Awareness can bring change. This is why I am doing this.

People who are doing an important service for the dogs that will help them get out of a stressful shelter environment in a timely manner should not be banned.  The 1st Ave kennel manager Lynn has banned or fired FOUR people. I filmed shelter dogs for 7 years- starting at Lane County Animal Services in 2008.

The foster home/volunteer coordinator of LCAS (Elizabeth Thompson) said this about me on 12/12/14:  "When I worked for Lane County Animal Services I considered Molly Nicole Smith one of our best resources for advocating for the underdogs. She instinctively knew which animals needed extra exposure and/or were misunderstood by their behaviors. She is a tremendous voice in animal rescue!"

The last person who managed Lane County Animal Services was Rick Hammel. At this time we had a nearly no-kill shelter. Here are the reasons why this was able to happen: LCAS allowed EVERYONE to share ads and advertise pets wherever they wanted in order to get dogs and cats placed. They ENCOURAGED people to spread the ads on Facebook and wherever the pets would be seen. Staff was supportive of me filming. A LARGE and wide range of rescues and other shelters were used... anything safe and good for the dog was utilized. Rescues found it easy to work with Rick. Elizabeth the foster home coordinator (at the time when Rick was there) did an AMAZING job getting TONS of dogs and cats into foster homes CONTINUOUSLY, like I had never seen before! She did a bang up job. Foster people were allowed to adverstise their foster dogs on their own and have potential adopters come to their house to meet the dog. (Of course the new adopter would also speak with staff later.) This made for faster adoption rates and then the foster home could take on another dog. Adoption events were also helping. There were trainers qualified to handle a wide variety of behavior issues. Stray dogs that are dumped at the shelter are going to have a wide range of issues. Before Greenhill took over LCAS, they were only dealing with owner surrendered dogs that they chose whether or not they wanted to take in- not to say that a dog's behavior wouldn't change once entering the shelter. Rick Hammel knew the dogs by name and it was important to him that he did. He did his part too to try to find placements for them. All dogs on the Red Alert list had a half price adoption fee. LCAS HAD A RED ALERT LIST. The Red Alert list was made so that the animal welfare COMMUNITY would know which dogs had been there too long or were deteriorating or having a difficult time living in the shelter, SO THAT PEOPLE COULD FOCUS on getting them out of the shelter. THEY ENCOURAGED PEOPLE TO SPREAD THE WORD ON THESE DOGS. One thing that I wished we had was a special home set aside (where there were no other pets) where a shelter dog could be taken to for a few days to see if their negative behavior would go away if they were in a home where they could de-stress. I always wanted this opportunity for the dogs before they were euthenised- A dogs true nature can only be seen once out of the shelter and in a calm environment. Shelter stress can cause a dog to seem aggressive towards other dogs in the shelter whereas if they were in a home with no stress they may get along with other dogs. ALL THESE THINGS ARE THE MAKINGS OF A NO-KILL (or nearly no-kill) SHELTER. My hope is someday we can have this back again and do even better- a fully No-Kill shelter. But we must take action to make this happen.