75 Years…and Counting!
For 75 years, the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria has been a resource to our community. From housing homeless animals to reuniting owners with lost pets, assisting wildlife in need, creating families and helping them stay together, the AWLA has been here for you. Read more about our journey below from AWLA Executive Director Stella Hanly.
Part 1 – Animal Welfare Before the AWLA
Part 2 – Dog Catchers No More!
Part 3 – Building Families with Open Adoptions
Part 4 – Celebrating 75 Animal-Loving Years
Part 4 – Celebrating 75 Animal-Loving Years
As the Executive Director of an animal-focused non-profit, I regularly consider just how lucky we are to be located here, in Alexandria and the wider Northern Virginia region. Every day I can clearly see how important pets are to our community. When the weather gets warm, and water and treat bowls line King Street, waiting for canine passers-by (with their people, of course), you can tell there is something special about our City. The number of specialty businesses that cater to pets runs the gamut from veterinary to training to grooming and other wellness services, not to mention the many dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, turtles, guinea pigs and more adopted in Alexandria each week. And I know I’m not biased here: Alexandria has been named one of the dog-friendliest cities in the country. Anyone can see: our community loves animals!
So when we looked into the history of the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria (AWLA) as we celebrate our 75th anniversary on June 28, we weren’t surprised to uncover a long tradition of community support for animals and the AWLA.
When the AWLA was first established in 1946, the primary consideration of the community was the City’s “dog pound,” where conditions were so poor that residents would occasionally break in to release the dogs. At that time, their biggest concern was the health of the animals confined to the “pound,” but as Alexandria has grown and changed, those concerns have also changed…and the AWLA has changed along with them.
As more people began to have pets and to treat those pets as family, they stood behind the AWLA to offer support to give lost and homeless animals the same chances. In the 1950s, an anecdote from an AWLA Board of Directors meeting noted a dog who had been hit by a car that the AWLA was called to assist. Because of their efforts, they were able to get the dog to a veterinarian and find his owner through licensing records, so they could save that pup’s life! But it was the support of the AWLA community that helped to fund our nonprofit and provide the resources needed to get that dog the attention and assistance he needed.
Alexandria’s love of animals has long extended not just to finding families for homeless animals but also to protecting animals across the community. This priority enabled the AWLA to hire its first Humane Officer in 1969, a single position that has now grown into our Animal Services team of five people, who help investigate cases of animal cruelty and neglect alongside the Alexandria Police Department. Animal Services also provides assistance to non-domestic animals, helping wildlife who might be trapped or injured. After all, our community loves their birds and squirrels too!
But the AWLA is more than a shelter. As early as the 1970s, we hosted the Great Canine Games, raising funds to help animals at the AWLA while giving hundreds of pets the opportunity to meet — and compete — in obstacle courses, races and training showcases. In 1996, we launched our first summer camp, marking our community’s focus on Humane Education to pass on that love and compassion for animals to young learners. Events like these over the years bring animal lovers of all ages together and have endured, even while following best COVID-19 safety practices.
But the biggest change in the field of animal welfare has been that the focus is no longer just on animals…it’s on people too. And the people of our community have rallied behind our human support programs, like our Pet Pantry (supplying pet food and goods to pet owners experiencing financial hardship), vaccine clinics and wellness events (offering pet vaccinations alongside a collection of human support services and organizations) and Crisis Care (providing short-term boarding for pets whose owners are experiencing emergencies). These free and low-cost programs help community members keep their pets — their beloved family members — with them in times of hardship, and they are funded by the support of our community. We already knew you loved animals, and it is amazing to see the ways you support your human neighbors as well.
For 75 years, the AWLA has grown in and alongside our community, changing with the times and expanding with your support. When you’ve asked, we’ve been there, and you’ve done the same for us in return, funding emergency surgeries, buying kitty litter by the pound and helping a pet when his or her owner needed it most. We’ve been a community resource for 75 years, and we’re looking forward to the next 75…and we couldn’t have done it without you!
Part 3 – Building Families with Open Adoptions
Have you ever adopted a pet? Maybe in the 1980s, or ‘90s, the 2010s or even in the last year? Were you asked a lot of questions, about the size of your house and yard, what kinds of pets you’d had before, your schedule, what vet you used, and maybe even your salary? How did the adoption process make you feel?
Depending on where and when you adopted a pet, your experience could have been very different from someone else’s. Over the past decade, the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria (AWLA), along with many other animal shelters and welfare organizations, have updated their adoption process to be more in line with the national “Adopters Welcome” approach created and advocated by the Humane Society of the United States. Much like its name implies, these efforts were designed to make potential adopters feel invited and informed, and to help everyone make the best decision about their new furry (or finned or feathered) family member.
The “Adopters Welcome” approach turns previous adoption processes upside down. Rather than requiring that families “prove” they are good enough to adopt an animal, it focuses on helping each family make the right match for them. So many of the people who are interested in adopting a pet do so because they want to help an animal in need, to give that animal a home and find a new best friend in return. The welcoming approach invites more people to make the difference in the life of an animal, and in turn, helps new animals find wonderful and loving homes.
Think about it: What limits the amount of love you can give an animal? It is your bank account? Whether you own or rent your home, and how big it is? Whether you’ve owned a pet before? None of these should be a barrier to whether you can adopt a pet; these facts now just give us more opportunities to introduce you to the pet that is right for you.
Now, instead of asking, “Do you have a fenced yard for a dog to run around in?” we ask, “What kind of activities are you looking to do with your pup?” If you’re looking for a pet who’s going to go hiking with you every weekend, we might recommend a rough-and-tumble outdoorsy hound. But if you know your own lifestyle is a bit more sedentary or your home is better situated to take short walks, perhaps a sweet senior terrier might be a better bet for you…or even a cat! It’s not to say that we know sometimes a certain pet won’t do well in, for example, an apartment, but we’ll share that with you too to help you find that perfect match for your life.
Similarly, we do not have an “application” that all adopters are required to fill out, because every adopter and every animal is different. Rather than having everyone give us the same information, we want to have a conversation to learn the most about you and what you are looking for in your new family member.
The “Adopters Welcome” approach not only breaks down barriers that were preventing people from adopting, it also allows us to connect a broader portion of our community with pets, people who may not have previously met the “criteria” of an adoption survey but who have all the love in the world to give to their new family member. Each different and unique family can provide an amazing home for our different and unique adoptable animals, if we only invite them to work with us to help an animal in need.
While COVID has changed the way we’ve invited our community to visit our facility, we hope it has been no less welcoming, offering a variety of ways to safely meet adoptable animals and support them once they are part of a family. We look forward to “welcoming” more of our community back into our facility — when they can do so safely — but in the meantime, no matter whether our doors are open, adopters are always welcome!
Part 2 – Dog Catchers No More!
Last month, I shared some of the history of the animal welfare movement and how it led to the establishment of the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria (AWLA) 75 years ago, in 1946. The movement started in an effort to help working animals, and over time, that focus expanded to care for unowned or “stray” animals, with the goal of bringing them to shelter locations so they could no longer roam the streets.
Enter the “dog catchers.”
Just as early shelter facilities were considered “the pound,” the “dog catcher” loomed large through the early 20th century. In comic strips and cartoon movies of the time, the dog catcher could be seen rounding up animals, both stray and sometimes even pets, to take to the shelter. In some contexts, they were synonymous with corruption or incompetence. “You couldn’t even be elected as dog catcher” was not an uncommon insult.
But as the AWLA diverged from “the pound,” our “dog catchers” changed their role with the times as well. In 1989, “animal control services” became part of the AWLA’s contract with the City of Alexandria; along with offering in-shelter adoptions, the AWLA provided services outside the facility, with our Animal Control Officers assisting with trapped or injured wildlife, responding to concerns about potentially dangerous or endangered animals, and, yes, picking up found animals, with the goal of reconnecting them with their families.
These days, the AWLA’s Animal Services team does even more than the Animal Control officers of the 1990s and early 2000s. As the field of animal welfare has advanced to focus on both animals and humans, so have the efforts of Animal Services. Our officers aren’t focused on the punitive; their goal is to help and educate. Rather than assuming that the owner of an unleashed dog is intentionally breaking the law, our officers ask, Do you know that dogs need to be leashed here? Do you have a leash? Could we provide you with one? Our officers take part in school and library programs, as well as providing fun and educational “Animal Assistance” training as part of the AWLA’s popular summer camp. When we receive a call about an animal who appears to be neglected, Animal Services asks for more information. Perhaps an owner is doing the best they can for their pet on a limited budget, but if our officers can help out by connecting them with our Community Programs department to provide food or emergency grooming, they can make all the difference by keeping a pet with an owner who loves them.
The AWLA’s Animal Services officers are just one piece of a city-wide team focused on keeping Alexandria safer for its residents. As part of Alexandria’s Domestic Violence Intervention Program task force, we know that more than 90% of the time, animal abuse in a household indicates that a human is being abused as well. By working closely with Alexandria’s police and sheriff’s departments and with the City and Commonwealth’s attorneys, we can be involved from the beginning in instances of abuse or neglect, helping determine how to assist the animals and humans involved and, as appropriate, seeing the situation through to a court case and prosecution.
Seventy-five years after the AWLA’s founding, our Animal Services team works with dogs but also cats, raccoons and birds, deer and squirrels and opossums, and of course, humans. They are no longer the dog catchers. They are first responders, and they are community liaisons. They are assisters and providers. They are part of the AWLA’s larger footprint of community resources, and they — we — are here to help!
Photo of the AWLA’s Animal Services team courtesy of DeSilva Studios
Part 1 – Animal Welfare Before the AWLA
The dawn of the animal welfare movement looks very different from the field of animal welfare today, which just goes to show that these efforts, spanning more than 200 years, are succeeding. Before the 19th century, in much of Western society there were no laws governing how animals could be treated; in fact, there weren’t really many laws about how humans were treated either.
But in the early 1800s, people began to re-examine how work was being done in industrialized countries like the U.S. and Great Britain. This included child labor in factories; the role of a woman and her responsibilities at home; and working animals, including cattle, horses and dogs. The goal was to address suffering routinely experienced by these groups. Early “humane societies” were developed to safeguard women, children and animals, stating that “beasts and babes” had the right to protection because they had the capability of suffering. While their intentions were progressive, the fact that these “humane societies” coexisted with slavery in the U.S. and left BIPOC communities out of the conversation throughout this history and still in recent years, means white populations benefited the most from these advances.
Over the decades, the humane society movement diverged from those worried about the treatment of humans. Animal welfare efforts focused on horses working in the cab and transportation trade, on the sale and trade of livestock and the plight of unowned dogs on the streets. By the time the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria was established in 1946, those goals in Alexandria were focused more on domestic animals, such as dogs and cats, though when the original Payne Street Animal Shelter opened in 1951, local media proclaimed it could “take all animals but snakes and alligators.”
While the animal welfare movement has shifted over time, one element of those earliest efforts is again emerging as important: the focus on animals and people. Now that animals are afforded certain rights and protections by the law, their importance in our lives, as people, is clear. Loving a pet is in itself not a privilege; it is a right, and a right that should be afforded to everyone, regardless of race, nationality, income, culture — even regardless of where you live. Just as humans improve the lives of animals, so too do animals improve our lives, which is why the AWLA’s current efforts focus not just on connecting animals with people but on keeping animals with people. Pets have been proven to increase health and decrease stress; they are our best friends and, in some cases, our sole companions. Every person should have that opportunity.
Through AWLA programs like our Community Pet Pantry and Vaccination Clinics, Veterinary and Grooming Assistance, Crisis Care emergency boarding and AniMeals for pets of senior citizens, we strive to once again focus on the connection between animals and humans. Our efforts concentrate not just on the animals in our care but the animals in our community — and the people who love them.
Photo of Stella Hanly courtesy of DeSilva Studios