When animal lovers learn about the cruelty and killing that are rampant in U.S. shelters, and that national animal protection organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) defend these shelters and thwart efforts at reform, the first and the most logical question they ask is: Why? Why are organizations which are supposed to protect animals the biggest defenders of the very shelters that systematically abuse and kill them?
During the first week of November, like they have done for so many years, HSUS will ask us to join them in their celebration of animal shelters in a campaign they call “National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week.” According to HSUS, which describes itself as the nation’s “strongest advocate” for shelters, we owe a debt of gratitude to the “dedicated people” who work at them. They claim that leadership and staff at every one of these agencies “have a passion for and are dedicated to the mutual goal of saving animals’ lives.” They tell us, “We are all on the same side,” “We all want the same thing,” “We are all animal lovers,” and criticism of shelters and staff is unfair and callous because “No one wants to kill.” That is why groups like HSUS can boldly publish, without the slightest hint of sarcasm or irony, a picture of a puppy—a young, healthy, perfectly adoptable puppy—put to death with the accompanying caption: “This dog was one of the lucky ones who died in a humane shelter: Here caring shelter workers administer a fatal injection.”
The facts, however, tragically and frequently, tell a very different story.
My book Redemption shows how the killing of roughly four million animals a year in our nation’s shelters is a preventable tragedy, a problem with a solution that is viable, affordable, and practical. Friendly Fire tells the corollary to that story: that the largest obstacles to that solution are the very organizations which should be leading the charge to implement it, organizations like HSUS, the ASPCA, and PETA.
When I left the Tompkins County, New York, after creating the nation’s first No Kill community, I did so in order to spread this new model of animal sheltering—what has since become known as “The No Kill Equation“—to shelters nationwide. As part of my work for the No Kill Advocacy Center, I traveled the nation, visiting hundreds of shelters, meeting tens of thousands of animal lovers, and empowering thousands of animal lovers who are fighting to reform their local shelters. And what I found shocked even me.
I had been aware that the killing in our shelters was entirely unnecessary and I fully expected that I would find in the shelters I visited practices and protocols which favored killing over lifesaving, sacrificing the animals to expediency and force of habit. And I was right. I found shelter directors that killed over 90% of the animals in their facility, claiming to do so due to “pet overpopulation” and “lack of space,” even though there were banks and banks of empty cages. I found shelter directors who refused to have foster care programs, choosing instead to kill neonatal puppies and kittens and treatable animals. I found shelter directors who refused to work with their local rescue groups who had offered to save the animals they instead chose to kill. And I found shelter directors who told me that “volunteers are more trouble than they are worth,” even though those volunteers would help them save lives.
What I was not prepared for as I visited shelter after shelter was the rampant neglect, abuse and sadistic cruelty that I found as well. I found shelters where animals were not fed or given fresh water, forgotten and left to starve in back rooms. I found shelter employees so callous that they did not remove animals from kennels while cleaning them, hosing those animals down with caustic chemicals and cold water, even flushing puppies down open drains where they drowned. I found sick animals in infirmaries not being fed, not being given medication, and left to die slowly and painfully. I found shelter directors who allowed systematic cruelty to occur in the shelter, who threatened whistleblowers with physical violence, and who retaliated against rescuers who refused to look the other way at inhumane treatment by killing the very animals those rescuers offered to save. I found shelter employees who took pleasure in causing the greatest amount of suffering to the animals before they killed them. And worst of all, I discovered that what I found was not unique, but corroborated by animal activists nationwide who were reporting similar atrocities occurring at their local shelter, too.
As the movement to end shelter killing has grown in size and sophistication, the networking made possible through the internet and social media has allowed animal lovers to connect the dots between individual cases of animal cruelty and neglect in shelters nationwide. These incidents reveal a distinct pattern. Animal abuse at local shelters is not an isolated anomaly caused by “a few bad apples.” The stunning number and severity of these cases nationwide lead to one disturbing and inescapable conclusion: our shelters are in crisis.
Frequently overseen by ineffective and incompetent directors who fail to hold their staff accountable to the most basic standards of humane care, animal shelters in this country are not the safe havens they should and can be. Instead, they are often poorly managed houses of horror, places where animals are denied basic medical care, food, water, socialization and are then killed, sometimes cruelly. The first time many companion animals experience neglect and abuse is when they enter the very place that is supposed to deliver them from it: the local animal shelter.
It is a tragic story true to cities and towns across this nation. And the large national animal protection organizations are as much to blame as the individual shelter directors themselves. For decades they have perpetuated the fiction that all is well in our nation’s shelters. They have assured us that they are overseeing these organizations, providing guidance and assistance to make sure they are run humanely and effectively: through their shelter assessments, their national conferences and their publications for sheltering professionals. In reality, they have ignored abuse, failed to create substantive standards by which to measure success and hold directors accountable and remained deafeningly silent regarding the cases of abuse occurring at shelters nationwide. In short, they have failed us. We trusted them, content to write them checks to do the job while we looked the other way because the “experts” were in charge, and in so doing, have allowed our shelters to remain virtually unsupervised and unregulated for decades, with devastating results.
The No Kill movement seeks to change this tragic reality by bringing standards and accountability to a field that has historically lacked it, by exposing the truth about our shelters, by calling for the replacement of poorly performing shelter directors and by seeking legislation that legally mandates common sense procedures that shelters should already be following.
Yet, whenever and wherever animal lovers mount campaigns for reform or seek legislation, the large national groups—primarily HSUS, PETA and the ASPCA—hinder their efforts. Too often, animal lovers, the media and legislators become confused and cannot see beyond the names and reputations of these organizations to discern their true motives. Too often, the opposition of animal protection organizations sows seeds of doubt regarding the need or nature of common sense reform and efforts falter or fail.
We are a nation of animal lovers, and we, and the animals we love, deserve better. We deserve shelters that reflect our progressive and compassionate values, not thwart them. We now have a solution to shelter killing and it is not difficult, expensive, or beyond practical means to achieve. Only one thing stands in the way of its widespread implementation: a deeply troubled and dysfunctional animal protection movement that undermines the effort at every turn. If we are to prevail, we need to understand the historical, sociological and financial motivations behind this paradoxical opposition so that we can neutralize its harmful and deadly effect.
My wife, Jennifer, co-founder of the No Kill Advocacy Center and a long-time animal advocate herself, and I wrote Friendly Fire not only to expose this crisis of cruelty, but to explain the nature of the opposition so that others—animal lovers, public officials, legislators, the media—can find the confidence and courage necessary to see through, and stand up to, those who seek to delay and derail urgently needed shelter reform.
To make that possible, Friendly Fire is being sold at cost and is available in three formats: full color, black and white, and as a Kindle e-book. The color version sells for $35.99. The black and white version is only $9.99. We wanted to provide an affordable version of the book as a tool for animal activists to use in their fight for No Kill; to distribute to local media, commissioners, council members, state legislators and others who are likely to be confused by the opposition to their efforts by HSUS, the ASPCA, PETA and the director of their local pound. Finally, an e-book will be available for only $3.99 (cost plus $1.00 to cover licensing fees for the many photographs in the book).
To purchase, click here.
Please note: Friendly Fire contains graphic photo images.
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My Facebook page is www.facebook.com/nathanwinograd. Many people mistakenly believe that the Facebook pages at No Kill Nation and No Kill Revolution are my pages. They are not.