Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
My name is Stephanie Jacks, and I am a shelter veterinarian in Jacksonville, Florida. I have
been a shelter vet there for three years, and I'm going to talk also about how to do
daily rounds. Dr. DiGangi kind of told you the who, what, when, where and why we do rounds,
and I'm going to kind of tell you how and give you some tips of how we get it done.
So as I said, I live in Jacksonville, Florida. As some of you may know, it was just the site
of the Florida/Georgia game. Because I went to both schools, I can say this: Go Dogs.
So a little bit about us. This last year we took in about 20,000 animals when I first
started. We were probably over 25,000 animals, and I think this decrease has been due to
a lot of spay/neuter projects that we do, our Feral Freedom program that we work with,
First Customer Homeless Pets. On average now, we usually take in about 62 new animals a
day. High days are over 100. Our average daily population is around 237, and that can be
over 300 in some of our higher intake weeks. This new shelter that we are at now, we moved
in 2009, it's over 42,000 square feet. That's a lot of space to cover during rounds. We
have 264 dog kennels, and those are split up into stray holding, isolation, and adoption
kennels. We also have 144 cat cages which we actually don't use most of those due to
the Feral Freedom program. When this shelter was designed, we were supposed to hold feral
cats for two days, but now that we do our T and R program, most of those cats are going
straight out the door the day they come in. First Customer Homeless Pets picks them up
twice a day, at lunchtime and at the end of the day, which helps us out tremendously.
So of those 88 stray holding, we really only use maybe 48 of those. So our groups that
we use for daily rounds, we kind of split them up to make them more practical and give
us more time. We have the animal inventory going about three times a day. Our vet tech
comes in before the shelter opens and does a thorough inventory of all the animals in
the shelter verifying that the right animal is in the right cage, and then we do another
inventory around lunchtime and another one at the end of the day just to keep on top
of the population. We also have an adoption team, and their job is to go through and give
a pathway to every animal. The different pathways are the move to adoptions. The PPP is our
Pet Placement Partners. Those are for our rescues and transfers to like the Humane Society.
FF is our Feral Freedom. Most of those, as I say, go from intake directly to the room
where the First Customer Homeless Pets people pick them up, but occasionally we have a cat
that gets put into a cage and we designate it as a feral cat, and it ends up going out
at a later date. We also have foster animals, and our NFA status, which is unfortunately
not for adopt. Then we have our population medical teams, and like what Dr. DiGangi kind
of went over, our job is to look at if there is any medical care that's needed on each
animal, look at these pathways that have already been designated and determine if they are
correct or if they need to be changed, put in notes for the animals about behavior or
other issues that we have noticed during our walks, making any corrections to dates, stray
hold dates, or anything else on the kennel cart or whatever that we have seen, and then
do tracking and put on holds if we notice that an animal has an identification that
was missed at intake. So our population and medical teams consist of two groups. We have
our daily group which is one veterinarian and one vet tech. The one vet tech is a consistent
person. We have in the past had that be a rotating position, and we found that just
having a consistent vet tech, they know what's going on. They are walking rounds with the
vets. They kind of understand what we're looking for. And in a pinch when we get kind of busy
they could do daily rounds for us if we're unable to break away. Weekly, and this is
something we just started this month, we have all of the managers and supervisors walk the
runs at one time. And as I said, that just started this last month, and that's been going
well to kind of have everybody else see what's going on in the shelter on a daily basis.
So our biggest problem is finding time. Our main job is to do surgery to get these animals
sterilized so we can get them to adoptions or to rescue groups. We are in surgery five
or six hours a day, and then there is only a couple more hours left while we have staff
members there to kind of get this accomplished. So we have gone from do we do them in the
morning or do we do them in the afternoon? The morning is taken up by surgeries, so it
does kind of take a vet away from doing surgery in the morning. But it also gives that staff
member time to complete all the duties during the day. If we do them in the afternoon, sometimes
we get kind of busy. It's a little harder to find that time, and the staff member doesn't
have the ample time to do it, but we're not interrupting surgery. We have a planned route
through the shelter. We start in our adoption facility and work our way to isolation, not
just for control of disease spread through the shelter, but also so we know what animals
we have in adoptions so when we're walking through and looking at the different pathways,
we might change some animal's pathway after seeing what is being held up in adoptions.
We have a lot of heartworm dogs being from the south. If there is only a couple of dogs
in adoptions with heartworms, we might move more of those forward versus trying to get
them out to rescues. This slide is just some of the tools. The main tool that we have is
the people that are doing it, making sure they are trained and understand the goals
that we're trying to accomplish. We have WiFi in our facilities so we can take a laptop
through. We also have gone through with the sheets like Dr. DiGangi showed, and I will
show you a couple of other different sheets that we have used in the past and talk about
the pros and cons to why we use them and why the staff doesn't like them or not. And having
current kennel cards on the cages like Dr. DiGangi said, knowing who that animal is.
You have a black dog in a cage. Who is it? Why did it come in? What does it need? How
long has it been here? That's all on our kennel cards. And that also goes from having a current
inventory that is correct making sure that that black dog is the right black dog and
not the one next door. And giving authority or power to the daily round staff so they
can make any changes or corrections to these animals as they need to. So this is one of
our reports. We use Chameleon as our database program. I don't know. There is other programs
out there. I'm sure that you guys can have these modified. On these things we see which
cage the animal is in, it's ID number, when it came in, when it's due out, sex, and other
descriptions of it. If there is any holds that are on there, what we have designated
the status as. And we have a little space that we can write in, actions that need to
be done. The obvious thing with this is that having enough space to write in everything,
and it also uses a lot of paper. It's probably about 14 to 15 pages when you print out the
whole shelter. The staff likes it. It's actually a thing that we all like because it gives
you the most current information. We also have made a checkoff sheet, and I think those
are in the packet. This we have where we can put in the kennel ID and just kind of checkbox
the most required actions that we have at our shelter and then when things are due by.
The staff kind of doesn't like having to do all the writing. They prefer using the Chameleon
inventory sheets. And then my favorite is taking the laptop around because we can see
all the information that we need. Who is this animal, what needs to be done to it, we can
make comments, we can go into the medical screen, sign them up immediately for medications,
see if they have already been signed up for medications. The staff finds it kind of cumbersome
to push a laptop around on a cart, but sometimes that's just what you do. The other thing I
find that makes it easier is having the protocols of what to do so you're not having to redescribe
everything each time an animal has a microchip. If they are held for this many days, we have
to send out a letter. You have to call these databases. Find out who the owners are. If
it's injured or sick, what needs to be done next. If it has a respiratory disease, take
it straight to isolation. Get a workup. If it has vomiting and diarrhea, test it for
parvo first before even handling the animal. All animals under six months are able to be
fasttracked to the shelter. We don't have a holding period for them. So we can get them
straight to surgery, like the next day. And then what are our workups for adoptions.