As much as I and our staff want to achieve NO KILL status for our shelter, first and foremost I want to put animals into the community that are safe. Sometimes I wonder if shelters want to achieve no kill so badly that they adopt out animals that have questionable temperaments.

For the last few months, our staff has started doing a temperament test on all dogs before we put them up for adoption. The ASPCA’s SAFER (Safety Assessment for Evaluating Rehoming) is a tool for assessing the probability of future canine aggression. The test will tell us if the dog is people aggressive, animal aggressive or food aggressive. If a dog scores high in one area, we can work on behavior modification. But if the dog scores high in multiple areas or is super dog aggressive, it will be euthanized. For this reason, some months we won’t be able to achieve NO KILL but in all good consciousness safety must come first, and I hope you agree and understand.