-Welcome to Nevada Week .

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Overcrowding at animal shelters is part of why Clark County banned the retail sale of dogs, cats, rabbits and potbellied pigs.

We'll explore that ban ahead.

But first, an interview with Hilarie Grey, CEO of Nevada's largest animal shelter, The Animal Foundation.

In September, several of her employees walked off the job alleging poor working conditions.

And in October, the foundation temporarily suspended the intake of stray or owner-surrendered dogs due to an outbreak of a respiratory illness known as canine pneumovirus.

Hilarie, how would you assess the past three or so months for The Animal Foundation?

(Hilarie Grey) You know, it's been a really challenging period.

A lot of things coming to a head and to our attention, but I'm really first and foremost really proud of how our team has risen to meet those challenges and some of the things that we've learned and have been able to really institute as a result.

-And when you talk about what you've learned, what would that entail?

-Well, you know, first and foremost, shelter overpopulation is a problem across the country.

It's not unique to The Animal Foundation.

It's not unique to Las Vegas.

It's a really challenging time for shelters and rescues.

And, you know, we saw that over the summer, that our population in the shelter became very high.

And we got outside of what we refer to as our "capacity for care," where you look at what our staff capacity is, what our facility and what our resources can handle.

And you want to make sure that you're giving the best care to every animal that comes in and you're not stretched so thin that you're not doing that and you're burning out staff and you're not being fair to the animals.

So we actually did what turned out to be a fantastic thing, and we have foster programs year round.

But we asked for the community's help in getting fosters out into homes, and that was really successful, and made sure that as some other things came down the pike that we weren't so overpopulated that we couldn't cope.

-Your intake situation.

What is it, and how does it impact overpopulation?

-"Managed intake" is kind of a key phrase that you hear from a lot of folks and experts in the animal welfare community to help make sure that communities are in tune with their most humane resources and aren't using the shelter or animal control as a default.

It's a little bit new from the traditional model of years past, which is, Okay, there's a lost pet, it goes to the pound.

You know, we're not a pound or a shelter, and we want to make sure that we have the resources to take the best care of the animals that need us the most.

So the ones that are really abandoned, maybe their family pased, you know, they're injured or dangerous, or ones that really need our care to be on their best pathway.

In Las Vegas, there aren't packs of stray dogs wandering the streets like in some countries.

What you have for the most part are lost pets.

And so it's kind of reframing that discussion with people.

When you find a lost dog or cat in your neighborhood, chances are it belongs to a neighbor.

And so it's a better deal for that person who is lost and frantically looking for their pet, and for that pet, for you to spend just a little time trying to find the owner, if that's canvassing the neighborhood, if that's putting a photo on Nextdoor, and even working with, you know, they're now "Animal Protection Services," as opposed to "Animal Control."

And part of that is those officers scanning for microchips, returning pets in the field so that we're not just getting lost pets in the shelter and diminishing their chances of being returned home.

-So what would it look like if I saw a stray dog out and about and I called Animal Protection Services today?

What would happen?

-Well, I mean, I can't speak for their individual procedures, but there are, like I say, there are a few different categories that we're talking about.

Like if you find a dog wandering around in your neighborhood, you may even recognize that dog and go, Okay, I think that belongs to somebody on this block.

But if it's a dog that's abandoned or, you know, running down the highway, those are the exceptions.

And you do, you want to call Animal Protection Services.

And it's important for the folks watching this to know that even when we had a disease outbreak in the shelter, we never stopped taking animals in true emergency.

-Was managed intake a result of the canine pneumovirus?

-You know, we had been-- We had moved to an appointment system for owner surrenders that we have been already experimenting with for several months that had been really successful.

And the great thing on that front is that that also, when you make an appointment, Oh, I'm having some trouble, and I think that I might need to surrender my dog or cat, that gives us a chance to kind of mobilize our troops, get some more information.

Why is that?

Do you maybe just need a little bit of veterinary care or food or resources?

You know, maybe your landlord is starting to charge pet rent, and we have programs that can help with that.

So to be able to have people thinking about that and giving us information in advance has been really helpful.

And so now also on the lost pet side, or the found pet side I guess I should say, we've gone to an appointment-based system, which is, you know, flexible.

Again, based on what's the capacity of the shelter, what's our capacity for care.

And that also does let us take in true emergencies.

And keep in mind, too, that we don't just get animals coming to our lobby from the public, we get them from three municipalities from Animal Protection Services.

So what we've asked our partners and the community to do is make sure that they're bringing us the animals in the greatest need.

And in any case, where we as a community can help get lost pets home, that's what we want you to do.

-And what did you learn from the pneumovirus?

-You know, number one thing is we have a fantastic team on our veterinary services, on our animal welfare and behavior side.

They really pulled together, and as a result of kind of an incident, command system that they set up starting with our chief veterinarian, they were able to detect, test, quarantine, and make sure that everybody was kept healthy and that we didn't see, you know, more spread of the disease.

All of the dogs in our care were watched, were treated, provided extra enrichment while we were in disease protocols.

And we're very happy that we were able to see the pneumovirus cleared in about a month, which was not the case for a lot of other shelters across the country that have also dealt with it.

So very, very proud of that and the way our team mobilized.

I also learned that our electronic system that we have for managing our kennels and our space helped with contact tracing.

Which if you remember from COVID, contact tracing was a big thing, right?

So we could actually track which dogs had been in which places, which had been in playgroup or encountered each other so that we knew which ones we needed to watch for popping symptoms as things went along.

-When I brought up the past three or so months within that timeline, in addition to the pneumovirus, was the City of Las Vegas notifying The Animal Foundation that it was in violation of its contract with the city.

And that was after Councilwoman Seaman made a surprise visit here and described the conditions as "unsanitary."

What is your response to that allegation?

-You know, we did respond to that in kind, and we are inspected.

And they're surprise inspections all the time by all three municipalities.

And our team does a great job of keeping conditions safe and healthy.

We felt like that was a calculated time and place, and we've addressed it.

-And now the City is conducting an audit of The Animal Foundation.

Your thoughts on that?

-You know, we really value our partnerships with all three municipalities, and we have contract relationships where financial audits are a part of that.

So we're happy to work with them and to, you know, discuss anything that, you know, they might be interested in.

-What do you think they will find as a result of that audit?

-You know, our finances, we are audited by outside firms.

We're listed in Charity Navigator and GuideStar , and our financials are very good.

-Might it be possible that they find the foundation could use more money?

-You know, it's interesting that you bring that up.

The contracts are sort of long standing and have been renegotiated at intervals.

But with the same kind of supply chain and cost issues and staffing issues that, not just in animal welfare, but everybody has experienced, you know, over the past few years, we have found that the cost of care that's supposed to be covered in the contract-- which are the statutory hold days that the cities or the county are responsible for.

So if an animal comes in and is on a three-day hold, it's those three days of care that that's supposed to pay for-- that it really hasn't been keeping up with our actual costs.

We've been subsidizing for quite a while.

-And on another topic, the ban on pet stores selling popular animals like dogs and cats that Clark County recently voted to enact, The Animal Foundation supports it.

In what ways would it support your efforts?

-The reality is, we talked about shelter overcrowding, there are plenty of animals that are in need of good homes.

And we think that directing people to adopt and letting them know that they can find, even if they're looking for a special breed of dog or cat, they all come through the shelter.

We did an analysis preparing for that ordinance hearing to look at how many of the top 10 breeds that you see listed that people seek out and buy have we had in the shelter, and we've had a lot of French Bulldogs, Yorkies, purebred Labradors.

Like you can really find whoever you need.

We have a lot of great rescue partners, too, where there are breed-specific rescues.

If Beagles are your jam, you know, there's a really great Beagle rescue in town.

There's a Golden Retriever rescue.

So there are lots of places where you can find the animal of your choice and do the right thing by giving someone who might not have one right now a loving home.