Episode Summary

Every year, millions of dogs and cats enter animal shelters, yet shelter intake has remained relatively unchanged for years. If we want to reduce the number of pets entering shelters, the work often begins long before a family reaches the shelter door.

In this episode, Penny talks with BJ Adkins, founder of Animals-Angels, about practical strategies that help families keep their pets during difficult times. After years of fostering animals, BJ realized many pets are surrendered because of temporary hardships like financial setbacks, housing challenges, medical emergencies, or a lack of affordable veterinary care.

Instead of creating another rescue organization, she built a prevention network serving seven counties in the Birmingham, Alabama area. Through a pet help desk, affordable spay and neuter services with transportation, post-adoption support, and community partnerships, her organization focuses on preventing pet surrender before it happens.

BJ also explains why she opposes mandatory spay and neuter laws, how local governments can invest in prevention programs, and why shifting funding toward keeping pets with their families can reduce shelter intake over time.

Whether you’re an animal advocate, shelter volunteer, rescue professional, policymaker, or simply someone who wants to improve animal welfare in your community, this conversation offers practical ideas you can apply where you live.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why the prevention conversation needs to happen before someone reaches the shelter door
• How a pet help desk works and what problems it can solve
• What subsidized spay/neuter looks like when transportation is attached to it
• Why BJ opposes mandatory spay/neuter laws, and what happens to intake when they pass
• How to make the prevention funding argument to a city council or county commission
• The one question to ask your local government about its animal welfare spending

Key Takeaway

To reduce shelter intake, start with the gap in your own community. The work that needs doing is the work nobody else is doing

Episode Highlights

03:23 — The reasons families gave up pets: a financial setback, a hospital stay, housing that wouldn’t take animals

05:03 — BJ’s bathtub analogy, and the decision to turn off the faucet instead of picking up a mop

06:36 — The prevention framework, starting with a pet help desk that has cut intake 30 to 50% elsewhere

07:57 — What a $15-per-pet help desk actually solves, including a 3 a.m. call about a family out of pet food

09:19 — The pet resume, and getting past breed and weight restrictions in rental housing

10:26 — Why reaching people at the shelter counter is too late, and what “owner surrender” connotes

12:13 — Subsidized spay/neuter, and the Austin Pet Care Connect model with transportation attached

14:04 — Why mandatory spay/neuter laws increase intake and stray populations

15:19 — Adoption Boost: 90 days of calls at 7, 30, 60, and 90 days

18:23 — What surprised BJ in her research, and why she concluded current approaches aren’t working

19:57 — Funding prevention through general funds: license plates, and the pet food manufacturer fee

23:26 — The fire department analogy, and the problem with quantifying prevented harm

24:47 — The partners she’s looking for: shelters, rescues, veterinarians, groomers, landlords

27:23 — The question to ask your city council or county commission

Resources Mentioned

• Animals-Angels Foundation
• The Four C’s of Legislative Advocacy for Animals (free audio series)

Related Episodes:

Fix it: Making Spay/Neuter Accessible and Affordable

How to Fund Spay/Neuter Programs: Lessons from Five States That Got It Done

Outside Dogs and The Law: How Support Keeps Dogs Out of Shelters

Transcript 

Penny Ellison

We talk a lot on this show about upstream and downstream solutions to animal welfare problems. Lots of times it seems like too much of animal welfare works downstream, dealing with the fact that shelters and rescues are overrun with animals in need. Roughly 5.8 million dogs and cats entered U.S. shelters last year, and that number has barely moved in 5 years. So I spend a lot of time thinking about upstream solutions. How do we stop shelters from filling in the first place? Fewer births, more resources to catch and solve problems before that animal is standing in the lobby and the shelter staff are trying to find an open kennel. My guest today sees the challenge the same way. She looked at what was happening in her community, and she’s building the infrastructure to change it.

Penny Ellison

Welcome to The Animal Advocate, where we arm animal lovers with the information and inspiration you need to become effective advocates. I’m your host, Penny Ellison, and I’ve taught animal law and advocacy at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006. If you’ve ever thought, someone should do something about that, I’m here to guide you on your journey to being that someone. You can find us on the web at animaladvocacyacademy.com. And that’s where you’ll find show notes and resources, and you can send us your comments on episodes and ideas for topics you’d like to hear on future shows. So, on to today’s topic.

Penny Ellison

BJ Adkins is the founder of Animals-Angels, working across a 7-county area around Birmingham, Alabama. She came to this work after years as a foster, watching animals come into shelters and rescues for the same reasons over and over again, whether it was a temporary financial setback, a hospital stay with nobody to watch the pet, a move to a place that wouldn’t take animals, or a pet deposit that the owner couldn’t afford. She’s also a disabled veteran, and she’s the author of a book called The Shift to Prevention. What she’s building in Alabama is a network, starting with a pet help desk that answers calls before the pet owners are standing in a shelter. She’s working on subsidized spay/neuter with transportation, providing 90 days of support post-adoption when returns are most likely, and a funding argument aimed at city councils and county commissions instead of a grant cycle.

We get into all of it, including why she opposes mandatory spay/neuter laws and the one question she’d have you ask your own local government. Here’s BJ Adkins.

Welcome, BJ. I’m so happy to have you on the Animal Advocate podcast.

BJ Adkins

I’m glad to be here. Thank you, Penny.

Penny Ellison

So you came to animal welfare after years of fostering. So, so tell me about the animals or the families that you saw during those years that made you decide you wanted to build something of your own.

BJ Adkins

Well, I would see families that were giving up their animals because they got into a temporary financial situation or they would go into the hospital and didn’t have anybody to watch their pet, you know, or if they were, you know, especially the elderly, if they had to go in, a lot of times they didn’t have anybody to watch their pet, so they have to give it up to the shelter or rescue. There was other ones that they moved and they— the new place didn’t accept pets, or if they couldn’t afford the pet deposit. You know, I ran into that a lot.

Penny Ellison

So you looked at a lot of the reasons that dogs had been surrendered and were in foster care at that point?

BJ Adkins

Well, not into foster care. First, of course, they were going into the shelters. And then the shelters would then look for fosters for the ones that were coming in.

Penny Ellison

And I assume the shelters stayed full all the time?

BJ Adkins

Pretty much. You know, because when people knew that I fostered, they would ask me, “I found these mama cat and kittens in my garage. Where can I take them?” And I’d be like, well, I don’t know where you can take them because they’re all full, especially during kitten season.

Penny Ellison

And you decided, I’m not going to be a rescue. I’m going to be something else. And you start your book with— we should talk about your book, which is called The Shift to Prevention. Yes.

BJ Adkins

And it actually starts with my analogy of animal welfare and shelters and rescues, where they’re all in a bathroom huddled around a bathtub that is just overflowing, and they’re running around with mops and buckets and trying to get the water up, and I just kind of looked at that and decided that I didn’t want to be one of the ones that was running around with a mop or a bucket, that I wanted to walk over and start turning the faucet off because that made absolute total sense to me.

Penny Ellison

And turning the faucet off is, is moving upstream to prevention, preventing all those reasons for surrender that you saw when you were fostering.

BJ Adkins

Correct. Right. And prevention, you know, when I speak of prevention, it’s not one program and it’s not one organization. I mean, there are some programs that are primary. That spay and neuter is one of the primary ones.

Penny Ellison

Let’s draw that picture for people, because I think you have primary, secondary, tertiary, you have different levels of prevention and they’re going to hit on different surrender reasons and they’re going to require different kinds of resources fed into them. You know, some of them need a fair amount of money. Some of them just need a policy change. So can you walk me through what your surrender prevention framework looks like?

BJ Adkins

Well, the first one that we have is actually the pet help desk, which we’re working on implementing. Through our research, we’ve actually found that other organizations that have implemented a like a pet help desk, have reduced their shelter intakes by anywhere from 30 to 50%. So that’s one of the primary. The second, of course, is spay and neuter.

Penny Ellison

Which requires veterinarians and vet techs and money, right?

BJ Adkins

Correct.

Penny Ellison

Pet help desk, on average, it costs about $15 per That’s an interesting question because you’re saying it averages at $15, which sounds like it should be easy to prevent a lot of surrenders. But data is one of those things in animal welfare generally, I think, that is hard to come by and not maybe as concrete as some people pretend it to be. For instance, housing is a big reason for surrender rates. A breed restriction, a size restriction, just the inability to get affordable housing that will allow you to have your pet. And that’s not a problem that’s going to be solved with under $100. So what kind of problems are you seeing that can be solved that inexpensively?

BJ Adkins

Well, with the Pet Help Desk, we’ve got people that, for example, that they call because they’re having issues with their cat. The cat won’t use the litter box.

Penny Ellison

So advice type, behavior advice.

BJ Adkins

And that’s just like a matter of like, okay, well, let’s first, let’s move the litter box. That doesn’t cost anything. But then we’ve got somebody that’ll call in and then they need help with pet food. For example, I actually had a call at 3 in the morning. I happened to be awake. And she had been outta work for like 6 months and had gotten to the point where her cats were trying to open the refrigerator, she said, to try to find food. And that was 3 o’clock in the morning. By 10 o’clock we had pet food.

Penny Ellison

So, things like behavior advice then, and support with food, maybe support with basic wellness or vaccine services. I think those are all doable. Have you run into housing as a barrier and have you figured out anything you can do about that?

BJ Adkins

Well, housing, what we run into there is people can’t find housing. You know, they run into like breed restrictions or weight restrictions when they’re looking. So for that, we have put together a pet resume. So instead of just going and saying, well, my pet, you know, Is great. They don’t do any damage. They don’t bark. They can go in with a pet resume, which of course shows that their vaccines are up to date, whether they’re spayed or neutered. Also, if there’s a prior rental history, they can have references from prior landlords. Yeah, they lived here for 2 years and the dog never barked and didn’t do any damage. So then instead of purely being based on breed or size, they can look at the dog on an individual level.

Penny Ellison

That’s what we want. I wanted to stay on the help desk issue for a minute because it is so important, both, that those services are provided and funded and how they’re provided, because I don’t know, in your experience, have you found that it’s important to reach people before they end up at the shelter?

BJ Adkins

It’s extremely important to reach them before they end up at the shelter. The majority of the time, by the time somebody is standing at the shelter door or the shelter counter, they have already looked for resources. They have already looked for support. They’ve posted on Facebook, you know, I can’t afford the vet bill, or I can’t figure out why my cat won’t use the litter box. And so they’ve already gone through, you know, the emotional turmoil and everything of trying to decide whether or not to surrender their pet, because the term owner surrender in and of itself connotates failure.

Penny Ellison

Hmm. I never thought of it that way. I do agree with you that it’s a very different conversation if you’re standing in the shelter lobby trying to offer resources because they’ve crossed that bridge. And I always say, you know, they’ve told their children, they’ve crossed that emotional bridge.

BJ Adkins

Yeah, they’ve already been putting out there and looking for support and everything. So they’ve gone through the emotional turmoil and everything. And they finally made the decision. And at that point, if you offer resources, you’re like, oh my, you know, they’re like, oh my gosh, well, if these resources don’t work, I have to go through all this again. And they’re not willing to go through all that again.

Penny Ellison

So your organization works on providing these help desk services in your— is it 7-county area, right?

BJ Adkins

Yes, in the Birmingham metro area of Alabama. Yes.

Penny Ellison

And we touched on, on that same tier of prevention, spay/neuter services. What do spay/neuter services look like in your area? Are there any subsidized spay/neuters? Is there any transportation provided?

BJ Adkins

There are some subsidized spay/neuter if you’re on government assistance, like if you’re on disability, WIC, SBT or EBT or SNAP, depending on what it’s called in your particular area. Then you can get a voucher and get a subsidized spay/neuter. There’s nothing that provides transportation. And we’re looking to put together what we call high-impact clinics, which is similar to what they did in Austin with the Pet Care Connect program. They went and they took the clinics out into the areas where they were needed. They worked with the local organizations like the local churches and everything to, of course, help them get into the area. And then, of course, the volunteers from the churches helped them.

BJ Adkins

They went and knocked on doors. Then once they got, you know, they did the free vaccines and the free microchipping and they sign up for spay/neuter. And on the day of the spay/neuter appointments, they provided transportation. So they went and picked up the animals, took them to the spay/neuter, and then at a predesignated time and place, They took the animals back so that the owners could come pick them up.

Penny Ellison

Making it truly accessible.

BJ Adkins

Yeah. Making it truly accessible to the people that were the ones that really needed it.

Penny Ellison

Now, you’ve come out against mandatory spay/neuter laws. There are a lot of people on social media that say we should just mandate all dogs and cats be spayed or neutered. Why are you against it?

BJ Adkins

For one thing, the people that are the ones that most need to have their pets spayed and neutered, they can’t afford it to begin with. You put on spay and neuter, and then they’re like, okay, well, I still can’t afford to get the spay and neuter, even though you’ve told me that legally I have to and you’re going to give me a fine. If I don’t get my animal spayed or neutered. So then what happens is shelter intakes increase because more of them start surrendering. And if they’re not surrendering, they’re dumping them in a dog park, they’re leaving them in a box outside the shelter, or they’re dumping them out on a back road. So shelter intakes and Stray populations increase when you implement mandatory spay/neuter.

Penny Ellison

I agree that the solution isn’t a legal mandate unless that legal mandate also comes with the resources that you need to make it, as you say, truly accessible to the people who most need it. We talked about help desk and spay/neuter. What are your other tiers or levers of prevention?

BJ Adkins

Well, we also have one that’s called Adoption Boost. And what that is, is no matter where the animal is adopted from, whether it’s a shelter or rescue, we provide 90 days of support from the day that you bring it home. And part of that is a phone call at 7 days, at 30 days, at 60 days, and 90 days.

Penny Ellison

Wow.

BJ Adkins

But she would call and say, you know, how is it going? I mean, there are programs where a service automatically sends out emails, but a lot of people don’t have emails, and the ones that really need them may not even have internet. But what we do is just put that human relationship back into it.

Penny Ellison

Absolutely. I mean, that’s another service that, you know, sometimes at sheltering it’s hard to to fund that kind of after-adoption follow-up. But I think it’s something that if you have experienced volunteers who maybe want to help remotely, it’s something that they could do, make those follow-up calls. I just saw a survey that said— it was talking about people’s satisfaction rate after adoptions, and it had, you know, a 90-plus percent satisfaction rate with adoption. But most of those people, like 3 quarters, also said they were dealing with some type of behavior issue so that they want to keep their pet. They’re happy that they adopted it, but they might need some support to address house soiling or leash pulling or something so that that kind of post-adoption support would prevent them from giving up.

BJ Adkins

Right. Because most adoption returns happen within the first 30 days. So that’s why our first call is at 7 days because, you know, the first 3 days after adoption is usually— you have to isolate the pet, maybe put them in a safe place and everything, because they’ve been in the shelter. Now they’re transitioning to a home or an apartment, which is, um, it’s like taking somebody and putting them on the moon. Here they’ve, they’ve been in the shelter and probably have some type of level of shelter stress. Now they’re into a completely new environment that they don’t know they’re safe. So, you know, at 7 days, we’ve passed that 3-day threshold just to say, okay, how’s it going? Is there anything that you need help with?

Penny Ellison

And that’s another way, like the help desk, to reach out to people before they make that decision to come back, bring them back to the shelter. You know, if you try to talk to them again, if they’ve decided to return because they can’t house train them or some other problem. You want to catch that while they’re still in the home and give them help and support. So you did a lot of research for your book. It appeared that way to me. Did you, did you find anything that surprised you in your research that you incorporated then into your programs?

BJ Adkins

I actually found quite a bit that surprised me during my research. I did a lot of research to see what the gaps were, you know, and I think the thing that surprised me most is because we hear about spay and neuter, we hear about adoptions, and spay and neuter and adoptions are at some of the highest rates that they’ve ever been. However, when you look at the last 5 years, the shelter intake data from the Shelter Animals Count, and the ASPCA has been right around 6 million for 5 years in a row. We’re doing, you know, we’re doing more adoptions and more spay and neuter. But overall, the needle hasn’t really changed in the last 5 years. So that told me that what we are doing isn’t working.

Penny Ellison

That is a great point because those are— when people say, I want to start my own organization and I want to help, I always tell them the first thing you do is look for gaps. You know, in your community, there are things that are not being done that could be done to turn off the faucet, as your analogy says.

BJ Adkins

Yeah.

Penny Ellison

So you looked for gaps. And when we talk about some of these things, obviously it takes money, and you point out in your book some examples of work running inside city government funded by the general fund as opposed to grants. And I think most of us doing this work are sort of grant dependent, which is, which is a hard way to live, to be able to offer these programs on a consistent basis through grants. What do you think we need to do to get more of these programs funded with municipal or county dollars or state dollars?

BJ Adkins

I think part of that is, uh, it’s gonna be a combination like New Mexico and, uh, Maryland.

Penny Ellison

Yep. Maryland, Delaware. You’re trying to talk about the pet food manufacturer fee?

BJ Adkins

Yes, actually. And, and a combination of income sources that the city government or state government, uh, would approve. You know, like the license plate program. But like those states found, I mean, it does bring in money, but it doesn’t bring in money enough to fund subsidized spay/neuter programs or veterinary access. So that’s when they did the pet food.

Penny Ellison

Right, because that brings in more money directly from the manufacturers.

BJ Adkins

Yeah, from the manufacturers. And I think that was in the neighborhood of $1.4 or $1.5 million.

Penny Ellison

Depends on the state, but the license plates, in my experience, bring in maybe $25,000, maybe $50,000, which, like you said, it’s helpful, but it’s not going to run a subsidized spay/neuter program.

BJ Adkins

Correct. So it’s got to be a combination.

Penny Ellison

If we’re talking about how do you persuade a city or a county government that this is something that is worth finding money in the budget for, you talked about having to pay animal control officers now. At least in the places where government takes responsibility for strays, they’re spending money sending animal control officers out, picking up strays, housing them in a shelter for the stray hold period, euthanizing them if that ends up being the outcome, or trying to get them adopted. So I think one, one of your persuasive mechanisms involves showing the government or any potential funder how much money you would save if you funded a spay/neuter program.

BJ Adkins

Correct. Because once I, you know, I did all my research and everything, I’m like, okay. We’re going to be a prevention-first nonprofit. We’re not going to be a rescue, which means that if I go and say, well, I want X number of dollars for a particular program, they’re so used to somebody asking for money that has been telling them how many intakes they’ve had, how many adoptions they’ve had, and everything else. So animal welfare is one of the few industries where we don’t really do a lot with prevention. We do it with our houses and we do it with our health and with our teeth. We go to the dentist for checkups. We go and get, you know, health checkups because if we find the problem early, it’s a lot less expensive and it’s a lot easier on our health.

BJ Adkins

Mm-hmm.

Penny Ellison

There are certainly a lot of people that are looking to figure out how to fund these programs, and I know you can’t just ask for money. You have to—

BJ Adkins

Well, no, because when you’re, when you’re working prevention, that’s like the fire department going and saying, okay, we need funding. And of course the city’s going to say, well, how many fires did you put out? Well, of course the fire department’s like, well, we didn’t put out any fires. We kept 500 fires from happening, which of course is exponentially less expensive than if they had put the fires out. But the, you know, the, the city is so used to funding based on how many fires were put out, they were— they’d be like, well, then that means you don’t need any money because you didn’t put any fires out.

Penny Ellison

It’s a good analogy.

BJ Adkins

It still costs money to keep those 500 fires from happening.

Penny Ellison

Quantifying impact is very important when you’re asking for money, whether it’s from a government or a donor or a private foundation. Right, right.

BJ Adkins

You’ve got to quantify it and put it into terms for your audience of who you’re, who you’re talking to.

Penny Ellison

Let’s go back to your, your structure is really you have a 501, but you’re looking to partner with a bunch of other organizations. So nobody can do this alone. So what kind of partners are you looking for and what do you want them to do?

BJ Adkins

We’re looking to partner with shelters, rescues, veterinarians, groomers, because everybody in animal welfare is part of it. Not only that, but landlords and pet owners. I mean, I hate the old phrase, it takes a village.

Penny Ellison

Yeah.

BJ Adkins

Okay. But pretty much in order to achieve, you know, lowering the number of intakes and lowering the pet population, it is basically going to take a village.

Penny Ellison

Sometimes there’s a reason that clichés become a cliché. And by keeping a lot of animals out of the shelters, you’re helping make those shelters that safe place. Because a lot of people, they see animals getting euthanized in shelters and they think, oh, you know, don’t bring, don’t bring your dog or cat there because they’re just gonna kill them. That’s, that’s largely not the case, but they, they can only handle as many animals as they can handle. And you, you need, we need to keep that number down. And that’s why you and I put the vast majority of our emphasis on these upstream programs. Instead of having the, the, the bail for the bathtub, we’re, we’re trying to stop that faucet so that the animals that end up at the shelter truly need to be there. And there’s enough space for them because the animals that could have been kept in a home are still at home.

BJ Adkins

Correct. I mean, you know, that way there is a spot for the animals that truly need, you know, a safe place to go. And not only that, but there’s space and the staff have time to take care of those animals once they come in because they’re not so overwhelmed with strays and owner surrenders that they have time to really Yeah. Give to the ones that really need it, you know, because there are situations, you know, you got hoarding situations, you got, you know, like puppy mills, you know, and they have to go and get 30, 50, or 100 dogs, you know, and those, those animals need a safe place to go. And that’s what our shelters were originally 100%.

Penny Ellison

I agree with you. So as we wind down, what you’re doing is something that needs to be done in, I would say, most places in the United States, creating this partnership infrastructure to have these prevention programs in place and accessible to people. Do you have— what’s your favorite piece of advice for somebody else that wants to do what you’re doing in their community?

BJ Adkins

My first piece of advice would be to call either their city council or their county commission, whoever funds the animal welfare, and ask them how much they spend on shelters versus prevention. If they’re spending more on shelters than prevention, then look at putting together ways to convince them to put a line item, even if it’s 5% of the budget that they’ve been spending on the reactive programs, even if it’s 5%, to get them to put into prevention. Because once they put it in, they start seeing the impact of that 5%, then eventually they’ll start putting more. But if they’re not putting any to begin with, Then you got work to do. Then you got a lot of work to do. Yeah.

Penny Ellison

Thank you so much for that advice, but mostly for everything that you’re trying to do in Alabama. I hope to talk to you again. I’m happy to help you with your work, and I’d love to see a lot more people trying to do what you’re doing.

BJ Adkins

Okay. Thank you, Penny. I was glad to be here.

That’s it for today. The Animal Advocate is brought to you by the Animal Advocacy Academy. If today’s episode got you thinking about what you can do to change things for animals, I want to make sure you know about the four Cs of legislative advocacy for animals. It’s a free audio series I put together that gives you a real framework for making legislation happen. You can find it at animaladvocacyacademy.com/fourcs. and you can find all our episodes and show notes at animal advocacyacademy.com. Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, and if you know another animal advocate who should be listening, send this one their way. Questions on today’s topic or anything else, just email us at podcast@animaladvocacyacademy.com.  We’ll write back, or we’ll feature your question in a future episode.

Remember, compassion is great, but compassionate action is infinitely better. Until next week, Live with Compassion.