Editor’s Note: In 2021, following the introduction of managed intake, the Memphis Animal Shelter took in 7,593 live dogs and cats. An incorrect number was provided in an earlier version of this story.

Memphis Animal Services director Alexis Pugh has an unusual office-mate. He’s tall, dark, and handsome, and he sleeps on the table next to her desk. 

Strut is one of thousands of dogs taken into the shelter every year. 

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Over the past six years, Pugh led MAS through what some have called a miraculous transformation. However, some practices lead animal advocates to say that the state of animal welfare is worse than when she took the reins. 

Whatever the case, Strut’s fate in the shelter looks much different than it could have before Pugh took over. 

When Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland appointed Pugh, the shelter was in dire straits and had a reputation to show for it. Six years prior to her appointment, the Sheriff’s Department raided the shelter in an investigation that resulted in indictments for three employees, including the shelter’s director. No one wanted to get anywhere near MAS because of its reputation, said Cindy Marx-Sanders, a board member during the search.

In 2010, the shelter saved 19% of the animals that came through its doors. By 2015, the year prior to Pugh’s arrival, that number had risen to about 65%. Today, it’s about 85%.

Pugh came to MAS from Mid-South Spay & Neuter, where she served as executive director. Prior to that role, she served as executive director of the Humane Society of Memphis & Shelby County. According to the National Animal Care & Control Association, she led both organizations to record-setting service levels. 

Pugh’s philosophy involved becoming a no-kill shelter. Nationally, a no-kill shelter is defined as one that saves 90% or more of the animals that it takes in. For most of Pugh’s tenure, the shelter’s save rate has hovered around that number. 

“My goal when I first arrived was to start evaluating every aspect of what we do to look for inefficiencies in how we operate. And then also really put forth an emphasis on how are we engaging with the community. Are we reaching out proactively instead of waiting reactively for people to come to us?” Pugh said. 

Some of those inefficiencies, she said, were the tendencies to work in silos and a disconnection from the animal welfare community across the nation. She also focused on changing perception of the shelter, from the dog pound and dog catcher mentality to a community-supported service. 

“The animal shelter itself will never be big enough, staffed enough, have enough capacity to perform all of the work required,” Pugh said. 

So she reorganized her staff, created a position for marketing to help get the word out about their animals, and began attending conferences to connect with other shelters and discuss best practices. One of those conferences is hosted annually by Best Friends Animal Society, a leader in the no-kill movement. 

Pugh also introduced a foster coordinator position, which built a community of people willing to foster animals in their homes, rather than having them stay in the shelter. That change, she said, reduced kitten mortality by more than 80%. 

But like many industries across the nation, the shelter is facing challenges caused by the pandemic, inflation and worker shortages.

Of 19 positions for animal control officers, 15 are filled. Of those 15, 12 are currently working at full capacity. This, she said, makes it harder for officers to respond to calls about healthy and friendly loose dogs in a timely manner, as opposed to those who are injured or aggressive, which they prioritize. 

Evictions and housing shortages have also pushed more animals out into the streets, advocates say. Some predict it will only get worse. 

And a seemingly ever-present challenge is the placement of large dogs. While the shelter has not euthanized a cat, small dog or puppy in more than five years, large dogs are still being euthanized for time and space reasons. Earlier this year, the MAS called out to the public for help with a space crisis as their dog kennels filled. 

Pugh’s office-mate Strut, a big black dog who enjoys a squeaky pig toy, had been in the shelter for 35 days as of last week. Currently, the average length of stay for dogs is 19 days. She said the biggest challenge recently is the increased average stay for dogs. That is the number one metric that drives the shelter, Pugh said. 

Still, her work inside the facility’s walls is more efficient than before, animal activists said. 

“Your decision to trust Alexis Pugh with that job resulted in three years of miraculous improvement at MAS. The euthanasia rate was drastically reduced, an active transport program implemented, adoptions and fosters increased, and partnerships within the animal rescue community were repaired and strengthened,” MAS board members wrote in a 2020 letter to Strickland. 

Her practices outside the walls of the shelter, limiting intake and upping community responsibility, have been a source of controversy among advocates and rescuers concerned about the well-being of animals in the streets. 

In that same letter to the mayor, the board members contend that Pugh’s intake practices are in direct violation of city ordinances regarding animals. 

“This dereliction of duty has resulted, and will continue to result in an overpopulation of stray animals in our city who are being left to either starve; be captured and forced into illegal dog fighting rings; be hit and injured or killed by automobiles; or form packs which has resulted in deadly attacks upon other companion animals and citizens of our city,” the letter reads. 

Five of the seven board members at the time were removed, not reappointed, or resigned shortly after. 

Marx-Sanders, who was not on the board at the time of the letter but served twice prior to it, said those board members never received a response from the mayor.

“I am very sorry seeing the way she’s performing now. And the decisions that she is making for the animals that impact the animals and impact the citizens. I am sorry I ever recommended her,” she said. 

The intake practice Pugh adopted is called managed intake. Instead of accepting every animal that citizens bring to their doorstep, the shelter now requires people who want to surrender their pets to make an appointment. This is a separate process than involving an animal control officer.

“We’re here to help you with your own pet. But that help may not come in the form of an immediate shelter intake if it compromises our ability to help free roaming lost pets in our community,” Pugh said. “When we really looked at our ordinances, there is nothing in City of Memphis ordinances that mandates we take in owned animals. It’s just something that was historically done.” 

To accommodate that shift, Pugh adopted an approach called community-supported sheltering. 

MAS created a pet resource center, equipping owners with pet food, behavior training, paying veterinary bills and other resources to alleviate the strain of factors that may make it difficult to own a pet. The idea is that people who own or find animals in the streets are provided with adequate resources to keep them, instead of turning them over to the shelter.

 In 2017, Pugh’s first full year in office, the shelter took in 8,273 live dogs and cats. In 2021, following the introduction of managed intake, the shelter took in 7,593 live dogs and cats, a decline of about 8%. There was a sharp decline in 2020, the year COVID-19 struck. That year, the shelter took in 59% less animals than in 2017, as the shelter went into emergency-only intake for a few months. 

Pugh’s approach has also involved community groups. Sea Isle Park Neighborhood Association is equipped with three microchip scanners to identify pets’ owners. 

Sandi Rogers, vice president of the neighborhood association, said they’ve had four successful reunification stories out of about 20 dogs rounded up. Others have not been microchipped or their microchips are no longer attached to the correct phone number. 

However, she said the four successes make their efforts worthwhile.

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Rogers said she reached out once she heard the shelter wanted to give out scanners, since the park in her neighborhood is a spot where she frequently sees loose dogs. 

“It is a very successful program. I don’t know why more neighborhoods aren’t doing this,” Rogers said. 

The decline in intake, however, raised concern with Blair Terry and Suzy Hollenbach of All 4s Rescue League. All 4s goes into underserved areas and provides free services such as spaying and neutering and free dog houses. 

Pugh’s approach relies on the assumption that most dogs roaming the streets belong to an owner who would welcome them back. 

She referenced a 2021 study conducted by MAS and the University of Memphis’ Center for Applied Earth Science and Engineering Research on unrestrained dogs. Surveyors visited census tracts in each district and observed loose dogs, notating if they were a roaming owned dog or a stray based on appearance. 

Of 42 dogs observed across the city, the researchers deduced that 37 were owned dogs and five were strays. According to the study, an estimate of Memphis’ total unrestrained dog population at any given time is about 2,445, with between 78% and 98% of those dogs belonging to an owner. 

“The data is what guides our thinking,” Pugh said. 

At All 4s, they said Pugh’s approach could work in a perfect world, but it does not fit in a city like Memphis, which faces extreme poverty and an overcrowding of strays. 

“In the pulse of the neglect and abuse in the stray population that we have in Memphis, Tennessee, it’s just not a good program for Memphis,” Hollenbach said. She said leaving dogs to fend for themselves often turns into a bad outcome for the dogs.

“There are people that harm animals in these areas, or really just anywhere,” Hollenbach said. “There’s dogs that have been found tortured, dogs have been raped, dogs starve, they get hit by cars.”

Terry said the philosophical difference is rooted in the issue of whether it’s worse for a dog to roam the streets or to be humanely euthanized if it is brought into a shelter and not adopted. From what she’s seen happen to dogs on the streets, she believes the former is much worse. 

But Rogers and the rescuers at All 4s agree that the stray population is out of control and will only get worse. 

Pugh believes her work and her approach to handling overpopulation is in the center of the spectrum. 

“I consider it my job to find a solution that lives somewhere in the middle that is rooted in best practices as defined by national animal welfare organizations that lead progressive efforts around the country and shelters around the country that have had great success implementing these programs,” Pugh said.