How Changing Strategy Kept 28,000 Dogs With Their?Families
Me with my parents' rescue dog, Lancelot.

How Changing Strategy Kept 28,000 Dogs With Their?Families


Change what you’re doing instead of improving what’s failing.?

It’s what Lori Weise and Downtown Dog Rescue do to keep over 28,000 families united with their furry friends.

This is how it works.

Dogs are the United States’ most popular pet. Sixty-two million US households have a dog: that’s 45.6% of US households.1

People really do love their dogs.

Unfortunately, many people are unable to care for their furry friends. So, they end up in shelters, waiting to be adopted.

Even though the number of pets in shelters decreased by 56.9% between 2011 and 2019, the number has started to rise again after the pandemic.2 And, adding to this problem, adoption rates have remained the same.3 Together, this causes shelters to be overrun because they are taking in more pets than are getting adopted.

This overcrowding is driven primarily by dogs.?

Traditionally, shelters try to solve the pet adoption problem by focusing on what happens after a pet reaches the shelter. In other words, they attempt to solve the problem by getting pets adopted. They treat a downstream symptom of the bigger problem of people surrendering their pets to shelters. And, much like BlackBerry, they keep trying to improve a failing system.

Lori Weise and Downtown Dog Rescue in Los Angeles take a different approach.

In the 1990s, Lori worked at a furniture factory near Skid Row in Los Angeles?—?an area that had a large homeless population.? And a chance encounter with a homeless man named Benny Josephs and his dog Iron Head eventually led Lori to establish her nonprofit.?

Lori got to know Benny and Iron Head. She learned what it was like living with pets on the street and how common the situation was. And she saw how important pets were to people who were homeless.? As Lori says, “For many, their pet was their best friend, their family, their reason to live.”?

She started helping Benny and Iron Head. This led to introductions to more homeless people and their pets. Lori helped when there were no other ways for them to seek help and remain together.?

Lori formed Downtown Dog Rescue in 1996 with just a couple of volunteers to help homeless people be able to care for their pets. And they also offered free spaying and neutering to reduce the number of strays on the streets.1?

As the years went on, Downtown Dog Rescue expanded its services to help not only homeless pet owners but also low-income families that are at risk of having to give up their furry family members. Through various programs, Downtown Dog Rescue provides pet food and supplies, vouchers to help with veterinary bills, short-term boarding, legal services, and social support for struggling owners.11 They even use a thrift store to hire and train pet owners who struggle to reenter the workforce.12

Most owners don’t want to hand over their dogs. They have to. As Lori says:

Owner surrenders are not a people problem. By and large, they are a poverty problem. These families love their dogs as much as we do, but they are also exceptionally poor. We’re talking about people who in some cases aren’t entirely sure how they will feed their kids at the end of the month. So, when a new landlord suddenly demands a deposit to house the dog, they simply have no way to get the money. In other cases, the dog needs a $10 rabies shot, but the family has no access to a vet, or may be afraid to approach any kind of authority. Handing over their pet to a shelter is often the last option they believe they have.13

Everything Downtown Dog Rescue does aims to increase the chances that pets remain together with their best friends. Instead of focusing solely on what happens to the pet after it’s given up, Lori and Downtown Dog Rescue focus on the owner, the dog, and their relationship. They attack the growing problem of pet adoption before circumstances force owners to surrender their pets to shelters.

One particularly successful program they’ve instituted is the Shelter Intervention Program. Started in 2013, this program has shelter staff ask owners who come in to surrender their pets if they want to keep them. If the owners do, then the volunteers use their network of resources to help.1?

What’s astounding about Lori’s approach is that 75% of owners who come to shelters to surrender their pets actually want to keep them.1? And this isn’t something traditional shelter programs address.

Lori says, “We’ve had people break down, their knees buckle. They’re on the ground just shaking because they love their dog so much.”1?

This program helps reduce costs and keep spots open for pets like strays that have no other options.1?

Other shelters around the country have picked up the Shelter Intervention Program.1? And, between 2013 and 2023, Downtown Dog Rescue helped 28,000 struggling families in South Los Angeles keep their pets.1?

Lori and Downtown Dog Rescue succeed by defining the real problem instead of trying to develop an improved version of an existing solution.

There’s no really one model for this because everybody’s so unique. And your team is gonna be super unique. And the shelter’s gonna be unique. And thinking that you can come in with some statewide or national model and squeeze it into something that already exists and not really understanding what is the real problem. Because I think in not just animal welfare, but I think in just nonprofits, people identify a problem that’s really just a symptom of something far greater. — Lori Weise2?

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Notes

  1. American Veterinary Medical Association, 2022 AVMA Pet Ownership and Demographics Sourcebook(Schaumburg, IL: American Veterinary Medical Association, 2022), 4, https://ebusiness.avma.org/files/ProductDownloads/eco-pet-demographic-report-22-low-res.pdf.
  2. “Pet Statistics,” ASPCA, accessed January 31, 2024, https://www.aspca.org/helping-people-pets/shelter-intake-and-surrender/pet-statistics; “Intake and Outcome Data Comparison for the Full Year, Q1-Q4 2022,” Shelter Animals Count, last modified September 6, 2023, https://www.shelteranimalscount.org/intake-and-outcome-data-comparison-for-the-full-year-q1-q4-2022/.
  3. “Intake and Outcome Data.”
  4. ?“Intake and Outcome Data.”
  5. Allie Torgan, “Keeping people and their pets together,” CNN, last modified December 18, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/23/us/cnn-heroes-weise/index.html.
  6. “Meet Lori Weise,” VoyageLA, December 11, 2023, https://voyagela.com/interview/meet-lori-weise-of-south-gate/.
  7. “Meet Lori Weise of Downtown Dog Rescue in South Los Angeles,” VoyageLA, August 26, 2020, https://voyagela.com/interview/meet-lori-weise-downtown-dog-rescue-south-los-angeles/.
  8. “Meet Lori Weise of Downtown.”
  9. “Meet Lori Weise.”
  10. “Meet Lori Weise.”
  11. “Meet Lori Weise”; “Meet Lori Weise of Downtown.”
  12. “Meet Lori Weise.”
  13. Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg, “Are You Solving the Right Problems?,” Harvard Business Review, January/February 2017, 80.
  14. Wedell-Wedellsborg, “Are You Solving,” 80.
  15. Wedell-Wedellsborg, “Are You Solving,” 80.
  16. Torgan, “Keeping people.”
  17. ?Wedell-Wedellsborg, “Are You Solving,” 80.
  18. “Meet Lori Weise.”
  19. Donnell Randolph et al., ”Preserving Bonds and Preventing Intake with Barrier-Free Services,” interview by Allison Cardona, California for All Animals, UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program, last modified September 2, 2023, video, 7:45, https://www.californiaforallanimals.com/news-stories/preserving-bonds-and-preventing-intake-with-barrier-free-services/.
  20. Randolph et al., “Preserving Bonds,” 26:33.


This strategy article originally appeared on Medium.

David Goldberg

Talent Acquisition Specialist at Apollo Retail

3 个月

I missed a lot

回复
David Goldberg

Talent Acquisition Specialist at Apollo Retail

3 个月

Great read and I really love it.

David Goldberg

Talent Acquisition Specialist at Apollo Retail

3 个月

It is absolutely great that you and your mom have such compassion. We all need to keep animals safe as they need our help. I have adopted many animals over the years. The first one was a shepherd named Dutchess. We really loved her. Keep up what you are doing

Michelle Sarah Shields

Doctoral Student, Curriculum Writer, Academic Coach

3 个月

Of course, I LOVE this!!

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