What’s happening?
In the update, BARC said the shelter saw nearly 2,000 more animal intakes in 2024 than the previous year. Additionally, BARC has seen a rise in the number of priority calls they are receiving, with the most urgent cases being animal cruelty, severe neglect, bite cases and aggressive animals.
Because of these upticks, BARC officials said they had to make key changes to how the shelter operates its at-risk animal outreach.
1. Rescue notice period
BARC reduced their rescue notice period for at-risk animals from 48 hours to 24 hours. BARC officials said this will help animals move through the shelter more quickly and encourage rescue partners to closely monitor BARC’s plea emails and provide a more prompt response. Rescue partners are nonprofits that take in these at-risk animals.
BARC’s Director of Communications Cory Stottlemyer told Community Impact that the shelter is nearly at full capacity, with 396 animals, or 367 dogs and 29 cats, at the shelter. Of those 396 animals, under 25 of them are on the at-risk list.
At-risk animals are pets who are at potential risk for euthanasia that are in urgent need of adoption, foster or rescue assistance, according to previous Community Impact reporting. Stottlemyer said most of these animals are on the list for medical or behavioral issues.
“A lot of the time, those [animals] that are on the list for behavioral issues, we don’t make them available for adoption, we only make them available for our rescue,” Stottlemyer said.
2. Refocusing networking efforts
BARC will no longer publicly share the at-risk animal list online and will only share it with approved rescue partners. BARC officials said that in the past, broad online promotion of at-risk pets led to “rushed, fear-driven” adoptions that didn’t always result in successful long-term adoptions. BARC will instead work directly with rescues and select fosters to place animals in the most appropriate homes, according to the update.
“A lot of people who pay attention to those lists don’t do any actual networking,” Stottlemyer said. “They’re not actually involved with the process, or they’re out of state, they don’t really have a means to assist. There’s a problem with our rescue office, our foster office, getting clogged up with people reaching out who don’t necessarily have a means to help.”
3. Strengthening rescue oversight:
BARC officials also said in recent years, they had to suspend or ban an increasing number of rescue partners for violating the shelter’s rescue policies, such as taking in more animals than the rescue partner could feasibly care for. Some of these cases have resulted in animals being placed in inhumane conditions.
For example, BARC pointed to a recent report where dogs transferred from BARC and other Houston-area shelters to an Alabama rescue were later neglected. To protect the animals, BARC is reinforcing stricter protocols on how at-risk animals are placed and ensuring rescues meet the shelter’s standards of care, according to the update.
Zooming in
BARC released a 2024 report on Jan. 8, 2025 that showed the shelter saw a nearly 700 uptick of euthanized animals last year compared to the previous year. However, the report also shows that more animals were adopted in 2024, with nearly 1,000 more adoptions compared to the previous year, which Stottlemyer said was unheard of before.
“We’ve seen the data showing that effort helps,” he said. “If we don’t pick up these animals, they could face outcomes that are much more inhumane than what could happen here at the shelter. They’ll be fed, they’ll be cared for. Everybody who works here is a big animal lover.”
