The recent contention around Danville’s animal shelter is a microcosm of a larger conversation in the sheltering world about the best approach to this work — and about who really bears the responsibility of caring for a community’s animals.
A high euthanasia rate at the Danville Area Humane Society has drawn criticism locally and nationally, and different ideologies on sheltering have increased the temperature of the conversation in recent months.
“There is serious disagreement about certain things that people want to do,” Danville City Manager Ken Larking said at a Sept. 17 city council meeting. “There are different approaches to how you deal with this issue, and not everybody agrees on what is best.”
Best Friends Animal Society, a national animal welfare nonprofit, is critical of the Danville shelter’s model and of how few animals are adopted out. The organization is funding a local campaign, called Danville Deserves Better, involving television commercials, social media posts and a presence at city council meetings.
Best Friends and Danville Deserves Better have been pushing the Danville shelter to make changes since fall 2023.
But high euthanasia rates are not entirely the fault of an animal shelter, said Daphna Nachminovitch, senior vice president of animal cruelty for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
“Those animals come from the community,” Nachminovitch said. “The shelter is not in a vacuum. The shelter is a reflection of the community where it’s located.”
PETA is critical of Best Friends’ policies and work in other localities around the country.
“When [Best Friends’] policies are pushed, there’s no sense of responsibility placed on the community,” Nachminovitch said. “Euthanasia is absolutely sad, but we need to put the onus back on why animals are euthanized at a shelter.”
A community can support its local animal shelters by adopting instead of buying pets from breeders or pet stores, volunteering their time and making sure to spay and neuter their animals, she said.
But Danville Deserves Better members say that they are reluctant to work with the municipal shelter because of its high euthanasia rates.
Folks from both parties say they just want what’s best for the animals — but they disagree on how to get there.
How many animals can be saved?
There are two major philosophies on animal shelter models: open-intake and limited-intake.
The Danville shelter has operated on an open-intake model since it was founded in 1975. It doesn’t turn away any animal, regardless of its health or of the space and resources available.
It’s not uncommon for healthy animals to be euthanized at open-intake shelters, which can run out of space before homes can be found for them.
Every municipality in Virginia is required by state law to operate an animal shelter or to contract with another nearby facility, so residents have a place to take strays.
Municipal shelters are usually open-intake, but there are exceptions, like the Lynchburg Area Humane Society, a limited-intake shelter that has a municipal contract with the city.
Limited-intake shelters can and do turn away animals and usually have lower euthanasia rates because they generally reserve euthanasia for terminally ill animals, those with a poor quality of life or those that are considered dangerous to the public.
Sometimes, instead of these terms, the labels “kill” and “no-kill” shelters are used. A shelter is considered “no-kill” if it has a 90% or greater rate of live releases.
Many organizations in the sheltering world are trying to move away from these terms, said Julie Rickmond with the Roanoke Valley SPCA.
“The terms ‘no-kill’ or ‘kill’ shelters are very divisive and just not necessary,” Rickmond said. “Every shelter will need to euthanize pets, due to illness, injury or extreme behavior concerns. We are considered a ‘no-kill’ shelter, but we’ve had to euthanize pets before.”
Open-intake and limited-intake shelters coexist and collaborate in many localities.
In Roanoke, for example, the municipal open-intake shelter is located right next door to the Roanoke Valley SPCA, a nonprofit limited-intake shelter. The two shelters work together and provide residents with multiple options.
Danville has never had a private or limited-intake shelter to help the municipal shelter shoulder the city’s rising animal numbers.
The shelter has 53 cages for dogs and 52 for cats, both including isolation areas, with another eight cages that can be used for smaller cats and dogs, said Paulette Dean, the shelter’s executive director.
Compounding the problem: The shelter takes in animals from other jurisdictions, not just from the city of Danville.
It’s a practice that used to be the norm among municipal shelters but has become less common over the years, said Dean. About 30% of the animals at the Danville shelter come from outside the city, she said.
Partially as a result of that policy, the shelter’s intake numbers are “staggering” for a community of its size, Larking said.
The shelter in Danville, a city with a population of about 42,000, took in 3,499 animals in 2023, according to data from the Virginia Department of Animal and Consumer Services, which oversees the state’s shelters.
The municipal shelter in Fairfax County, which has a population of 1.15 million, took in 4,515 animals in 2023.
Combined, these challenges have contributed to euthanasia rates at the Danville shelter that are roughly eight times the state average.
Of the 3,499 animals that the Danville shelter took in last year, 980 dogs and 1,753 cats — more than 70% and 80%, respectively — were euthanized, according to VDACS data.
The Danville shelter does not want to limit its intake despite these numbers, said Dean, adding that it may be the only option for some animals.
“They appear on our doorstep, and they have been turned down by other shelters,” she said. “What would happen to that animal if we turned them away?”
Unfair barriers to adoption, or sensible precautions?
While Best Friends would like to see every animal shelter in the country become “no-kill,” Danville Deserves Better takes a less hard-line approach and says that the shelter can increase its save rate while maintaining an open-intake status.
The founder of the Danville shelter is a campaign member, and she still believes strongly in open-intake policies.
Alexis Adams created the Danville and Pittsylvania County Humane Society, now the Danville Area Humane Society, in 1975. This was before the “no-kill” movement became popular, she said, and the original intent of the shelter was to be open-intake.
Though she said that Danville’s current euthanasia rates are “shameful,” and she believes that the shelter could do many things to increase its save rate, “it should be open access, without a doubt.”
Jill Mollohan, executive director of the Lynchburg Humane Society, said that high euthanasia rates are not an “open-intake versus no-kill” issue.
“There are so many programs that go into lifesaving,” Mollohan said. “Managing your intake is only one of the many components that save lives.”
Lisa Gunter, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech’s School of Animal Sciences, agreed.
Open-intake and limited-intake shelters have different perspectives on sheltering, but they don’t have to be at odds, she said — especially because there is such a need for sheltering services in most communities.
“That doesn’t mean that they’ll always be able to work together harmoniously, but there are plenty of homeless pets that need assistance,” Gunter said. “I don’t think they’re at odds, and I would resist that characterization, as all types of animal welfare organizations are trying to help people and their pets. They just do it differently.”
Mollohan listed programming for fostering and for spay and neuter services, as well as lower barriers to adoption, as factors that could decrease euthanasia rates.
An adoption policy that is “way too strict” is one of Adams’ criticisms of the Danville shelter.
The Danville shelter requires a 24-hour waiting period, a landlord check, a questionnaire and a $100 adoption fee. Until recently, the shelter’s website also said it required fenced-in yards for dogs, but Dean said that information was inaccurate and the site is being updated.
Requirements for adoption are a topic of disagreement in the animal sheltering field and another subject where PETA and Best Friends differ.
PETA is critical of Best Friends’ low-barrier adoption policies, which do not include home visits or background checks for potential adopters.
Velazquez said that Best Friends’ adoption policies, which she called “conversation-based adoptions,” help move animals out of shelters and into homes.
“It’s less of a screening, less of starting from a place of suspicion when folks walk through the door,” Valezquez said. “It starts with the premise that people coming into shelters are initiating with good intent.”
According to the Best Friends website, conversation-based adoptions include “having nonjudgmental conversations with prospective adopters instead of having them fill out lengthy applications.”
This method offers reduced and waived adoption fees, same-day adoptions and adoptions prior to spay/neuter when surgery access is limited.
It also removes home, veterinarian, and landlord checks, as well as the requirement that an adopter have a fenced-in yard — common adoption policies that Velazquez called “barrier-driven practices.”
“That’s an older school of thought,” she said. “Landlord checks could take a week, and sometimes we even see adopters going through full-on background checks, during which time the animal is still in the shelter with more animals coming in.”
Nachminovitch said that Best Friends’ approach has backfired in other communities, mentioning examples where abusive owners have been allowed to adopt pets or where aggressive pets have been adopted out and attacked owners.
“[PETA] does home visits for every animal we place,” Nachminovitch said. “We can’t all sit around pretending that everybody does a good job having an animal.”
A challenge to work together
Mollohan said that it’s up to a shelter and its community to work together to facilitate programs to lower euthanasia rates, regardless of the shelter’s model.
Such collaboration has been in short supply between Danville Deserves Better and the municipal shelter.
Campaign members say people are unwilling to volunteer at the Danville shelter because they are “horrified” by the euthanasia rates. Dean said she and members of her staff have at times felt unsafe because of comments made on Facebook and Danville Deserves Better signs placed outside their houses.
“I challenge anybody who points the finger at an open-admission shelter to walk one week in their shoes,” Nachminovitch said. “Good luck. It’s hard.”
Regardless, animal intake in Danville has increased almost every year since 2019, the first year that public data is available from VDACS.
“It’s important to realize that the animal shelter doesn’t make all these animals come in,” Larking said. “There’s an input in this process. The cats and dogs come from somewhere. … There’s got to be work on the input side and there’s got to be work on the output side and that’s where the community comes in.”
Nachminovitch said that it’s easy to point the finger at a shelter for its euthanasia rates when the community also bears responsibility for these numbers.
Residents buying from breeders or pet stores and failing to spay or neuter pets both contribute to the animal population. Both of these are also outside of an animal shelter’s control, she said.
“This is the time for people who care to look at their own behavior,” Nachminovitch said. “Did you adopt from a shelter? Are all your animals spayed and neutered? Is your cat inside, or do you have a bunch of animals breeding willy-nilly?”
The blame game isn’t helpful, Nachminovitch said, adding that Best Friends puts a disproportionate amount of culpability on local shelters instead of encouraging community action that could help.
“The big failure has been largely due to policies pushed by Best Friends and other proponents of ‘no-kill,’ that say that this is the shelter’s fault, and therefore the community does not need to change,” Nachminovitch said.
Larking also mentioned community responsibility, saying that sheltering is a process with inputs and outputs — animals coming into the shelter and animals that are adopted out.
“The community on the whole needs to be helpful so that there are fewer intakes,” he said. “It would be great if there was a stronger community that could handle the outputs of the process.”
Some community-driven efforts to lower the animal population in Danville are already underway.
Several members of Danville Deserves Better volunteer their time with Homeward Trails, an Arlington-based animal welfare nonprofit that runs trap-neuter-vaccinate-return clinics in Danville.
TNVR is a strategy for lowering the population of feral cats. It involves trapping cats, bringing them to a veterinarian to be vaccinated and fixed, and then releasing them back into their communities.
Municipal shelters are not allowed to run TNVR programs by state law, and as there are no private shelters in Danville to do this work, the effort is coming from outside groups and community members.
Sue Bell, the executive director of Homeward Trails, said she’s seen community-led efforts that support municipal shelters work in other Virginia localities.
“We caution a lot of jurisdictions who think that building a new shelter will solve the problem, but if you build a shelter, it will just fill,” Bell said. “Some of the most effective collaborations are a [local] nonprofit group that supports the shelter.”
Danville is “absolutely ripe for that kind of partnership,” despite the tension between the municipal shelter and Danville Deserves Better.
Best Friends would not be involved in organizing or funding either a local nonprofit or a private shelter, Velazquez said, though it will continue to fund Danville Deserves Better and push the municipal shelter to change.
Best Friends also gives funding to Homeward Trails, and it has spent about $70,000 on TNVR events in Danville this year through that group, according to Best Friends spokesperson Alina Hauptman.
“[Funding private shelters] is not something that we engage in,” Velazquez said. She claimed that the contract between the city of Danville and the Danville Area Humane Society precludes the opening of a private shelter.
The city manager, city attorney and the executive director of the animal shelter all said that this is not the case.
“There’s nothing prohibiting that,” said City Manager Ken Larking at the council meeting.
And Dean said that the shelter would welcome any help shouldering the high animal intake in the area — although she refuses to accept resources and programming from Best Friends because she doesn’t believe that group’s policies are best for animals, she said.
A private shelter is a “contingency plan” if nothing changes at the existing shelter, Lawton said, and Adams added that “property has already been found.”
Adams agreed that community support for a municipal shelter is a crucial factor.
“The community has to participate because without that, you can’t have a good shelter,” she said.
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Correction, 12:20 p.m. Sept. 27: A previous version of this article stated that the Danville Area Humane Society requires adopters to have a fenced-in yard, based on information from the shelter’s website. But Paulette Dean, executive director of the shelter, said that the website was inaccurate and is being corrected. The shelter has never required adopters to have a fenced-in yard, she said. “Dogs can’t roam freely, but people can supervise the dogs outside or can buy a dog lot to safely confine them when they aren’t outside with the dog,” she said. The article has been updated to reflect this information.
