National group aims at reducing Odessa Animal Shelter’s 62% kill rate

ODESSA, Texas (KMID/KPEJ)- Best Friends Animal Society, a national animal welfare organization, held a news conference this week to offer support to Odessa Animal Services to help increase the save rate at the local animal shelter. This call to action came on the heels of data released showing that in 2023, 62% of all dogs and cats that entered the shelter were euthanized.

Advocates for the “Odessa Deserves Better” campaign said that the City’s policies aren’t in line with “best practices” used at other shelters across the country; to that end, Odessa’s kill rate was ranked as the fourth highest in the state with a save rate of only 38%. Advocates with Best Friends said many of the animals euthanized last year were healthy, adoptable, and killed unnecessarily.

“There are a couple things going on from what our understanding is of Odessa Animal Services. The best practices for animal sheltering as, it relates to outdoor cats, is something called Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate, Return, TNVR. Right now, Odessa Animal Services is using a catch and kill method where they are taking cats from the community and killing them in the shelter or on their trucks instead of returning them back to the community fixed. So that’s a real challenge because basically they’re taking someone’s cat or someone’s loved pet and then instead of returning it back to them, those animals are dying in the shelter for no reason,” Best Friends advocate Sophia Proler said. “On the dog side, our understanding is that there’s a real concern for disease control, which is completely understandable. We’ve offered best practices for disease mitigation, sanitation protocols to reduce the number of sick animals and prevent the spread of disease to other animals, but Odessa is choosing instead to kill them.”

Advocates said the residents they’ve spoken with said they want to see a “fiscally responsible approach with a focus on spending taxpayer dollars to save lives, not kill them”.

The group said that a number of offers of both physical and financial support from national and local organizations have been extended to Odessa Animal Services to help reduce the kill rate and help these animals find loving homes. That includes help from Fix West Texas, a group based out of Midland that aims to help keep pets healthy, by providing little to no cost vaccinations, microchipping services to help reunite lost pets with their families, and low cost spay and neuter services to help keep the unwanted pet population down.

In fact, local groups saw massive success last weekend as Midland worked to clear its shelter without having to euthanize any animals amid a distemper outbreak; not a single animal was killed because of the support from groups like Fix West Texas as well as community members who offered to foster those animals until they can be placed in their forever homes.

So far, advocates said their pleas and offers of help, in the form of advice from veterinary experts about disease control, as well as help on how to adopt and implement cost effective no-kill practices, have fallen on deaf ears.

“All we can do it offer support. We’ve reached out to the Mayor, to City Council…had conversations with City leaders and they’ve, so far, chosen not to accept our offers of support,” Proler said.

That’s why they are calling on the community to join the campaign.

“It really is a community initiative, (the community) can ask for change…advocate for change, and by joining this campaign we can make sure that their voices are heard and help make the Odessa shelter a true no-kill shelter,” Proler said.

If you’d like to help effect a change in Odessa, help save animals, and keep the unwanted pet population from rising even further, visit this website to learn more about the “Odessa Deserves Better” campaign. Proler said she also recommends reaching out to your local leaders to tell them about the changes you’d like to see at the animal shelter.

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