The Danville municipal animal shelter and the local grassroots campaign that’s been criticizing it made announcements on the same day in October, marking some of the most tangible actions following a monthslong debate about how to best serve the city’s animals.
The Danville Area Humane Society said that it will update its strategic plan. Danville Deserves Better announced the opening of a physical headquarters. Both of these announcements came Oct. 15.
The shelter, which has come under fire for its high euthanasia rates, said that it will partner with a third-party company in Danville to revamp its strategic plan.
“Our goal is to reduce the number of homeless, neglected, and abused animals while remaining a truly open-admission shelter,” said a press release from the shelter.
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 data from the Virginia Department of Animal and Consumer Services, which oversees the state’s animal shelters.
These numbers have drawn backlash from national animal welfare organization Best Friends, which is funding a local campaign called Danville Deserves Better. The campaign includes television commercials, social media posts and a presence at city council meetings.
Local Best Friends representatives will be among the stakeholders invited to committee meetings this fall as part of the shelter’s strategic plan update process, according to the release.
City representatives, local veterinarians, volunteers and humane society members will also be included.
Best Friends and Danville Deserves Better have been pushing the Danville shelter to make changes since fall 2023.
From conversations to action
Until this month, the campaign has been mostly focused on spreading information about the low save rate at the Danville shelter. Danville Deserves Better members have sent letters to local government officials, operated a booth at the local fair, and spoken at city council meetings.
Several members have also volunteered with spay/neuter clinics conducted by Homeward Trails, an Arlington-based organization that also receives funding from Best Friends.
Starting in November, the campaign will have a physical location where it plans to provide resources to local animal owners to enable them to keep their animals at home, rather than give them up to the shelter.
Best Friends will be funding this storefront, which will function as the Danville Deserves Better campaign headquarters, said David Wesolowski, campaign manager.
The group is still working out concrete details about the resources that will be provided, but it will include a pet food pantry and likely other items that people may need to keep their pets in their homes, he said.
Pet food company Blue Buffalo has already sponsored the first 2,000 pounds of pet food supply.
“I ran a pet food pantry in a shelter in South Florida for a time as part of that shelter’s intake diversion program, and we found that by giving people things like pet food, leashes, crates, et cetera, we could really keep animals from being surrendered,” Wesolowski said.
Danville Deserves Better will not provide vaccinations, microchipping or financial resources at this location, which will be on Lynn Street in the River District. A grand opening is scheduled for Nov. 3.
The Danville shelter is working on an expansion of its isolation area for incoming puppies and kittens, funded by the city, which was announced in July.
Danville Deserves Better said that an expanded isolation area is just one of many improvements needed at the shelter. The campaign also called for better advertising of adoptable pets and improved transparency.
Paulette Dean, the shelter’s executive director, said the campaign has stirred division and hate in the community, and she said she’s been threatened, as have members of her staff and city officials.
“There has been a lot of misinformation circulating about the work of the Danville Area Humane Society, and we hope that we can use the strategic plan to dispel the misinformation, as well as to better inform area residents of our work,” Dean said in the release.
The release said that the shelter’s programs for spay/neuter surgeries, fostering and transferring, as well as its pet food bank have “helped countless [animals] for decades.”
Still, Best Friends and Danville Deserves Better are critical of the shelter’s policy of taking in every animal.
Folks on both sides say they want what’s best for animals — but they disagree about how to get there.
Differences in sheltering ideology
The Danville shelter’s open-intake policy means that it takes in every animal that comes to its door.
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.
Limited-intake shelters, on the other hand, can and do turn away animals and often have lower euthanasia numbers 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.
Best Friends wants to see every animal shelter in the country become no-kill by 2025.
The Danville shelter does not want to limit its intake, Dean said, because it may be the only option for some animals that have already been turned away elsewhere.
The debate in the city 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.
Euthanasia numbers 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.
A locality’s save rate is also a reflection of the community, which has a responsibility to minimize the amount of animals going to a shelter, she said.
PETA supports the Danville shelter and is a proponent of open-intake policies. Nachminovitch also criticized Best Friends’ track record of “finger pointing” and pitting communities against their local shelters.
These different ideologies about sheltering have raised the temperature of the conversation in Danville — so much so that some campaign members refuse to volunteer at the local shelter, even though more volunteers and staff would help it better serve Danville’s animal population.
“Pet overpopulation, abandonment and neglect are community problems and need community solutions,” said the release from the shelter. “It is time to work together as a community.”
More details about the strategic plan update are coming, it said.
