by Heide Brandes
In 2020, nearly 90,000 cats and dogs entered Oklahoma’s 120 animal shelters. Of those, about 11,000 were euthanized.
That is a big number, but far less than the 18,000 animals that were euthanized in 2019. The reduction is partly because of Common Bonds, a new organization supported by the Kirkpatrick Foundation.
Comprised of about three dozen nonprofits, organizations, and animal-welfare groups, Common Bonds was created in 2018 as part of the larger overall goal of the Kirkpatrick Foundation to have Oklahoma become the safest and most humane place to be an animal by 2032.
Each of the partners of Common Bonds became a collaborative partner to save more shelter cats and dogs in Oklahoma.
According to data sourced by Best Friends Animal Society, Oklahoma ranks eighth in the United States for shelter euthanasia. To address that issue, Common Bonds was created with the goal of increasing the statewide live-release rate from the current 73 percent to 90 percent by 2025. “So the common goal is to create this organization that would be charged with increasing the live-release rate of shelter cats and dogs to 90 percent by 2025. Everything that we do is really tied back to that overarching goal. But we have some big challenges to get there, for sure,” said Kelly Burley, director of Common Bonds.
Common Goal, Common Ground
Common Goals’ partners have a threepronged approach to meeting the 90 percent goal. The first is to develop relationships with shelters managers and communities.
“We are trying to build grassroots relationships with the animal shelters, not only with people that are running them, but their counterparts who make decisions about those shelters,” said Burley. “We’re actively trying to connect the shelters together. I don’t know of any other state that is really doing anything quite like this in terms of being on the ground trying to bring these people together.”
Common Bonds also encourages shelters to report their intake and release data to the Shelter Animals Count national database because the count helps to create an effective infrastructure for understanding risk factors. The accurate data can also be used to implement strategies and positively impact efforts. A comprehensive nationwide data collection did not exist prior to Shelter Animals Count.
“Another area that we focus on is accessible spaying and neutering. Spaying and neutering are long-term solutions to this population problem, so we’re big advocates of trying to connect resources in that area,” Burley said.
The last and perhaps most successful aspect of Common Bonds’ mission is a Certified Communities Program to recognize cities that report their data and shelter animal counts and commit to the 90 percent live-release goal.
Ponca City is one such location. In addition to building a new shelter, the city commission passed a resolution in April to become a no-kill city by 2025.
“That is huge. Ponca City went the extra mile and did that. Also, there is a good working relationship between the nonprofit community and the public entity of Ponca City, and they work very closely together,” Burley said. The North Oklahoma Humane Society works closely with the Ponca City municipal animal shelter and with other municipalities in the region. “We were previously called Ponca City Humane Society, but when we built the new state-of-the-art facility in 2019, which opened in 2020, we changed our name to Northern Oklahoma Humane Society,”
said Ashley Villines, director. “Where we’re situated, we take animals from Blackwell, Newkirk, and western Osage County — anywhere between here and Stillwater.”
Villines discovered Common Bonds “kind of randomly” and reached out to the organization for some assistance with a trap-neuter-release program. She began to attend Common Bonds meetings and networked with other organizations. “Kelly Burley introduced me to different people who have given me different ideas or have shown me ways they do things. I’m all about not trying to reinvent the wheel, and it helps when you’re working with city commissioners to be able to say, ‘This is what they are doing and it’s working for them, so it could work for us,’” Villines said.
Continuing the Mission
The networking and support that come with different organizations bonding over a single mission are especially helpful to smaller and rural animal-advocacy groups such as the Enid SPCA. Vickie Grantz, executive director, began the organization in 1998 after she and a friend fostered animals for their local humane society. The organization grew, and in 2010, it started an aggressive spay-neuter program for the community.
“We have spayed and neutered over 10,000 animals. We have since put our focus on becoming a service organization to our community. We have a pet food bank, and this year, we partnered with Enid SOS, which is an Enid street outreach service, to add a food bank there,” said Grantz.
Still, the small Enid SPCA struggles to maintain its mission, especially facing veterinarian shortages for the spay-neuter-release programs. Because it is so small, the Enid SPCA does not qualify for grants or federal assistance in some cases. “The one thing that we have learned through our coalition with our local organizations is how important it is to work together because the Enid SPCA could not pull off our rescue-wagon program by ourselves,” Grantz said. “We just don’t have the manpower to do it all, so the importance of working together is what makes change. We have been fortunate that we have been able to reach the 90 percent live-release rate within our community, but we continue to battle to keep it.”
As part of the overall mission, Common Bonds also welcomes citizen supporters and advocates who can reach out to info@ commonbondsok.org.
“Obviously, we’re really interested in building a network of people who can be our eyes and ears in terms of what is happening in their communities and the opportunities and challenges,” said Burley. “Anyone who shares our goal of a 90 percent live-release rate is welcome to reach out. I’m the lone staffer for the organization, so we rely on a network of like-minded people.”
Common Bonds is supported by the Kirkpatrick Foundation, whose chairman, Christian Keesee, and executive director, Louisa McCune, recently visited Washington, D.C. The two met with Ngodup Tsering, representative of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and U. S. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma to discuss animal well-being. The foundation’s Safe and Humane initiative continues to fight to make Oklahoma the safest and most humane place to be an animal by 2032.
For more information about Common Bonds, visit commonbondsok.org. For more information about the Kirkpatrick Foundation Safe and Humane Initiative, visit kirkpatrickfoundation.com.
