A numerical simulator of Indianapolis Animal Care & Control

The ACClock project is an effort to help people understand how frequently or infrequently animal intake and outcome activities happen at Indianapolis Animal Care & Control (IACC).

Why present the information this way?
The intent is to engage people in what is happening with cats and dogs in our community. Although many people find it troubling or distasteful to discuss, the fact is that unwanted, lost and discarded animals are being killed by the tens of thousands every year. They are not being killed because there are too many. They are being killed because the system has been constructed with the notion that killing is the only practical solution. In fact, there are other solutions. It has been proven in cities larger than Indianapolis, with far larger animal problems. The Indy No-Kill Initiative is devoted to bringing this information to the public and people involved in animal welfare, and to embrace these solutions that save lives, rather than take them.

The Data
The information is based on publicly available YTD statistics issued monthly by IACC and averaged over the length of the YTD period to come up with a "frequency" expressed in terms of minutes. The clock uses this information to numerically estimate how many more animals are being affected, and how frequently, and updates the display every minute.

The information should not be used as a basis for estimating shelter statistics, as those follow seasonal trends, and also have a largely unpredictable component. Archives of IACC historic statistics are available in our Library section, and current data is available in the ACCess section.

How to read the clock
The ACClock is categorized into two broad categories:

• Intake -- Animals being received into the shelter. We choose to show only cat and dog related statistics, but IACC accommodates all types of animals, as mandated by law. The other animals represent a very small portion of their total volume of animals. There are other types of intake as well, but again, these represent a small percentage of the intake.
• Outcomes -- What happens to the animals that come into the shelter. "Good" outcomes would be Adoption or Humane Transfer to a no-kill shelter* or returning a lost or impounded animal to its owner. "Not-so-good" outcomes involve the destruction of the animals.

The difference between Euthanized and Killed
The dictionary defines euthanasia as the humane taking of a life to end irremediable suffering. This means an animal that is ill or injured in a manner than cannot be medically addressed, would have its life ended as painlessly as possible.

In the majority of shelters in the US, this term is mis-used as a euphemism for any killing of an animal. This is done because the public does not like the notion of killing, so by mis-representing it as a humane act, makes it more palatable to the general public and even the staff having to perform the gruesome task. Indeed, if you look at the ACClock, we have use IACC's own categorization of the data to determine which animals were considered to be untreatably ill or injured. Those are animals to which the term "Euthanized" can be correctly applied. Killing an animal because it is shy, old, not in fashion, or because there are simply too many at the shelter cannot and should not be labeled as anything other than "Killed".

Using the ACClock on other web sites
The Indy No-Kill Initiative encourages others to include the ACClock on their web sites. The ACClock is a copyrighted programming work, but may be used freely by anyone whose intent is to draw public interest to the reduction of animal killing in Indianapolis.

The ACClock requires a space of 140 x 600 pixels, and only comes in a vertical format. You may add it by simply including the following line on the HTML code of the page where you want it to appear:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://indynokill.org/ACClockloader.js"></script>

That's all there is to it! Any browser that does not support Javascript, or has it disabled will simply not see the clock. It has been tested in Mozilla Firefox 2.0x and Internet Explorer 6-7 browsers.