McHenry County Animal Control leans on shelters to reduce euthanasia

CRYSTAL LAKE – By the end of 2015, officials at McHenry County Animal Control reported the number of animals being put to death in its shelter had dropped by more than 40 percent over the past two years.

The decrease stems from a concerted effort started in 2014 to get cats out of Animal Control and into shelters that would be able to help the animals find a suitable home, McHenry County Department of Health spokeswoman Keri Zaleski said.

“We started aggressively transferring cats,” Zaleski said. “Cats that maybe were not adoptable as a family pet. We transferred them to shelters that could adopt them as barn cats.”

The agency’s annual report shows 208 animals – 115 dogs, 89 cats and four “others” – were euthanized at the shelter in 2015. That’s a 13 percent drop from 2014, when 239 animals were put down, according to that year’s annual report. And it’s a 43 percent drop from 2013, when 365 animals were euthanized.

Those numbers exclude animals whose owners walked into Animal Control requesting that their animal be put down, which dropped from 126 in 2013 to 70 in 2015.

The number of animals being taken into the shelter dropped roughly 13 percent over the same time.

The way the agency is relying on a network of cat-friendly rescues and shelters is reflected in its reported numbers. In 2013, some 20 percent of cats were transferred. In 2015, that number had increased by almost 10 percent.

The effect has been a reduction in not only the numbers of euthanized animals, but also the percentage of animals received that have to be put down. About 32 percent of cats and 22 percent of dogs taken in by Animal Control in 2013 were euthanized, according to agency data. Last year, 15 percent of cats and 20 percent of dogs were euthanized.

Nationally, the ASPCA estimates about 41 percent of cats and 30 percent of dogs in shelters are euthanized.

Zaleski said Animal Control employees send out emails to organizations asking if they could accept cats that otherwise would be considered unadoptable.

Among those organizations is the Animal Services Assistance Program. Based in Marengo, President Cindy Gaffney said in 2015 her agency accepted about half of Animal Control's transferred cats. It accepts feral cats, the ones Gaffney worries would be put down if her no-kill organization didn't take them.

“It’s a community effort,” Gaffney said. “It makes it a win for the cats and a win for the organizations.”

McHenry-based Animal Outreach Society also accepts cats from Animal Control, President Joyce Crosbie said. The 15 foster homes licensed through her operation take in county cats until they can be adopted. A no-kill operation, Crosbie said, it adopted all of the cats it received in 2015.

She’d like to see similar results for all cats that end up in Animal Control.

“We have shelters in our county that run down and get those animals,” Crosbie said. “We’ll never get to be a no-kill community unless people help. We do it because it’s the right thing to do.”