The Length of Stay Game
THE LENGTH OF STAY GAME
Sandra Newbury, DVM
UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program
Here’s how to play the game at home to illustrate how length of stay influences daily population in a shelter! You don’t even have to wear animal costumes to make it work.
The basic idea is that, in a system with animals coming and going, as length of stay increases, so does the number of individuals present at the same time. A bunch of different terms can be used to describe that number: daily population, daily census, or some shelter software programs will even call it your inventory.
Here’s the basic math. If 5 animals come in each day and stay an average of 5 days, 25 will be present (5 x 5). If 5 come in each day and stay an average of 10 days (twice as long), then 50 (twice as many) will be present each day (5 x 10). That makes a huge difference in nearly every aspect of your life saving work.
Basic Game Play
Take two groups of three empty chairs (6 chairs total) and call them Shelter A and Shelter B. We like to play this game at conferences and meetings and put the chairs up at the front of the room. Next, pick ten people to play for each group; you will need 20 people total. The “intake” rules are the same for both groups. Every 30 seconds, someone from each group comes up to the chairs and finds a seat. The exit or “live release” rules are different. For Shelter A, each person who enters must wait one minute before they can leave. For Shelter B, each person must wait three minutes after entry to leave. Length of stay for Shelter B is three times as long as it is for Shelter A.
Use a stopwatch to keep the time and watch what happens in each group. The chairs will begin to fill from the start of the game (Time=0). At 30 seconds, there will be two people in each group with one empty chair. At one minute, a third person will join each group; the first person from Shelter A will exit, leaving only two people in Shelter A and three people in Shelter B. At 1 minute 30 seconds two more people will enter the game, one joining each group. Again, one person will leave Shelter A just as the new person ends so there will still be one empty chair. Nobody has left Shelter B yet, so there are no empty seats to sit in. The new arrival must try to find a place to be even there is no obvious choice. Some people choose to stand a little anxiously behind the chairs; others pile on the laps of the already seated players.
At this point, it is good to notice that Shelter A has reached a steady state. As long as the rules don’t change, the group will go on with a population of two with one consistently empty spot. Shelter B will not reach a steady state until the 3 minute mark. At that time, there will be six people for the three chairs. As a new person enters (every 30 seconds) at three minutes, the first person who came up will leave, having served their three minutes. As long as the rules don’t change, Shelter B will go on with a population of six people.
Notes on Basic Game Play:
Intake
Both groups had the same intake. If we start from the point of steady state, both have the same number of outcomes; one person would leave every 30 seconds. But the length of stay of Shelter B has caused Shelter B to have a higher population that exceeded the capacity to provide comfortable seating. Shelter A has served just as many animals but kept their in-shelter population low by moving animals efficiently through their shelter system.
Live Release
Starting from steady state, both groups had the same live release numbers. This is theoretically possible but what we tend to see instead is that the shelters that move animals through the shelter more efficiently, tend to find their live release increasing. Why? There are a lot of factors. Some really positive connections seem to be:
- Fewer animals are getting sick or deteriorating behaviorally
- A less overwhelming number of choices actually encourages people to make a choice
- The shelter environment is more inviting
- More staff and resources to invest in getting animals placed
Extended Game Play to Increase the Fun:
Fast Tracking– Changing Your “Steady State”
Once both “shelters” have reached their steady state you can you can release the happy “animals” in shelter A and thank them for volunteering.
We’ll focus in on Shelter B to unwind their viscous cycle. We’re going to do it by Fast Tracking half their intake or every other animal who comes in to play.
Start the clock running again. We’ll give you times starting here from 0:00 again.
At 0:00 the next intake to Shelter B looks like they would be easy to place, so they are going to be fast tracked to adoption. Nothing else changes for any of the other players. We’ll call this fast tracked “animal” FT1.
FT1 comes into Shelter B, as one of their every 30 sec. intakes, just as another animal is leaving so the population in Shelter B stays at 6.
At 0:30 another “animal” is released and another normal three minute intake takes their place. There are still 6 players in Shelter B.
But at 1:00 min a regular 3 min player has a live release and so does our extra cute FT1. So there are two live releases. Another intake is coming in too. We’ll call this cutie FT2 and again assign a 1 minute LOS. The number of players in Shelter B is down to just five.
At 1:30, another player has a live release at their 3 minute mark and a regular 3 min stay player takes their place.
At 2:00, one more 3 minute stay is over and so is FT2s 1 minute stay. So there are two more live releases. The intake is super cute again so we’ll make this FT3. FT3 will stay only 1 min.
At 2:30, one live release and one intake.
At 3:00, now we’re back to one live release every 30 sec. again. This time only FT3 heads home. FT (FT4) a fast track intake replaces FT3. We are holding steady at just 4 “animals” in the “shelter”. Much better!
If we kept up with these “rules” (which is really an average LOS of 2 minutes) we would remain at this new steady state of 4 animals with one intake and one live release every 30 sec.
If we could shave even a little more time off both the one minute Fast Trackers and the “regular”3 minute intakes to give an average LOS of 1 minute 30 seconds then there would be just enough space for everyone. We could also lower the average stay by fast tracking a greater percentage.
Notes on Extended Game Play:
How long does it take to get to a new steady state?
It doesn’t take very long! In some cases, it can be just a matter of days. That’s good news and bad news.
On the positive side, just a temporary investment in fast tracking some animals can get you to a new steady state. This does mean an increase in live releases but only for a short period of time. So coupling your increased efficiency with an adoption special works wonders.
On the down-side, letting efficiency or live releases slip even for a little while can cause daily population to swell and re-start the vicious cycle if you don’t respond. Some shelters can experience this down-side after just a few days of being closed for adoptions (eg. holidays or budget cuts), or during a vacation for key staff. In some cases things slow down because of an outbreak of illness. But never fear, all of these examples are manageable. The key to staying on top of things is recognizing how quickly things can start to stack up so you’ll work to find solutions to help things un-wind.
Intake
In this extended game play, intake still remained unchanged at one animal every 30 sec. Of course, another way to decrease the in shelter population would have been to limit intake a little bit. But we wanted to show you that efficiency alone can sometimes do the trick.
Live release
Live release was increased temporarily while we brought the shelter to a new steady state. But that increase doesn’t need to be maintained. If we went forward from here with an average length of stay of two minutes we would maintain the new steady state of 4 animals with the original rate of one live release and one intake every 30 sec.
1 / Length of Stay Game