Open the shelter doors

New study proves that requiring an appointment to adopt out animals leads to fewer adoptions — and fewer adoptions leads to more killing. No Kill Advocacy Center calls on “shelters” to open the doors.

Despite a national decline in intakes, some “shelters” are adopting out fewer animals and killing more. This is a crisis of pound managers’ own making. 

Specifically, these directors have made pandemic-era policies permanent. As such, they are refusing to fully open to the public. Families who try to meet animals without an appointment are turned away. The result is fewer adoptions and, consequently, increased killing.

Data shows that shelter intakes remain below pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, 6.8 million dogs and cats entered U.S. shelters. In 2023, that number was down to 6.5 million. In 2024, that number continues to remain below the baseline. Despite this, dog killing is up 12% from pre-pandemic levels, and cat deaths are up from 2022.

At Orange County Animal Care (OCAC) in California, for example, the kennels remain off-limits and appointments are needed to visit animals. As a result, despite declining intakes, killing dogs, including puppies, rose by 187% in certain categories.

In response to a Grand Jury report condemning the OCAC closures, pound leaders temporarily opened the kennels to potential adopters without an appointment during certain limited hours. Although that is how most shelters operated throughout their history, including at OCAC, they called it a “pilot program.” The remaining hours continued to require an appointment.

In a new study — “Comparison of the Number of Dog Adoptions in a Pilot Program That Restored Limited Visitor Access to Kennels” — researchers compared the number of dog adoptions when families were allowed to visit without an appointment with the number of adoptions during hours that required an appointment.

Not surprisingly, allowing people to visit the kennels without an appointment led to increased adoptions. Moreover, adoptions didn’t just increase slightly during these periods; they skyrocketed by 82%. This was also true of large dogs, which pound managers argue are the most challenging to adopt — and are often killed in greater numbers. Despite limited hours when people could visit the kennels without an appointment — two days a week for a meager 2.5 hours each of those days — those hours accounted for 83% of large dog adoptions.

This one change — ending pandemic-era closures by fully opening to the public without an appointment — will vastly increase adoption and significantly reduce killing.

While that conclusion is inescapable, one question does remain:

Do managers at OCAC, the New York City pound, and “shelters” in other communities with similar policies care enough to do so?