From Intake to Adoption: Planning a Seamless Pathway for Shelter Animals
Why Pathway Planning?
Of the nearly 4 million animals euthanized in animal shelters each year, 10-25% are a direct result of overcrowding. Decreased length of stay has a profound impact on shelter staff burnout, sheltering costs, euthanasia rates, and much more. Pathway planning is an integral part of streamlining shelter operations and moving animals efficiently through the system. Let’s talk about how pathway planning can help to lessen the load on your animal shelter.
What is Pathway Planning?
Pathway planning is a type of animal shelter programming that seeks to proactively move shelter animals along toward their most likely and optimal outcome. By assigning animals with a pathway at intake, like return-to-field, return-to-owner, adoption, or transfer, you set them along a predetermined path with predictable pit-stops along the way. Integrating pathway planning into your shelter operations can have a lot of positive outcomes, including:
Determining Capacity for Care
In order to fully serve the animals in their care, every shelter needs to ensure that they are always operating within their capacity for care. That means constantly evaluating whether your shelter has the space, equipment, staff, and money to meet your animals’ physical and behavioral needs.
Pathway planning allows you to predict the resources needed for each animal at intake, which will give you frequent opportunities to evaluate your capacity for care. For instance, an injured dog who is a bite risk will require more medical and behavioral resources, and will likely have a longer length of stay, than a young cat with no medical or behavioral struggles.
Reducing Length of Stay
Pathway planning can be utilized to fast-track lower-needs animals through the shelter and free up space and resources for staff to focus on higher-needs animals. By reducing length of stay, pathway planning helps to prevent overcrowding, thereby reducing staff burnout, freeing up financing, and decreasing euthanasia.
The Stages of Pathway Planning
Intake
Intake is a pivotal moment in pathway planning. Ideally, intake will involve a thoughtful and thorough examination that ensures animals receive prompt care and sets them on course for their ideal pathway from the very start, saving valuable time and resources. Intake should include the following key steps, modified to fit the needs of your shelter:
History: A history profile form should be distributed and filled out by the person who has brought the animal(s) to the shelter.
Initial assessment: Before removing the animal from their cage or carrier, staff should complete an initial assessment, observing the animal for obvious signs of injury or illness, temperament, and distinctive physical features.
Medical examination: After removing the animal from their cage or carrier, staff should scan for a microchip; estimate age, sex, and weight; and complete a brief physical examination.
Vaccinations: After their physical exam, animals should receive any relevant vaccinations, de-worming, and external parasite control.
Behavior observation: While completing the physical examination and vaccinations, a separate staff member should note behavior observations. Animals who are friendly and display no concerning behaviors can be fast tracked to free up resources for a more in-depth behavioral evaluation of animals with concerning behaviors.
Data collection: All observations gained from intake should be promptly and accurately entered into your shelter’s data collection software system.
During intake, each animal should be carefully evaluated to determine their physical and behavioral needs.
Pathway Assignment
Insights gained from a thorough intake can be used to assign an accurate pathway to animals from the very start. After completing all of the necessary medical and behavioral exams, staff should assign each animal to their initial pathway plan and corresponding housing location. Pathway plans and housing choices can be assigned based on a variety of factors, including (but not limited to):
Age: Puppies and kittens are more likely to be adopted quickly, so they will typically be assigned to short-term housing. Alternatively, older dogs and cats are typically assigned to longer-term housing.
Health: Animals who are injured or sick with infectious diseases will need to be housed in separate areas that are isolated from the rest of the population.
Temperament: Dangerous animals, such as those under bite quarantine or rabies observation, will need to be housed separately until considered safe. Scared and struggling animals may be more successful in quieter areas of the shelter or with more support.
Adoptability status: Puppies and kittens under 8 weeks of age might be housed separately from those who are between 8 weeks and 5 months of age and eligible for adoption. Similarly, stray or lost animals not eligible for open adoption–or community cats selected for return-to-field–should be held separately in short-term housing.
Intervention
Once an animal has been assigned to their most likely pathway, staff should make plans and assign staff to complete any appropriate interventions. Some possible interventions include:
Enrichment: Regardless of pathway, all shelter animals should receive proper enrichment in order to ensure behavioral and physical health. Intervention can include everything from playgroup programs to in-kennel measures.
Medical Intervention: Medical staff should perform appropriate interventions for animals who are sick or injured, including surgeries and treatments. Additionally, any un-sterilized animals should be spayed or neutered.
Behavioral Intervention: Animals with behavioral complications should receive behavior modification services, including tailored training plans, stress reduction efforts, and proper enrichment.
Daily Rounds
Despite our best intentions, animals don’t get assigned the right pathway at intake. That’s why regular monitoring is a huge part of pathway planning. Daily rounds give management the opportunity to monitor each animal’s progress daily and make pathway adjustments when needed.
Review, Rinse, and Repeat
Pathway planning strategies should be tailored to the unique culture and structure of your particular shelter. It follows, then, that as the needs of your shelter changes, so should the particularities of your pathway planning. It’s important to take time out of the everyday hustle and bustle to sit down with your team and review the outcomes of your pathway planning program. As time goes on, trim the fat and make adjustments where necessary.
Laurie Lawless offers an integrative, personalized approach to her work with shelters, developing a partnership with staff and management.
Pathway Planning in Your Animal Shelter
So, how to go about implementing pathway planning at your shelter? It’s a big undertaking, and it requires looking holistically at your shelter, community, and culture. You’ll need to identify gaps in your current shelter operations, develop care pathways that fit your shelter, and make changes as you go. Tools like the Animal Flow Training Playbook, the Care Pathways training through Maddie’s University, and ASPCA’s Pathway Planning Protocol can help you get started.
However, proper pathway planning can feel like too big and daunting an undertaking for some–especially those who need it most. In those cases, it can be helpful to seek professional help. Laurie Lawless, founder of Shelter Behavior Integrations, offers an Integrated Pathways Program that is the perfect fit for the overwhelmed shelter. This intensive six-month program involves in-person and remote support tailored to your specific shelter. Check out the SBI website to learn more about Laurie and get started today.
