animal_shelter_operations v1.0.0

name: "animal_shelter_operations" description: "Run an animal shelter or rescue so capacity and care stay honest: intake records that capture stray, surrender, transfer, and other intakes differently, kennel and foster capacity counted in one view so no animal is double promised, medical and behavior notes that travel with the animal, conversational adoption matching and paperwork, and outcome reporting that reconciles and names its live release formula. Use when setting up or fixing shelter or rescue operations, counting capacity, building intake or foster workflows, or producing a board or funder outcome report."

Animal Shelter Operations

Purpose

Run a shelter or rescue on three numbers that agree with each other: how many animals you have, how many you can actually care for, and what happened to the ones who left. Most shelter trouble comes from those numbers drifting apart. Kennels get counted without the staff to clean them. Foster homes get promised to two animals at once. A live release rate gets reported with a denominator nobody wrote down, and the board and the funder end up arguing about arithmetic instead of animals.

This skill ships the full operating method: one intake record per animal that differs by intake type, one capacity view that puts kennels, isolation, staff time, and foster slots on the same page, daily population rounds that give every animal a path, conversational adoption matching with clean paperwork, and a monthly outcome report that reconciles before it calculates rates. It follows the Association of Shelter Veterinarians Guidelines for Standards of Care in Animal Shelters (second edition, 2022) and the Shelter Animals Count Basic Animal Data Matrix for categories.

Workflow

1. Open one record per animal at intake, and let the intake type drive the form. Every record starts with the same core: unique animal ID, intake date and time, species, breed or description, sex and spay/neuter status, age estimate, weight, photo, microchip scan result, collar and tag details, and the name of the staff member who processed intake. Then branch by type, because each type creates different legal duties and different next steps.

• Stray or at large: record the exact found location, finder name and contact, and how the animal arrived (field pickup or over the counter). Set the stray hold end date from local law before anything else is scheduled. The first path for a stray is return to owner, so lost reports get checked at intake and again daily during the hold.
• Relinquished by owner: record the surrendering owner's contact, the reason for surrender in their own words, and a signed surrender form that transfers custody. Ask the history questions while the owner is present (see references/intake-and-records.md). This is the only chance to get most of that history.
• Owner intended euthanasia: record it as its own intake type, never folded into surrenders. Decide before the animal arrives, and write on the report, whether your organization logs these as intake and outcome or as a community service. Shelter Animals Count has recorded them as a community service since July 2022 and allows either logging rule, so an unstated rule makes two honest reports disagree.
• Transferred in: record the sending organization, their animal ID, the date custody passed, and every record that came with the animal. An animal whose medical or behavior file did not travel is a new unknown, and the record must say so instead of implying a clean history.
• Other intakes: seizures and protective custody (record the agency, case reference, and legal hold status, and flag the record so the animal is never shown as adoptable while the hold stands), born in care (record the mother animal ID, and count each newborn as its own intake and its own record), and adoption returns (a new intake record linked to the prior adoption, counted under relinquished by owner in Shelter Animals Count reporting, with the return reason recorded without blame language).

1. Put the safety and medical flags where the next handler cannot miss them. Bite history, known aggression triggers, handling restrictions, visible injury or illness, current medication, and contagious disease exposure go at the top of the record, not in a notes field three screens down. A flag is a dated entry with the source (owner report, finder report, staff observation, sending organization record), never a rumor rewritten as fact. Full field lists per intake type are in references/intake-and-records.md.

1. Keep one traveling file for medical and behavior. Every exam, treatment, vaccine, surgery, behavior assessment, enrichment note, and foster report appends to the same record, dated and signed. Behavior notes describe observed behavior in a specific situation (what the animal did, where, with whom) rather than character labels. When the animal moves to foster, transfers out, or gets adopted, the file moves with the animal: the foster gets the care and handling summary, the receiving organization gets the full file, and the adopter gets the medical summary and known behavior history in writing. Known bite history and behavior risks are disclosed, never softened, at transfer and adoption.

1. Count capacity as one view, in animals, by species. Capacity for care is the lowest of three numbers, not the kennel count. Work the method in references/capacity-method.md.

• Housing capacity: appropriate housing units minus units reserved for isolation and medical hold. Pop up crates in hallways and offices are overflow, not capacity, and get reported as overflow when used.
• Staffing capacity: direct care minutes actually available per day, divided by the minutes per animal per day your own timed work shows. Time your feeding, cleaning, medication, and enrichment work. Do not borrow a published minutes figure: the 2022 ASV guidelines moved away from fixed time estimates because they ignore facility design, sanitation method, training, and enrichment load.
• Foster capacity: open foster slots only, counted per home per species. A foster home has a status (available, full, resting between placements, paused) and an approved animal limit. Only available homes contribute slots, and a slot promised to an animal is spent until that placement ends. Resting homes count as zero until their rest period ends.
• Effective capacity is the lowest of housing plus open foster slots, and staffing capacity, computed separately for dogs and cats. Report all three inputs, not just the answer.

1. Reconcile the census every day before rounds. Animals in care equals animals on site plus animals in foster plus animals at offsite or veterinary partners. Every animal is in exactly one location in the system. If the kennel walk count, the foster list, and the software census disagree, fix the records that day. A double promised foster slot and a phantom kennel both start as a census that nobody reconciled.

1. Run daily population rounds with a path for every animal. Rounds walk the whole population, in care and in foster, with the manager, an animal care staffer, the adoption and transfer coordinators, and a veterinary team member where available. For each animal, rounds answers: what is this animal's path (return to owner, adoption, transfer, foster, continued treatment, or another outcome), what is the next step on that path, who owns it, and what date it happens by. An animal with no path and no next step is the finding of the day. Length of stay is the lever rounds controls: daily census equals average daily intake times average length of stay, so a few added days per animal raises the whole census without a single extra intake.

1. Adopt by conversation and match, not by gatekeeping. Use conversational adoption counseling: a short conversation that covers the adopter's home, schedule, other animals, and expectations, and matches this animal's known needs against that picture. Keep the written application short enough to complete in the visit. Drop requirements that do not predict outcomes (blanket home checks, landlord calls, reference checks) unless a specific animal has a specific need that justifies one, and record that reason on the animal, not as policy on people. Present foster animals to adopters with the same effort as on site animals. Paperwork at outcome: adoption agreement signed, medical summary and known behavior history handed over in writing, microchip registration transferred or explained, spay/neuter status and any pending procedure stated plainly, and the return policy stated before money changes hands. Record the outcome on the animal record the same day, with adopter contact.

1. Move animals to foster as a placement, not a favor. Screen and train fosters before the first placement: application, agreement to follow care and reporting policy, and training on medication, disease prevention and quarantine, transport safety, behavior reading, and who to call in an emergency. Every foster placement records the home, the animal, the start date, the expected end or review date, supplies issued, and the coordinator responsible. Check in on a set cadence and log it. Foster reports on behavior in the home feed back into the animal's traveling file and its adoption profile. Full foster roster method in references/capacity-method.md.

1. Close the month with reconciliation first, rates second. Build the monthly report in the Shelter Animals Count matrix shape (categories in references/outcome-reporting.md), separately for dogs, cats, and total:

• Check the equation first: beginning count plus total intake equals total outcomes plus ending count. If it does not balance, the report is not ready, no matter what the rates say.
• Then compute each rate with its formula printed next to it. Live release rate in this skill means live outcomes divided by total outcomes. Save rate means live intakes minus non live outcomes, divided by live intakes. Population balance means total outcomes divided by total intakes, times 100. Never report a rate from a different formula under one of these names.
• Report length of stay (animal care days divided by animals with outcomes, by species), foster census, overflow days (days any animal was housed outside counted capacity), and returns within the period.
• Run scripts/shelter_report.py on the month data to do the arithmetic and the reconciliation check. The worked example in references/worked-month.md shows a full month, including a weekend where the dog kennels filled completely.

1. Act on what the month showed before the next month starts. Tie each operational change to a number from the report: a path bottleneck from rounds notes, a length of stay rise in one species, a foster slot shortage in one intake type, a return pattern pointing at a matching gap. One or two changes, owned and dated. A report that changes nothing is filing, not management.

Output Contract

A shelter operations setup or review must contain:

• Intake record spec: the shared core fields, the added fields and forms for each intake type (stray, relinquished by owner, owner intended euthanasia, transferred in, seizure or protective custody, born in care, adoption return), and where safety and medical flags live on the record.
• Capacity sheet: by species, housing units, isolation reserve, open foster slots by status count, staffing minutes available, locally measured minutes per animal, the three capacity numbers, and the effective capacity with the binding constraint named.
• Census rule: how on site, foster, and offsite animals are counted into one census, and when reconciliation happens.
• Rounds format: who attends, the per animal questions, and how a path, next step, owner, and date get recorded.
• Adoption packet: the conversation guide topics, the short application, and the exact paperwork handed to the adopter at outcome.
• Monthly report: beginning count, intake by type, outcomes by type, ending count, the reconciliation check result, live release rate, save rate, and population balance each with its formula stated, average length of stay by species, foster census, overflow days, and adoption returns.
• Change list: the operational changes the report drives, each with an owner and a date.

Operating Rules

• Never report a rate without its formula and denominator written next to it. Live release rate and save rate are different calculations and produce different numbers on the same data.
• Never let a month close unbalanced. Beginning plus intake must equal outcomes plus ending. Find the missing animal or the double counted outcome before anything is published.
• Never count a foster home's slots while it is resting, paused, or already full. A promised slot is spent.
• Never count overflow housing as capacity. Crates in a hallway are a welfare warning to report, not a number that makes the census fit.
• Never use a borrowed minutes per animal figure for staffing capacity. Time the work in your own building.
• Never let an animal sit without a path. Every animal in rounds has a path, a next step, an owner, and a date.
• Never soften or omit known bite history, behavior risk, or medical conditions at adoption or transfer. Disclosure goes in writing.
• Never count a foster placement or a trial stay as an adoption outcome. Adoption is final placement only, per the Shelter Animals Count matrix.
• Never fold owner intended euthanasia into surrenders, and never switch its logging rule mid year. State the rule on every report that includes it.
• Never describe behavior with character labels alone. Record what the animal did, in what situation, observed by whom, on what date.
• Keep species separate in every count. A shelter can be inside capacity for cats and over capacity for dogs on the same day, and a combined number hides it.
• Local law sets stray holds, licensing, rabies, and record retention. This skill sets the workflow. Where they differ, law wins and the record shows the legal date.