As Rich Island wends his way through aisles and aisles of cages at Animal Care & Control Team headquarters on Hunting Park Avenue, he seems immune to the setting: He talks calmly over the tremendous din of barking dogs, and splashes seamlessly through puddles from frequent floor hosing.
Neither distract him from his practiced and measured method of evaluating the animals to see which would be a good fit for adoption through Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society, where he wears several hats as PAWS’ dog-rescue coordinator, kennel manager and enrichment coordinator.
Each animal that lands at ACCT has his or her own story — surrendered by owners who couldn’t afford them, found wandering the streets or taken away from their owners by authorities — and Island connects one on one with them to try to learn those stories.
“Talking, loose, body language, that’s great,” Island said as a wiggling pit bull ran up to the front of his cage to greet him. The dog was one of at least 75 he interacted with the day of our visit as he evaluated which were ready to be moved out of the city’s shelter — which last year euthanized nearly a quarter of the animals brought in —and start their path toward adoption.
PAWS is the city’s largest no-kill shelter, rescuing animals from shelters where they could face euthanasia, providing medical care and matching them with foster and adoptive families. It also operates two low-cost clinics for pet owners.
Some may think of the rescue journey as: find a puppy, post its picture, send it off to a loving home. But for PAWS, the process is a multi-faceted one that keeps the animal’s best interests at the forefront.
“You don’t ever want someone to bring the dog back to a shelter,” Island said, noting that PAWS has a very successful 4-percent return rate.
PAWS had a banner October, adopting out 290 dogs and cats, a record for the organization, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary. In the last decade, intake at ACCT is down by 30 percent, and lifesaving is up from 11 percent to 78 percent.
Island visits ACCT every day, combing through the dozens of cages of adoptable dogs and cats to search for animals to fill PAWS’ kennel. At each cage, he stops and interacts with the animal in what seems to be a casual manner, but what is really a series of targeted tests.
Island tries to approach each dog cage like he is an inexperienced handler — which he says helps the animals feel looser and can show how they might react to non-trained pet owners. He first evaluates their cage presentation, looking for signs of any immediate aggression like snarling or teeth-baring. As he goes up to say hello through the bars, dogs who run up and seek to “engage” with him are given a green light. Island runs his hands along the cage in different spots, seeing if the dog follows and is interested; the more social the dog is, the easier time it will have being adopted out.
Island also looks through papers tied to the cage — containing any known history and medications the dog may be on, among other information — while doing his own visual check for any obvious medical issues.
If the dog has passed all of Island’s initial checks, he may try a leash test, opening the cage and looping the leash on and off the dog’s neck. Once the cage is open and they’re interacting, Island can also get a better read on the dog’s level of fear.
A fearful dog, he noted, does not disqualify it from adoption; Island actually prefers working with such animals.
“Unsure, nervous, shy, fearful,” he said about a small Pekingese mix in the Small Dog Rescue Room that presented well but was hesitant to interact with him. “This will be a dog I’m going to take an extra step with. I love scared dogs. That’s the best project in the world. That can help me show everybody how scared he was and eventually he’ll be walking around like a champ.”
Island usually takes no more than three dogs per day — smaller dogs are often more adoptable, though Island loves being able to take pit bulls — and, for many, he comes back and visits day after day to keep working on any issues he’s noticed.
“I’m not saying that’s a reason to not take her,” he said, pointing to one older dog whose back legs had urine stains on them, suggesting a medical issue. “But if you’ve got dogs that can go already, take those first because they’ll move quicker. Pay attention to her, don’t take her off your radar, but figure out all her medical issues, get her out of that cage, have her interact with big dogs and small dogs, see how she does with cats and see if you can then move her.”
A large black and tan mutt housed in the larger-dog section was another such candidate. On the day of our visit, Island performed all of his initial checks and then undertook a food test, filling a bowl with a mixture of dry and wet food, smearing the latter all around the edges with his hands. He carefully leashed the dog up through the cage door and sat the bowl down, repeatedly restraining the dog and then letting her charge at the food, only to restrain her again, testing to see if she would act aggressively toward his hand.
She passed with flying colors, so Island moved on to see how she reacted with other dogs, marching her up and down the rows and rows of cages to test if she would return the aggression many of the dogs were throwing out from behind their cage bars. When one dog in particular was barking and throwing itself at the cage door, she looked up at Island as if questioning how to handle it, which he said was a sign of previous training.
Island next took her to one of ACCT’s fenced-in play yards. Instead of riling her up, he sat on the yard’s bench, evaluating how interested she was in interacting with him as opposed to exploring on her own, an area he determined she needed another day or two of work before she became a PAWS dog.
Dogs that come to ACCT as strays have to wait 48 hours before Island or other rescue workers can take them, so they can get up to date on vaccinations.
That day, one pup was ready to head out with him: Beans, a Puggle. After filling out paperwork in the ACCT office, Island loaded Beans’ crate into the back of the PAWS van and headed to PAWS’ Spay/Neuter Wellness Clinic in Grays Ferry.
When animals arrive at that location from ACCT or another shelter, one of the first stops is in the foster coordinators’ office, where they’re given a chance at interacting with a cat and socializing with the staff. Island fills out the new arrival’s paperwork, including tagging the dog with a “level” — 1 for dogs who will require little enrichment and are perfect candidates for adoption, 2 for those who might need a little preparation and so on.
Then it’s off to a meeting with the PAWS vets, who give the animal a full evaluation and come up with a plan of care. Some may require medical attention — like a cat who recently had a bulbous growth on her face removed — or need to be spayed or neutered; others get a clean bill of health and move right onto enrichment programming.
The PAWS kennel room is like night and day from ACCT’s; the bottom half of each cage is enclosed so the dogs aren’t enticed by their neighbors, and soothing music is piped throughout the room. Each day, volunteers and staff work one on one with the animals, taking them for walks, playing skills games like puzzles and sometimes taking them for motorcycle rides in a nearby parking lot. The dogs are exposed to new smells in the kennel — vanilla, cinnamon, lavender — to get them accustomed to the many scents they may encounter in their new home. A wipe board on the kennel wall dictates that day’s activity, like treat-filled kongs and “pupsicles,” which make the dogs work for their reward while having fun.
The more the animal is kept to a routine, the more comfortable it becomes.
“It’s all about repetition and consistency,” Island said, as he opened a cage to let out a small dog who’d been having issues warming up to people. He stood in the same spot and used the same tone of voice he’d been using during all of their interactions as she jumped into his arms.
PAWS also houses dozens of cats at the clinic; all have small towels tied to their cages, which Island explained they rub against as a means of comfort. Each is given toys suited to their needs; the day of our visit, Island ripped a few holes in a cardboard box for a cat and her kittens in which to play and seek privacy.
As the animals get accustomed to their surroundings, the foster-care team posts their photos and info online for potential adopters, before they make their way to a PAWS’ adoption centers or into foster care.
Foster parents work with the animals on behavior issues and house-breaking, and the experience gives them more opportunity to socialize with both people and other pets, said PAWS foster-care and dog-adoption manager Sara Davidson.
“There’s a lid for every pot,” she said about the adoption application-screening process. “Thankfully we live in a huge city with so many personalities and people with different backgrounds and experiences with animals. We get such a wide range of both applicants and animals, so the adoption and foster departments are all about matchmaking. I take what Rich presented to me, my interaction with the animals and then interact with the public and connect it all.”
If a match isn’t made right away, potential adopters can be put on a “wish list,” and PAWS will notify them when a certain animal comes in, such as a hypo-allergenic, kid-friendly dog.
Right now, the team is putting 16-22 dogs a week into foster care and adoption.
“We’re working at a really good pace but we have to walk a very fine, thin line,” Davidson said. “The public isn’t necessarily dog-savvy but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a pet; they just have to be trained, they have to learn and be educated to be savvy. And it all starts with picking animals that we know will live up to the standards of Philadelphians and going the extra mile and giving an extra boost to the ones who might need some more work.”
For more information, visit https://phillypaws.org.