There are more than 6.3 million shelter animals in the U.S., making shelter medicine an important area of care within the veterinary industry, but often a forgotten one. Shelter consultant Allyne Moon, RVT, LVT, CCFP, has shifted her career to focus on improving shelter medicine and shedding light on the needs of the animals, staff, and facilities. We talked with Allyne about the importance of shelter medicine, some of the biggest misconceptions, and her passion for working in shelters.
Allyne, tell us a little bit about your background and how you found your role in shelter consulting.
Well, I’ve been in veterinary medicine for 29 years, and I’ve worked in private practice, corporate practice, and surgical specialty. I just recently stopped working for the SCVMA, which is the Southern California Veterinary Medical Association and have now jumped full-time into consulting and RVT relief work.
My true veterinary passion is in shelter medicine because I can do everything that I’ve learned and been trained on for my patients without being limited by a client’s financial concerns. In shelters, the medical staff makes the decisions about the best treatment and care plans, and because we don’t have to consult with a pet owner, the patients get the very best that I can give them all the time. It’s a very challenging career, and it’s never the same day twice, but you can do so much good for the community and pets in general.
Your CCFP credentials are some we don’t see often. Can you tell us more about that certification?
I am a Certified Compassion Fatigue Professional. I joke with people and say I’m “certifiably fatigued.” I’ve taken special extra training to be able to sit and listen to people and let them get what they need off their chest. I’m not a counselor, I’m not a professional, I’m not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or social worker. I did take extra training to sit and talk with people who are having a hard time, to be a soundboard for them to figure out solutions. It allows me to be a resource and shoulder to lean on for my professional coworkers and colleagues.
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Did you always know that shelter medicine was a career option for you?
Yeah, it’s always been a career option. I started in shelter medicine in 2007, and it’s remarkable to see how far we’ve progressed. We’re now doing high-quality, high-volume spays and neuters, and treating the patients in our care more like a real clinic would with x-rays and other care. There’s just so much more that we can do for these pets now than we used to do back in the early 2000s when it was common practice to hold them until they had to be euthanized. I’m so very grateful that we’re able to bring the “Compassion Saves” model to shelter medicine for our patients and help people who have no place else to turn to give their animals a second chance at life.
There are so many times when service men and women are being deployed, and they have no one who can take their pet, so we’re able to rehome them. It’s the same for those who lost their house due to a fire; we can take their pet in and treat them while they’re looking for a new home and then reunite that pet, or connect these people with programs to help them get back on their feet and keep their pets with them.
There are a lot of new shelter diversion programs to prevent pets from being put into the shelter in the first place. There are also programs focused on animal health that we’ve been able to work with; for example, LA County Public Health does parvo tracking. We can set up free or low-cost vaccine clinics in “veterinary deserts.” Currently, I work with one called Downtown Dog Rescue. There’s not a lot of veterinary care available for people in the community, and we can get their pets vaccinated and administer flea preventatives and other parasiticides.
The actual intake rate to the shelters for diseases like parvo has decreased dramatically over the last ten years now, and there’s an overall significant decrease in sick animals being brought to the shelter. So it’s fun taking these different organizations, communities, and government agencies and bringing them all together to help the people and their pets in Southern California.
You mentioned how far shelter veterinary care has progressed. What are the main misconceptions about veterinary shelters?
Oh, that all we do is euthanize the animals. That is by far the biggest obstacle that we’ve had to overcome and are still trying to overcome. A lot of people say this to general practice veterinarians, too, “You don’t care about the animals; you’re just in it for the money; all you do is kill animals here,” and it’s simply not the case. We’ve treated dogs that have been hit by cars with IV fluids and pain medication and have gotten them back to their owners. Even animals that have come in with horrible trauma. We can treat them and get them into a new home.
The misconception that shelter medicine is just the bottom of the barrel and that we don’t care and just want to kill things is the hardest thing we have to overcome because we do care very much. I feel a lot of times, my patients get better care at a shelter because I can do the cytology and skin scrapings and the medications, and I don’t have to go over an estimate with an owner who has cost concerns. I can just give it because they need it. I honestly think there are times when a patient in a shelter will get better care than in general practice because we don’t have to fight with somebody about paying a bill afterward.
You’ve worked in a lot of different areas of veterinary medicine. What’s the biggest difference in working with shelter animals compared to animals treated in a regular veterinary practice?
The biggest difference is that most animals we see in the shelter come from what we call “the uncared-for population.” So, many animals have never seen veterinary care in their life and are suddenly being put on a good vaccine prevention program. They’re getting parasiticides, they’re getting spayed and neutered, with good, high-quality medications. It’s high-quality care now. Back in the day, if you were going to a low-cost spay/neuter place, you were going to a place that didn’t give pain medications and couldn’t do IV fluids or subcutaneous fluids. The animals were not intubated (had a breathing tube placed); it was just knock them out, put them on anesthesia, and hold them if they moved. There was little in the way of multi-modal pain medication. It was the lowest of the low veterinary care.
That’s where compounded medications have really made a difference for us in the shelters, such as compounded ponazuril or compounded doxycycline. The compounded buprenorphine that lasts for three days has really been a game changer in terms of pain control and having top-rate surgeries come out of the shelter, that are on par with a general practice.
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And it’s because we’re able to take this uncared-for population and cut out the financial constraints that an owner may or may not have. We’re able to help these pets and then get them into a good home with a minimal adoption fee, and hopefully, you know, keep them there for life.
To stock the medicine you need on such a small budget, how do you find the right pharmacy partner to best support the types of cases your shelter sees?
In my experience, each shelter is a little bit different. Working for a municipal shelter, we had to create a contract where we’d have to establish a relationship with a compounder. We’d get a budget through a bid process. So, they would give us a total spend with a specific compounder, and we would order directly from them to stock the medications.
Working for the government is a little different than working for a clinic where I can pick whoever I want and make an agreement with them. The government has to contract out and go through a bid process and create specific purchase orders for a budgeted amount. And this all has to be approved by another government agency, whether it’s a city council or a budgeting office for whichever department that shelter happens to fall into. So, when I first started, we were under Health and Human Services, and then we got transferred to Parks and Rec. Those departments had very different budgets and ways to set up vendor accounts.
How did you first hear about Epicur and start working with them?
I actually met Sam Newton through the SCVMA, and they were kind enough to do a couple of continuing education webinars for us at the association. I like the products that Epicur offers, and the goal is always to use medicines that work better. It gives us more control over our patient care. And for a shelter environment, any medicine we can give once that lasts for an extended period of time is always going to be good because we never have enough time or people to treat the patients the way we want to. So, extended care treatments, where it’s like a one-and-done, is just a godsend for a shelter environment.
We’ve had times, especially through COVID-19, when there were supply issues, and the products have been on backorder everywhere. I can always rely on my compounders to get me something close that I can use.
For the veterinary staff in shelters, is there enough education about the differences between 503A and 503B in veterinary medicine?
There is definitely a knowledge gap, and there are certainly more ways we can close that knowledge gap through continuing education, working with other associations, or even vaccine events.
I truly appreciate Epicur’s willingness to collaborate with us and provide practitioners with the necessary knowledge for the proper use of a compounder. Given the unique legalities in the state of California, where distinct regulations apply, it’s invaluable that Epicur educates us on the state-specific compounding guidelines for 503B and the steps they take to ensure compliance with those rules.
Do you see a lot of turnover in your shelter staff?
Yes, we see quite a bit of turnover, and there are several reasons for it. One is politics. You’re always going to have people who will question what you do and not understand why you do it, even though you explain. There might be a rescue group or individuals who won’t adopt anything or help your shelter in other ways, but boy, will they make a stink when any animal gets euthanized. It could be an animal that’s dying of cancer, that hospice has refused, the rescue’s refused, nobody will take this animal, and we’re genuinely giving this patient a merciful way out.
A second aspect is the work we do – it’s hard to see animal abuse cases, hoarder cases, or victims of a house fire whose family may have perished come in. It’s also hard to see animals that are so aggressive that they’ve killed people, and now they have to be put down because they never got the right training. You see a lot of hard things in shelter medicine that, quite frankly, no reasonable person is going to be untouched by. It’s hard to deal with, and there are very few resources for help and support.
We had several programs at the shelter – peer support groups, a social worker from the city we could see – but eventually, because we became so short-staffed, they took those programs away due to shelter leadership’s opinion we were using too much time to deal with our own trauma. Leadership with no medical education or training decided that Animal Control Officers and Medical Staff needed to spend more time dealing with the overwhelming numbers of animals coming in.
Pay is another issue. Governments are sometimes the last to recognize that you can’t pay a credentialed registered veterinary technician $17 an hour. We are highly educated people responsible for getting pets healthy and adopted or supported until they find their owners. It took a long time for the city I worked for to recognize that you must start paying a more reasonable wage.
Can you tell us more about the challenges shelters face regarding funding and resources?
Well, in the shelter, my budget for the year was $50,000. And we would have an intake of anywhere between 8,000 to 15,000 animals every year. All those animals have to get vaccines, deworming, and some type of topical parasiticide, and that ate up most of the budget. I worked hard to find distributors who would donate their un-sellable products (the box may be damaged, but the product was safe to use), find vendors at conferences that would donate samples and supplies to avoid shipping them back to the warehouse and ask the Shelter Friends Association to fund needed supplies.
Shelters are often very last on the list to receive funding. Anything in addition to that $50,000 is next to impossible to get. So we have to try and find ways to get more money. We often get really creative and see if Amazon carries anything that we need. Getting people to donate to our friend’s association or to our charity fund that goes into covering the spay/neuter costs can be a challenge. Even if you do have a large donor, the city makes it difficult because there is a lot of red tape you have to go through to utilize the money.
Shelter medicine obviously has its challenges, but it also must be rewarding. Could you share a success story of where you improved the outcome of a shelter animal?
Oh, absolutely! The thing we always see in the shelter is ear infections in dogs. Most of the time, we clean them out, and we apply an Otipac, which covers both yeast and bacteria; it’s a one-and-done. And now the dog with ears you could smell from a block away is an adoptable animal. This happens so often, and it’s really a simple thing to do, but now that pet no longer has a horrible ear infection, they feel better, and then get adopted to a new home.
Another story is we had one pet that came in that had this horrible wound where he was missing the first layer of the skin on top of his paw. And, of course, this is very painful. So, we were able to use the long-lasting buprenorphine injection to keep him comfortable enough that we were able to change the bandage and gently clean away any of the infectious buildup every day. The wound was able to shrink very quickly, and he was able to find a new home. And in the end, he only had a tiny little scar because we were able to keep him comfortable, and it helped him heal quickly.
We love happy stories! What do you love most about shelters?
The very best thing about shelters is that as an RVT, I get to use all of my skills, all of my training, everything available to me to help the animals in need. Every day, I get to go to work and know that I can do the very best I can to help the patients in my care. And to me, that is the best thing about shelter medicine for an RVT.
Thanks for sharing these insights, Allyne!
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