The Revolution Marches On, Cont’d
I’ve blogged about success in communities in which the No Kill initiative was led by animal control. Shelters I’ve worked with have had some very progressive results: Porter County Animal Control in Indiana reduced killing rated by 94%, Montgomery County Animal Control in Texas went from an 80% rate of killing to an 18% rate of killing, Caddo Parish Animal Control in Louisiana has seen adoption/redemption rates increase 245%, and others are striving equally hard toward No Kill. This is on top of Tompkins, Reno, and Charlottesville, and is by no means a comprehensive list.
Recently, a former neighbor of mine when I ran the Tompkins County shelter in New York touched base. Sgt. Joel Klose who runs animal control on behalf of the Elmira (NY) Police Department sent me an update of his progress. He writes that “Last year 83% of all dogs went out alive,” and he hopes to replicate that success in cats. Sgt. Klose notes that “we are taking in 1/2 as many [cats] thanks to a gargantuan effort in 2006-2007 to get an active TNR program going in our area and a solid low cost spay neuter program: and working on recruiting the community to re-evaluate cats as “neighborhood cats.”
In other words, while he is actively spaying and neutering and increasing adoption programs, he is working to undo the HSUS-created paradigm that sees free roaming cats as a “nuisance,” and instead is working to encourage the public to view them as animals who share our communities and whose needs must be accommodated.
Sgt. Klose further notes that “this may be the best year here in my 25 years of working in the animal control field.” He finishes by saying that they are “still in the battle with one goal—get ’em out alive.” Kudos to Sgt. Klose who, after 20-plus years in animal control, had the courage and conviction to embrace the innovative approach of the No Kill philosophy and to commit himself to the compassionate goal of saving lives entrusted to his care.
Sgt. Klose is not alone. An Arkansas animal control officer wrote me the following: “I am the animal control officer for the city. I have been doing this for about four years. When I took the job they had a hold and kill pound. I told them I wanted to make it a no kill operation.” The officer reports not killing a single dog in that time.
If only that was the goal of every shelter director:
Following our Conscience
In questioning a recent call by large groups to curtail outrage over the Humane Society of the United States’ recent endorsement, embrace, and recommendation to slaughter 145 Pit Bulls, including dozens of puppies, in Wilkes County, North Carolina, I wrote that,
Leadership in this movement must reflect the tremendous discontent of those in the grassroots, not seek to prematurely quell it and the vast potential for reform its expression offers. There is no “reset” button for the more than 150 dogs and puppies killed in North Carolina—they are gone forever and we cannot bring them back. It is, therefore, premature to suggest that we move on—not only because HSUS has neither apologized for their actions nor owned up to the obscenity of them, but because the North Carolina incident is a typical example of how HSUS routinely operates, and therefore offers us a cautionary tale as to what we can expect from an HSUS that is anything short of what it is our duty to force it to be: unequivocal in its embrace of No Kill.
Because of the grassroots backlash, Wayne Pacelle, the HSUS CEO, announced that he wanted “to talk with professional colleagues in the movement” in order to reevaluate the HSUS position. But there is also a potential trap here. What makes the No Kill movement so vibrant is that we do not follow the voice of groups who have the biggest budget or the loudest voice. We follow our conscience. And it is incumbent upon HSUS to heed this as it enters negotiations with large, national groups next month in Las Vegas before producing a carefully crafted statement that is devoid of substance.
When some of the largest groups outside the No Kill movement and some of the largest groups inside the movement signed on to a vision for the future called the Asilomar Accords, they claimed that this would be the roadmap for animal sheltering in the U.S. Fortunately, the grassroots rejected them, not because they were not invited to participate, nor because their views weren’t sought. They were rejected because it allowed killing to continue. They were rejected because conscience dictated it. As a result, they were dead on arrival and have since been largely forgotten.
Wayne Pacelle risks a similar outcome if he insulates himself from the voices of grassroots conscience by speaking only to those he considers “professional colleagues,” as was done in Asilomar, and as he is threatening to do in Las Vegas. If something worth accepting and celebrating is to come out of this meeting, it must be judged before the conscience of the grassroots which has powerfully and vocally demonstrated its rejection of the disproved excuses used to justify continued killing, and its hunger for real, substantive, life-affirming change.
With this seismic shift in the understanding of what is causing the killing, what must be done to end it, and how quickly it can be achieved, has come a more confident grassroots that is outraged with the status quo, and more outspoken against it and the forces working to maintain it. There is strength in these numbers and with this shift in power, the realization that there is no pragmatic or practical reason to tolerate the undermining of our values, the thwarting of our will, or the compromising of the No Kill movement’s goals any longer—especially when it comes to reforming organizations such as HSUS which act against the best interest of animals despite their stated mission to protect them. As I’ve said in the past, “We have found our voice, and recognize the potential its fullest expression can create. No more compromises. No more killing.”
Volunteer Rights
Recently, I posted a blog about using civil rights laws to protect volunteers who are fired for going public about inhumane conditions. A district court in Southampton recently awarded a volunteer who experienced this situation over $250,000, in ruling she had the same rights as paid staff against unlawful termination.
Read the article by clicking here.
Mandatory Spay/Neuter
The champions of expanding the animal control bureaucracy’s power to impound and kill animals in California may be at it again. A newly introduced statewide licensing and leash law for unaltered animals was recently introduced. I have to wonder why they don’t spend any energy trying to reduce animal control’s power to mistreat and/or kill animals? How about shelter reform legislation like the Companion Animal Protection Act?
And as often as I have tried to set the record straight, I will do so again: My opposition to these kinds of laws is not philosophical, unless you want to say that I must oppose any law that expands the power of “catch and kill.” My opposition is practical. I would be the first to champion any successful approach to reducing shelter killing. But if we are going to heed the lessons of the past, that means we must work to reduce the power animal control has to impound and kill animals, not increase it by giving officers additional power to threaten citations if people don’t surrender their animals who are in violation (which just as often means they go get another animal, thereby fueling and exacerbating the market for backyard bred animals).
Without forcing shelters to put in place the humane, life-affirming programs of the No Kill Equation, the animals impounded under these laws will be killed. Giving shelters the power to impound and kill even more animals is no way to lower the death rate, as has been shown time and time again. And despite the claims of those who promote these types of laws that their approach will work, they flatly refuse to include protections in the law for the animals themselves. If they are so convinced that this is good for animals, every mandatory law of this kind, introduced anywhere, would include the following:
- A “no-impound/no-kill” provision, meaning an animal can never be impounded based on a violation of this law and if an animal is surrendered because a person received or was threatened with a citation, that animal cannot be killed.
- An exemption for feral and free roaming strays, as they have no “owners.”
- A provision for “free spay/neuter” in lieu of a citation based on a legislative approved income schedule. In other words, if someone falls below a threshold on income (e.g., is on any type of local, state, or federal welfare benefit or subsidy), they can demand free sterilization instead of a citation; or the citation cannot be written or the law enforced against them.
- A baseline impound and killing rate is established before the law goes into effect. If at any time, there is an increase in impounds or killing on an annual basis, the law automatic sunsets without further action by the legislature. In other words, if Year 1 impounds or killing exceeds Year 0, or if Year 4 impounds or killing exceeds Year 3, etc. the law is automatically repealed.
- If after the first two years, the decline in impounds or killing does not exceed the decline in impounds or killing for the two year period prior to enactment, the law is also automatically repealed.
Their refusal to do so speaks volumes about both their integrity and their values.
Abuse continues in Los Angeles
The No Kill Advocacy Center and other plaintiffs in the Los Angeles County lawsuit over inhumane conditions in Department of Animal Care & Control shelters may be heading back to court as the County shelter system continues to violate the law, this time in violation of a court order. For more information, click here.
To read an article (with graphic photographs) about inhumane conditions in L.A. county shelters, click here.
Thanks to a grant from Maddie’s Fund, the No Kill Advocacy Center will be announcing similar lawsuits in other communities this year.
More Kudos for the Nevada Humane Society
Look for 90-plus percent save rates in Washoe County for both dogs and cats this year as the former director of Washoe County Animal Services has retired. Despite her open hostility to the No Kill philosophy, and actions which resulted in animals needlessly losing their lives, the NHS-led countywide No Kill initiative has nonetheless had some very impressive results in its first two years.
In 2007, NHS:
- Increased the countywide adoption rate 53% for dogs and 84% for cats (compared to 2006), a higher increase than any other community in the nation.
- Decreased the countywide number of dogs killed by 51% and the number of cats killed by 52% in Washoe County animal shelters (compared to 2006).
- Achieved a countywide 92% save rate for dogs and 78% for cats despite a per capita intake rate that is twice the national average, effectively making Washoe County one of the safest communities for homeless animals in the United States.
In 2008, NHS:
- Increased dog and cat adoptions 9% over 2007.
- Decreased the number of dogs and cats killed in Washoe County by 10% over 2007.
- Increased the countywide save rate for cats to 83% despite a per capita intake rate that is twice the national average, again putting Washoe County in the top tier of communities nationwide.
With her departure, one of the last remaining obstacles to No Kill success has been overcome. The future looks very bright indeed.
The Irresponsible Shelter
During the years I’ve been working in this field, I’ve kept a collection of the most unusual reasons why people have surrendered their animals to shelters. I’ve got plenty of the usual ones, and even some unusual ones, including:
1. “My dog is too friendly”
2. “My cat needs her litter box scooped DAILY”
3. Spontaneous allergies after 9 years with the dog
4. “Moving” for surrendering a litter of black and white kittens. Still “moving” from the same address one year later for a second litter of black and white kittens
But one takes the cake. It occurred while I was in Reno during a recent evaluation of operations I did at the Nevada Humane Society. In surrendering this little gem of a dog, the family came in and said they “didn’t want” their dog anymore. When pressed further, they said that, well, “she has a chew bone stuck on her jaw.” The family woke up in the morning and found the chew bone stuck around their dog’s lower jaw (as seen in the photograph) and could not remove it. They then decided they didn’t want the dog anymore.
I have long stated that while irresponsibility sends some animals to the shelters (though certainly not all, a distinction shelters often fail to make), that is why shelters exist in the first place and they are obligated to respond humanely. I’ve long stated that what happens when the animals get there depends on the shelter. The fact that someone allows a pet to give birth to a litter doesn’t mean a shelter doesn’t have to put in place a foster care program to avoid killing those little ones. It doesn’t give the shelter the moral absolution to order their killing because they refuse to put in place a targeted program to stop it. Shelters exist to be a safety net for animals who are victims of irresponsible people, for homeless animals, and for animals when people have no where else to turn. But too many kill, rather than save animals. In fact, too many shelter directors refuse to implement alternatives to killing, acting irresponsibly themselves.
There is a great hypocrisy in our movement. While shelters tell people not to treat animals as disposable, they treat them that way by killing them and literally disposing of their bodies into landfills. And rather than take responsibility for the killing, they deny that they are even killing, as this “euthanasia expert” stated to thunderous applause at HSUS Expo 2006, the Humane Society of the United States’ animal sheltering conference:
We are not killing [animals in shelters]. We are taking their life, we are ending their life, we are giving them a good death: but we are not killing.
What is more disturbing than the fact that animal shelter professionals from coast-to-coast applauded in agreement, and that the nation’s “euthanasia” expert is professing the Orwellian logic that killing is not killing, that killing is kindness. But when you deny any responsibility for the killing, the impetus to change your own behavior which might impact that killing disappears.
A note on Chewy Bone: She wasn’t in any pain. And yes, the Nevada Humane Society got the chew bone off.