Four years ago, Shelby County, Kentucky ended the killing of healthy and treatable animals. In 2011, they finished with a save rate of 98% for cats and 94% for dogs. Like all shelters, they get jammed periodically. Shelby County seems to get jammed more than other No Kill shelters because they have not fully and rigorously embraced all the programs of the No Kill Equation. But unlike most shelters, when the cages got full for the last four years as they can do for both kill and No Kill shelters, they have not taken the easy, convenient and violent way out: by killing animals to reduce the population.
Despite their success, I have been frustrated with Shelby County officials because even though they’ve been No Kill for four years and their save rate last year was tops in the nation despite a paltry budget of $147,000, a remote location and a depressed economic base, they will threaten to kill animals, though they never do. I’ve told them that threatening to kill animals is not No Kill and it is not “reaching out” to the public for help. When No Kill advocates and No Kill shelters post pleas that include threatening to kill animals if people don’t respond by rescuing or adopting by a certain date, we become that which we claim to oppose and I hope never to hear such threats from organizations and groups that claim to value life. Threatening the ultimate form of violence condones that violence and is not how you create a society where every animal is respected and cherished, and where every individual life is protected and revered. But though the periodic threats are not good for the movement and do not faithfully represent the No Kill philosophy, Shelby County has not killed and that is what matters for the animals.
Recently, however, it happened again: another threat, this time with a date. An article in a Louisville, Kentucky newspaper stated that Shelby County officials announced they would start killing again today, on September 1, because the population was too high (over 200 animals). On behalf of the No Kill Advocacy Center, I reached out to Shelby County to offer advice, guidance and whatever help I could give. But it wasn’t needed. Once again, as she and her team have done so many times before, Kelly Jedlicki at the Shelby County No Kill Mission, a private organization both responsible for and dedicated to ensuring that Shelby County remains No Kill, went to work and the “crisis” has been averted, bringing the population down to 82, through rescue, foster and adoption.
But I wasn’t the only to reach out to Shelbyville when the story broke. PETA did also. Unlike the No Kill Advocacy Center, they did not offer assistance. Unlike Shelby County No Kill Mission, they did not help save the animals. PETA didn’t ask what they could do with their $35,000,000 a year in revenues and millions of animal loving members to help save animals being threatened with death, as donors intended and as supporters assumed. They didn’t offer to help the Shelby County shelter find homes, build temporary kennels, board animals, foster animals, adopt animal, or even just get the word out across Kentucky that animals need help.
Instead, PETA sent Shelby County government and shelter officials gift baskets, with a note thanking them for their decision to start killing again after four years. “Thank you for doing the right thing” wrote PETA in its gift offering from Allison’s Gourmet which included vegan cookies,* baked without eggs or dairy, because—you know—harming animals is wrong.
Before the first cat was poisoned with an overdose of barbiturates, the PETA staff had begun to celebrate the mass killing proposed. This is what the Butcher of Norfolk and the rest of the PETA death cult stand for. But now PETA will have to put away the party hats because the animals are safe. They’ve been adopted. They’ve been fostered. They’ve been placed under the protective embrace of rescuers.
Ingrid Newkirk is death.
Kelly Jedlicki is love.
PETA is death.
No Kill is love.
Don’t let anyone tell you differently.
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Watch the video that Shelby County No Kill Mission created in response to PETA:
Learn more from Shelby County No Kill Mission. Please join them on Facebook by clicking here.
* If I was Allison of Allison’s Gourmet, I would send Shelby officials another gift basket at my own expense, apologizing for being used as a pawn in PETA’s extermination campaign and thanking them for doing the right thing by not killing the animals.
For further reading:
PETA: My Disturbing Encounter With the Mind of PETA
Shelby County: The Court is Now in Session
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