Abstract
Shelter care of animals and shelter medicine are both a growing field with expectations of improved welfare for shelter animals. The Association of Shelter Veterinarians (ASV) published The Guidelines for Standards of Care in Animal Shelters in 2010. The ASV Guidelines outline minimum care expectations for shelters, using a ‘must,’ ‘should,’ and ‘ideal’ ranking. Frequently shelters have limited resources, staff with a variety of training or experience, and often only consulting veterinarians – or even no veterinary coverage in certain locations. The ASV Guidelines are open access, freely available, and provide a roadmap for skills expectations. We performed comprehensive training searches to determine how available training could be crafted to meet or exceed the ASV Guidelines. The search for internet training resources was moderately successful. While useful resources were discovered, many others known to be available by the authors were not included in the search results. This article reviews our search methodology, reporting what was found and identifying certain ‘missed’ training activities. We then outline a basic online training program which could address each major topic identified in the ASV Guidelines and offer encouragement for shelter managers seeking to enhance local training experiences.
Highlights
Each chapter title from the Association of Shelter Veterinarians (ASV) Guidelines were used as part of the search criteria in addition to the words, “animal shelter” and “online training”
Some websites were completely missed and included the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) regarding public health, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) regarding record keeping, American Humane Association for multiple topics and Dogs Playing for Life for behavioral health
The training program outlined later in this report only includes sources that meet the requirements for reliability and content relevance, as previously described
Summary
Animal shelters are typically understaffed and underfunded. The average operating cost in 2018 for North Carolina shelters was $664,166.95, with an average intake of 2935 dogs and cats, based on data from eighty-two reporting shelters. North Carolina shelters spent approximately $226 per animal. Operating expenses in North Carolina ranged from $125 (total intake of 11 dogs and cats) to $6,377,414 (total intake of 9,811 dogs and cats) [1]. While detailed operational descriptions were not included in the NCDA report, clearly fiscal resources for basic sanitation, feed, and water would consume more than $11 per animal, which is the calculated average cost per animal expense for the shelter with the $125 operating expense. Et al inferred that shelter staffing, time allocations, and skill set were quite variable amongst organizations [2].
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