More pets are spared thanks to KC's new Adoption Center

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- DiAnn Roberts of the city's department of animal health surveys her yowling, barking buddies:~ Cats and dogs are being adopted out at about twice the rate of last year.

Roxie, the 3-year-old collie mix, sits wide-eyed in her corner pen. Ghost, the white Lab mix, jumps against her cage and barks. A collection of cats, Ginger, Silky and Scooter, all skitter over the concrete floor.

Roberts takes no time calculating how many of the 30 dogs and cats around her would normally, by this time, have been put to death.

"One hundred percent," she said recently.

But that was before November, when the city's Department of Animal Health and Public Safety -- which each year reluctantly euthanizes close to 7,000 stray or abandoned pets -- began a new Adoption Center in the basement of its building, typically known as the city pound. Now more cats and dogs are getting their day, being adopted out at about twice the rate of last year.

"We really didn't know if it would work," the agency's director, Lesly Forsberg, said. "It's been much more successful than we ever dreamed it would be."

Emotionally difficult

The agency receives about 10,000 stray or abandoned pets each year. At any one time, it has room for about 200, kept in row upon row of cages inside the main kennel, a large corrugated metal shed.

About 1,200 are adopted out annually; about 1,000 are transferred to animal rescue groups. Some are reunited with their families. But about 19 animals per day, close to 7,000 dogs and cats a year, are put to death because they go unclaimed.

The city started the new Adoption Center to meet two goals. First, it wanted to attract volunteers to help feed, walk and clean the dogs and cats. Also, it wanted to increase its adoption rate.

Forsberg said they quickly realized that few people wanted to volunteer at the main kennel because of how swiftly the animals were euthanized. By law the agency must keep an animal for five business days before it can becomes available for adoption. If there's enough room in the kennel, it's possible to keep an animal for days or weeks. But most are put to death within several days.

Forsberg said volunteers "would come out for one day. Then the animal they volunteered with the day before wasn't here. It's not an easy thing to work with. Most people don't have the emotional makeup for that."

Late last year, the agency began its basement Adoption Center as a nonprofit, thinking that people would volunteer for a charity rather than a city agency.

Roberts and others cleared out the vast concrete basement, used for storage and as a garage. They put in more comfortable pens and cages, with rugs and cat scratch posts. The friendliest cats and dogs were allowed to run free. The space gave the agency the opportunity to keep the animals for weeks longer and to post pictures on popular animal adoption Web sites such as petfinder.com and petharbor.com.

Since November, the agency has attracted about 12 volunteers, six of whom, such as Henry Sanchez, 48, of Kansas City, volunteer seven days a week.

"I didn't want to work up there," he said of the agency's main kennel. "It's a kill shelter. You come down here, you watch these dogs blossom. I walk the dogs. I'll walk some three or four times."

Since November, the agency's total animal adoptions have more than doubled, from an average of about 70 adoptions per month between November and February last year to about 140 adoptions a month for the same period this year.

Recently, at noon, when the agency opened for adoption, James Stewart, 23, and his fiancDee, Amber Polen, 22, toured the main kennel looking for a puppy.

"We've been coming here for a while," Stewart said. "It's like our sixth or seventh time upstairs. We asked the man upstairs, 'Is this all the puppies you have?' He said, 'Yeah, except for what we have in the basement.'

"I said, 'In the basement?"'

Stewart and Polen walked away with a tan puppy, a Labrador retriever and whippet mix that they'll name Dr. Gonzo.