The Seven Freedoms: promises we must make now to protect pets

The Five Freedoms as described by the ASPCA, the Association of Shelter Veterinarians (ASV), American Humane, and others as the ‘universal standards of care’ for animal shelters, are primarily conceptual and do not meaningfully and consistently exist in most animal shelters. Where they are attempted, they are maintained only in particular moments when staffing levels are high, motivated leadership is in place, and the intake of animals relative to shelter resources makes it possible to ensure basic welfare standards are met. This is a call to reimagine these freedoms. It is a proposal to create new and expanded freedoms and ensure they are met. It's an assertion that we (the public, national organizations, and government leaders) need to help shelters provide these freedoms through means other than depopulation and euthanasia to reduce capacity. Currently, impoundment and holding are the primary mechanism for getting lost pets home, housing sick and injured animals, and caring for relinquished animals. Using the Five Freedoms as a starting point, I am going to expand on each of them and propose we add two more in order to build a concrete and aspirational vision for a better system of animal welfare.

Freedom from hunger and thirst by ready access to fresh water and diet to maintain health and vigor. Fresh, clean water should be available to animals in the custody of the animal services agency. For cats, who intake water partially through the food they eat, wet and dry food should be available at all times. Both cats and dogs should be monitored to ensure they are eating and drinking appropriately. Animals that will not eat the standard food provided by the agency should be offered alternative foods until one is identified that they will eat and/or they are seen by a veterinary professional to determine why they are not eating and to provide appropriate medical care. Pets with dental issues and older animals should be provided with age-appropriate, palatable food, and very young animals should be fed at appropriate durations with age-appropriate liquid or solid food.?

Freedom from discomfort by providing an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area. For animals in custody for a very short period of time (less than one week), a traditional kennel with indoor and outdoor spaces may be acceptable. Animals that enter in small groups or pairs should be housed together in larger kennels and every housing area should contain two distinct areas where the pet can relieve themselves outside of their sleeping area. A comfortable resting area should include a bed big enough to fit every animal in the enclosure.

For pets that will be housed for longer periods of time, comfortable housing should resemble something closer to enclosures in model zoos, where the animals can live in small or medium-sized groups, indoors and outdoors, explore their environment, engage in various forms of grooming and play, and move vertically as well as horizontally. For dogs these should resemble play yards or doggie day care facilities, with all friendly and social animals able to spend time socializing or resting during the day.

For cats, this should include indoor and outdoor housing with hiding and climbing options, noise reduction design to reduce stress, and enrichment activities like fountains, scratch pads, and safe plants. Both cats and dogs should be readily viewable by the public without disturbing the animals, so visitors should be able to watch animals through a one-way glass or from the side of an outdoor play yard. Visitation between people and adoptable pets should happen seamlessly, so that pets can be easily moved from a group to individual meeting space without causing undue stress to the animal.?

Freedom from pain, injury, or disease by prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment. Imagine going from a bed to sleeping on a concrete floor. You’d be sore too, and like us, older animals suffer more from lack of a soft place to rest. Every animal should receive an intake examination followed by regular check-ups by a medical professional. Additionally, every pet should be vaccinated before or at the point of intake, to prevent the spread of potentially deadly contagious illnesses. Injured and sick animals should receive prompt, emergency care and treatment and there should be an emergency medical intensive care unit where animals can be monitored by the veterinarian at all times. Pets should all have access to be able to move freely both indoors and outdoors, to run and jump, and to play. These conditions prevent animals from getting sick by reducing the stress of confinement.

Medically vulnerable animals should be prioritized for immediate foster placement and 90% or higher of all animals should be deemed eligible for foster care. Pets with owners who are surrendering due to lack of ability to pay for care should be offered the option to keep their pet post-treatment. Animals with contagious illnesses should also be prioritized for foster care and those that remain in custody through sickness should also be housed in groups and given equal exercise and enrichment.?The few animals that would be housed for bite quarantine should have roomy, individual kennels with comfortable beds and enrichment items. There should be checks and balances to ensure animals that need routine or ongoing care and those that need ongoing medications get them.

All animals that can be treated outside of the shelter should be marketed to foster homes, and the animal services agency should subsidize care of especially medically challenging animals. Dismantling and reimagining the shelter system of today would mean animal shelters would provide a higher level of care to pets in the shelter and the community and that animals could get treatment and support from the shelter without impoundment and surrender. Finally, traumatic stress would be formally considered pain and injury and shelters would consider the mental health and wellbeing of every animal as much as its physical condition. Consideration of mental health would involve case management to ensure that animals impounded for bites, legal cases, and other impounded pets with known owners would be allowed regular visitation by caregivers and other family members and pets would be allowed to remain in homes rather than being impounded in every case except in extremely high risk situations where community wellbeing may be compromised.?

Freedom to express normal behavior by providing sufficient space, proper facilities, and company of the animal’s own kind. ‘Normal’ behavior for a companion animal varies, based on the animal’s life experience, age, condition, and previous living conditions. In the reimagined system, organizations would make foster care the primary means of housing pets, as this is the best chance of replicating normal conditions. For animals housed in facilities for any length of time, co-housing, group housing, or species-adjacent housing should be guaranteed, and at all times, animals should be able to choose whether they interact with their roommates or spend time alone or just with people. Daily, normalizing activities should be planned for all animals in custody and these should include group and individual outings, varied enrichment and brain games, life skills opportunities, and consistent routines, like bedtime and morning rituals. These should be utilized as opportunities to learn more about the pets and their particular personalities and preferences.

Freedom to express normal behavior must also include the freedom to express fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, unexpended energy, defensiveness, and other behaviors formerly perceived as undesirable and possible causes for euthanasia. The small percentage of animals that do pose safety risks for handlers while in custody should be prioritized for behavioral foster care and rehabilitative support services outside the shelter. Animals should be given opportunities and choices when it comes to meeting new people and animals. Animals should be grouped according to their energy levels and interactions styles so they are not subjected to undue stress by being grouped with animals who are very different from them.?

Freedom from fear and distress by ensuring conditions and treatment which avoid mental suffering. The Fear Free, LLC system for veterinary handling can give us a pathway towards protecting animals from conditions that cause mental suffering. In order to create a new system that avoids or at least reduces mental suffering, the traditional isolation kennel will no longer be an appropriate means of housing most animals, for it in and of itself creates the conditions for mental agony and suffering.

Sheltered animals should have a right to interact with their own species through programs like Dogs Playing for Life? . Further, a system of privacy protections should be enacted for animals, similar to the system that protects foster children from having protected information disclosed publicly. Finally, a system to protect animals from fear and distress means impoundment into a kennel cannot be the primarily means of helping animals. Keeping animals out of shelter kennels, and getting them out quickly, are the easiest, safest, and most cost effective ways to ensure pets are free of the distress of losing everything they know and love when they’re removed and impounded.?

Freedom from death due to shelter capacity or lack of resources. Both government and non-profit animal shelters are guaranteed the right to euthanize any animal in their custody for any reason. As a result, animals are never guaranteed the right to a live outcome, and can be euthanized with little or no justification. Even in relatively high-functioning shelters, an animal can be euthanized simply because it came in with two other animals and the records got mixed up or because the animal did not 'present well' when observed inside a kennel. Mistakes happen so even when the shelter doesn’t intend to euthanize an animal, they are still at risk of ending up dead because of tracking system failures.

A new system must begin by protecting from the system itself. This will mean getting lost pets home without impounding them through use of technologies like Petco Love Lost which make shelter impoundment unnecessary in most cases and removes the shelter as the arbitrator between the owner and the finder. We also need to provide alternatives to pet owners seeking surrender and help build mutual aid and resilience within communities by promoting rehoming technologies like Rehome. We must have formalized mechanisms to end the practice of euthanizing animals simply due to space or time limits. This will require changes to punitive laws and government-mandated practices that are highly effective at getting pets into the system and prevent them from returning home or getting adopted.

Freedom from gatekeeping and discrimination. The building blocks of our current system are discriminatory in nature because they sort people and animals into categories of understanding. The current system intakes, evaluates, sorts, and dispositions animals arbitrarily through subjective and biased practices. Through laws, animal control practices, and ‘do not adopt’ lists, animal shelters formally ban certain people from acquiring a pet through the shelter, regardless of whether they are legally prohibited from owning pets. The even bigger problem is the shelter's role in upholding and perpetuating a system of formal and informal discrimination against pet owners seeking to get their animals back and potential adopters and foster caregivers.

Both laws and shelter policies reinforce discriminatory barriers that cause animals to remain institutionalized indefinitely and prevent lost pets from returning home. These practices are justified as protecting the welfare of animals and the safety of people, without any evidence that shows they do either of these things. Additionally, policies that restrict or prohibit foster and volunteer programs, informal practices that refuse to adopt to people considered to be potentially irresponsible, incapable, too old, too young, too poor, or too busy to be desirable as adopters or foster caregivers.?Animal shelter policies should never go beyond the laws and laws should be written to ensure equal access to all services for humans and pets.

The five freedoms, expanded to seven and envisioned this way, could create standards for future building design and operations, but alone they do not abolish the system that exists that serves as the engine driving intake and impoundment. To dismantle those drivers, we need to consider the lived experiences of companion animals today, which are the result of hundreds of years of animal laws that systematically separate people and pets as well as the global commodification of companion animals and how an animal’s perceived value at any moment determines if and how it is enrolled into the animal services assembly line.