ANIMAL WELFARE EXECUTIVE CALLS FOR PROFESSIONALISM AMONG WORKERS
By Nancy Smith, JD, Editor

As a former CPA turned animal welfare executive, Michael Arms makes no apologies about dedicating his life to animals.  In fact, he is quick to tell anyone who will listen that he owes his life to animals.  Many years ago, when he was trying to rescue a dying dog from a tough neighborhood in New York, Arms was touched by the heart of the dog, who nurtured Arms’ spirits after street thugs beat and stabbed him because the rescue interfered with their wager on how long the dog would live.  As he lay wounded in the street, the dog crawled to him and licked his hand.  “I prayed that if I made it, I would help enhance the quality of life for orphaned animals,” Arms said.   

 
Michael Arms, executive director of the Helen Woodward Animal Center in San Diego, right, gives a tour of the center's boarding facility to Andrea S. Mullen, DVM.

Today, as head of the Helen Woodward Animal Center in north San Diego County, Arms is quick to take his time to help others in animal welfare to make it more business-like.  Addressing an audience of animal control officers, volunteers, breeders and animal rights activists, Arms told the six annual meeting of the Pet Overpopulation Symposium this June, that they should “demand to be treated equally” to other workers and should adopt the same practices that make commercial ventures profitable—advertising and marketing.

Shelters and adoption organizations have a product—loving animals—just like Macy’s has clothes.  He encouraged the audience to use the same techniques that work for Macy’s—mass marketing, advertising and promotion.  Competition promotes interest in the field, he said, and a primary competitor is the “puppy mill” industry.  Meeting and beating the completion with professionalism will promote the welfare of animals.  In the business of spay/neuter education and orphaned animal adoption, Arms said, “marketing is the key to success.”

Arms traced his experience at an East Coast shelter where he started using newspaper advertising to compete with pet stores for those interested in adopting. By aggressive use of advertising, he said, the organization went from adopting 20 pets a day to more than 300 pets per day, opening the doors to lines of visitors looking for pets.  After “running it like a business” for less than 20 years, he said, he gained “control” of the market in that region until there were no puppies for adoption in a 50-mile radius.  He then started a program to transport abandoned puppies from a less fortunate region. 

The programs he has used to increase public interest in adopting abandoned animals include:

  • Pet Adopt-a-thon: Selecting a time to stay open 24-hours a day to promote adoptions.
  • Home for the Holidays: A program in which the regional shelters unite to promote holiday sales to compete with puppy mills for animals as Christmas gifts.  The program last year in San Diego County united 14 shelters and made more than 2,500 adoptions, “reducing the number of puppy mill sales for the holidays,” Arms said.

For organizations in transition, Arms recommended the “retail” job of adopting animals be moved to remote locations away from shelters that make visitors depressed because they are like prisons or warehouses.  “You don’t see Macy’s putting their retail in the same place as their shipping and receiving,” Arms said.  When a family wants to adopt a pet, they do not want to see the tragedy of warehoused strays.  The presentation of adoption animals has to compete with the pleasant, clean and well-lit atmosphere that pet stores have found so successful. (Written years ago.)