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How to Reduce Shelter Intake: What One Advocate Is Building · The Animal Advocate

• 0:00
  We talk a lot on this show about upstream and downstream
• 0:03
  solutions to animal welfare problems. Lots of times
• 0:07
  it seems like too much of animal welfare works downstream,
• 0:11
  dealing with the fact that shelters and rescues are overrun with
• 0:15
  animals in need. Roughly 5.8 million
• 0:18
  dogs and cats entered U.S. shelters last year,
• 0:22
  and that number has barely moved in 5 years.
• 0:26
  So I spent a lot of time thinking about upstream solutions.
• 0:30
  How do we stop shelters from filling in the first place? Fewer
• 0:34
  births, more resources to catch and solve
• 0:37
  problems before that animal is standing in the lobby and the
• 0:41
  shelter staff are trying to find an open kennel. My
• 0:45
  guest today sees the challenge the same way. She looked at what
• 0:49
  was happening in her community And she's building the infrastructure
• 0:53
  to change it. Welcome to The Animal Advocate,
• 0:57
  where we arm animal lovers with the information and inspiration you
• 1:01
  need to become effective advocates. I'm your host,
• 1:05
  Penny Ellison, and I've taught animal law and advocacy at the University of
• 1:08
  Pennsylvania since 2006. If you've
• 1:12
  ever thought, someone should do something about that, I'm
• 1:16
  here to guide you on your journey to being that someone. You can find us
• 1:19
  on the web at animaladvocate.org.
• 1:25
  And that's where you'll find show notes and resources, and you can
• 1:29
  send us your comments on episodes and ideas for topics you'd like
• 1:32
  to hear on future shows. So, on to today's
• 1:36
  topic.
• 1:47
  BJ Adkins is the founder of Animals Angels.
• 1:50
  Working across a 7-county area around Birmingham, Alabama.
• 1:55
  She came to this work after years as a foster, watching
• 1:58
  animals come into shelters and rescues for the same reasons over
• 2:02
  and over again, whether it was a temporary financial setback,
• 2:07
  a hospital stay with nobody to watch the pet, a move to a
• 2:11
  place that wouldn't take animals, or a pet deposit that the
• 2:14
  owner couldn't afford. She's also a disabled
• 2:18
  veteran, and she's the author of a book called The Shift
• 2:22
  to Prevention. What she's building in Alabama is a
• 2:25
  network, starting with a pet help desk that answers
• 2:29
  calls before the pet owners are standing in a shelter.
• 2:34
  She's working on subsidized spay/neuter with transportation,
• 2:38
  providing 90 days of support
• 2:40
  post-adoption when returns are most likely, and a
• 2:44
  funding argument aimed at city councils and county commissions
• 2:48
  instead of a grant cycle. We get into all of it,
• 2:52
  including why she opposes mandatory spay/neuter laws and the
• 2:56
  one question she'd have you ask your own local government.
• 3:00
  Here's BJ Adkins. Welcome, BJ. I'm so
• 3:04
  happy to have you on the Animal Advocate podcast. I'm glad to be here.
• 3:07
  Thank you, Penny. So you came to animal
• 3:11
  welfare after years of fostering. So, so tell me about the
• 3:15
  animals or the families that you saw during those years that
• 3:19
  made you decide you wanted to build something of your own.
• 3:23
  Well, I would see families that were giving up their
• 3:27
  animals because they got into a temporary financial
• 3:30
  situation or They
• 3:34
  would go into the hospital and didn't have anybody to watch their pet,
• 3:38
  you know, or if they were, you know, especially the elderly, if
• 3:42
  they had to go in, a lot of times they didn't have anybody
• 3:46
  to watch their pet, so they have to give it up to
• 3:49
  the shelter or rescue.
• 3:55
  There was other ones that they moved and they— the
• 3:58
  new place didn't accept pets, or if they couldn't afford the pet
• 4:02
  deposit. You know, I ran into that a lot.
• 4:06
  So you looked at a lot of the reasons that dogs had been surrendered
• 4:09
  and were in foster care at that point? Well, not into foster care.
• 4:14
  First, of course, they went into the, you know, they were going into the shelters.
• 4:18
  And then the shelters would then look for
• 4:22
  fosters for, you know, the ones that were coming in.
• 4:26
  And I assume the shelters stayed full all the time? Pretty much.
• 4:31
  You know, because when people knew that I fostered, they would
• 4:35
  ask me, you know, like, well, you know, I
• 4:38
  found these mama cat and kittens, you know,
• 4:42
  in my garage. Where can I take them? And I'd be like, well, I
• 4:46
  don't know where you can take them because they're all full, especially during kitten
• 4:49
  season. And you decided, I'm not going to be
• 4:53
  a rescue. I'm going to be something else. And you start your book
• 4:57
  with— we should talk about your book, which is called the
• 5:01
  shift to prevention. Yes. And it actually starts with my
• 5:04
  analogy of animal welfare and
• 5:08
  shelters and rescues, where they're
• 5:12
  all in a bathroom huddled around a bathtub
• 5:15
  that is just overflowing, and
• 5:19
  they're running around with mops and buckets and trying to
• 5:23
  get the water up, and I
• 5:27
  just kind of looked at that and decided that I didn't want to be one
• 5:30
  of the ones that was running around with a mop or a bucket,
• 5:34
  that I wanted to walk over and start turning the faucet off
• 5:38
  because that made absolute total sense to me.
• 5:42
  And turning the faucet off is, is moving upstream to prevention,
• 5:46
  preventing all those reasons for surrender that you saw when you were fostering.
• 5:51
  Correct. Right. And prevention, you know, when I speak of prevention,
• 5:55
  it's not one program and it's not one organization.
• 5:59
  I mean, there are some programs that are primary.
• 6:03
  That spay and neuter is one of the primary ones.
• 6:08
  Let's draw that picture for people, because I think you have primary, secondary,
• 6:12
  tertiary, you have different levels of
• 6:14
  prevention and they're going to hit on different surrender
• 6:18
  reasons and they're going to require different kinds of
• 6:22
  resources fed into them. You know, some of them need a fair
• 6:26
  amount of money. Some of them just need a policy change. So can you
• 6:30
  walk me through what your surrender prevention framework
• 6:33
  looks like? Well, the first
• 6:37
  one that we have is actually the pet help desk, which we're working
• 6:41
  on implementing. Through our research,
• 6:44
  we've actually found that other organizations that have
• 6:48
  implemented a like a pet help desk,
• 6:51
  have reduced their shelter intakes by anywhere from 30 to 50%. So
• 6:55
  that's one of the
• 6:58
  primary. The second, of course, is
• 7:02
  spay and neuter. Which requires
• 7:06
  veterinarians and vet techs and money, right? Correct.
• 7:10
  Pet help desk, on average, it costs about $15
• 7:13
  per
• 7:19
  That's an interesting question because you're saying it averages at $15, which sounds
• 7:23
  like, you know, it should be easy to prevent a lot
• 7:27
  of surrenders. But data is one of those things in animal
• 7:31
  welfare generally, I think, that is hard to come by and not maybe as
• 7:34
  concrete as some people pretend it to be. For instance,
• 7:38
  you know, housing is a big reason for surrender rates. A breed restriction, a
• 7:42
  size restriction, just the inability to get affordable housing
• 7:46
  that will allow you to have your pet. And that's not a problem that's going
• 7:49
  to be solved with under $100. So what
• 7:53
  kind of problems are you seeing that can be solved that inexpensively?
• 7:57
  Well, with the Pet Help Desk, we've got people that, for
• 8:01
  example, that they call because they're having
• 8:04
  issues with their cat. The cat won't use the litter box.
• 8:09
  So advice type, behavior advice. And that's just like
• 8:13
  a matter of like, okay, well, let's first, let's move the litter box.
• 8:18
  That doesn't cost anything. But then we've got
• 8:21
  somebody that'll call in and then they need
• 8:24
  help with pet food. For example,
• 8:28
  I actually had a call at 3 in the morning.
• 8:32
  I happened to be awake. And she had been outta work for
• 8:36
  like 6 months and had gotten to the point where her cats were
• 8:40
  trying to open the refrigerator, she said, to try to find food.
• 8:45
  And that was 3 o'clock in the morning. By 10 o'clock we had pet food.
• 8:49
  So things, things like behavior advice then, and support with
• 8:53
  food, maybe support with basic wellness or vaccine
• 8:57
  services. I think those are all doable. Have you
• 9:00
  run into housing as a barrier and have you figured out anything
• 9:04
  you can do about that? Well, housing,
• 9:09
  what we run into there is people can't find
• 9:13
  housing. You know, they run into like breed restrictions or
• 9:16
  weight restrictions when they're looking. So for
• 9:20
  that, we have put together a pet resume.
• 9:24
  So instead of just going and saying, well, my pet, you know,
• 9:28
  Is great. They don't do any damage. They don't bark.
• 9:32
  Um, they can go in with a pet resume,
• 9:37
  which of course shows that their vaccines are up to date,
• 9:41
  whether they're spayed or neutered. Also, if there's a
• 9:45
  prior rental history, they can have references from
• 9:49
  prior landlords. Yeah, they lived here for 2 years and the dog
• 9:52
  never barked and didn't do any damage.
• 9:57
  So then instead of purely being based on breed or
• 10:01
  size, they can look at the
• 10:04
  dog on an individual level. That's what we want. I wanted
• 10:08
  to stay on the help desk issue for a minute because it is so important,
• 10:11
  both, you know, that those services are provided and funded
• 10:15
  and how they're provided, because I don't know, in your experience, have you
• 10:19
  found that It's important to reach people before
• 10:23
  they end up at the shelter? It's
• 10:26
  extremely important to reach them before they end up at the shelter. The
• 10:30
  majority of the time, by the time somebody
• 10:34
  is standing at the shelter door or the shelter
• 10:37
  counter, they have already looked for resources.
• 10:41
  They have already looked for support. They've
• 10:45
  posted on Facebook, you know, I can't afford to vet bill,
• 10:49
  or I can't figure out why my cat won't use the litter box.
• 10:54
  And so they've already gone through, you know, the emotional
• 10:57
  turmoil and everything of trying to decide whether
• 11:01
  or not to surrender their pet, because the term owner
• 11:04
  surrender in and of itself connotates
• 11:08
  failure. Hmm. I never thought of it that way. I
• 11:12
  do agree with you that it's A very different
• 11:15
  conversation if you're standing in the shelter lobby trying
• 11:19
  to offer resources because they've crossed that bridge. And I always say, you know,
• 11:23
  they've told their children, they've used it, like they've crossed that emotional bridge.
• 11:27
  Yeah, they've already been putting out there and looking for support and
• 11:31
  everything. So they've gone through the emotional turmoil and everything. And
• 11:34
  they finally, you know, made the decision. And
• 11:38
  at that point, if you offer resources, you're like, oh my, you know, they're like,
• 11:42
  oh my gosh, well, if these resources don't work, I have to go through all
• 11:44
  this again. And they're not willing to go through all that again. So
• 11:48
  your organization works on providing these help desk services
• 11:52
  in your— is it 7-county area, right? Yes,
• 11:56
  in the Birmingham metro area of Alabama. Yes.
• 12:00
  And we touched on, on that same tier of prevention,
• 12:03
  spay/neuter services. What do spay/neuter services look like in your
• 12:07
  area? Are there any subsidized spay/neuters? Is there any
• 12:11
  transportation provided? There are some
• 12:14
  subsidized spay/neuter if you're on government
• 12:18
  assistance, like if you're on disability,
• 12:21
  WIC, SBT or EBT or
• 12:25
  SNAP, depending on what it's called in your particular area.
• 12:30
  Then you can get a voucher and get
• 12:34
  a subsidized spay/neuter. There's nothing that
• 12:38
  Provides transportation.
• 12:42
  And we're looking to put together
• 12:46
  what we call high-impact clinics, which is similar
• 12:50
  to what they did in Austin with the Pet Care Connect program.
• 12:54
  They went and they took the clinics out into
• 12:57
  the areas where they were needed. They worked with the local
• 13:01
  organizations like the local churches and everything. To, of course, help
• 13:05
  them get into the area. And then, of course,
• 13:08
  the volunteers from the churches helped them. They went and knocked on
• 13:12
  doors. Then once they got, you know, they
• 13:16
  did the free vaccines and the free microchipping and they sign up for
• 13:19
  spay/neuter. And on the day of the
• 13:23
  spay/neuter appointments, they provided transportation. So they went
• 13:27
  and picked up the animals, took them to the spay/neuter, and
• 13:30
  then at a predesignated time and place, They
• 13:34
  took the animals back so that the owners could come pick them up.
• 13:39
  Making it truly accessible. Yeah. Making it truly
• 13:43
  accessible to the people that were the ones that really needed it.
• 13:47
  Now, you've come out against mandatory
• 13:51
  spay/neuter laws. There are a lot of people on social media
• 13:55
  that say we should just mandate all dogs and
• 13:59
  cats be spayed or neutered. Why are you against it?
• 14:04
  For one thing, the people that are the ones
• 14:08
  that most need to have their pets spayed and neutered, they can't
• 14:12
  afford it to begin with. You put on spay and neuter,
• 14:16
  and then they're like, okay, well, I still can't afford to get the spay and
• 14:20
  neuter, even though you've told me that legally I have to
• 14:24
  and you're going to give me a fine. If
• 14:28
  I don't get my animal spayed or neutered. So then what
• 14:32
  happens is shelter intakes increase
• 14:35
  because more of them start surrendering. And if they're
• 14:39
  not surrendering, they're dumping them in a dog
• 14:43
  park, they're leaving them in a box outside the shelter, or they're
• 14:47
  dumping them out on a back road. So shelter intakes and
• 14:52
  Stray populations increase when you
• 14:56
  implement mandatory spay/neuter.
• 15:00
  I agree that the solution isn't a legal mandate unless that legal
• 15:04
  mandate also comes with the resources that you need to make
• 15:08
  it, as you say, truly accessible to the people who most need it.
• 15:12
  We talked about help desk and spay/neuter. What are your other
• 15:16
  tiers or levers of prevention? Well, we also have one
• 15:20
  that's called Adoption Boost. And what that
• 15:24
  is, is no matter where the animal is
• 15:27
  adopted from, whether it's a shelter or rescue, we
• 15:31
  provide 90 days of support from the day that you
• 15:35
  bring it home. And part of that is
• 15:40
  a phone call at 7 days, at 30 days, at 60 days, and 90
• 15:44
  days. Wow. But she would call and say, you know, how is it going?
• 15:49
  I mean, there are programs where a service
• 15:53
  automatically sends out emails, but a
• 15:56
  lot of people don't have emails, and the ones that
• 16:00
  really need them may not even have internet. But what we do is
• 16:04
  just put that human relationship back into it.
• 16:09
  Absolutely. I mean, that's another service that, you know, sometimes at sheltering it's hard to
• 16:13
  to fund that kind of after-adoption
• 16:16
  follow-up. But I think it's something that if you have
• 16:20
  experienced volunteers who maybe want to help remotely, it's something that they could
• 16:23
  do, make those follow-up calls. I just saw a survey that
• 16:27
  said— it was talking about people's
• 16:30
  satisfaction rate after adoptions, and it had, you know, a
• 16:34
  90-plus percent satisfaction rate with adoption. But most
• 16:38
  of those people, like 3 quarters, also said They were dealing with some
• 16:42
  type of behavior issue so that they want to keep
• 16:45
  their pet. They're happy that they adopted it, but they might need some support to
• 16:49
  address house soiling or leash pulling or something
• 16:53
  so that that kind of post-adoption support would prevent them from giving up.
• 16:57
  Right. Because most adoption returns happen within the first
• 17:01
  30 days. So that's why our
• 17:05
  first call is at 7 days because, you know, the first
• 17:08
  3 days after adoption is usually— you
• 17:12
  have to isolate the pet, maybe put them in a safe place and everything, because
• 17:17
  they've been in the shelter. Now they're transitioning to a home or
• 17:21
  an apartment, which is, um, it's
• 17:24
  like taking somebody and putting them on the moon. Here they've, they've been
• 17:28
  in the shelter and probably have some type of level of
• 17:32
  shelter stress. Now they're into a completely
• 17:35
  new environment that they don't know they're safe.
• 17:40
  So, you know, at 7 days, we've passed that 3-day threshold
• 17:44
  just to say, okay, how's it going? Is there anything that you need
• 17:47
  help with? And that's another way,
• 17:51
  like the help desk, to reach out to people before they make that
• 17:55
  decision to come back, bring them back to the shelter. You know, if you
• 17:58
  try to talk to them again, if they've decided to return because They can't house
• 18:02
  train them or some other problem. You want to catch that while they're still in
• 18:06
  the home and give them help and support. So you did a
• 18:10
  lot of research for your book. It appeared that way to me.
• 18:14
  Did you, did you find anything that surprised you in your
• 18:17
  research that you incorporated then into your programs?
• 18:23
  I actually found quite a bit that surprised me
• 18:27
  during my research. I did a lot of research to
• 18:31
  see what the gaps were, you know, and I
• 18:35
  think the thing that surprised me most is because
• 18:39
  we hear about spay and neuter, we hear about adoptions,
• 18:43
  and spay and neuter and adoptions are at some of the highest rates that
• 18:47
  they've ever been. However, when you look
• 18:51
  at the last 5 years, the shelter intake
• 18:54
  data from the the shelter animals count, and
• 18:58
  the ASPCA has been right
• 19:01
  around 6 million for 5 years in a
• 19:05
  row. We're doing, you know, we're doing more
• 19:08
  adoptions and more spay and neuter. But
• 19:12
  overall, the needle hasn't really changed in the last 5 years.
• 19:16
  So that told me that what we are doing isn't
• 19:20
  working. That is a great point because those are— when
• 19:24
  people say, I want to start my own organization and I want to help, I
• 19:27
  always tell them the first thing you do is look for gaps. You
• 19:31
  know, in your community, there are things that are not being
• 19:35
  done that could be done to turn off the faucet, as
• 19:38
  your analogy says. Yeah. So you looked for
• 19:43
  gaps. And when we talk about some of these things, obviously it takes money,
• 19:46
  and you point out in your book Some examples of
• 19:50
  work running inside city government funded by
• 19:55
  the general fund as opposed to grants. And I
• 19:58
  think most of us doing this work are sort of grant dependent, which is,
• 20:02
  which is a hard way to live, to be able to offer these
• 20:06
  programs on a consistent basis through grants. What do you think we need to
• 20:09
  do to get more of these programs
• 20:13
  funded With municipal or county dollars or state dollars?
• 20:18
  I think part of that is, uh, it's gonna be a
• 20:22
  combination like New Mexico and, uh,
• 20:26
  Maryland. Yep. Maryland, Delaware. You're trying to talk about the pet food
• 20:29
  manufacturer fee? Yes, actually. And, and a combination
• 20:33
  of income sources that the city government or
• 20:37
  state government, uh, would approve. You know, like
• 20:41
  the license plate program.
• 20:46
  But like those states found, I mean, it
• 20:50
  does bring in money, but it doesn't bring in money enough to
• 20:54
  fund subsidized spay/neuter programs or
• 20:58
  veterinary access. So
• 21:02
  that's when they did the pet food.
• 21:06
  Right, because that brings in more money directly from the manufacturers.
• 21:10
  Yeah, from the manufacturers. And I think that was in the
• 21:14
  neighborhood of $1.4 or $1.5 million.
• 21:18
  Depends on the state, but the license plates, in my experience, bring
• 21:22
  in maybe $25,000, maybe $50,000, which, like you said, it's helpful,
• 21:26
  but it's not going to run a subsidized spay/neuter program.
• 21:29
  Correct. So it's got to be a combination.
• 21:34
  If we're talking about how do you persuade a city or a
• 21:38
  county government that this is something that is worth
• 21:42
  finding money in the budget for, you talked about having to pay
• 21:46
  animal control officers now. At
• 21:49
  least in the places where government takes responsibility for strays,
• 21:53
  they're spending money sending animal control officers out, picking
• 21:57
  up strays, Housing them in a shelter for the
• 22:01
  stray hold period, euthanizing them if that ends
• 22:05
  up being the outcome, or trying to get them adopted. So I think one,
• 22:08
  one of your persuasive mechanisms involves
• 22:13
  showing the government or any potential funder how much
• 22:17
  money you would save if you funded a spay/neuter program. Correct. Because
• 22:21
  once I, you know, I did all my research and everything, I'm like, okay.
• 22:24
  We're going to be a prevention-first nonprofit.
• 22:28
  We're not going to be a rescue,
• 22:32
  which means that if I go and say, well, I want X
• 22:36
  number of dollars for a particular program, they're so
• 22:40
  used to somebody asking for money that
• 22:43
  has been telling them how many intakes they've had,
• 22:47
  how many adoptions they've had, and everything else. So
• 22:52
  Animal welfare is one of the few
• 22:56
  industries where we don't really do a lot with
• 23:00
  prevention. We do it with our houses and we do it with our health and
• 23:03
  with our teeth. We go to the dentist for checkups. We go and get,
• 23:07
  you know, health checkups because if we find the problem
• 23:11
  early, it's a lot less expensive and it's a lot easier on
• 23:14
  our health. Mm-hmm.
• 23:19
  There are certainly a lot of people that are looking to figure out how to
• 23:22
  fund these programs, and I know you can't just ask for money. You have to—
• 23:26
  Well, no, because when you're, when you're working prevention,
• 23:30
  that's like the fire department going and saying, okay, we need
• 23:34
  funding. And of course the city's going to say, well, how many fires did you
• 23:38
  put out? Well, of course the fire department's like, well, we didn't
• 23:41
  put out any fires. We kept 500 fires
• 23:45
  from happening, which of course is exponentially
• 23:49
  less expensive than if they had put the fires out.
• 23:54
  But the, you know, the, the city is so
• 23:57
  used to funding based on how many fires were put out, they
• 24:01
  were— they'd be like, well, then that means you don't need any money because
• 24:05
  you didn't put any fires out. It's a good analogy.
• 24:09
  It still costs money to keep those 500 fires
• 24:12
  from happening. Quantifying impact is very important when you're
• 24:16
  asking for money, whether it's from a government or a donor or a private
• 24:19
  foundation. Right, right. You've got to quantify it and
• 24:23
  put it into terms for your audience of who
• 24:27
  you're, who you're talking to. Let's go back
• 24:31
  to your, your structure is really
• 24:34
  you have a 501, but you're looking to partner with a bunch of other organizations.
• 24:39
  So nobody can do this alone. So what kind of partners are you
• 24:43
  looking for and what do you want them to do?
• 24:47
  We're looking to partner with shelters, rescues,
• 24:52
  veterinarians, groomers,
• 24:55
  because everybody in animal welfare is part of
• 24:59
  it. Not only that, but
• 25:03
  landlords and pet owners. I
• 25:06
  mean, I hate the old phrase, it takes a village. Yeah.
• 25:11
  Okay. But pretty much in order to
• 25:14
  achieve, you know, lowering the number of intakes and lowering
• 25:18
  the pet population, it is basically going to take a village.
• 25:22
  Sometimes there's a reason that clichés become a cliché.
• 25:26
  And by keeping a lot of animals out of the shelters, you're
• 25:29
  helping make those shelters that safe place. Because a lot of people, they
• 25:33
  see animals getting euthanized in shelters and they think, oh, you know,
• 25:37
  don't bring, don't bring your dog or cat there because they're just gonna kill them.
• 25:40
  That's, that's largely not the case, but they, they can only
• 25:44
  handle as many animals as they can handle. And you, you need, we need to
• 25:47
  keep that number down. And that's why you and I
• 25:50
  put the vast majority of our emphasis on these upstream programs.
• 25:54
  Instead of having the, the, the bail for the bathtub, we're,
• 25:58
  we're trying to stop that faucet so that the animals that end up at the
• 26:01
  shelter truly need to be there. And there's enough space for them because
• 26:05
  the animals that could have been kept in a home are still at home.
• 26:09
  Correct. I mean, you know, that way there is a spot for the
• 26:13
  animals that truly need, you know, a safe place to go.
• 26:17
  And not only that, but there's space and the
• 26:21
  staff have time to take care of those animals once they come
• 26:25
  in because they're not so overwhelmed with strays
• 26:29
  and owner surrenders that they have time to really Yeah. Give
• 26:32
  to the ones that really need it, you know, because there
• 26:36
  are situations, you know, you
• 26:40
  got hoarding situations, you got, you know, like puppy mills, you know,
• 26:44
  and they have to go and get 30, 50,
• 26:48
  or 100 dogs, you know, and those, those animals need a safe
• 26:52
  place to go. And that's what our
• 26:55
  shelters were originally 100%. I agree with
• 26:59
  you. So as we wind down, what you're doing
• 27:03
  is something that needs to be done in, I would say,
• 27:07
  most places in the United States, creating this partnership
• 27:11
  infrastructure to have these prevention programs in place
• 27:14
  and accessible to people. Do you have— what's your favorite piece
• 27:18
  of advice for somebody else that wants to do what you're doing in their community?
• 27:23
  My first piece of advice would be to call either their city
• 27:26
  council or their county commission, whoever funds the
• 27:31
  animal welfare, and ask them how much they
• 27:34
  spend on shelters versus prevention.
• 27:39
  If they're spending more on shelters than prevention,
• 27:44
  then look at putting together ways to
• 27:48
  Convince them to put a line item, even if
• 27:52
  it's 5% of the budget that
• 27:56
  they've been spending on the
• 27:57
  reactive programs,
• 28:01
  even if it's 5%, to get them to put into
• 28:05
  prevention. Because once they put it in, they start seeing the
• 28:08
  impact of that 5%, then eventually they'll start putting more.
• 28:13
  But if they're not putting any to begin with,
• 28:17
  Then you got work to do. Then you got a lot of work to do.
• 28:20
  Yeah. Thank you so much for that advice, but mostly for
• 28:24
  everything that you're trying to do in Alabama. I hope to talk to
• 28:28
  you again. I'm happy to help you with your work, and I'd
• 28:32
  love to see a lot more people trying to do what you're doing.
• 28:35
  Okay. Thank you, Penny. I was glad to be here.
• 28:41
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• 28:44
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• 29:34
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