This week, Cathy Bissell and the BISSELL Pet Foundation courageously brought an important conversation back into the spotlight: the harm caused by the labels we use to describe animal shelters.
I am grateful for Cathy’s leadership in challenging the tired and divisive language of “kill” and “no-kill.” I would like to lean into that conversation even more directly—because in communities like ours, the future of animal welfare depends on shifting our focus from labels to lives.
At the heart of the “no-kill” movement is a single, arbitrary number: a 90% live release rate. If 90% or more of the animals entering a shelter leave alive, the shelter earns the “no-kill” designation.
That number was created decades ago by national organizations with little regard for the vastly different realities faced by local, community-based shelters.
As shelters evolve, the animals entering our doors are changing—and that is a sign of progress, not failure.
Across the country, shelters like Halifax Humane Society are building robust Pet Safety Net programs: emergency pet food assistance, free and low-cost veterinary care, training and behavior support, fence and doghouse builds, and crisis intervention to prevent surrender. These programs are doing exactly what they are meant to do: keeping good pets in loving homes and preventing unnecessary shelter intake in the first place.
At the same time, expanded spay and neuter programs like the Halifax Humane Society Spay & Neuter Clinic are dramatically reducing the number of homeless litters of puppies and kittens born in the first place.
When, for whatever reason, highly adoptable animals do enter the animal shelter, those pets are quickly placed into new homes.
These are success stories to be celebrated.
These programs, Safety Nets, high-volume spay and neuter clinics, and efficient pet adoptions, lead to a hard truth that the “no-kill” narrative rarely acknowledges:
When we succeed at keeping healthy, manageable pets out of shelters, who remains?
The animals entering community shelters today are increasingly those with serious behavior challenges, complex medical conditions, victims of cruelty and neglect, and pets for whom no humane or effective treatment exists.
Even with the best shelter medicine, modern facilities, and highly skilled veterinary and behavior teams, not every life can be saved. Some conditions are untreatable. Some behaviors are unsafe. Some suffering cannot be ethically prolonged.
This is not failure. This is the intended purpose of a community animal shelter.
As shelters become more proactive and more effective at prevention, the population that remains will naturally be sicker, more fragile, and more complex. That reality will lower live release rates—not because we care less, but because we are caring for the animals who need us most.
When arbitrary percentages become the goal, shelters are pressured to chase numbers instead of practicing good medicine, sound behavior judgment, and ethical decision-making. That pressure can lead to overcrowding, disease, unsafe adoptions, and prolonged suffering.
Halifax Humane Society does not measure our compassion with a single statistic.
We do challenge our community to ask better questions: Are fewer animals entering shelters because families are getting help? Are pets healthier because of access to care? Are communities safer because dangerous behaviors are addressed responsibly? Are animals in pain treated with dignity and mercy?
Lives saved matter. But so do lives spared from suffering. So do families kept together. So does the courage to make the hardest decisions with integrity and compassion.
It is time to move beyond labels.
Not “no-kill.” Not “kill shelter.”
Just this:
A community shelter doing everything in its power to reduce suffering, prevent homelessness, and save as many lives as ethically and humanely possible.
If you believe in our work, we invite you to stand with us.
Visit us. Volunteer with us. Foster an animal in need. Support our Pet Safety Net programs. Advocate for access to care in our community.
When you support Halifax Humane Society, you are not supporting a label. You are supporting lifesaving medicine. You are supporting families in crisis. You are supporting animals with nowhere else to go.
Together, we can build a community where fewer animals ever need a shelter—and where every animal who does come to us is met with compassion, dignity, and hope.
