The Animal Rescue League of Iowa (ARL) is as much a part of life in Polk County as the Des Moines Water Works. It’s served the Des Moines metro community since 1926, growing into the largest nonprofit animal shelter in the state. ARL has provided all of the City of Des Moines’ shelter services since 2005, and does the same for some of the other smaller cities in Polk County.
It cares for about 11,500 animals during the course of a year. And not just the dogs, cats, birds and rabbits you’d expect to find at an urban animal shelter. Currently, ARL has in its care horses, chickens, sheep, miniature donkeys, a pot-bellied pig and a Hereford steer.
Tom Colvin has been the nonprofit’s CEO since 1995, but his career in animal welfare goes back even further than that. He started working for the Humane Society in Waterloo in 1974, before joining ARL in 1993.
Colvin spoke to Little Village about ARL, its new shelter facility that is nearing completion, a new effort to address wider issues around animal abuse and what he’s seen change over the course of his 49-year career.
The Animal Rescue Leagues helps thousands of animals every year, but a lot of people only hear about it when large numbers of dogs or cats need to be taken out of a harmful environment, and you provide care and shelter. Can you talk a little about what ARL does beyond those emergency situations?
We want to be a shelter for animals that truly need to be sheltered, but if somebody has a pet and they just need a low-cost spaying or neutering or vaccinations or access to a pet pantry or any of a number of situations, we want to meet that need as much as we can to help people keep their pets, keeping them out of shelters.
There’s a new facility for ARL under construction. It’ll be almost 22,000 square feet, which is about double the space at your current shelter building. How will that change things?
It’s going to have a huge impact on our programming. From a facilities standpoint, we’re trying to do too much with too little right now. We’re going to a very nice adoption location at the new building, something that’s not possible at the current building. We’re also going to be able to offer so many of the community outreach programs, like the vaccination clinics and the pet pantry. We do those things now, but primarily in the driveway. We’ll be able to offer them better and more frequently at the new facility, because there will be simply more space.
Another very important component to this is the location that the city picked. City animal shelters used to be put out towards the sewer plant or the city dump, on the outskirts of a community. This one is not. This one is going to be in the heart of the city. It’s going to be within walking distance of the East Village, and next to a landing for the Water Trails.
You’ve recently talked about ARL making use of the work done by the National Link Coalition, a North Carolina-based nonprofit that researches the connection between people engaging in violence against animals, or neglecting them, and then engaging in violence against other people. Why is ARL interested in this, and how do you see it being incorporated into your work?
When it comes to the Link, it has done extensive studies on the connection between human and animal violence. We want to take advantage of that very valuable resource, and bring it to central Iowa. We can do that in a number of different ways, whether that is partnerships with law enforcement or mental health professionals, or any partnerships we can bring together that look at the connections between human and animal violence. That doesn’t mean we think every animal neglect situation is connected to someone who will go on to commit acts of violence. Absolutely not. But there are some indicators that can be spotted by mental health professionals who can help address a situation.
We’ve shared this information before, but now we’re actively trying to pursue partnership with professionals who deal with human behavior. Right now, we’re trying to get people to the table, professionals on both sides, so we can learn from each other.
You’ve worked to help people and pets, and to care for strays and neglected animals, for almost 50 years. What kind of changes have you seen during your career?
When you think about the relationship that people have had with pets from the ’70s through 2023, you’re looking at lightyears of change. Thinking back to those times in the ’70s, spaying and neutering was something that some people did, but hardly anybody saw the importance of it and the impact it has on our society, so it was seldom done. It was also a time before rescuing pets, or adopting from a shelter, was considered kind of a cool thing to do. That was hardly popular at all back in the ’70s, but, of course, it is now. Those changes have had profound effects on animals, people and society.
Those are the two big changes I’ve seen, but there’s been a lot of others, more subtle ones. There weren’t near the number of humane societies and rescue groups working to help animals back in the day, and frankly they were pretty isolated, making it harder for them to work together. Now in 2023, national and local organizations work together, sharing resources.
There was also a kind of a feeling among shelters way back that you just focus on the animals in the shelters. But now we have a model looking at health issues for people and animals, thinking about the two ends of the leash and trying to help the ones on both ends succeed.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s November 2023 issue.
