Animal rescue glossary.

ANALYTICS

A category of technology that encompasses the access, querying, exploration, and use of data—often employing sophisticated algorithms—the aim of which is to make better decisions faster. An example of this is whether to offer a customer a discount on a new product or service when she logs on to her phone carrier’s website, or which neighborhood zip codes are most likely to need pet pantry resources from their local shelters.

BEHAVIOR ANIMALS

A behavior animal—most commonly referencing a dog—exhibits manners or habits that are likely to impede its successful adoption. Behavior problems might include anything from not being housetrained to being fear-aggressive toward humans. Most behavior problems can be overcome with socialization and training. However, this deliberate work requires resources that many shelters and rescues don’t have or are unwilling to fund. As more animals in shelters get adopted, the percentage of behavior animals in shelters proportionally increases. The treatment and disposition of these animals will become more visible and the pressure to help them will increase apace.

BIG DATA

Big data is a technology category that represents the vast amounts of data coming into business and our personal lives. An example would be your electric utility monitoring your usage patterns and sending you a text message suggesting that you lower your thermostat at night.

BIOMETRICS

Biometrics is the science of using physical characteristics to uniquely identify an individual. It applies to humans—think of scanning your fingerprint on your smartphone to access your bank’s website—as well as animals. Though its use in animal welfare is in the early stages, biometrics can ultimately replace current forms of identification (like tags or microchips) with digitized iris scanning, paw prints, ear vein analysis, and facial recognition.

BREED-SPECIFIC LEGISLATION (BSL)

BSL refers to state laws that ban so-called “dominant breeds”—mainly pit bulls, but also any dog who might LOOK like a pit bull. Fueled by negative media attention, BSL is fraught with assumptions about how dogs that look a certain way will behave a certain way. Because of its flaws, many states have passed provisions prohibiting BSL.

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE (BI)

BI is the process of collecting often-heterogeneous data into a report or dashboard in order to enhance the understanding of a topic or phenomenon and drive an informed decision. Think of the different workouts your Fitbit keeps track of. It summarizes the data into some nice visuals at the daily, weekly, monthly, and annual levels to help you make informed decisions about your physical activity.

CASE MANAGER

A case is an entity—say, a child, an animal, a hospital patient, or a family—undergoing some sort of event that involves multiple steps and very likely multiple people. For instance, a family who is bottle feeding kittens for the first time might need support from a foster coordinator at a shelter, a vet technician, and a transporter. The case manager, who might be one of these people, or someone in charge of overseeing all kitten care for the shelter, keeps in touch with the family, and monitors the progress of the kittens. They might delegate questions or phone calls to other shelter resources and provide regular updates on the cases they are supporting. In effect, both the family and the kittens can be viewed as cases, depending on the desired outcome.

COMMIT TO ADOPT (CTA)

CTA is the code that goes into an animal’s record when a private party agrees to come and adopt the animal. This is often done by phone before the animal is spayed or neutered, thus requiring a waiting period. A CTA reserves the animal for the requestor.

COMMUNITY-BASED SHELTERING

Community-based sheltering is a movement seeking to disintermediate physical animal shelters, transforming them from destinations for homeless pets to community resource centers. Shelter-provided services like low-cost vaccinations, behavioral counseling, temporary boarding services, and pet pantry facilities make it easier for people to keep pets at home. Community-based rehoming and reuniting are subsets of the community-based sheltering movement.

COMMUNITY CATS

Community cats are groups of unowned domestic cats (a.k.a. feral) that frequent public spaces. Community cats have high reproduction rates that, when left unchecked, can result in huge feral populations that can carry disease and are considered nuisances. Community cats area also infamous for their predation of local bird species. Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) programs can stem rampant reproduction, eventually eliminating community cat colonies.

COMMUNITY REQUEST TRACKING

Part of case management is registering and tracking community needs when it comes to animal care. Community request tracking is the function of recording requests for help from neighbors and pet owners, usually in a particular geographic region. For instance, by recording and monitoring every animal-related 3-1-1 call, a city can track contact reasons over time and begin to anticipate need. This allows municipal organizations to budget appropriately, increase staff during busy times, target outreach to specific partners in advance (for example, mobile veterinary clinics during spring kitten season), and plan fundraising efforts in advance.

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM)

The process and technology involved in specific outreach and marketing techniques to consumers. While CRM is commonplace in corporations, it’s just now catching on in animal welfare as means of categorizing adopters, fosters, volunteers, and donors, and communicating to them based on their specific interests.

DATA-DRIVEN

Organizations that are data-driven are those that analyze data in order to provide factual (and, increasingly, real-time)  insights into operations, customer behaviors, and supply chain functions, among other things. Whether analyzing the spread velocity of a pandemic, or doing historical analysis on reasons owners surrender their pets, organizations that use data can improve business outcomes based on evidence-based findings.

DIGITAL

When we talk about something digital, it’s usually an electronic (e.g., computer-enabled) representation of a process or signal. The opposite of digital is analog. For instance, the old radio in your dad’s garage was analog. The satellite radio in your car is digital. The wristwatch you wore in high school was likely analog, while your Fitbit or Apple watch is digital. Some might argue whether digital makes things better. But when it comes to making information sharable and easy to understand, digitizing animal records is infinitely better than the paper alternatives of old.

ENRICHMENT

A set of techniques for ensuring an animal in a shelter or other restricted situation receives both mental and physical stimulation. This is an important component in the animal’s wellbeing and can help avoid behaviors that could indicate anxiety. Examples of enrichment include playing with toys, running agility courses, doing nose work, and practicing leash manners.

FLIPPER

A flipper is someone who takes a dog from a shelter and profits from it in some way. The typical example is rescuing a purebred dog from a shelter and then attempting to sell it (usually on buy-and-sell sites like Craigslist.com). There are stories of shelter dogs ending up in hoarding situations (or worse) because of flippers. Please never buy or sell an animal on Craigslist.com!

FOOD INSECURITY

Food insecurity refers to an individual’s or family’s ability to obtain food due to lack of financial or support resources. This can be due to unemployment, under-employment, transportation issues, health limitations, or other challenges. Food-insecure families often find it difficult to obtain food for family pets.

FOSTER

As a noun, a foster is an individual or family who agrees to house an animal on behalf of a shelter or rescue for a predetermined but temporary amount of time. Fostering (as a verb) serves several purposes, chief among them socializing the animal so that it is more adoptable when the time comes. Fosters also relieve shelters and rescues that may already be burdened by an overflow of animals and need a place for a recently-rescued animal to stay.

FOSTER FAIL

A foster fail is someone who fosters an animal and decides to permanently adopt her.

HOARDER

A hoarder is someone who has become overwhelmed with the number of animals in their care. Hoarders usually exceed the legal limit of companion animals by orders of magnitude, putting themselves and their pets at risk of injury or disease.

HOUSING INSECURITY

Housing insecurity refers to people whose living situations are tenuous. Housing insecurity results in family instability and often involves families moving and unable to either temporarily or permanently care for their pets.

INTERESTED PARTY (IP)

An IP is someone who would like to be kept apprised of the status of a dog without committing to adopt it.

INTEROPERABILITY

Interoperability means computer systems talking to each other, integrating processes, and sharing data. Many software solutions in the animal welfare movement are standalone, designed to address a specific problem (like finding an animal's owner) from beginning to end. But when these products can connect and share data with others, they invite a richer data set about animals, allowing greater insight and driving better decisions.

INTERVENTION

Intervention programs prevent or reduce instances of animals entering shelters. Such programs often help people who would otherwise turn their pets into the shelter system to keep them, offering them free or low-cost vet care, fence or gate repair to  prevent escaping pets, or temporary foster accommodation for owners in transition. Intervention is often used synonymously with the term surrender prevention.

OUT OF THE BUILDING (OTB)

Despite declarations that someone is planning on adopting a dog or cat, no animal is truly safe until it has physically left the shelter premises. Along with photos and videos, the OTB designation is typically used on social media to verify that the animal has left the shelter, hopefully for good.

PAPERLESS

With the advent of digital technologies, including smartphone apps and online forms, more animal welfare organizations are able to “go paperless” by applying this automation to previously paper- and manually-intensive tasks. Going paperless not only saves trees, it saves time and money that can be allocated to new programs.

PEER-TO-PEER

An important concept in community-based sheltering, peer-to-peer refers to community members engaging one another for support with their pets. Peer-to-peer adoption or rehoming avoids the shelter altogether through the use of websites or neighborhood social media sites. Likewise, peer-to-peer fostering involves collaboration between neighbors by keeping pets safe until their families can adopt or reclaim them.

PLAY GROUP

You can find out a lot about an animal when it’s given the chance to play with its own kind. Play groups not only provide a way to assess animals (usually dogs) by watching them interact in a group, they give dogs a chance to burn off steam, get exercise, relax, and be dogs again. (There are play groups for cats, too, but cats are more likely to already be living in community with other cats.) More shelters than ever are instituting play groups, and training their staff members and volunteers on how to manage them safely.

PLAY YARD

An open area in many shelters where dogs can go to get supervised exercise, participate in play groups with other dogs, be evaluated for behaviors, and get enrichment.

PLEDGE

Pledging is the act of promising a donation if a party (usually a rescue) saves an animal from a shelter. Pledges help with the inevitable costs rescued animals incur, including boarding and medical treatment, once they leave the shelter. Pledging is usually done via social media sites like Facebook or Instagram. Only pledge to a proven 501(c )(3) rescue that has a proven track record of evaluating, vetting, and placing animals. When in doubt, research the organization first. NOTE: Outta the Cage prefers donations over pledges. Administratively, it’s faster, it’s easier, and it saves time.

POPULATION HEALTH

Population health focuses on the health care and outcomes of a specific group. Usually applied to humans, the term is increasingly being embraced by the animal welfare community. In this sense, a population might be the animals in a particular geography (for instance, cows at feed lots in west Texas), or a particular category of environments (like animal shelters), or even a specific facility (like a quarantine building in a specific shelter). When considered holistically, population health encompasses both physical and mental wellness.

POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS DOG (PDD)

A dog designated as a Potentially Dangerous Dog might have bitten someone, been involved in an altercation with another animal, or been abused. Most PDD dogs are Rescue Only (RO). Many have been successfully adopted without incident, while others are euthanized before they ever had a chance.

RED-LISTED

A red-listed animal is one that is typically slated for euthanasia. Increasingly shelters will alert rescue organizations and volunteers about red-listed animals before they are euthanized to give them a final chance to network the animals and get them to safety.

RESCUE

A rescue is a most often a charitable organization that has been registered as a 501(c)(3), thus designated as a non-profit. Such organizations cannot earn revenue, but can defray their costs through donations from the public. With their experiences with dogs and cats—and often, specific breed types—rescues play an important role in getting animals out of shelters, evaluating those animals, and placing them in forever homes.

RESCUE ONLY (RO)

RO dogs (and yes, they are usually dogs) typically have a problem that has resulted in the shelter deeming them unfit for public adoption. Problems can vary from pregnancies to medical issues to behavior. A RO designation for behavior is usually determined after a temperament test has been performed by a shelter employee.

RETURN TO FIELD (RTF)

Most often used in the context of community cats, RTF programs apply standard protocols for the humane trapping, sterilizing, vaccinating, and ear-tipping community cats, then returning them to their original habitats. 

RETURN TO OWNER (RTO)

RTO programs not only alleviate shelter populations, they help keep families together. Animal shelters are putting fresh emphasis on researching a stray animal’s provenance, through either a tag, license, microchip (or, increasingly, using biometrics), and making an effort to find the animal’s family. RTO programs rely on social media, community outreach, and other community-based sheltering programs to make sure that once an animal is returned, it can remain with its family.

SELF-REHOMING

Self-rehoming is the process of finding a home for a pet using resources outside of the animal shelter system. Social networking sites, neighborhood groups, specialized rehoming websites, and even personal networks can all be tools for keeping family pets in homes and avoiding the shelter altogether. Many shelters offer support for individuals seeking to rehome their pets, including foster assistance, pet food, and temporary boarding.

STRAY HOLD

The practice of keeping an animal in a shelter for a designated number of days (usually 3 to 7), to give the animal’s owner a chance to claim it before it is available for adoption.

TELEHEALTH

Telehealth (a.k.a., telecare) is the practice of evaluating, diagnosing, and even treating illnesses remotely via a video conference or a specific software platform. Telehealth has shown great promise in the veterinary world, with several new companies springing up to provide veterinarians and other animal care practitioners the ability to remotely consult with pet owners. This saves time, lowers costs, and obviates close human interactions that might be deemed unsafe during a public health crisis. Note that while the term telehealth is the more general category of running a health care operation electronically, telemedicine is the practice of actually providing remote care, and tele-triage is the more specific activity of diagnosing and preparing a patient for the next step in its care plan.

TEMP(ERAMENT) TEST

A temperament test is the process by which a shelter evaluates an animal’s behavior. Temp test evaluations vary by shelter, but typically include assessments of the dog’s attitude toward: food; behavior around other dogs; resource or toy guarding; sensitivity to handling; obedience and training; and child- or cat-friendliness. While there are temp testing standards, some shelters have developed their own temp test methods, and some even settle for subjective observations to determine behavior.

TRANSPORT SERVICES

Animal transport has been around for almost as long as there have been farms. For domestic animals needing homes, transport has taken on a new urgency as the availability of adoptable animals has been regionally inconsistent. For instance, California, Texas, and Florida continue to have high shelter populations—and higher kill rates—whereas animal shelters in the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast find themselves more often with empty kennels. Transporting animals from overcrowded shelters to areas with lists of willing adopters has saved lives. More shelters and rescues are participating in transport programs to help local families whose adoption choices might be limited save a shelter animal’s life.

TRAP, NEUTER, RETURN (TNR)

TNR is a common method for managing community cat populations, thus avoiding shelters and allowing cats to remain in their habitats without reproducing. In areas that practice TNR, there have been fewer nuisance complaints about feral cats, and cat colonies have been either been reduced or eliminated.