've done that recently a couple of times. We do see some ER cases.

I say that we are not an ER facility but we have depending on resources and staff, if we feel like it's something that we can take care of we'll do our, our best to get that pet healthy again. And we [00:03:00] also do dental procedures too. We had many patients where we've had to extract lots of teeth to make that pet comfortable and ready for adoption.

And yeah, I think that is pretty much the extent of the, the surgical side the medical exams. We do have some like hospitalized patients too. We don't have a lot of capacity for that but we do have some animals in with feeding tubes and fluids and that sort of thing. But really my job is to make sure that all the animals are doing well, and if they're not, what can we do to try and get them a positive outcome?

Dr. Sugerman: That's fantastic. I think a lot of people don't really know that. You know, they just assume that there's just vaccines and spays and neuters that somebody else comes in to do.

I don't think a lot of people know that there's, in most shelters, there is some sort of veterinarian who's there to do a lot of these procedures.

Humane Society Staff: Yeah, and not all facilities will run like that.

And we are lucky here that we're able to provide that. We do have a really fantastic medical director, too. That's not with us today. Who provides or supports our need for good [00:04:00] surgical equipment. And keeping things up to date. I will add that most of that comes from funding, from our community..

So it is a community effort. And like I said, we, we really, we do have to look at what resources we have at the time, what our population is. And part of that is like Emily said, trying to keep animals in the home as much as possible. But the, the pets that truly need us and the community that, that needs us to help, we try and do our best to do that.

And some of those, like we said, some of those procedures are a little more specialized. And then sometimes we do send pets to a referral center too. Again, they're few and far between. But if we have a pet that really needs like an orthopedic procedure. Has a good outlook, good prognosis and we have the funding in place.

Then we have used that as well.

Dr. Sugerman: So it just the animals who are here because they, they're in the shelter that do this for, or is it people who come in from the public as well, so we can keep them into, in their houses.

Humane Society Staff: Yes, that's a great question too. Actually pretty recently we have [00:05:00] a sister location.

Northwest Spay and Neuter. They actually are the, mostly the public side of our resources for surgery. They do provide a spay and neuter and now dentistry, low cost dentistry, to publicly owned pets. So people that come in here that say, Hey, I need this and this. We can refer them there.

Most of my time goes into caring for the pets that are currently in the shelter or in foster care. We'd have tried to work with people if they can't get care. And that comes from many different angles. That could be a conversation with Emily to see if it's maybe training resources.

Sometimes it's not always medical, sometimes it's a behavior or Tori for different things that we can do. What we're trying to avoid is surrendering that pet into the shelter system. It's stressful here as much as we try and make it not stressful.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.

Humane Society Staff: Then sometimes, we do, if they do have to come in, we're going to try and utilize foster.

We really like pets to be in a home, especially if they need medical care and they need to recover, that's going to be the best place for them to be. Yes, we help the public. It is a community effort. But most of our public [00:06:00] services for taking a pet in to do a spay and neuter procedure is going to be over at Northwest Spay and Neuter.

Dr. Sugerman: Okay. So, Emily, how is it, like, what do you do then to try to help with, behavior aspect to kind of help them, again, before they can come into the shelter and then after, unfortunately, if they are in the shelter?

Humane Society Staff: Once in a dog, because we're really talking about dogs here, we don't really have...

cats might have behavior problems, but they're pretty easy to manage and pathway plan regardless of what their their behavior is so dogs are really what we're talking about and ...so we have had some financial support through Tori's program that if someone calls and they need some help with training. I used to work as a professional trainer. I don't currently work as a professional trainer because I work here

Dr. Sugerman: You're still still a professional trainer, just here.

Humane Society Staff: Yeah, and so but I have limited amount of time that I can provide that support to the public. So I do phone consultations with people and I can refer them to trainers and we do have limited funds so we can give people if we think [00:07:00] that getting someone partnered with a really we have a short list of qualified reward based trainers that we recommend and we can partner them up with those folks and we do have there's a program called good pup.

It's a free training service. It's free for it has with a partner shelter for a short period of time. So it has limited free training where it's all virtual. But they have like video resources and it's unlimited tech support from those trainers. And then it is a weekly fee from there on, but it's relatively affordable when you look at other training opportunities.

So that's, that's why I can offer people to try to prevent dogs from coming into the shelter. And even after they've been adopted, that would be the similar, what I, what I would do. But in the shelter, there, I, I think people have the idea that I have a behavior problem dog. I'm going to send it to the shelter and the shelter is going to fix this dog.

And unfortunately that, that isn't the case. And as much as I do really think that our shelter is a very nice shelter. And [00:08:00] I think that it is, it's a little bit of an ivory tower, like we do have a lot of staff and we have a lot of resources.

But it's still a shelter and it's still loud and it's still weird and it smells funny and it is incredibly stressful and I try to control the population of dogs in the shelter, but I have limited control. We are open intake. We mitigate our intake, but we have a contract with an animal control organization.

So we get surprised with animals all the time and I can't just stop dogs from coming in. So once a dog is in the shelter behavior modification doesn't really happen in a shelter. There's just really limited things that we can do to help a dog who has behavior issues. We have some people who have some training skills who do come in and volunteer.

We'll do office time for dogs. But a lot of training that dogs need, like for being leash reactive. Things like that, that people usually experience that that is something you [00:09:00] absolutely cannot work on in a shelter environment. And you can't, there's no consistency. that's really hard to control the environment.

So the best thing for those dogs is usually to get them in a foster home. And a lot of times, some of the behaviors that we see in the shelter that are shelter based behaviors, like some of the over arousal that we're seeing, mouthiness, like those sorts of things. If we can just get those dogs out of the building, that often resolves that problem.

So there's kind of like, there's, there's two different problems. We see there's dogs that just fundamentally like they as individuals have some kind of behavior issue, whether they just have high anxiety or they might stranger danger or reactivity, or we have these dogs that just the shelter itself is what causes them to have the behavior problems.

There's almost like two pathways of behavior that we have to deal with, but the shelter doesn't help either of them.

No, it doesn't. And I will just add on... because you do owner surrender consults. If we do have to bring a dog in and let's say it has a history of [00:10:00] anxiety. Emily is really good at getting a detailed history.

And then if we can, if there is a veterinarian available, we'll go and speak to that client and trying to get a more detailed medical history. About 80 percent of behavior cases have some medical component to them. We do try and look for areas that maybe from a medical point of view, we can make that animal more successful, more comfortable.

That can be anything from orthopedic pain. It could be that their hormones are off, right? They might a thyroid problem. They might have a skin irritability. Can think to yourself, if you've had allergies and you're itchy, you can be a little grumpy.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, if you're in pain, grumpy, right?

Humane Society Staff: Exactly. Yeah. And then someone goes to pet you where you're painful, right?

We do that too. That is not something we can provide every single day, but that is something for specific cases where we feel like we can help. And we're very clear about whether we feel like we can help. We do that as well. So that's why we work really closely together.

Dr. Sugerman: Nice. Yeah. And then, so how do we get all the funding to do this, Tori?

Humane Society Staff: Oh. [00:11:00] Well there's a few different pathways, but for one of the major programs that I oversee, which is our Pets for Life program. That's funded by the Humane Society of the United States. So they give us a really amazing, huge grant to provide that kind of support to our community. And so, so grant funding is one of the ways.

Dr. Sugerman: Real quick, can you tell me, like, with grant funding, because I don't think people know exactly, like, what goes into doing that. It's a lot of hard work, I know.

Humane Society Staff: Sure, yeah. So I don't have a ton of experience with, like, applying for grant funding. I have minimal experience on that front. I have applied for a few grants, but there is a lot of, like, writing and presenting a very specific plan.

What you would do with the funds available and kind of the outlook that you see for how you're going to support the community or whatever it is that you're going to do with those funds. And then obviously they have to go through that has to go through an approval process [00:12:00] oftentimes there's lots of follow up questions about your initial proposal and then... Hopefully you get approved and then if you are approved, oftentimes there's a planned like check ins with whoever offered you that grant funding to say, look, this is how we're doing.

This is how much we've spent. This is what we've spent it on. And kind of touching base. Oftentimes, in animal welfare those organizations that provide grant funding not only want to see the numbers, but they also want to see, you know, like personal stories and pictures of the people and pets that we've helped.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Good. Well, I don't know that... nobody knows this, but I actually got one of my dogs from here so I'm very excited that hopefully our picture then helped you with some grants. Yep.

Humane Society Staff: Yep. We definitely used that.

Dr. Sugerman: Excellent.

Humane Society Staff: Yep. We have a, and just for emotional support, we have a picture of, of her up in our front office.

Dr. Sugerman: Ah, nice.

Well, some people have heard her on the podcast because you can hear her barking sometimes or [00:13:00] scratching at, at me cause she wants up while I'm doing podcast.

So, yeah.

All right. So what are the other that get funding then?

Humane Society Staff: Yeah. I don't know. I feel like you guys can speak to these as well, but donations from the community. We don't really manage that, but we have a director of philanthropy who will kind of solicit those donations. We have obviously some, some larger donors and people who consistently give large amounts to the organization.

But then also, like, even just small community donations make a huge difference, whether or not that's financial or whether that's, like, food. Pet supplies.

Time too, so volunteers is a huge part of our organization and we have, I don't know how many hours it is, but we really do rely on volunteer time to help us walk the dogs, get food ready, whatever it is to try and help this organization, keep going and doing the work that we're doing.

But yeah, we do consider people donating their time, huge part of it as well.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. That's [00:14:00] amazing. Great. And then also, we talked about the foster system too. Like, how do you organize, like, getting fosters?

Humane Society Staff: We're looking at each other because because we're a small organization, we do wear many hats, like Emily was saying.

So right now the foster is managed by myself and some of the vet team. And when I say that team on a particular day, that's going to be two support staff and then me. So that's going to be a veterinary assistant and usually a licensed veterinary technician.

Dr. Sugerman: And these are not volunteers, these are paid people, correct?

Humane Society Staff: Yes. These are paid employees.

And then we have Emily who also helps with the foster side of things. So in terms of, you put a foster application in, it might be me that you hear from. We try and, process those as quick as we can. Communication back and forth, obviously is a time out of the day too, but it is super important for us to get animals into foster care. And we are hoping at some point that we may be able to add another person to try and help with some of [00:15:00] those tasks and foster side of things.

Dr. Sugerman: And what does it entail, like, when you are foster? What do you have to do?

Humane Society Staff: Typically, and you can jump in here as well.

You're going to put in an application and we're going to get some information from where you live, what type of house you have, what pets you have in the home really what your expectations or experiences for fostering, because many people have fostered for other organizations. And then you're going to hear from the team to say, Hey, we've onboarded you.

Do you have any questions? And then typically from there, because we are a small team, we can't usually reach out to people individually. If we have a need for foster, which we always do, we will send out a request and say, Hey, this is the pet. This is what, what we know about this pet. Are you available?

Do you have questions? And then that's usually either an email or a phone call, depending on how complex that case is. We provide all the supplies, so we don't expect people to buy food or anything like that. And we do all the medical care. So when the pet is in foster, everything comes through us, so you don't need to worry about the financial [00:16:00] aspect.

And then we do provide support, whether it's introducing that pet to a pet in the home or other people. And yeah, and then it's just a continued really checking back and forth to see how everybody's doing.

Yeah, most pets. leave with a plan to come back. Most pets are like, it's usually like a two week or four week situation.

We do have a select few dogs who are probably a little more difficult behaviorally. And so those dogs, we haven't seen as much. That are out in foster, but for the most part, everybody has a plan to come back in and just keep getting checked and most of those animals aren't available. I would say more and more now the trend is that we're seeing, we're placing more and more available animals because our population, we do have a population problem as does every shelter in the area.

So more and more we are putting available animals in foster homes. So then if that's the case, we do rely on those fosters to coordinate with us to bring those pets back for meet and greets with the public and to get information from those fosters about [00:17:00] behavior and get photos and get any kind of marketing information from them.

Just help feature those pets. So it's really important that they have the ability to communicate with us and give us that kind of information. And we we have a long term foster right now who he had two TPLO surgeries.

Yes,

and actually he's been with us for quite a while and in a foster home, a wonderful foster home, and we just had our marketing team meet with them and that we did a whole segment like a video segment featuring featuring them so it ...when they are in foster, they're not on our adoption floor and it is harder for people to see them so they tend to stay a little bit longer. So we are working on that marketing piece of that as well with the fosters. But we do continue to provide all, all supplies food, dog bed, crate, you know all that kind of stuff.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, I'm assuming all that comes from your grants and donations and stuff. Is that right?

Humane Society Staff: Yes. And actually something I forgot to mention earlier, that's another great revenue stream for us is we have a thrift store in downtown Auburn and...

Dr. Sugerman: What is it [00:18:00] called?

Humane Society Staff: AVHS thrift store. Can't miss it. Yeah. So, yeah. So, a lot of the funds from there help fuel the shelter as well as certain types of sales like sales of dog and cat food specifically fund another of the programs that I offer.

Dr. Sugerman: Nice.

Humane Society Staff: So, yeah.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, that's a, that's a lot of things you have to fund for sure.

Humane Society Staff: Yes, there's a, there's a lot of stuff that we have to, have to take care of.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Yeah.

And you were also talking about the volunteer stuff too. Is there , can anybody volunteer? Do you in an application? What, what happens there?

Humane Society Staff: Yeah. So you have to be a certain age to volunteer.

I believe it's 16 with a parent. Is that right?

You can be younger with a parent, and at 16 you can actually, be a solo. We're in dangerous territory because none of us are the volunteer coordinator [00:19:00] but I, I know for for dog walkers, a 16 year old can come walk dogs. But if you're younger, yeah, you have to have a parent with you.

And there, there is an application process and the volunteer coordinator will, will take a look at that. And then I think usually she will meet with individual people, give them a tour, tell them about all the different areas that they can volunteer in, what that entails. And then just, yeah, get them on board and, and hopefully they have a great time volunteering for us. That's the idea.

Dr. Sugerman: Do you have a lot of pre-vet people or people who want to be veterinarians that come in?

Humane Society Staff: That's a great question. Yes. And that seems to be increasing in demand, which is great. So here at the shelter, we are able at least on the vet side to try and slow down things a little bit so that we can do some teaching and mentoring. And we also do have veterinarians from the community.

That want to come in and just have some surgery time. So depending on their background, they may not get to do surgery every day. And so they can come in and they can, try out some new [00:20:00] techniques.

High volume spay and neuter can be a little bit different from what we're taught in school.

And so we, we have, we like to have that sort of space, friendly open space to come and practice your skills or do what you would like to do. And then we do have veterinary students come in and they often will come back and volunteer for us, which is wonderful. We love that.

But yeah, it's something that is increasing. I keep getting emails.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, two of our doctors are going there actually, two of my, the two doctors I'm mentoring. They're going over to Northwest Spay and Neuter and doing spays and neuters there, which they do actually get a lot of surgical time with me, but, they, but it's very different, like, I have to do, you know, very emergent surgeries, things happen very quickly even though I'm mentoring them the whole time, know, it's very different than doing high volume spay and neuters.

Humane Society Staff: Yeah. And, and that's what, hopefully Northwest can provide that obviously and like I said, we can certainly move things around a little more here to provide that as well.

Yeah. Yeah, we love it. [00:21:00] love, we love hearing from vets in the community and also budding vet students that want to come learn about animal welfare and about shelter medicine.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, which is also very different.

Humane Society Staff: It is very different. And there are programs now in vet schools for shelter medicine.

And years back it was never really a thing. And now there are certifications in it that you can take. There's conferences with hundreds of people like it. It's its own thing. And we'd love to get more people involved in the animal welfare side because ultimately that is what provides support for the community.

And again. To keep pets in the home, So

Dr. Sugerman: Did you go and do any special certification or take any special classes?

Humane Society Staff: And so I my story might be a little different. And so a bit of background. I'm from the UK. And I was in general practice and ER work at the time and they did a little bit of animal welfare early on, and then I moved over here and fell into volunteering at the shelter and just fell in love [00:22:00] with shelter medicine.

So I haven't done any certifications. I was mentored by the medical director that was here and I would recommend anybody going into animal welfare that they really get a good mentor for it.

For support. And just, somebody else's experience as well. And I have, I've done continued education.

I've done lots of that. For shelter medicine and some conferences too. So yeah, so you don't have to have, you don't have to have it. But it's something that you can definitely learn some more skills and especially if you've got the support of somebody who has that experience.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. And the people that I actually worked with in California where I went to school had worked with multiple shelters and most of them did not have any special certification either.

But they were all really excited when, like, I think it was Florida, I think was the first one that came out with some sort of shelter programs. They were all very excited about that.

Humane Society Staff: Yeah, it's great.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.

Yeah. Well, one of the other things we had talked about real quickly before this was getting your dogs licensed.

So I, even as a veterinarian, have always been under the assumption that [00:23:00] all the licensing money just goes the shelter for funding. But I've just now learned something new, that it actually doesn't go to the shelter, right? But it's still very important to get them licensed, right? So why is that?

Humane Society Staff: Yeah, this is outside of our scope. I think you've got three people here who are, who don't know much about that.

I would, I would say licensing has reunited pets with their people, right? So we're looking at our big picture, which again is always, let's get animals in homes and keep them in homes.

So licensing has helped with that and I've seen that many times. Also helps if the, they've got tags on. I am guilty of it. I do not have a tag on my dog for the license, but it does help. And then in terms of the, where the money goes, that is county. So it's a, that's to do with the county and how they, they run things.

I don't specifically know where that funding goes, honestly. But it doesn't, as far as I'm aware, it doesn't directly go into, medical funds or, or something [00:24:00] like that. Yeah, but it is, we do recommend to get pets license. It is law. So it's something that yeah, it's out of our scope, but it's, yeah, it's important to know.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, exactly. It's super important to know, because like I always assumed that all that money just went here. So, it's really good to know. Yes. Was there any other questions? I can't if there was anything else anything else on there.

Humane Society Staff: You had asked what it meant to be a no kill shelter.

Dr. Sugerman: Oh, that's right, that's right, yeah.

So, can somebody tell me, like, what does it mean to be a no kill shelter? And what is the difference between that and a regular shelter?

Humane Society Staff: So no kill is, it's a dated term. This is a term that was used, I think, more in the 90s and like early 2000s. And basically to, to be a no kill shelter, you have to be an organization that has a live release rate of greater than 90 percent of animals.

Dr. Sugerman: So what do you mean by live, live release rate?

Humane Society Staff: It means you have positive outcomes, so not euthanize it. You can't euthanize more than 10 percent of your, your population. That being said, I would say... So you're not [00:25:00] euthanizing for time or space. So once upon a time, I think people have an idea of a, of a, of a shelter from back in the day where, you were a dog, you came in and you had so many days and if your day, your time was up, then it was over for you.

And there has been a lot of progress made in animal welfare, and so shelters, most shelters right now don't function in that capacity, especially in this region. So we, we don't really see that. So most organizations are going to have a fairly high live release rate.

That being said, I, a lot of organizations aren't really comfortable with the term 'no kill' because even though like our organization, we do meet the criteria of a no kill shelter, we don't use that terminology because it's, it's grossly misleading.

And euthanasia isn't always bad. It's a it's a trigger word and so it's that's probably triggering for some people but..

Dr. Sugerman: I talk about it on, think literally every podcast.

Humane Society Staff: Okay. Yes. .

Dr. Sugerman: I think they're used to it now.

Humane Society Staff: Okay. Good. So euthanasia. It's a welfare concern, this is something that

Is an important part of animal [00:26:00] welfare and animal care and being a responsible animal parent. It's just something that a lot of people are going to have to face.

And so we do medical euthanasias, which are like the I think the more palatable ones that people can get behind, but we also do behavioral euthanasias. We consider the welfare of the animal, the mental welfare of the animal, and what resources we have to help the animal cope with whatever they're experiencing.

And we also have to consider public safety. So those are all really important things and we you know so we will choose to humanely euthanize certain individuals for behavior or for medical reasons and I don't want to say that's a bad thing or judge any organization that maybe is in a position where they don't have the capacity to care for their animals and maybe they are having to make some really hard choices. Which is really hard for staff to be in a position to do that, but sometimes that's the responsible choice. And I don't want to use words like, you are a kill shelter to to judge those organizations because [00:27:00] we're all just doing the best that we can with the resources that we have.

So most organizations now really aren't using that no kill moniker for for their organization. So a lot of people will say things like we, we're a limited intake shelters. Those are shelters that don't usually have contracts like with any kind of animal control. Open intake, you're going to have probably a higher euthanasia rate at an open intake shelter because you're taking every animal from the community.

You don't really have a choice. You don't to cherry pick those individuals. And so you are going to be seeing more dangerous animals or very ill animals

But so there are other things that people can say but we like we mitigate our intake. So we're like a heavily mitigated intake shelter, meaning I'm really careful about what animals I take in from the community as owner surrenders.

And I do try to give people resources either to keep their pets like with Tori, or I give them resources to rehome the pets themselves, because those individuals are going to be much better at rehoming a pet that they've had, that they know. They're [00:28:00] going to be better adoption counselors than we ever could be that animal.

And the animal is going to be, be much better off most likely outside of the organization and not not coming through the system.

But that's how, if you're mitigating take shelter a lot of times that... You're having a higher live release rate, but but yeah so that's how we, we do it. We have life saving aspirations.

We have a life saving policy that's posted on our website and we, we do try very hard to keep that live release rate up, but we, we don't use the words no kill.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. And there's so people who walk into the ER with me and we'll say like, is this a no kill shelter?

Right. it's just, it's such a, I think from the past, like it's so ingrained into people to like ask that particular question. I think it's great to kind of like understand what that means and how really, everybody's just here to save pets. Not that we want to have them go to the shelter and they're immediately euthanized.

Humane Society Staff: Yeah. Yeah. And I think really what we're looking at is if we need to alleviate suffering.

And we [00:29:00] can't through medical or behavioral, whatever it is, resources we have, then we're not going to leave that pet suffering. And so humane euthanasia is a, an outcome that is considered for any pet that is suffering that we, that we can't help for whatever reason that is. As a side note, cause we're talking about euthanasia, we do actually offer humane euthanasia services to the public for their pets as well.

And usually that is a chat or a consultation with one of the team to see if we can help as well. So it's not, you don't just bring your pet in and drop it off. We do have a chat with, with the owners and if humane euthanasia is the best outcome. We can, we can do that for people in the community and their pets.

Yeah. And even if humane euthanasia ends up being not the right step. There's a lot of collaboration between our departments and so I've had Michelle come to me before and be like, hey, this isn't a candidate for euthanasia, but I could see this being the next step. Can you help them with funding? They [00:30:00] can't afford the cost of care for that. And then I would follow up with those people to provide assistance however we're able.

Dr. Sugerman: And then you do more than just funding stuff, it sounds like you also do things like helping them get resources, like getting, you know, crates or things like that, right?

Humane Society Staff: Yeah, yeah. So I do a little bit of everything. Definitely the majority of what I do is helping provide financial assistance with veterinary care, but yes, there are oftentimes there is a need for other resources and other supplies.

So I get a lot of calls about pet food and yeah, crates, I don't know, very basic things which, yeah, we're happy to provide. I've ordered like dog runs for people's yards who, like, they don't have a fence or their fence is broken and their dog's been getting out a lot. Things like that.

I'm always here to, like, help people troubleshoot and if we're not able to provide something then I help direct them to another resource that may be able to do that for them. So we [00:31:00] mainly serve Auburn and a few zip codes in Tacoma around Northwest Bay Neuter Center. So that's kind of our, our main area.

Dr. Sugerman: That is a great clarification because usually you have to go to the Humane Society that's in your area, right, and which I believe you can look up online if I remember correctly.

Humane Society Staff: Yeah. And it definitely can be a little bit confusing. I, I get lots of calls from people from all over. I get calls from people way up north.

And which isn't a problem. I am happy to help kind of point people in the right direction. And yeah, but yes, our, our service area is a bit smaller, I think than most people are aware. And our funding is so limited. We can, you know, only do so much with what we have, and so, yeah. Unfortunately we do have to, say a little clarification there.

So there is a difference between our Pets for Life program, like our funding jurisdiction versus like our shelters jurisdiction. There, [00:32:00] there's a pretty big difference there because we do have Tacoma locations where we can provide funding and support.

Whereas if somebody needed help like with their pet or needed re-homing resources or things like that for their pet. Tacoma would be outside of our jurisdiction, so we only service the city of Auburn, like shelter for those pets, but we provide services for a wider range of animals with our Pets for Life program, and course, we have that, we have that sister clinic, we have our Northwest Bay Neuter Clinic, which is a resource for anyone.

You don't have to be in any jurisdiction to utilize the, the clinic. Just wanted to add that.

No, that's great to clarify that because it can get confusing for people from the public too and they're like, Oh, well Northwest helped me spay and neuter my dog. I thought that I could get X, Y, or Z from you or I thought that I could. Surrender a pet to you. Right. Yeah.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, even with us coming to the emergency we get a lot of strays that come in, even for us It's a little bit hard to know [00:33:00] like where do they go?

And what literally what street were they found to know like where, what resources they have? So yeah.

Humane Society Staff: And I would always say, you know, it never hurts to ask usually people are happy to help direct you to where where the appropriate place to go is.

Dr. Sugerman: Yes. Yeah, cuz I'm sure again you guys just want to get them help you just want to get back to their homes, right?

Yeah, are there other resources you have to like of keep animals in their homes then?

Humane Society Staff: Yes, well sort of so a lot of my programs are overlapping so the major ones...

Dr. Sugerman: Again you wear many hats, right?

Humane Society Staff: Yes, again the major one is Pets For Life and that like I said services Auburn and a few zip codes in Tacoma. We have our public veterinary assistance fund, which existed prior to the Pets for Life program that specifically can be used to help cover veterinary care and that is specifically for Auburn residents and it's a one time use program.[00:34:00]

And then we also have another program called Pets in Crisis, where if someone is facing housing crisis, medical crisis we can provide temporary foster for their pets. Again, that's under, we have to be in the right place, we have to have a foster available, because we don't want people's pets to come and sit in the shelter if they don't have to especially if it's for a temporary foster to go back home.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, and that's a great resources too because I mean we have also have a lot of people who come in and like well, this person is in the hospital and we don't know where they're gonna come back out and so they've asked us to like relinquish the pet to us we, we as an emergency cannot do that. But that's great to kind of know that you that is there that resource available.

Humane Society Staff: Yeah, and that's been something that's been really high need as of late like over the last couple of years, right?

And resources for temporary foster I know are really [00:35:00] limited. I do get a lot of calls about it. Our program, we can only offer up to 30 days in temporary foster. I know there are a few other resources, like Seattle Humane has a program. They can do 90 days. And there are a few others.

I think Kitsap Humane has a program.

It's always just good to ask, right? We want the community to see us as a resource and reach out, right?

We're not here to judge people. We're here to help and between all the different departments that we have. We can hopefully help or provide you the right, hopefully the right direction, right? There may be times where we can't do anything physically, but at least we can chat with you about what could happen

Dr. Sugerman: Right? What resources are available or what can do to help. Yeah. Absolutely. Which again, like I think is another big thing for just talking about all this.

I think some people just view this as humane societies are, are just where you drop off your pet. That it, know, but there's like so many other [00:36:00] things out there to try to help animals stay in their homes.

Humane Society Staff: And we've also had comments, with from the public that have maybe pets that have been lost and have come into the shelter that we're holding their pets. And one really important thing for everybody to know is that that is the opposite of what we want to do. When pets come in, there is a process obviously that we have to go through to get your pet back.

But we do try and do everything we can in order to make that happen. So we're not here as as the police or anything like that, we do have a contract with the county to house and take care of stray animals. But yes, please, if your pet has been lost or it is in the shelter, please come in and chat with us.

We're here to help.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, yeah. And you can always call to see if your pet here too, right?

Humane Society Staff: Yes, you can. Yeah. So if you have a description age, gender, color, breed, obviously all those things help. Yeah.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. I usually tell people too when they call in. Like when they call the ER, I tell people call multiple shelters [00:37:00] around because you have no idea how far your pet traveled or where that person said they found their pet.

I've definitely had people who have said they found it somewhere else than where they actually were, and so they went to a different shelter. You know, so, I just tell people to call multiple shelters to them.

Humane Society Staff: And if you're a husky, could be anywhere.

Dr. Sugerman: Right. So true.

Humane Society Staff: You could be in a completely different county.

Yes. If your pet's lost, call every single shelter you can and yeah, hopefully you can then be reunited.

But yeah, yeah.

Dr. Sugerman: Excellent.

Is there anything else you guys would like to add?

Anything want the public to know about or anything to kind of help you guys? How people can donate, things like that?

Humane Society Staff: I know people can donate through our website. There's like a very big donate button. That's hard to miss. So you can always donate there. Or they can donate in person at the shelter.

Or donate their time, like Michelle said.

Dr. Sugerman: Time, resources, food, like you said.

Humane Society Staff: Yes.

Dr. Sugerman: Yep.

Humane Society Staff: And also share us on social media.

Our [00:38:00] marketing team is building up our brand or, our social media platform. And so if you can share do all the things that everybody asks everyone to do. And, it really helps get those animals out there that really, don't necessarily show well in the shelter or maybe they're in foster homes but if you can share those animals, that's really, that would be really great as well.

And I think our handle for social media is @AuburnValleyHS.

I Think we're on Instagram and TikTok.

and facebook

And Facebook.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, say I know for sure Facebook, that's where my wife found Challah.

Humane Society Staff: Oh, you go.

Yeah.

Yeah. And our TikTok. It's actually a lot of the videos are actually filmed by one of our wonderful front desk staff members.

She will take videos of adoptable pets or even just pets that have come in. And it's really great to, to share those as well so can actually see some of the work that we do and actually see the dogs, their actual personalities rather than just, the photos [00:39:00] and that that sort of thing.

Dr. Sugerman: Fantastic. Anything else you wanted to add, Emily?

Humane Society Staff: I don't think so.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you guys so much for talking with me today. I really appreciate it. I think this will really help a lot of our listeners to kind of like understand what you guys do and like how much you put into trying to keep pets in homes and what you do for them.

Humane Society Staff: Yeah. Thanks for having us.

Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, absolutely. Of course. Thanks.

Humane Society Staff: Thanks.