The Chicago Shift
Organizations have history of cooperation
Sobel fully acknowledges the value of many of the programs run by the Anti-Cruelty Society and other area organizations, particularly their aggressive spay/neuter campaigns. Last year, Anti-Cruelty's low-cost, high-volume program altered about 12,000 animals, including strays, people's pets, and animals from other rescues and shelters.
Sobel says animal control is doing its best to add to these programs, despite limited resources. The city department offers a free spay/neuter clinic once a month for people who live in the Chicago zip codes with the biggest animal overpopulation, and, in March, launched the Animobile, a mobile spay/neuter clinic to go into poor areas.
But while Sobel applauds the idea that the Anti-Cruelty Society will put more resources into spay/neuter and animal rehabilitation, she wonders why that means they have to stop holding strays.
"Why can't they do both?" she asks.
Mueller responds that it comes down to a decision of where to direct a limited amount of resources.
Although the Tribune reported that the society has $29.8 million in assets, Mueller says his group has actually been exceeding its $4.25 million annual budget by about $1 million a year.
By no longer using the society's resources to hold animals that legally may not be adopted, Mueller says the society will save about $200,000 a year and free up approximately 17,000 cage days.
Although the city pound is also short on space and money, Mueller says that implementing the city's mandate for animal control is really its function.
"That's just not our role," he says.
Breaking from history to explore new paths
The Chicago Anti-Cruelty Society was formed in 1899 by people upset with the harsh treatment of the city's working horses. Over the years, the organization has evolved as the city's relationship with animals has changed, and it has become focused almost entirely on improving the lives of the city's 1.3 million companion animals.
The society has never received city funding for animal control, and city enforcement officers take all of the strays they capture to animal control, which takes in 12,000 to 13,000 strays each year. However, the society has accepted between 4,000 and 5,000 strays brought in by the public each year.
Despite the fact that the city has never paid them for these services, Mueller says the society traditionally accepted strays because of the inhumane conditions at the old city pound, and the city's use of the carbon monoxide chamber for euthanasia. Now, this has all changed, with the city's construction of a modern animal holding and adoption facility, and its switch to the use of sodium pentobarbital injections, a more humane form of euthanasia.
As a result, Mueller says it is no longer "morally incumbent" on his society to hold strays, and the group may now focus its resources elsewhere. He credits Best Friends Animal Society and other organizations around the country for providing the models for the changes he is making.
"The models and information that Best Friends provides are exactly the catalyst for making changes like this. We are able to review what worked and what didn't work, and it gives us ideas for things to try," he says.
In recent years, many new programs have been tried by the Chicago Area Shelter Alliance (CASA), a coalition of 10 large and small shelters, including animal control and Anti-Cruelty. For example, CASA has held very successful super adoption events, at one of which animal control placed a record 57 dogs.
But Peggy Froh Asseo, the Anti-Cruelty Society's vice president of external affairs, says that her organization is still the most effective adoption agency, and wants to try to maximize its impact.
"We adopt out more animals than every other shelter combined, including animal control," she says.
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