L.A. City Council Sheds Crocodile Tears

I believe in spay/neuter. I encourage spay/neuter. I promote incentives for spay/neuter. It is a key component of the No Kill Equation. But I am against mandatory spay/neuter laws. That is not a contradiction. It is an understanding that if one is goal oriented, and if the goal is reducing shelter intakes and shelter deaths, one does not necessarily follow the other.

As my colleague Brent Toellner at kcdogblog.com indicated in an interview I did of him last year,

In 2006, Kansas City passed mandatory spay/neuter of all “Pit Bull”-type dogs. Since the ordinance was passed, Kansas City has seen an 80% increase in the number of “Pit Bulls” killed in their city shelter. Many of these dogs are getting confiscated from homes because they were not in compliance with the spay/neuter ordinance. Young puppies are being killed because they look too “Pit Bull” and are not altered by the time they reach eight weeks of age. They’re killed only because they have not been spayed or neutered.

Many other cities have seen similar results with their mandatory spay/neuter ordinances—of both “Pit Bulls” and of all types of dogs. Los Angeles passed their mandatory spay/neuter in February of 2008, and has seen their kill numbers go up 31% this year, after more than five years of steady decline in shelter killings.

Similarly, other cities have struggled with their mandatory spay/neuter ordinances. Problems range from decreased licensing (pushing these people underground and making them harder to reach with low cost services), significant increases in animal control costs, and an increase in shelter killing rates due to the ordinances. Simply put, mandatory spay/neuter ordinances have never led to No Kill success anywhere, ever.

Giving shelters the power to impound and kill even more animals is no way to lower the death rate. Giving animal control the power to divert resources from programs that do work so that agencies can hire yet more officers to write yet more tickets, to no avail, is no way to lower the death rate.

Time and time again, studies show that people who do not spay/neuter belong to those at near, at, and below the poverty line. And Los Angeles should know, it was on the vanguard of this understanding some three decades ago, and put in place a very effective response to overcome it. As I wrote in Redemption,

On February 17, 1971, it opened the first low-cost spay/neuter clinic in the country, with the City of Los Angeles paying for the veterinary staff. By 1973, two more clinics opened and the first was expanded. In 1979, a fourth clinic became operational. The program was so successful, that within the first decade of the program Los Angeles shelters were killing half the number of animals they had been prior to the clinics. Every dollar invested in the program was saving taxpayers ten dollars in animal control costs, due to the reduced numbers of animals these shelters were handling. And despite outcry from private veterinarians and their associations when the program first began, there was no discernible loss of business over time. With four clinics operating, private veterinarians were still performing 87 percent of all neutering within Los Angeles, because the clinics were being used by poor people who would not otherwise have had their pets altered. While national “leaders” were trying to appease private veterinarians, Los Angeles had begun the march to save the animals.

Unfortunately, the clinics were closed in a round of budget cuts, and Los Angeles began following the model of punitive legislation being advanced by those national leaders. Now, it is left scrambling to try to save a badly flawed, unworkable program. And that is why the latest furor over the elimination of subsidized spay/neuter vouchers sadly misses the point.

As I reported earlier,

Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS) General Manager Ed Boks made headlines in his support last year of Assembly Bill 1634, California’s mandatory spay/neuter bill when he admitted that the legislation was more about expanding the bureaucratic power of animal control than saving animals. During a legislative hearing, a Senator asked Ed Boks, the General Manager of Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS) and one of the bill’s chief proponents: “Mr. Boks, this bill doesn’t even pretend to be about saving animals, does it?” To which Boks responded: “No Senator, this is not about saving dogs and cats.”

Not content to wait for the state (which did not pass the measure), Boks convinced the City of Los Angeles to pass its own version. He also demanded more officers to enforce it. The end result was predictable. Almost immediately, LAAS officers threatened poor people with citations if they did not turn over the pets to be killed at LAAS, and that is exactly what occurred. For the first time in a decade, impounds and killing increased—dog deaths increased 24%, while cat deaths increased 35%. In the process, he also fed the backyard breeding market for more (unaltered) animals.

Now, Boks is adding another insult. As others have reported, he has abolished LAAS’ low-cost spay/neuter program, which allowed some poor people to comply with the new law. Despite increasing impounds, Boks has decided that subsidized spay/neuter is expendable.

In response City Council Member Tony Cardenas introduced a motion, with three co-sponsors, to reinstate the voucher program calling it “key in creating a No Kill city and saving money.” Cardenas, sponsor of the city’s mandatory spay/neuter ordinance, further stated that “When [that] ordinance was drafted, my focus was on drastically reducing the over 15,000 dogs and cats [killed] per year. Without assistance, lower-income families will be unfairly burdened and will be put at risk for non-compliance with the law. In these tough economic times, individuals should not be forced to choose between feeding their families and complying with the law.” The motion calls “for the continuation of the voucher program and a report on the success of the spay/neuter ordinance.” Both efforts are largely meaningless.

First, it is only by the sheerest self-delusion that he seeks a report on “the success” of the ordinance. Since the Cardenas pet killer bill was passed, Los Angeles City shelters have increased the rate of animal killing, the first such increase in better than a decade. And killing is not only up, it is skyrocketing with 35% more cats and 24% more dogs losing their lives. In effect, Cardenas is asking for something that is not possible to do—there is no “success” to report. Instead, the law has been an abysmal failure, something that was not hard to predict.

But Cardenas has his fall guy, in the form of Ed Boks, the director of animal services who, in an all-too-common moment of impolitic, eliminated a program that he once sold to the community as a key component of making the mandatory spay/neuter approach work. And so Cardenas and other Council Members get to ignore their own dubious role in the increased killing by taking pot shots at Boks, while grandstanding over a program that does very little for the animals of Los Angeles. Don’t get me wrong, I too have called for the program to continue. It is certainly better than the alternative, which if Boks has his way, is nothing. But for all of Cardenas self-serving rhetoric, the voucher program was not successful, because the paltry amount it offers does little to offset the cost of spay/neuter and therefore, the primary barrier which keeps low income people from sterilizing their animals in greater numbers.

Every year, Los Angeles issued roughly 40,000 of the vouchers, but the vast majority only covered $30 dollars of the full retail cost of the spay/neuter surgery at private veterinary hospitals, which can run upwards of hundreds of dollars. (The more “generous”–and less common–vouchers still only cover $70.) Some veterinarians even add pre-surgical blood work, vaccinations, and office visit fees, vastly increasing the cost of the already expensive procedure, and taking it further out of reach of those at the bottom 15% rung of the economic ladder. This is hardly a low-cost program, and—not surprisingly—it is one key to understanding why less than 5,000 vouchers are historically redeemed annually (although Los Angeles Animal Services claims roughly 12,000 of the 40,000 vouchers handed out are now redeemed). Using the American Veterinary Medical Association pet population index, there would be roughly 2,000,000 dogs and cats in Los Angeles, which means only 0.01% of animals are assisted by the city’s pet sterilization program if indeed redemption of vouchers jumped to 12,000—and, even then, they are only partially assisted. How does Cardenas expect lifesaving results with that feeble of an effort?

Where would Los Angeles be today if it continued its successful 1970s era spay/neuter program? A comparison to San Francisco is helpful. In 2008, the pound in San Francisco took in less than 6,000 dogs and cats. Adjusted for population, that would be the equivalent of the Los Angeles city pound taking in about 27,000 dogs and cats per year, or about half the current intake. That would wipe out all population control killing in Los Angeles and even allow Los Angeles to do what San Francisco does—impound thousands of dogs and cats from outside its jurisdiction to meet adoption demand. But Los Angeles did not continue its program, choosing to follow the the punitive road of sheltering promoted by the Humane Society of the United States.

Instead of reinstituting the mediocre program Cardenas falsely called a “key to No Kill,” the Los Angeles City Council should expand it based on their successful 1970s model. Indeed, LAAS has seven new shelters, complete with state-of-the-art spay/neuter clinics which are currently sitting largely unused, a betrayal to Los Angeles taxpayers who agreed on a $37-million bond measure to build them.

But Los Angeles Animal Services has been asked to cut its budget, so where would the money for a truly low cost, high volume program come from? For one, it should be viewed as an investment, not an expense.

Second, city taxpayers spend over $20 million per year on their shelters, about $5.50 per capita. It is one of the most generously funded systems in the nation. I am not arguing that this is too much, only that it is too much for what Los Angeles residents and animals receive in return. Many cities take in a higher per capita rate of animals than Los Angeles, but spend a fraction of the Los Angeles animal control budget, and they still save a higher percentage of animals. As a result, it should not be hard to find revenue from the roughly $400 Los Angeles taxpayers spend for each animal impounded into their shelters. Providing free spay/neuter would only cost a fraction of that.

Third, they could eliminate some of the unnecessary bureaucracy, starting with some of the “typists” who work for the department—49 in all, 11 of them “senior typists.” Or how about diverting to spay/neuter the nearly $350,000 on 11 canvassers Animal Contol wants to hire to enforce dog licensing? Since the pound re-started the licensing canvassing program in FY 2003-04, it notes that dog licensing rates actually declined. Or, how about using the $62,000 proposed to hire assistants for the “assistant” managers? Or how about using some of the $65,000 earmarked for a public relations specialist who, if history is any guide, will do little more than spin the truth anyway?

But that is not likely to happen, because Cardenas and his ilk are buffeted by a throng of activists who demand more laws to punish the public and who champion his cheap populist message, a fact he is only too willing to exploit as he sheds crocodile tears over the half-hearted voucher program and asks for a whitewash over the results of his pet killer law. In  Redemption, I wrote:

While some activists simply do not know better and mean well, others obstinately ignore facts, experience, and history and continue to push these types of laws. They will do what they have always done—facts, logic, and history be damned. They will continue to blame the public and they will continue to fight for more and tougher laws. They will argue that their community is different, that their situation is unique, that citizens in their community are particularly—or peculiarly—irresponsible. None of this is true, but they do not care.

While they claim to be motivated by saving lives, there is something much more powerful driving them: the desire to punish. An activist truly focused on lifesaving, who subsequently learns that punitive legislation is not only a dismal failure, but that it has the opposite results (more impounds, more killing), would end their support of such methods and begin to push for regime change at animal control or the programs and services of the No Kill Equation.

By contrast, those who are intent on punishing the public are being driven by other imperatives. In the end, they so want to punish the public for not taking care of their pets as much as they think they should, they are willing to ignore all the evidence about legislation’s true results or about how to truly save lives, and instead empower animal control to kill animals in the process. Unfortunately, animal control is generally more than willing to oblige and do just that. In the end, these activists become that which they claim to most despise—people whose actions result in the impound and killing of animals. They become the “irresponsible public.”

It is clear that these individuals are not truly motivated by saving animals because they spend no effort on shelter reform legislation, and don’t even stop to think about how horrible and abusive the pounds are that the animals get taken to because of their punitive laws. In fact, they stand side by side with the perpetrators—in speeches and legislative hearings. They are the champions of continued killing, the defenders of draconian animal shelters, and the purveyors of punishment through misguided legislative efforts such as pet limit laws, leash laws, feeding bans, and mandatory spay/neuter even when community after community has shown that animals are killed because of it.

The ones that, as another colleague described,

have heard—and repeated—the mantra of “irresponsible pet ownership” as the root of all evil in the animal world. This resonates with them doubly because they tend to dislike/distrust people, and are exposed to animals that are often the result of abandonment, neglect, ignorance, or at least believe this to be true which further reinforces their dislike for people as a whole. When a local Pit Bull advocate loudly proclaimed that Pit Bulls would be better off with a “humane death” than to be adopted to the “wrong family,” the last piece finally fell into place for me. So many animal welfare people have assumed a position of moral/ethical superiority over the “masses” by virtue of their work with the animals. Only they and an elite few can properly know and care for animals. Most animals in the hands of the unwashed masses, in their estimation, would be better off dead at the hands of “caring” professionals than to be subjected to the horror of the POSSIBILITY of being in the clutches of the dreaded “irresponsible pet owner.” Many of these people are truly distraught at the idea of drastically increasing adoptions, knowing that it will be bad for the animals. In their minds, shelters MUST kill animals to protect the animals.

When you’re exposed to ugliness or just thoughtlessness toward animals, it’s very easy to fall into the mindset I describe above. I think this is why getting animal welfare folks to truly embrace No Kill as a reality (rather than just a nice idea) can be such a hit-or-miss affair and I have not yet come up with a strategy to really “reach” the people who so desperately need the killing to continue. They’re not willing to embrace the No Kill Equation because it depends on the public being a key component to solving the problem…and they will simply not accept that the cause of the problem can in any way be the solution to the problem. Only by pummeling and imposing legislative controls on people … do they see the problem being solved. All the while, they sit atop the shining throne of the animal advocate and know they are “doing good.”

They aren’t motivated by saving lives, they are about setting themselves up as “better” because they are in opposition to everyone else, the uncaring masses. They are, as my colleague noted above, “atop the shining throne of the animal advocate,” whose rule is threatened by the emerging success of the No Kill movement which says, yes some people are irresponsible, but most people do care. Most people find killing abhorrent. Most people pass on their own needs during difficult economic times in order not to have to cut back on what their animals need. Most people would do the right thing if given the information they need to make good choices, if we can cut through the fog of deceit that HSUS has been peddling for fifty years. Most people are not only part of the solution; they are the key to it. And that, according to these Naysayers, can’t be allowed to happen. Because guess what? When everyone is special, no one is special. Not only are most people as committed to animals as they are masquerading to be, but they are more so, because they oppose killing, too. So they can’t accept that. And they block it out, because what else do they have? Who else are they? They lose their identity as “saviors”—these addicts of being special at the expense of the animals.

And so they will champion Cardenas. And they will line up at the podium to thank him. And he will get his lackluster voucher program. And he will get a report that says the mandatory spay/neuter law works but its success is being obscured by rising impounds and deaths due to the economy (ignoring the fact that other communities that have been harder hit by the recession are still increasing rates of lifesaving, despite these troubled economic times). And the activists will applaud their “good work” and go back to feeling special. Meanwhile, the animals will continue to be killed.

The Revolution Marches On

The No Kill Revolution

The No Kill revolution may have been started by the private San Francisco SPCA in the mid-1990s, but it is being driven by progressive animal control agencies around the country: Tompkins County, Charlottesville, and Reno are but a few. Recently, 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.

Some of these communities are in the North, some in the South. Some are urban, some rural. Some are public shelters, some are private. Some are in what we call “blue” or left-leaning states, and some are in very conservative parts of the country—at least one is in the reddest part of the reddest state. Despite all the things that separate us as Americans, people of all walks of life want to build a better world for animals.

The fundamental lesson from the experiences of these communities is that the choices made by shelter managers are the most significant variables in whether animals live or die. Several communities are more than doubling adoptions and cutting killing by as much as 75-90 percent—and it isn’t taking them five years or more to do it. They are doing it virtually overnight. Their success occurred immediately after the hiring of a new shelter director committed to No Kill and passionate about saving lives.

In Reno, for example, a new director’s commitment to the No Kill philosophy resulted in an increase in the adoption rate of 53% for dogs and 84% for cats and decrease in the number of dogs killed by 51% and the number of cats killed by 52% countywide in her first year. Not content with saving nine out of ten dogs and eight out of ten cats, in 2008 she led an effort which further increased adoptions by an additional 9% and decreased killing another 10%. The director’s appointment followed the 20-plus year reign of a darling of HSUS—a member of their national sheltering committee—who for two decades found killing easier than doing what was necessary to stop it.

This is also the story of Tompkins County, Charlottesville, Porter County, Montgomery County, and all the others. The buck stops with the shelter’s director.

And that is ultimately why the question of public vs. private shelter, urban vs. rural, or South vs. North is not relevant. The only relevant inquiry is whether the shelters are run by truly compassionate directors working to rigorously implement the only national model that has achieved success—The No Kill Equation. And that is why any argument that “every community is unique” or its residents are particularly—or peculiarly—“irresponsible” is simply excuse making.

The time has come for animal advocates to broaden their understanding of why animals are really being killed in shelters, to stop accepting the excuses which rationalize the killing, and to stop providing regressive shelter directors the political cover they need to continue killing. The animal protection movement must find the moral courage to stand up to shelters directors who refuse to change the way their shelters operate, to national organizations like HSUS which legitimize the killing, and also to the Naysayers in our midst who choose to ignore or remain willfully ignorant of that facts and champion defeatism by repeating the mantra, “It can’t happen here”.

By replacing kill-oriented shelter leadership, by boycotting groups that oppose No Kill, and by silencing the voices of negativity and failure, we pave the way for No Kill’s conquest of the status quo. And that conquest will give animals entering U.S. shelters a new beginning, instead of what they currently face unnecessarily and much too often—the end of the line.

The Bark

A new year, a new president, and new hope for a No Kill nation. Read my editorial “No Kill Nation” in this month’s issue of The Bark magazine. Available wherever books and magazines are sold.

Building a No Kill Houston

The No Kill Conference in Washington DC has sold out two months in advance, a testament to the desire and hunger for a No Kill nation. If you did not register in time, consider the all-day No Kill seminar in Houston, TX:

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Come to the all-day seminar which has been called “a prerequisite for rescue groups and organizations that are serious about changing their communities to No Kill.”

Workshops include:

•    Building a No Kill Community: Cost-effective Lifesaving Programs
•    Big Dogs, Shy Cats & All the Rest: Finding Homes for All of Them
•    Saving Shelter Dogs: Evaluation, Socialization, Treatment & Placement
•    Feral Cat Care & Advocacy
•    Reforming Animal Control: A Guide to Citizen Action

For more information, go to www.nokillhouston.org

To register, go to nokillhouston.eventbrite.com

Proceeds benefit No Kill Houston.

BOGO (For Your Local Shelter) Free

Buy One Get One (for a local shelter) Free!

From now until March 31, buy one copy of Redemption from the No Kill Advocacy Center for you or a friend and get a second  one sent to the manager or director of your local animal shelter free.

Help spread the No Kill revolution with the book which is being called “powerful and inspirational,” “ground-breaking,” and “a must read for anyone who cares about animals.” Winner of USA Book News Award for Best Book (Animals/Pets), a Best Book Muse Medallion winner by the Cat Writers Association of America, a Best Book nominee by the Dog Writers Association of America and winner of a Silver Medal from the Independent Publishers Association, the book shatters the notion that killing animals in U.S. shelters is an act of kindness.

To purchase, go to www.nokilladvocacycenter.org and click on “What’s New.”

Reforming Animal Control

The No Kill Advocacy Center’s latest e-newsletter, The No Kill Advocate, is dedicated to Reforming Animal Control and includes features on shelter reform legislation, litigation, a guide to citizen action, pet limit laws, liability, and more.

Read it at www.nokilladvocacycenter.org by clicking on “No Kill Advocate.”

Wayne Pacelle Under Siege

In response to public outcry over their support and participation in the Wilkes County Massacre, in which the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) first championed and then defended the mass slaughter of over 150 dogs and puppies, Wayne Pacelle of HSUS issued an interim new policy of favoring temperament testing of individual dogs seized in dog-fighting cases, and called for “a meeting of leading animal welfare organizations concerning dogs victimized by dog fighting.” That meeting has been called for April in Las Vegas. If history is any guide, there is little reason to celebrate as of yet.

To begin with, HSUS did not adopt a policy that all dogs will be temperament tested to determine if they are aggressive, only that they will recommend that they be, a policy which can be ignored. Second, there has been no discussion over what type of test will be used and how outcomes will be determined, a major flaw in the temperament testing process used by many shelters. Third, there is reason to believe that the outcome in Wilkes County would not have been any different even if this policy were already in place. Last year, Wayne Pacelle claimed that HSUS had tested all the Michael Vick dogs and determined—in his own words—that “they are some of the most aggressively trained pit bulls in the country,” a blatant falsehood. In overruling HSUS, the court agreed with non-HSUS reformers that most of the dogs were rehabilitatable, and two are now therapy dogs, bringing comfort to cancer patients. Does it matter if the dogs are killed with or without a temperament test if the test itself is as draconian as HSUS is?

There is also reason to doubt HSUS’ sincerity. Regardless of what HSUS says at the meeting or even publicly, they ultimately cannot be trusted to act in a manner consistent with their promises. After all, the support and participation in the Wilkes County massacre comes after HSUS publicly stated that shelter killing is needless and shelters are not doing enough to save lives. Their defense of it reverted to old patterns of blaming pet overpopulation and even suggesting that we cannot ask shelters to be more humane, because they’ll just do a worse job. According to HSUS, if you “impose” the “burdens” of being humane on these shelters, “they may decline to intervene in criminal fighting cases, allowing the dogfighters to continue to operate.” In other words, HSUS believes we can’t ask more of shelters because if we do, they’ll just decide to be even less humane.

In addition, their defense of the needless slaughter of almost every animal at the Tangipahoa Parish shelter last August which claimed the lives of over 170 dogs and cats came after they promised a “new dawn” of animal sheltering in that region.

And despite a “pro-TNR position paper” they published in 2006, HSUS officials said they “didn’t have a problem with humanely killing a stray cat” in April of 2008 after Randolph, Iowa officials announced a bounty on them, offering residents $5.00 for every cat they rounded up and brought to the shelter to be killed. (HSUS supported the plan to round up and kill the cats, but not the process suggesting that people might get bit by cats if the cats were not professionally trapped. They then backpedaled there, too, after a massive public outcry, suggesting it wasn’t a good idea either way. Sound familiar?)

In addition, even Pacelle’s announcement of the meeting suggests a diversionary tactic. The issue which needs to be addressed is not, as he misleadingly claims, a discussion concerning dogs “victimized by dog fighting.” We are all in agreement here. The scourge of dog fighting must be ended. We need to pursue and punish dog fighters with all the resources we can muster. The issue is what to do concerning dogs victimized by HSUS and shelters after they have been saved from dog fighters.

As I wrote in a prior blog,

The choice was not, as HSUS contends, a choice between continued suffering at the hands of dog fighters or death at the pound. This was not the option the dogs faced. Once they were taken into custody by HSUS and Wilkes County officials, more dog fighting was no longer an option. The option was whether HSUS and Wilkes County officials would kill them or whether HSUS and Wilkes County officials would not kill them. Their choice is now well known: they chose to systematically put all the dogs and puppies to death, a choice they defend still.

And finally, is such a meeting really necessary? If Pacelle was willing to stand up for what’s right, rather than to defend his clearly wrong colleagues, he would not need the symposium. He would know what HSUS policy needs to be and he would ensure that it is followed.

Instead, in response to criticism, HSUS—through dog killer apologist John Goodwin—chastised groups for making an unnecessary “fuss.” And when that callous retort sparked additional furor, they further inflamed public criticism by issuing a defense of the massacre. Everyone’s heard some variation of the joke that goes, “how many people does it take to screw in a light bulb?” In this case, the more apt question is: “How many humane groups does it take to figure out that an animal welfare organization should champion the saving, not the taking, of animal life?” The answer, of course, should be “one.” It is self-evident. You don’t need a meeting to figure it out. But the reality is that the answer is “two” if one of those groups is HSUS: HSUS to get the answer wrong. The other group to tell them what the right one is.

Ever since San Francisco’s 1994 seminal achievement when it became the first community in the nation to end the killing of healthy homeless animals in its shelters, HSUS has ignored that success and fought it—and other successes—every step of the way. They continue to regurgitate old clichés about pet overpopulation, continue to support regressive shelters, continue to fight progressive reformers in communities across the country, continue to falsely deny that No Kill has been achieved, and continue to support mass killings—as they have in Randolph, IA, in Tangipahoa Parish, LA, and in Wilkes County, NC. And ultimately, they don’t seem to want to learn from their mistakes.

The public condemnation over their call for killing of all the Michael Vick dogs should have pre-empted the current call for killing, but it didn’t. The support for cat killing in Randolph, IA should have been pre-empted by the outcry over their prior feral cat policy, which resulted in a policy switch two years before. It didn’t. And they should not have supported the Tangipahoa slaughter because every time they have supported other mass killings at shelters, they’ve been forced to back down by public outcry. These are not the actions of an agency whose leadership is truly interested in doing the right thing or learning from the past.

But that doesn’t mean the show mustn’t go on. The meeting has been called, and it should be attended. But we cannot confuse a move for political survival, which this meeting represents, with a sincere desire for change on the part of either Wayne Pacelle or his draconian organization. To do so, is to do so at our movement’s own peril.

This is classic social movement theory. Those vested in the status quo, as HSUS is, first ignore reform, as they did in the mid-1990s and lost. Then they fight reform, as they did in earnest in the first half of this decade, and continue to do so in various parts of the country, only to again find themselves on the losing side. The next stage is co-option. That is the stage we are currently in.

The fact is Pacelle and HSUS cannot ignore the will of No Kill advocates anymore and he is only asking for input because he has no choice in the matter. As Christie Keith noted in her Pet Connection blog,

if what HSUS needs is pressure from their donor base, the general public, pit bull advocates, bloggers, animal lovers or other animal welfare organizations to start doing the right thing for these much-maligned dogs … There seems to be an awful lot of it out there.

This is true. But caution should rule the day. In the past, No Kill advocates stopped the pressure on HSUS in similar campaigns and celebrated victory, only to have discovered they had been hoodwinked by carefully crafted statements and Pacelle’s penchance for meaningless pretty words. In 2004, some No Kill groups signed on to a statement of principles called the Asilomar Accords, which were championed by HSUS as a roadmap to “significantly reducing the euthanasia of healthy and treatable companion animals in the United States.” Unfortunately, the document allowed for the continuation of policies that resulted in killing, including breed discriminatory actions that culminate in mass slaughters like the one which has sparked the current outcry. In fact, the actions taken in Wilkes County were entirely consistent with the Asilomar Accords—an agreement many No Kill advocates initially supported.

Likewise, some feral cat advocates praised the 2006 HSUS statement on feral cats as a “vision for the future,” until it was shown that the statement was riddled with loopholes which allowed killing of feral cats to continue indefinitely—actions consistent with their support of the cat bounty debacle in Randolph, IA.

Time and time again, Pacelle and HSUS have proved they cannot be trusted. Nonetheless, some groups are optimistic. Best Friends welcomed the recent announcement and stated,

There had been more than enough airing of feelings and outrage that the [Wilkes County] dogs were not evaluated prior to being summarily [killed]. It was time to hit the reset button on this in order to move things forward in a constructive way. Mr. Pacelle was open and receptive to what we had to say and we are looking forward to our meetings in April.

As I’ve stated, I believe the meeting should take place, and I hope their faith is not misplaced. I welcome the involvement of Best Friends in helping set HSUS policy and have very high regard for Best Friends employees working in this field. So much so, in fact, that Best Friends speakers will be giving presentations on this topic at the No Kill Conference this year. There is no falling out with Best Friends. But I do take issue with the notion that it is time to move on from airing outrage or that it is time “to hit the reset button.” One does not necessarily follow the other.

It was mass public pressure from a large number of groups and a wide array of voices which forced HSUS to the table, not a response to a single group’s call for change, however large and influential. Admittedly, Best Friends was a major player and took an important and vocal leadership position on this issue; but any appearance of cooperation they get from HSUS is the result of widespread and loud dissent rising up from grassroots activists and rescuers nationwide. It is that clamor which is the only thing that has ever forced HSUS to the bargaining table—and it should not be discouraged.

Moreover, 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.

And force it we will because the power is now ours. We are in a position to dictate the direction of this movement and we must not settle for any compromises. At the meeting in Las Vegas, demands must be made that include, for example, a condemnation of the Wilkes County massacre. To prevent other shelters from citing HSUS’ actions and its very public defense of it for their own policies which favor killing, HSUS must publicly reject them in total. The demands must also include:

• The right of individual evaluation and consideration for each dog, not merely a recommendation.
• It must include a guarantee of clemency for any puppies.
• It must give rescue groups and No Kill shelters the right of access to save the animals, and the right to conduct independent evaluations rather than rely on the flawed results of HSUS or the shelter’s own potentially predetermined ones which favor killing.
• It must include an unqualified statement in favor of saving animals that rejects the excuses of the past.
• It must include support of legislation that will give all of these principles the force of law. It should be illegal for a shelter to kill a dog if a rescue group is willing to save him (as it is in California).
• And dogs should not be deemed dangerous without an evaluation and hearing, subject to appeal by any shelter or rescue group.

That is just a start. There are thousands of us and only a few of them. We have found our voice, and recognize the potential its fullest expression can create. No more compromises. No more killing.

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

He is the author of 10 bestselling books. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages. He’s the number 1 business blogger in the world. Seth Godin’s new book Tribes is all about leadership and getting things done. And it includes a case study on the No Kill movement.

In his new book, Godin says “Sure, you know about superstars like Steve Jobs, Barack Obama and John Mayer. But consider: NATHAN WINOGRAD [who is saving] the lives of millions of dogs and cats with his tenacious opposition to their slaughter by animal shelters.”

Here’s a review of the book by Guy Gonzalez at Loud Poet:

Just do it.

Or, as Gandhi put it, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

That, in a nutshell, is the primary message of Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, Seth Godin’s masterful mini-manifesto on what it takes to be a leader and why YOU should be the one to take the lead.

“I can tell you this: leaders have nothing in common.

They don’t share gender or income level or geography. There’s no gene, no schooling, no parentage, no profession. In other words, leaders aren’t born. I’m sure of it.

Actually, they do have one thing in common. Every tribe leader I’ve ever met shares one thing: the decision to lead.”

Emphasis mine, but it’s a point Godin returns to several times throughout the book, illustrating it with numerous examples of people from various walks of modern life who didn’t take no for an answer: they rejected the status quo, risked failure to achieve success by being deeply committed to what they believed in, attracted like-minded people to their cause as a result, and led them forward.

“All you need to do is motivate people who choose to follow you…

This leads to an interesting thought: you get to choose the tribe you will lead.

Through your actions as a leader, you attract a tribe that wants to follow you. That tribe has a worldview that matches the message you’re sending.”

Through the wide range of instructive and/or inspirational examples he cites, from the requisite Steve Jobs and Starbucks, to the far more interesting Grateful Dead and Nathan Winograd — he even throws in a nod to Barack Obama, although unnamed, in a brief section sub-titled “Criticizing Hope is Easy” — Godin gets in front of almost every likely objection someone might have for why his premise doesn’t apply to them and knocks them down.

One of the clearest, and most timely, examples he offers is that of Fox News, noting that they “didn’t persuade millions of people to become conservatives, they just assembled the tribe and led them where they were already headed.” (Ultimately off a cliff, it would seem, but that’s a different post!)

Clocking in at a brisk 147 pages — of which I specifically dog-eared and marked up more than twenty — Tribes reads like a dizzying rush of adrenalized common sense; you can almost imagine Godin pounded it out over one long, inspired, most likely caffeinated weekend. It’s neither a dry how-to manual nor cliched motivational tract, but rather an enthusiastic endorsement of standing up and taking the initiative.

If you’re already a leader, you’ll recognize yourself in these pages and find comfort in the examples of others like you. If you think you’re not leadership material, you may be surprised to realize that you most certainly could be.

Alternatively, if you only THINK you’re a leader but are really just a manager, I hope you have thick skin and can accept constructive criticism, because in a lot of ways, this book is especially for you.

Godin believes that what most often keeps someone from becoming a leader is the fear of failure, and while he arguably downplays the legitimate fear of losing one’s job (especially in the current economy), the more likely downside of taking the lead and failing is feeling bad about that failure, so his underlying philosophy is sound: leaders are modern-day heretics and they don’t burn heretics at the stake any more.

In the end, Godin encourages anyone who gets something from his book to pass on their copy to someone else. The marketing guru that he is, I’m pretty sure he figured it was more likely that anyone who was excited by his book would mark it up and hold on to it for future inspiration, and instead encourage others to buy and devour their own copy.

And that’s exactly what I’m doing.

Well played, Mr. Godin. Well played.