Is transport the answer?

Every year, tens of thousands of dogs are sent north from southern pounds, shelters, and rescues. Right now, there’s a crisis among southern shelters and rescues as the monopolistic adoption search engine, Petfinder, released an update that has made it very difficult for dogs in the south to be seen by adopters in other states. The impact on adoptions makes it very clear just how much southern pounds and rescues rely on transport. Even No Kill shelters in the south have accepted the conventional wisdom that dogs are better off being sent elsewhere.

I don’t think that’s true.

Reliance on transport has a number of drawbacks. First, once a dog has been transported, the sending organization often doesn’t track what happens. There’s very little transparency throughout the animal sheltering and rescue world, and even less when dogs are sent away in hopes of a better life. We don’t know what percentage of transported animals gets that better life, what percentage end up back in a shelter, and what percentage are ultimately killed by a shelter or rescue.

Second, things are not always better up north. Here in central Texas, there are several communities that have made great strides toward becoming No Kill communities, and in the process we have developed capacities and attitudes that are rare in other places, including many transport destinations. We still don’t have enough force-free, positive reinforcement, reward-based dog trainers and other businesses, but we have a lot more than many cities and regions in the northern U.S. Transport destinations may have plenty of homes for dogs in the middle of the bell curve, but there are a whole lot of dogs with minor quirks that become causes of death when there are no supports in their local community.

Finally, reliance on transport is a band-aid, not a cure for the systemic problems affecting animal welfare, especially in southern states. Underfunded government agencies, including municipal animal shelters, outsource a public service to private organizations, local and distant. As long as animals are sent away, the problem never has to be addressed. Cities and counties in southern states tend to ignore their reason for being—to provide for the common good through taxation and public services—to the greatest extent possible. They preach self-sufficiency but if southern communities were truly self-sufficient, they would use local resources to solve local problems (including the massive stray cat and dog problem). They’d use tax dollars to provide effective, efficient public services such as dog and cat sterilization, vaccination, helping caring owners keep their pets and re-homing those who don’t care or don’t want their dogs and cats. If local pounds became shelters, the number of unwanted animals would be drastically reduced and so would the need for transport.

There are times when transport is a good thing, but it’s not a panacea. I think the guiding questions should be: Will this individual dog have a better life if transported? How can we make sure that’s true? And what will we do if he needs us again?