r those who care about the fates of the many dogs and cats that pass through the city’s hands, there’s cause for hope: Nashville has come a long way in 17 years — since the days when the Metro animal shelter was named the worst in U.S. history.
In June 1998, the National Animal Care & Control Association, a professional organization that monitors animal control procedure, issued a scathing report on the Metro-operated shelter then known as “the Bordeaux facility.” According to NACA’s audit of the fiscal year 1996-97, 7,668 animals passing through its doors were euthanized — a kill rate amounting to 97 percent.
The report cited conditions such as trash “left in plain view,” a “basically non-existent” air exchange to control disease and odor, and no air conditioning. “Only some cats are provided with litter trays,” it noted, while as many as 15 dogs were “grouped into gang kennels.”
Animals were not removed from their cages for cleaning, NACA found. Workers merely cleaned around them, leaving the animals to soak in their cages. As for the smell, the report concluded, “poor sanitation has contributed to the noxious odor which is prevalent throughout the building.”
“Nashville’s animal shelter was none other than a death camp for dogs and cats,” remembers Robert Chatham, a local animal-control activist. “You had to hold your nose from the stench of feces. Little to no effort was made to adopt those poor animals.”
There was little effort toward improvement from within the facility, administered under the Metro Public Health Department. According to NACA’s report, staffing was insufficient. Existing employees had no previous experience and received little training. There was not even a veterinarian on staff. Meanwhile, the report observed that employees seemed “satisfied with their working environment and the substandard levels of their operation” while there was “little or no discipline among workers.” Chatham says some were selling the animals for illegal dog fights.
What’s more, all transactions were cash, which raised eyebrows at NACA. Its report states that the staff actually had no computers for keeping records. Animal intake and processing were recorded in a hard-copy ledger; employees marked animals by hand with masking-tape collars, while cages were marked with handwritten cards. Given how wet animals and cages got during cleaning, the ink frequently ran, moving animals out of order in the euthanasia scheduling line. With a 97 percent kill rate, perhaps it didn’t matter who went first.
Such practices led activists to found the Animal Care Taskforce of Nashville to demand action. In December 1998, Chatham joined 74 fellow activists and 15 rescued pets outside a Metro Council session at the courthouse. They demanded that the municipal government shut down the Bordeaux facility.
A groundswell of public sympathy, including TV appearances by prominent musicians, pressured Metro to close the controversial facility, while Brent Hager, the new director of the Health Department’s Bureau of Environmental Health Services, worked from within to close the embattled facility. Finally, in 2001 Metro opened a new animal shelter on Harding Place.
While the new shelter offered humane treatment from the outset, however, euthanasia continued to be monstrously high for years after its opening 14 years ago. Space constraints and low adoption rates kept the numbers from declining. Despite staff working around the clock, the shelter was simply overwhelmed with incoming dogs and cats.
The story is different today. Cats and dogs have a far better chance of survival when they enter Nashville’s shelters. A chart of the past five years (Figure 1) shows the monthly percentage of dogs and cats euthanized (blue) versus directly adopted (orange) or taken by a rescue group (green). Drawing attention to January 2010, a decade after the new shelter was opened, the euthanasia rate for dogs and cats was more than 80 percent.
By January 2013, however, the euthanasia rate started to plummet. The percentage of dogs and cats going into rescue groups increased dramatically. Nashvillians stepped up and started to adopt more rescue pets directly from the rebranded Metro Animal Care and Control (MACC).
For the first time in its history, Metro has been able to stop euthanizing adoptable dogs and cats because of space contraints in 2015.
Why the dramatic improvement? Those who work in animal rescue credit changing public attitudes, coupled with the rise of key leaders in the pet rescue community. As Nashville has modernized, so too have ideas about humane and responsible pet care. Among younger generations of Nashvillians, adopting a rescue pet is becoming the norm — buying from breeders is seen as an outdated bourgeois practice.
The euthanasia rate currently stands at approximately 20 percent. Many nonprofit shelters boast that they are “no-kill.” Government-owned shelters, however, are required to take any stray or surrendered animals from their county, and they shoulder the largest volume of animals. By law, they must euthanize publicly unsafe animals (e.g. bite cases, rabies). They also euthanize animals suffering from untreatable medical issues. Thus there will always be some euthanasia performed at such shelters.
Animal rescue workers and volunteers who spoke with the Scene credit many of MACC’s large recent strides to Becca Morris, who joined MACC in 2011 to lead public relations and community outreach, and Lauren Bluestone, the new director hired in 2014. Bluestone initiated significant changes, starting with the streamlining of internal operations. While this may seem like a routine administrative step, efficiency is vital at a shelter handling thousands of lives. Bluestone also increased collaboration with the pet rescue community to transfer dogs and cats into foster homes when space ran thin.
One of Morris’ main battles was to eradicate memories of the Bordeaux facility, securing MACC’s reputation as clean, caring and well-run. She led the way in promoting the shelter’s adoptable animals, making use of social media and websites such as (continue reading at NashvilleScene)