The Atlas/Shelters & Rescue/Standards of Care in Animal Shelters
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Standards of Care in Animal Shelters
ASV · Association of Shelter Veterinarians
The international clinical benchmark for how an animal shelter should care for the animals in it.
01 What It Is
The Association of Shelter Veterinarians publishes the Guidelines for Standards of Care in Animal Shelters, the international clinical benchmark for sheltering organisations. First issued in 2010 and substantially updated in a second edition in 2022, it sets out what adequate and good care require across the whole of a shelter’s work. It is a guideline rather than a law or a certification.
02 What It Covers
The guidelines span intake and capacity management, housing, sanitation, disease control, behavioural welfare, medical and end-of-life care, and newer areas such as forensics and disaster response. They use deliberately graded language, marking expectations from unacceptable through must-do to ideal, so a shelter can see both the floor it must not fall below and the standard to aim for.
03 How It Is Checked
These are professional guidelines, so there is no inspection or certificate behind them; their authority rests on the standing of the veterinary association that writes them and their wide endorsement across the sector. Many shelters, rescues and foster networks use them as a self-assessment reference and a basis for their own policies, rather than being audited against them by an outside body.
04 Why It Matters
Shelter animals are wholly dependent on the organisation holding them, and standards between shelters vary enormously. A common, science-based reference for what good sheltering looks like gives staff, volunteers and funders a shared yardstick, and a dog in a shelter a better chance of care to a recognised standard rather than an improvised one.