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Tag: safest

  • Austin Pets Alive! | Future of APA!: A Letter to Our Stakeholders

    Austin Pets Alive! | Future of APA!: A Letter to Our Stakeholders

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    Aug 24, 2021

    Friends,

    In 2017, the Austin City Council passed a resolution that APA! could stay on the Town Lake Animal Center (TLAC) property for three 25-year agreements (75 years!). City staff and APA! were directed to negotiate and execute an agreement over the next three years.

    Since then, APA!, with the amazing help of our pro-bono attorneys at Drenner Group, and the City has been in intense negotiations, resulting in two emergency extensions to allow both sides more time to come to a consensus. This has proven very difficult and our exact future is unknown. We want to make sure that you, as a valued APA! partner, are being brought along more thoroughly as this unfolds and a final decision is reached in the months ahead. What is crucial for you to know today is that it is impossible for APA! to operate with the TLAC facility service agreement currently in place, and due to the state of our facility, we have no choice but to either renegotiate those terms or find a new facility. We want you to be aware of this as we continue to work with the City of Austin to determine our future in the months ahead.

    I’m sure you are asking: why can’t you just keep your current terms? The top-line answer to that is that it’s complicated. The complications involve requirements around the parkland that TLAC sits upon, the campus buildings in various stages of disrepair, the City’s Lamar Beach Master Plan, operations at both Austin Animal Center and APA!, and our vision for the future of No Kill. It is too much to pack into one letter. In an effort to keep you informed but not overwhelmed, we will be sharing this information in pieces over the next few weeks. We welcome your questions and thoughts as you hear our plans unfold.

    When we started APA!, our goal was to make Austin a sustainable, No Kill city. We envisioned a place where all pets would be truly safe from death and where euthanasia due to space and time limits would no longer exist. Now, more than a decade and nearly 100,000 lives saved later, we have succeeded in fulfilling that mission year-over-year, making Austin the safest place in America for lost and homeless pets, and spreading that territory into the rest of Texas. This will not change, no matter the outcome of our relationship with the City.

    As we are sustained entirely on donations and rely heavily on fosters and volunteers, we could never have accomplished making, and keeping, Austin No Kill without your tireless support. Your ongoing investment has helped us transform Austin and show the world what it looks like when a community comes together to work towards one goal. Every dollar you’ve given, every hour you’ve spent volunteering, and every pet you’ve fostered or adopted have resulted in what has come to seem normal but is truly extraordinary.

    Thank you,

    Ellen Jefferson, DVM
    President and CEO
    Austin Pets Alive!/American Pets Alive!

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  • Austin Pets Alive! | The Future of Transport – A Note From Dr. J

    Austin Pets Alive! | The Future of Transport – A Note From Dr. J

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    Mar 25, 2021

    As we start to see the light of normalcy return with the release of COVID vaccines, we have a little break from what has felt like back-to-back emergencies to share our plans for the future at Austin Pets Alive!. Our board of directors and executive staff have been working hard on creating and starting to implement our 2021-2023 strategic plan.

    This plan brings our mission sharply into focus. If you need a refresher, our mission is to promote and provide the resources, education, and programs needed to eliminate the killing of companion animals. We recognize if we tighten our efforts, forget what we know as our “status quo” and really drill down on all the ways we, as a large lifesaving organization, can physically intervene in the deaths of shelter pets, we can actually find even more ways to save lives with what we have and know. Our eyes are set on making Texas No Kill and we’re not stopping there.

    After the recent snowstorm, we got a taste of what the animals are like who are still losing their lives in Texas as we madly transported more than 1,000 of them to other cities that wanted to help. These are sweet cuddly little kittens, small fluffy dogs, labs, huskies and so many more deserving lives that we know from our experience in Austin are among the easiest to save. One story in particular hit home–a sweet little chihuahua mix named Hamilton in Laredo who was scheduled to be killed. He was scooped up for this transport and now is happy and safe in a home in Jackson Hole, WY! We had never thought we could save thousands more per year until now, and dogs like Hamilton deserve our brainstorming and reassessing so that more lives are saved.

    Here is some food for thought:

    • It is estimated that 150,000 animals are still needlessly dying in Texas shelters every year.
    • In most northern U.S. communities, there is an overabundance of adopters, which is keenly felt by organizations which scramble to find adoptable pets to meet demand.
    • It costs a fraction of our total per animal to serve as a distributor to shelters and rescues as it does to take them all in and do all the work ourselves before adoption.

    So why haven’t we transported out all along? Over the last 12 years, we have steered clear of transport, except during Hurricane Harvey and then only for non-Austin animals, because Austin is the safest community in the country for pets. Sending pets from Austin to anywhere else is inherently more dangerous for them. Unfortunately, that thinking has gotten in the way of us taking a hard look at how we might be able to help pets still dying all over the state. While Austin is safest, only a tiny fraction of the 150,000 animals losing their lives each year in Texas can get into Austin. If we start to think of Austin instead as a pit stop in the journey from one very dangerous place in TX to a much less dangerous place in the north, even if that final destination is not at Austin’s level of No Kill experience, we start to open the door to making Texas No Kill.

    You might be thinking, “But taking some of your attention off of Austin-only animals makes you less effective for Austin!” We believe the opposite is true. We know that if we are able to save the masses of Texas lives more efficiently, we can ourselves focus on saving the few that truly need our specialized support more effectively. By helping more cities stop killing, we help more animals join homes both in Austin and beyond. By solving for the reasons animals die on a grander scale than just our own backyard, Austin continues as the beacon of hope for other cities and states. By ensuring that the money entrusted to us to save lives saves as many pets as possible, we give every animal, no matter its lineage, an equitable chance to not die in a shelter without the benefit of someone trying to help.

    Transport is one small piece of our strategic future. We will be sharing a lot more in the coming weeks. Thank you for being on this journey with APA! as we continue to push the lifesaving needle.

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