Redemption Turns 3

Today marks the third anniversary of the publication of Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America. At the time of its publication, the religion of pet overpopulation was beyond question and the notion of killing as unavoidable was firmly entrenched. Today, the voices that defend that point of view are on the retreat and some are falling all over themselves to embrace the new paradigm.

When I first submitted Redemption to a literary agent, I received my fair share of offer letters. I also received my fair share of rejection letters. Most of the latter were form letters:  very short, very polite, variations of “It’s not the right fit for us” and wishing me the best of luck. But one I can remember almost verbatim. He suggested I ask myself how many people would pay $20 to read it. “Very few,” he said. And I “should probably rethink my desire to publish it.” But I did not write Redemption to make money. In fact, I was prepared to print out copies of Redemption myself and hand them out on the street for free, if need be. But I did not believe that would be necessary. I had faith in people.

When I think back about that rejection letter, I hold no animus. I realized then that the literary agent was not trying to hurt me for the sake of hurting me or to be mean-spirited. In his mind, he was probably trying to save me from disappointment. He could not conceive of anyone spending a few bucks to read Redemption. Of all the letters I received, that was the only one I’ve kept for posterity. I sometimes think about it, and sometimes think about writing him. I never will, but it is fun to fantasize about it.

A successful non-fiction book sells 5,000 to 7,500 copies. Redemption has sold ten times that amount, and is on pace to surpass 100,000 copies in print. But more than that, that little book has saved tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lives, and has completely redefined animal sheltering in the U.S. and abroad.

I originally began writing Redemption in Ithaca, New York. I wanted to tell the story of San Francisco and Tompkins County in order to replicate the model nationwide. But it became a radically different book based on my experiences after leaving Ithaca. When I first founded the No Kill Advocacy Center, I embarked on several efforts to spread the No Kill Equation. Not only was I going to do assessments for shelters, I was going to hold national conferences and a training academy for shelter managers and directors on No Kill sheltering. But I quickly found out the extent to which the status quo was not interested in changing.

Today, the No Kill Conference sells out in a matter of weeks and brings together people from nearly every state in the union and across the world, from as far away as Switzerland, Thailand, France, Australia, and New Zealand. Today, we could fill a hall with nearly 1,000 people based on the numbers turned away every year for lack of space. But it wasn’t like that, pre-Redemption. Even if Facebook was as popular then as it is now, it is unlikely a page like the No Kill Nation which was “founded on the principles and inspiration found in the book Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America” would have 75,000 fans like it does today.

When I talk about the No Kill Advocacy Center’s No Kill Conference, it is generally assumed that we had our first one in Washington D.C. in 2009. That is not entirely accurate. In fact, I had two in San Diego back in 2005 and 2006. I specifically marketed it to shelter directors, those in power. I had a unique experience, having created the nation’s first—and at the time only—No Kill community, and I wanted to share it with them so they too could achieve success. The schedule and workshops were ambitious. And it included one-on-one time for community-specific private consultations. But hardly anyone showed up. That first year, we had less than 50 people. The second one, even less than that. I canceled the Executive Director Training Academy due to a lack of interest.

But I did begin visiting “shelters” nationwide, not at the request of shelter directors, but by grassroots activists and over the opposition of the establishment. And though I was familiar with the realities of killing in U.S. sheltering, having experienced it firsthand through my work as a rescuer, doing TNR, with the Stanford Cat Network, Palo Alto Humane Society, San Francisco SPCA, and Tompkins County, I was literally blown away. I knew much of the killing was needless, but I was not adequately prepared for what else I found: the rampant neglect and abuse in shelters across the country that precedes that killing. I could go into a very cosmopolitan city, a progressive city, a city that likes to think of itself as ahead of the curve culturally, socially, politically, and institutionally, a city like Los Angeles, and the pound system would be medieval in its barbarity. Across the country, it was largely the same: filth, animals wallowing in their own waste, untreated medical conditions, lazy and inept managers, and neglectful and abusive staff. The mythology that no one wants to kill was not only off the mark, it was a wholesale lie. And the numbers started to make sense; all the pieces began to fall into place until the light-bulb moment: the number of available homes exceeded the number of animals in shelters. The movement had gotten it backward. We could be a No Kill nation today.

I wrote Wayne Pacelle. I spoke to people at the ASPCA. I wanted to dialog about changing the status quo. Polite, private letters asking for their help. And I never received the courtesy of a reply. I think about that when people say I am divisive, when they say we should work together. I’ve tried. In fact, I’ve been writing to Pacelle for over 15 years trying to work together before I finally, thick-headedly realized he was not interested in saving lives. But I knew that the grassroots would be.

I knew what had happened in San Francisco and I knew what had happened in Tompkins County and I was committed to spreading the model that the “leadership” of the movement had no interest in, even though it held the key to ending the tragic and wholly unnecessary killing of millions of animals every year.

I wrote the book because I looked around and saw a movement devoid of true leaders. Wayne Pacelle was making a fortune on the backs of animals his organization was condemning to death. Ed Sayres had destroyed the San Francisco SPCA and appeared committed to mediocrity at the ASPCA. No one at Best Friends had a plan for actual No Kill success and refused to acknowledge our ability to end it today (they still speak the old and dead language of “pet overpopulation”). And even Richard Avanzino who experienced firsthand during his tenure at the SF/SPCA how dishonest and enemy-seeking the status quo was and how they refused to collaborate with rescue groups and animal advocates to effect change in our communities; even he had embraced the Asilomar Accords, agreeing to sacrifice the term “No Kill”—the powerful, revolutionary, life-affirming term No Kill—for vague promises of transparency in return (which ultimately, and predictably, never materialized).

I realized that the No Kill movement had to be waged by the grassroots and if I could not appeal to leaders, I would try to change the climate of public opinion in which they had to operate. Immediately after Redemption was published, I went on the road. Borrowing $20,000, I went on a 20-plus city coast-to-coast book tour, appearing in Boston, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Indianapolis, Portland, and more. At the time, there were a small number of people I could have a knowing conversation with about the myth of pet overpopulation, about how utterly needless the killing was, about the very real ability to end it today. And so as I prepared to stand up in front of people, I was not sure how people would respond to my telling them that the God of Pet Overpopulation did not exist. That we were living in Plato’s cave, convincing ourselves that killing was a necessary evil, when it was simply evil, period.

The first city I visited (outside of the friendly turf in Ithaca) was just outside of Boston in Lexington. I spoke at a museum that stood on the very site of the first battle of the American Revolution. I was nervous about how they would react to what I had to say. I was going to tell them that everything they thought was true was a lie. I stood up in front of a crowd and I told them they should stop using the term “euthanasia” to describe shelter killing, that they should stop using the term “pet overpopulation” when it does not exist, that they should stop portraying the problem as the fault of the public, stop seeking laws that empower animal control to impound and kill more animals, and stop portraying the problem as insurmountable and not in the direct control of shelter managers. My faith in my fellow rescuers was not misplaced. They responded like they did in Indianapolis, in Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Austin, San Antonio, Naples, and more: with enthusiasm. And the crowds kept getting bigger and bigger. By the end of the tour, I was speaking to standing room only crowds.

But I also knew the ASPCA, HSUS, PETA, and others I called to account in Redemption would attack back, calling me divisive, corrupt, shrill, harmful to the cause. In fact, I have been called all of those things by them and more. But the response I received during that six-week book tour showed me the mood of the nation had shifted and that even if they did not know it, Pacelle and company were speaking a now dead language. And despite the attacks from the so-called “leaders” of the movement, mail and e-mail brought something very important to me: the proof of Redemption’s impact on my true constituency, the everyday animal lover with a troubled heart, the rescuer who has to pretend to be friends with the cruel and corrupt shelter manager because they hold animals hostage, the shelter volunteer forced to look away from abuse for fear of being barred from the facility. It kept me going. It still keeps me going in moments of exhaustion.

When I recently called out Best Friends Animal Society for betraying the animals of New York for corporate profit, the rescue community condemned them with a ferocity that has them reeling to this day. And when they tried to attack me, using pages from the Wayne Pacelle playbook (No Kill equals hoarding, rescue groups can’t be trusted, saving lives is a burden on shelters, Nathan is divisive), they got attacked even more. Redemption changed the movement landscape, an allegiance not to institutions, but to ideals. The killing of animals that Best Friends joined the ASPCA in defending was—as my friends at No Kill Nation clearly articulate—“immoral, unacceptable, and unnecessary” and anyone who championed it, as Best Friends is doing, was an enemy of the animals, regardless of their tired, cliché-ridden rhetoric.

When it was first published, nearly 100 copies of Redemption were being sold every day. It climbed to the top 500 at Barnes & Noble and became the best selling animal rights book in the country. And then came something else. The letters and e-mails from shelter directors and government administrators who wrote that Redemption turned them around. And they, in turn, turned their shelters around. One spoke of how she used to look for reasons to kill animals in her shelter and, after Redemption, she now finds ways to save them. Another spoke of taking a shelter with a 20-year reign of killing under his watch to No Kill overnight. To be sure, many are still digging in their heels, but there were some who, as one shelter manager wrote, “were brainwashed” to believe that killing was the only way.

As I wrote in the foreword of the second edition,

The Humane Society of the United States’ (HSUS) favorite misnomer “euthanasia” has lost its cache. Rescue groups and animal advocates have stopped using it and other HSUS euphemisms such as “putting them to sleep” to describe the abhorrent practice of systematic shelter killing. People are more aware of widespread mistreatment of animals in shelters. And they are less tolerant of the poor care and the killing, the excuses built up over the decades to justify it, and the legitimacy that groups like HSUS give to it. This has put the large national humane groups on the defensive, trying to take credit for the decline in killing nationally even as they opposed and in some cases continue to oppose the programs responsible for it, and by softening their anti-No Kill positions.

Redemption debunks the myth of pet overpopulation and puts the blame for the killing where it belongs: on the shoulders of the very shelter directors who find killing easier than doing what is necessary to stop it, on the local governments who continue to underfund their shelters or place them under the regressive oversight of health and police departments (and even under sanitation!), and on shelter managers who protect uncaring and even cruel staff members at the expense of the animals.

More than all of that, average people are now aware that shelters kill. And they are aware that there are some shelters and communities that do not kill. After reading the book, one animal lover in Los Angeles, California, told me: “At least now we know what—or more accurately, who—the problem is.” We also know how to make them stop. And in more communities nationwide, we have.

The No Kill movement in New Zealand is born of that book. It is the basis for emerging success in Australia. From North America to Europe, Redemption is saving lives and putting No Kill on the agenda of communities around the world. Not only did it spark a worldwide movement, it is directly responsible for the achievement of No Kill communities across the globe.

By contrast, Maddie’s Fund has not created a single No Kill community despite 12 years and $300,000,000. The ASPCA with its $120,000,000 a year has none. The Humane Society of the United States with its $100,000,000+ per year budget: none. Best Friends Animal Society which raises $40,000,000 a year and only takes in about 600 or so animals a year: zero. It is not the absence of money that prevents No Kill communities from flourishing. It is the absence of integrity. All the money in the world will not change the status quo in shelters without people committed to a culture of lifesaving. In other words, the biggest factor in achieving No Kill success is not the size of the coffers, but the decisions made by those who run shelters and, quite simply, how big their hearts are.

That is why New York City, despite having the richest SPCA in the country, and over $20,000,000 in Maddie’s Fund support, promised the City would be No Kill by 2008, but failed; promised it would be No Kill by 2012, and realized it wasn’t going to happen; and has now, for the third time, set a new date of 2015. Five years. It is always five years away, as if five is a magic number which will make all the neglect, abuse, rampant uncaring, and self-serving power grabs somehow vanish on December 31. Lack of integrity doesn’t disappear at the stroke of midnight.

On the other hand, when truly caring people read Redemption, it gives them hope. They follow the model it advocates. And they achieve No Kill overnight. The lives saved rather than killed in places as diverse as Kentucky, Indiana, Nevada, Minnesota, and elsewhere are a living testament to the power of the pen, and the compassion of most people.

Three years later, we are now harvesting the seeds it planted. Killing shelters and the national organizations that legitimize them are on the defensive. Governments are passing laws demanding reform. Communities are increasingly embracing the No Kill paradigm. And it comes down to all of you.

On Redemption‘s third anniversary, I want to thank all the animal lovers, all the true and uncompromising animal advocates, all the shelter reformers, and animal rescuers, those running shelters with integrity and heart, for believing in the message of Redemption and vindicating what we all knew in our hearts to be true even before its publication, but perhaps did not have the words or experience to articulate.

I’ve not done much blogging lately as I have been focused on writing another book. And it doesn’t matter because you are carrying the torch: bloggers, reformers, and activists across the globe. You are calling killing killing, challenging the status quo, championing lifesaving, and holding the opposition’s feet to the fire. For me, it is a dream come true.

They may call you “divisive.” They may accuse you of “bash and trash.” They may say you are “harming the cause.” They may libel you as “hoarders in disguise.” But the No Kill movement’s success is your success. You are doing it without their millions, without their media reach, without their political power and you are doing it in spite of them—in spite of HSUS’ cowardly neutrality, in spite of the ASPCA’s opposition, in spite of Best Friends putting one arm around you and stabbing you in the back with the other. You are succeeding and the animals increasingly going out the front door in the loving arms of families, instead of out the back in body bags, are a living testament to your ideals.

It seems everywhere I turn; there is yet another reason to celebrate. Austin embraces the No Kill Equation in a 7-0 vote by the City Council. Delaware unanimously passes shelter reform legislation. A Kentucky community celebrates its second No Kill year. A Canadian community reduces killing by 70%. A New Zealand animal control shelter finishes the year with a 96% rate of lifesaving. Another in Australia surpasses even that. Unthinkable, a few short years ago. And it is now happening all the time, all over the world. 

No Kill is within our reach.
———————

In celebration of Redemption‘s anniversary, The No Kill Nation and I will be giving out one free copy every day of September. Go to the No Kill Nation’s Facebook page to find out more.

The Rot at the Heart of the Movement

The last decade has proved to be one of the more remarkable in the history of animal sheltering in the U.S., right up there with the period following Henry Bergh’s incorporation of the ASPCA. In fact, the last decade saw the No Kill philosophy, its realization, and its spread, solidify; ensuring its future hegemony over the entire nation. And the first year of this new decade is no exception: with both No Kill ambitions and No Kill achievements here at home (such as in Kentucky, Texas, Wisconsin and Minnesota), and across the globe, in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

We’ve learned we do not have an animal problem (too many for the too few homes), we have a people problem, but not all people. Specifically, people in shelters, best summarized by the last two paragraphs of my book, Redemption:

In the end, there may be an overpopulation problem in the United States, but it is not the one we traditionally define. What we are actually suffering from, what is actually killing a high number of animals, is an overpopulation of shelter directors mired in the failed philosophies of the past and complacent with the status quo. As a result, a culture of lifesaving is not possible without wholesale regime change in shelters and national animal protection groups. Consequently, the most important single act—and the crucial first step—in achieving a No Kill nation is firing the current leadership of shelters across the country.

In the final analysis, animals in shelters are not being killed because there are too many of them, because there are too few homes, or because the public is irresponsible. Animals in shelters are dying for primarily one reason—because people in shelters are killing them.

The killing is the fault of uncaring bureaucrats, lazy and inept shelter managers, and national organizations committed to ensuring that the killing paradigm is not upended. Right now, today, roughly 3,000 shelter directors, backed by their cronies at the ASPCA, the Humane Society of the United States, and PETA, are holding back the will of the American people.  And no amount of spin, no amount of revisionist history, and no amount of trying to encourage through the “carrot” rather than the “stick” will change that unassailable fact. But there is no shortage of people trying. And, irrespective of whether their motivations are nefarious, benign, forgiving or strategic, they are not truthful. And the sooner we stop pretending otherwise, the sooner we can focus our efforts on overcoming what is really killing shelter animals. Two recent articles highlight this issue.

HSUS’ Legacy: Two Steps Forward, One Step Backward (and that is being generous)

Last week, while the Royal New Zealand SPCA announced it has formally embraced the No Kill Equation model of sheltering, as communities in New Zealand announced they have crossed the goal line, as communities in Wisconsin and Minnesota made formal announcements of achieving No Kill through the No Kill Equation model, as Duluth, MN announced it is very nearly there (88% rate of lifesaving and climbing), as several Canadian communities announced that they are aggressively moving in that direction (one community went from a 16% rate of lifesaving to 76% and climbing), as Australian communities have announced saving 100% of baby kittens, 93% of all dogs, and more, the Humane Society of the United States held its annual conference in Nashville, TN.

Aside from the main conference, which was largely business as usual, Maddie’s Fund held their second all-day workshop at Expo (though separate from the rest of the conference) on creating a No Kill community. They didn’t use that term, HSUS would not allow it (among other things), highly symbolic but perhaps a minor point. The workshop is a very welcome addition, as the people who attend Expo are the ones who need to hear the message the most. These are people who cheered and gave thunderous applause when HSUS’ resident expert on shelter killing announced—at Expo 2006—that shelters are “not killing” animals, that “they are ending their life, giving them a good death, humanely destroy—whatever” and then subsequently said since they are not killing, she “can’t stand the term No Kill shelter.”(Listen to the Orwellian rant—and the response to it—by clicking here.)

Progress? To be sure. To have Bonney Brown, Susanne Kogut, Mike Fry, and others provide living testaments to the ability to achieve No Kill and to do it overnight at HSUS Expo is a sign of the times. But to suggest, as the Richmond SPCA does, that groups like HSUS “have all embraced clearly articulated visions of adoption guarantee as the appropriate model for our nation’s communities and have committed to working for that outcome” and that Wayne Pacelle has “taken courageous steps to help push this issue as a part of a healthy national dialog and to make it safe for so many other organizations and communities to now embrace it” is simply indefensible. It is a lie. It is a lie to write that Ed Sayres and the ASPCA are doing this also. In killing Oreo and Max, in allowing young dogs to be killed, in trying to derail legislation that would create the infrastructure for a No Kill nation; he is actively fighting against it. Providing crumbs with one hand and taking them away with the other is hardly courage and it is hardly a “clearly articulated vision.” It is just that, crumbs. We’ll take them, but we shouldn’t celebrate the mediocrity, especially when we already hold the keys to ending the killing now and forever. And in many communities we have, despite Pacelle and Sayres, HSUS and ASPCA, denying that those communities even exist.

Neither Pacelle, nor Sayres, nor the respective organizations have ever articulated a vision in sheltering out of love of animals or a passion for saving lives. Any concessions—and that is what they are—have been the result of face saving necessity borne of public humiliation over their indefensible posturing in favor of killing. Pacelle has taken hits for supporting and lobbying for mass killing of dogs, of cats, for embracing the most notorious animal abuser of our time even while he lobbied to have the victims killed, and for stealing money from shelters and rescue groups through outright fraud in fundraising. He has no choice in the matter. No choice at all.

That Bonney Brown was able to present at a separate workshop held in conjunction with HSUS Expo that she turned her community right side up (in a community that the former director—a darling of HSUS and member of their national sheltering committee—said was impossible) is the very definition of poetic justice. That Mike Fry, who has two No Kill communities to his credit and who is an unapologetic champion of my work, was able to tell the truth at Expo is also a marvelous sign of the times. But “separate” is not equal, and more than that, not all of the workshop speakers were truthful.

In fact, one of the speakers at the workshop, the last of them, was Jane Hoffman of the Mayor’s Alliance for New York City animals. Besides admitting that even after six years and tens of millions of dollars, they are still failing by killing healthy animals, she told the assembled crowd they should not be made to feel guilty about killing healthy animals. Spit-take! Two steps forward, one giant step backward.

Even if a shelter manager or employee is going to ignore all evidence to the contrary in order to believe that pet overpopulation is real and insurmountable, even if they believe that no one will adopt animals, that they have no choice but to kill them, the very least they could do is feel bad about it. They are, after all, robbing an animal of his or her only life. All the animals have—their very lives—prematurely taken away. If they don’t feel guilty, they should not be working in a shelter, because to kill healthy animals without remorse, is to be cavalier and unfeeling. It is to be a butcher. But that is the message Hoffman was giving them. No remorse. No guilt. Self-medicating absolution for her efforts to undermine Oreo’s Law; to back the ASPCA even when they needlessly kill animals, allow animals to go hungry, allow puppies they are responsible for to be killed, abuse animals in their custody and then try to cover it up, and allow NYC shelters to kill healthy animals, because they write the checks to Hoffman’s group; and for her own failures to achieve No Kill despite tens of millions of dollars and a shelter system with some of the lowest per capita intake rates in the nation and the highest potential adopter base (8 million people).

In the end, the separate, day-long workshop was not the result of a clearly articulated vision of HSUS, courageous leadership on the part of Pacelle, or anything of the sort. It was forced upon Pacelle and HSUS, and while that is “progress,” it is a baby step when we could be at a full sprint; and even that step is undermined every time Pacelle backs killing, as he routinely does and did at the very same Expo. One of his experts and presenters in Nashville was from Multnomah County Animal Services. Under current leadership at MCAS, fewer animals are going home alive than before. The trend is to more killing, not less. And the trend is to greater punitive enforcement, rather than community-based programs intended to make it easy for people to do the right thing—exactly the opposite of what is needed to save lives. In other words, while Brown, Fry, and others were trying to build a bridge to the future, people like Hoffman and the leadership at MCAS dug trenches to the past. And it is costing animals their lives.

Ironically, I use MCAS as a case-study in my presentations on how shelters misuse temperament testing to justify killing healthy, friendly dogs and make it appear that they are doing a better job than they are. Here is just one example: A 35 pound puppy was evaluated by MCAS staff. According to their own reports, the puppy performed as a puppy should:

• Kennel Presentation: “Easy to leash from kennel doorway” “whole rear end wagging”
• Collar Put On: “Gets excited/playful”
• Entering Stranger: “Readily approaches everyone with [friendliness]”
• Handler: “Readily approaches everyone with [friendless]”
• Pet Back: “No guarding seen”
• Ears/Cheeks: “No guarding seen”
• Remove Bowl: “No guarding seen”
• Tail Stroke: “Mouthiness” “Whirl”
• Pick up Two Paws: “Mouthiness”
• Teeth Exam: “Allows exam”
• Hug: “Allows exam” “Interested in attention”

All those results are consistent with normal puppy behavior. This is a clearly a little fellow who loves people, is friendly and eager to please, and as Cyndi Lauper once sang, just wants to have fun. But the puppy was killed for being “vicious.” And it was not an isolated incident. Can you guess what breed the puppy was identified as? These are predetermined conclusions which have led to a rapidly expanding killing rate for these dogs, even while they tell the public the animals are “unadoptable.”

When these facts were brought to the attention of HSUS prior to Expo by Portland rescuers and No Kill advocates, HSUS threw the full weight of their support behind the shelter. John Snyder, a former kill shelter director himself who is now in charge of companion animal programs at HSUS, wrote them back saying that MCAS had HSUS’ unqualified endorsement. The American people and the animals deserve more from the nation’s largest, wealthiest, and arguably, most influential animal protection organization. But they are not getting it, despite the Richmond SPCA’s fantastical view to the contrary.

PETA’s Three Kinds of Lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

The Animal Rights movement deserves better, too. At its core, the movement for animal rights is based on the principal that animals have a right to live and that we give it expression through laws to promote and protect that right. But you wouldn’t know it by listening to PETA. The largest “animal rights” group believes that people have a right to kill animals. As such, they have more in common with the industry groups they claim to be fighting than they admit. And they certainly practice what they preach with a relish unmatched except by the slaughterhouse industry. Last year, they killed 97% of all animals they sought out, the year before it was 96%, and the year before that, 91%. In 2009, less than ½ of 1% of the animals at PETA were adopted. They kill healthy, adoptable animals. They advocate for the mass slaughter of dogs someone says looks like pit bulls. They advocate for the mass killing of free living unsocialized cats. They routinely defend some of the most abusive and draconian shelters in the nation. And they even support breed bans in communities that turn around and forcibly take family pets, and then sell them for animal research. They are, quite simply, the worst of the worst.

They lie to people saying all the animals they kill are irremediably suffering or hopelessly ill. They lie to people by saying that breed bans and rounding up and killing free roaming cats are both necessary and proper. And they claim the animals want to die—that killing them is a “gift.” And then they lie to people through manipulative use of statistics to claim that animals in pounds are being killed because there are too few homes for them.

Actually, by PETA’s own data, there are plenty of homes for shelter animals. In a newly released May 2010 report, PETA says that 8 million animals enter shelters and of these, half are already being saved through a combination of adoption and reclaim. That leaves, by their own admission, “3 to 4 million cats and dogs” being killed, many of them healthy. But the conclusion they reach that they are being killed “because there simply aren’t enough good homes for them” is a fabrication. Moreover, the reality is that the number is closer to, and even well below, the low end of 3 million.

If shelters did a better job returning lost animals home, they could, for example, increase the percentage of dog reclaims from an average of about 25% to 60%. If shelters ignored PETA’s anti-TNR policy, they could release these cats to their habitat, rather than kill them. If they had pet retention programs to help people overcome the behavior, medical, and environmental conditions which cause them to surrender animals, they could reduce by as much as 30% the number of animals coming in to the shelter. If they utilized foster care programs, they wouldn’t kill the underaged animals entering their facility. And if they had good customer service, employed basic marketing principles, and comprehensively implemented an adoption program, they’d have little trouble finding homes for the 2 to 3 million animals being killed in U.S. pounds and shelters who need adoption. That’s potentially 2 million dogs and cats competing for the 17 million people who are looking to bring a new dog or cat into their homes, have not decided where that animal will come from, and can be influenced to adopt from a shelter.

So, once again, animals are being killed in shelters not because of pet overpopulation, but because people in shelters—and butchers like Newkirk—are killing them. But too many people and organizations such as Pacelle and Sayres, HSUS and the ASPCA, who should know better are still speaking PETA’s dead language of pet overpopulation, giving Newkirk and shelter directors across the country the excuse and political cover they need to kill. And they are using it today. They are telling people not to feel guilty about killing healthy animals. And they are writing 10 year plans for what should occur overnight, as it has in communities across the globe.

An Absence of National Leadership

Right now, neither HSUS or the ASPCA has taken a true and comprehensive leadership position on creating a No Kill nation. We best serve the animals by holding them accountable, not by whitewashing the truth in the hopes that they can be gradually influenced in a more life affirming direction through carrots. History proves the latter view wrong, as every gain in this movement, has been fiercely fought for and hard won. But even if people or organizations believe the carrot is better than the stick, it does not warrant misrepresentations of whom and what Ed Sayres and Wayne Pacelle, the ASPCA and HSUS, truly stand for. And what they stand for, pure and simple, is death. There is no courage in that. It is, in fact, the coward’s way, a refusal to stand up for what is right, because they don’t care enough about the animals to do what is in their power to do: demand an immediate end to the whole bloody mess.

It is the rot at the heart of the animal protection movement, and no amount of spin, sanitizer or perfume can eliminate the stink. It must be cut out and discarded. By calling them visionaries, we only embolden them. The end result is both a tragic embrace of incrementalism that needlessly increases the body count of dead animals; and cooption of the language of No Kill, which they then turn around and willfully use to undermine it.

We can end the killing and we can do it today. But that requires leadership, which neither is willing to provide. Their size, their wealth, their influence could be a game changer for the animals. But aside from a few crumbs, neither is offering it. In fact, what they offer with one hand, they take away with the other. Tell the animals needlessly ending up in landfills that these groups are courageous and visionary. And it will literally, very literally and tragically, fall on deaf—indeed, dead—ears.

On the Road

I will be offline and on the road until May 7.

For those new to the blog, here is what the No Kill Blog is all about. These are the top ten blogs of this year:

The tragedy of San Francisco

Turn your shelter upside down

A celebration of compassion

Is No Kill a bipartisan issue?

How can we help?

Said the killing apologist to the killer

Reno leads the pack

Our history through cartoons

Biological xenophobia

The decade that changed everything

Here are the top blogs of 2009:

Lessons from an Andy Warhol totebag

The confederacy of dunces

Debunking pet overpopulation

It’s a wonderful world

There ought to be a law

This is what the large, national organizations really stand for:

PETA: The butcher of Norfolk

HSUS: In bed with monsters

ASPCA: ASPCA chief’s tenure marked by unconscionable policies

There is more on these groups by following the links to the right.

I also write for Examiner.com. You can follow progress on Oreo’s Law, the rise and fall of San Francisco (the former crown jewel of the No Kill movement), and other local and national No Kill issues by clicking here.

Don’t forget to:

Read the books

Support the cause

And remember the golden rule: no more excuses, no more compromises, no more killing!

Back soon…

Turn Your Shelter Upside Down

The Delaware SPCA, which operates two open admission animal control shelters in Delaware, is a new member of the club. I am, of course, referring to the club of caring shelters which have rejected the catch and kill policies of the era dominated by the Humane Society of the United States, and instead embraced the No Kill Equation model of sheltering.

In just under two years, the death rate has dropped 70%. According to their director Anne Cavanaugh,

In early 2008 the Delaware SPCA adopted a policy under which only animals that were too ill or injured to recover or were a danger to the public would be euthanized. The objective was to dramatically increase the ‘live release rate,’ which is the standard many shelters use to measure their effectiveness in terms of reuniting pets with owners, having them adopted to new homes, or transferring them to rescue groups.

Today, their save rate is 80% and climbing. I had the pleasure of meeting Anne when she just started at the SPCA as part of a seminar on Building a No Kill Community I held in her community. Anne inherited a shelter dominated by cronyism and mismanagement–and an $800,000 structural deficit on top of it.

How did she turn her shelter upside down? I could cut and paste from the experiences of Tompkins County, NY, Charlottesville, VA, Reno, NV, Porter County, IN, Shelby County, KY, or any of the others. In other words, the No Kill Equation. And, especially, the No Kill Equation’s focus on comprehensive adoptions. In fact, this is the same story that is occurring in Duluth, Minnesota where a shelter director has taken his community to an 88% save rate and climbing.

Not only is the No Kill Equation beyond reproach, the HSUS model of sheltering is experiencing a well-deserved demise. Of course, it is true that most shelters follow the latter. But no true animal lover in the nation still subscribes to it. It has no legitimacy. And even Wayne Pacelle, the Minister of Spin at HSUS, is trying to distance himself from it in obscure blog after obscure blog that wants to have it both ways: ‘we support No Kill but we don’t support No Kill,’ so as not to offend his catch and kill cronies, while acknowledging that the whole nation is moving in an exciting, more compassionate direction (that HSUS had nothing to do with and indeed fought a losing battle against).

We can adopt our way out of killing and in more communities across the country, we have. But that requires shelter leadership and staff willing to do so.  A number of years ago, I did an interview with Angel Tales magazine in Chicago. They asked me, “What’s the most critical step to take to build a No Kill community?” My response was as follows:

If you ask 100 animal welfare professionals this question, all 100 would say spay/neuter. But all 100 would be wrong. That is not to say that high volume, low cost sterilization services aren’t important, they are. In fact, they are crucial. But that is not why most dogs and cats are currently being killed in shelters. It isn’t “pet overpopulation.” What we are actually suffering from as a nation, what is actually killing a high number of animals, is an overpopulation of shelter directors mired in the failed philosophies of the past and complacent with the status quo.

We know how to stop the killing, but many shelter directors refuse to implement the No Kill model. As a result, a widespread, institutionalized culture of lifesaving is not possible without wholesale regime change in shelters and national animal protection groups, replacing them with compassionate leaders who reject killing as a method for achieving results.

That is only part of the story. The more comprehensive answer would have also added that once new leadership is brought in, that leader needs to bring in new staff. For years, we’ve been told that those who staff our nation’s shelters are caring and compassionate. For years, we’ve been told that the killing is not their fault. And in my first book Redemption, when I put the blame for killing directly on their shoulders—because they find killing easier than doing what is necessary stop it—I was attacked. “No one wants to kill,” shelter directors and staff who killed in the face of alternatives shot back. “Blaming shelters for killing is like blaming hospitals for patients dying,” said PETA’s killers and killing apologists. “Shelters are filled with hard working people doing their very best,” affirmed HSUS, the chief architect of the killing paradigm we live with today.

But here’s the rub. Shelter reformers are now better connected and have more access to information and we’ve managed to connect the dots—to see scandal after scandal at killing shelters which show, definitively, that too many of these people not only needlessly kill animals in the face of a readily available lifesaving alternative, but they also neglect and abuse the animals in the process. But of greater significance, we now have a number of No Kill communities, and in the case of places like Duluth, MN and Newark/Georgetown, DE, communities moving in that direction and very nearly there. The question, of course, is whether any of the communities with No Kill level save rates did so with the same staff and the same team that oversaw the killing?

In Redemption, I wrote about my own experiencing creating the nation’s first No Kill community in Tompkins County and the resistance to my efforts by the many staff members I inherited upon my arrival. I wrote that “Not all staff was supportive of the new order” as they appeared content to continue killing and pass the blame to others. “In the first six months, over half of all employees moved on or were fired, eventually replaced with new coworkers who shared a vision of a No Kill Tompkins County.” Before Susanne Kogut took over as head of the shelter in Charlottesville, she came to visit me in Tompkins County to see how we did it. After she got the job, she called me. I remember our first conversation. I asked her how many of her managers shared her vision for a No Kill Charlottesville. How many she could rely on to implement the spirit of that vision in her absence. And how many were working at cross purposes with her, trying to stall or undermine changes. The answer was pretty lopsided. I don’t recall the specifics, but it was somewhere on the order of all but one or two were decidedly against saving lives. I told her to fire them all and then call me back when she did. The rest, as they say, is history.

The reality is that I don’t believe it can be done any other way. And that is why, just as there are many communities who have achieved success and all of them did it by leadership and staff terminations, there are just as many communities—King County, WA and Los Angeles, CA to name just two—that have promised No Kill success, but failed to achieve it because leaders were not terminated, or new leaders would not do the necessary task of firing underperforming and non-performing staff.

People are the heart and soul of any organization. To succeed at the No Kill endeavor, staff members must be committed to the organization’s mission and goals, share leadership’s lifesaving values, and have a strong work ethic. That means termination of employment for some people. Admittedly, this is no fun for anyone involved, but it is a necessary step to move forward effectively.  It is always better to fire a bad staff member than to kill a good animal. Animal shelters should never become what, in fact, they have become in too many communities: a jobs program for people who are not employable in other agencies deemed more important by uncaring bureaucrats. In Los Angeles, if you failed out of the sanitation department (the trash collectors), you were placed in the animal shelter rather than fired. Until very recently in Houston, the Bureau of Animal Regulation & Care was where candidates who scored the lowest on city aptitude tests were placed. Is it any wonder that BARC has historically been beset by neglect, cruelty, and killing?

On the plus side, turnover in staff means you reward the hard workers. It means advancement for some employees. It means new people with a passion for saving lives get hired. It means the job just got a whole lot easier because when you have the right people on the team, a lot of things fall into place right away.

As noted above, in Tompkins County, 50% of staff was pushed out, resigned, or terminated within six months. The result was a 93% save rate which amounted to a 75% decline in killing, virtually overnight. In Charlottesville, almost every manager was terminated. The result was a 92% save rate the following year. In Reno, every manager resigned and only three of the original 60 staff members remain today. The result is a 90% save rate. Even in Philadelphia, when the now-defunct Philadelphia Animal Care & Control went from an 88% kill rate to a save rate of over 60% (and at one point got as high as 74%), it resulted from a 50% overall turnover—by firing union-protected shirkers. And what about Delaware and Duluth? The story is the same. Shirkers were removed in favor of passionate, hard working employees.  At the Delaware SPCA, 80% of Anne’s staff is new. According to Anne, “I try to raise the bar every time I hire someone new… it makes my life easier and we can accomplish so much.” And the results prove it.

I have never seen a shelter go from a culture of killing to a culture of lifesaving without turnover in managers and staff. That is why King County has so far failed. That is why No Kill has failed in both the City and County of Los Angeles. And that is why the long-term success of the No Kill plan in Austin is still up in the air. Recent events there suggest that the same leader who presided over an anti-No Kill campaign, backed by the ASPCA, and who has killed over 100,000 animals under her watch is not doing what it takes to save lives—and not holding her team accountable. That is why I have called for regime change in Austin.

No one likes to be the bearer of bad news. But here’s the truth. You want to go No Kill? Fire the lot of them.

The Butcher of Norfolk (4th Edition)

The numbers are finally in. In 2009, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) impounded 2,366 animals. They killed 2,301 and found homes for only 8. Another 31 were transferred to killing shelters and their fates are unknown. That’s a 97% rate of killing. While the No Kill movement is having unparalleled success and with No Kill communities now dotting the American landscape—in California, Nevada, Kansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Colorado, Utah, Virginia, and elsewhere—PETA continues to move sharply in the other direction. This is the fourth time I have run this very blog. This is my fourth plea to stop the Butcher of Norfolk.

The blog I write is about reforming animal sheltering in the United States. It is about ending the systematic killing of animals in these pounds. But this particular blog isn’t about sheltering. This isn’t about the battle between the No Kill philosophy and its eventual conquest over regressive, kill-oriented approaches. This isn’t about a lazy, inept, or uncaring shelter director who fails to hold his or her staff accountable. It isn’t about shelters that kill animals because doing so is easier than putting in place the programs and services to stop it.

This is about something more nefarious. This is about something truly insidious. This is about a bully who seeks out animals to kill. This is about the creation of death squads that actively go into communities with the specific purpose of finding dogs and cats to kill. And this is about a movement that has utterly failed to defend the innocent animals being slaughtered. This blog is about Ingrid Newkirk, the President of PETA. This is about an animal killing, arrogant, disturbed person. And enough is enough.

Over three years ago, I wrote a blog opining that the reason PETA slaughters virtually every animal it seeks out and “impounds” has more to do with Ingrid Newkirk’s dark impulses than with any ideology, philosophy, or belief in overpopulation. This followed a staggering 97% kill rate for animals in 2006, despite millions of animal loving members, a world-wide reach, and a budget of tens of millions of dollars. It followed the killing of 1,942 out of 1,960 cats they impounded. It followed the deaths of 988 out of the 1,030 dogs they impounded. It followed the killing of 50 of the 52 rabbits, guinea pigs, and other animals they took in. It followed the killing of the one and only chicken they impounded. That blog earned me a letter from PETA’s attorney threatening litigation for defamation.

Then came the 2007 numbers showing a 91% rate of killing—the killing of 1,815 of the 1,997 animals they impounded. And so I reran the blog. In 2008, I ran the blog once again (it has now been up continuously for over three years) because the slaughter—the needless, senseless, evil slaughter—continued with an equally staggering 96% kill rate. A paltry seven dogs and cats were adopted. A paltry 34 were transferred to an SPCA whose fates are not known. And out of 2,216 dogs and cats impounded, the rest were systematically put to death by PETA.

Killed: 555 of the 584 dogs.

Killed: 1,569 of the 1,589 cats.

Finally, 2009: only 8 adoptions, less than 1/2 of 1% of the animals they took in. Killed: 2,301 out of 2,366.

In the last ten years, they have killed 21,537 animals: that’s roughly 2,000 animals a year every year for the last decade; or over five animals killed by PETA every single day. PETA has argued that all of the animals it kills are “unadoptable.” In fact, PETA’s attorney stated that in his letter threatening a defamation lawsuit if I did not back down. But this claim is a lie. It is a lie because the numbers historically come from the State of Virginia’s reporting form which only asks for data for animals taken into custody “for the purpose of adoption.” It is a lie because PETA refuses to provide its criteria for making that determination. It is a lie because rescue groups and individuals have come forward stating that the animals they gave PETA were healthy and adoptable. It is a lie because testimony under oath in court from a veterinarian showed that PETA was given healthy and adoptable animals who were later found dead by PETA’s hands, their bodies unceremoniously thrown away in a supermarket dumpster. And it is a lie because Newkirk herself admitted as much.

In a December 2, 2008 interview with George Stroumboulopoulos of the Canadian Broadcasting Company, Stroumboulopoulos asks Newkirk: “Do you euthanize those pets, the adoptable ones, if you get them?” To which Newkirk responds: “If we get them, if we cannot find a home, absolutely.” In short, Newkirk admits that PETA “absolutely” kills savable animals. Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

Why does the animal protection movement tolerate this woman?

No other movement would allow someone to remain in her position without a massive outcry and public condemnation when their actions are so counter, so anathema to their movement’s foremost principles. The child protection movement would not allow someone who kills children to run an organization dedicated to children’s rights. The human rights movement would not allow someone who kills people to run any of their organizations. But the animal rights movement—a movement founded on the principle that animals have a right to life—allows a very public, avowed, shameless animal killer to run an animal rights organization. And with the exception of Friends of Animals, the rest of the nation’s animal rights groups remain deafeningly silent about it.

As if that was not shameful enough, others go further and actually embrace her. The groups which organize the Animal Rights Conference inducted her into their Animal Rights Hall of Fame. Wayne Pacelle and HSUS have allowed her and her pro-killing apologists to give workshops at their national conference, HSUS Expo, to promote PETA’s ghastly vision of killing.

So a notice to all would be animal killers out there. One way to avoid the condemnation by the animal rights/welfare community for your vile actions is to start an animal rights group yourself and use that group as your cover for killing. Because they won’t stand up to you. There will be no campaign to bring you down. They will kowtow to your power and your position. You will become their colleague. Some will look the other way. But others will induct you into their hall of fame. Still others will ask you to present workshops at their national conference.

If history teaches us anything, however, it is that the only way to stop a bully is to stand up to one. The only thing that will stop Newkirk is challenging Newkirk and calling her killing for what it is: the nefarious acts of a disturbed person. Because that’s how history will remember and condemn her, despite the aura of legitimacy her untoward actions now receive from her Board of Directors, the Humane Society of the United States, the groups who promote the Animal Rights Conference, and the other groups which tolerate her leadership position through their silence.

While those who now dare to call Newkirk’s slaughter for what it is may be threatened with litigation, or be attacked in other ways, history will vindicate them, as it always does for those who—despite the personal costs—defend what is right by challenging tyrants. While those who remained silent in the face of these atrocities—the hypocritical leaders of other organizations who take her telephone calls, shake her hand, stand side-by-side with her, and take personal pride in their association with her—will someday have to answer for this complicity, and will face the shame that comes with answering “nothing” when asked what they did to stop Newkirk’s bloody reign at PETA.

Because engrave this in stone: As soon as Newkirk and her pro-killing cultish devotees are gone, PETA will immediately, completely, and without reservation embrace the No Kill philosophy and become one of its leading champions. When that happens; when her actions are thoroughly and completely seen by everyone for what they truly are; when she is condemned and finally, finally, thankfully, finally, we don’t have to hold our breath, clench our teeth, shake with rage, or cry at the thought of what PETA did to those poor animals, we will all be left wondering just what took us so damned long to rise up and stop this villain in our midst.

So here it is again: Round 4. Munchausen by PETA. My opinion.

Munchausen by PETA?

In search of a diagnosis as to why Ingrid Newkirk and PETA seek out animals to kill. And a plea for the movement to stop them so that they won’t continue killing.

In 2006, an official report from People for The Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) shows that they took in 3,043 animals, of which 1,960 were cats, 1,030 were dogs, 52 were other companion animals, and one was a chicken. Of these, they killed the chicken, killed 1,942 cats, 988 dogs, and 50 classified as “other companion animals.” They found homes for only 2 cats, 8 dogs and 2 of the other companion animals.

By the numbers:

• PETA killed 1,942 of the 1,960 cats, finding homes for only 2.
• PETA killed 988 of the 1,030 dogs finding homes for only 8.
• PETA killed 50 of the 52 other companion animals (rabbits, guinea pigs, etc.), finding homes for only 2.
• PETA killed the chicken they took in.

That’s a 97% kill rate. (This was based on PETA’s own reporting to the Commonwealth of Virginia, which only requires “recordkeeping and reporting of only those animals taken into custody… for purposes of adoption.”) Despite $30 million in revenues, they found homes for only 12 animals. An additional 21 cats and 25 dogs were transferred to another agency (likely a kill shelter since PETA has a “policy against No Kill shelters.”) The rest were put to death. Why?

I’ve tried to explain it by the simple observation that the founder of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, formerly held a job killing homeless dogs and cats at the Washington Humane Society, a shelter with a consistently poor record for saving lives and the subject of historical public acrimony for its over-reliance on killing. But, in my opinion, there appears to be something more disturbing going on here than Newkirk’s history.

It can’t simply be explained by catch phrases like “they are hypocrites” and “they don’t really care.” Those are terms which No Kill proponents may use to describe Newkirk’s and PETA’s position on killing dogs and cats, but they don’t explain it. Nor is this simply a disagreement between No Kill supporters and traditional “catch and kill” proponents. That is the debate going on with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), where their reputations and donations are being threatened. But with PETA, there appears to be something much more nefarious at play.

While Newkirk tries to shield her actions by wrapping them in the language of opposition to “No Kill,” PETA neither has an animal control contract, nor do they operate as a rescue group. Any effort to offer a lifesaving alternative to killing is dismissed as “no clue” or “warehousing animals” and any dissent by employees or volunteers is allegedly punished by termination or ousting from the group. In talking with an ex-PETA employee, he indicated that during a staff meeting, he was subjected to a PETA video of this kind (No Kill equals hoarding). Having lived in San Francisco during the 1990s when No Kill was in its heyday there and the San Francisco SPCA the nation’s premier shelter, he openly questioned the veracity of the information and was asked to his supervisor’s office and terminated.

Why? The closest analogy or explanation that I have found which appears to fit is the same phenomenon that causes nurses to kill their patients, some offshoot of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome (See Attack of the Killer Nurses: A look at a curious phenomenon – nurses who kill their patients, National Review, May 28, 2001). In the typical case, the nurse or caregiver kills the patients with lethal injections. They often claim they act from “compassion for their ailing victims,” because they want “to end their suffering,” and because they and their colleagues are “severely overburdened.” In their minds, they are the heroes and those who try to stop them are turning their backs on their patients.

The corollary to PETA’s language about “Euthanasia: The Compassionate Option,” about “overburdened” shelter workers, and about giving animals what Newkirk calls “the gift of euthanasia,” and how “it was the best gift they’ve ever had,” is eerily similar. In her case, she also believes she is the hero and those who try to stop her are turning their backs on the animals. (She recently blasted a No Kill supporter by stating: “How dare you pretend to help animals and turn your back on those who want an exit from an uncaring world!”) Indeed, Newkirk-through-PETA says that blaming shelters for killing animals is like blaming hospitals for killing patients. Is Newkirk trying to tell us something?

Unfortunately, I have no psychological evaluation to support such a diagnosis, except for similarity of language and the acts themselves: the fact of the killing, the death squads, the indoctrination against No Kill, the hateful denunciation of No Kill, and the proactive efforts to stop communities from trying to embrace No Kill principles.

So what is it? (PETA-apologists have suggested that Newkirk has seen terrible suffering and worries about animals, but this is nothing more than Orwellian double-speak. I was a prosecutor. I’ve seen and handled cases involving torture, child rape, murder, arson of animals, and other acts of unspeakable cruelty. I was also an animal control director in a shelter which investigated and prosecuted horrific crimes against animals. I’ve seen terrible suffering to which is why I want to end it, regardless of whether it comes at the hands of a single abuser or systematically by killing)

We may never know. But what we do know and what I can say is that animal rights and animal welfare groups should reject this point of view and actively campaign against it not only for the dogs and cats PETA will kill in the future and whose interests they theoretically exist to protect, but because it undermines our movement’s credibility when we either ignore the atrocities PETA is committing against animals, or make excuses for it simply because those perpetrating them claim to be part of our movement. Moreover, PETA’s position that animals in shelters do not have a right to live subverts the entire foundation upon which all social justice movements are inherently based.

The right to life is universally acknowledged as a basic or fundamental right. It is basic or fundamental because the enjoyment of the right to life is a necessary condition of the enjoyment of all other rights. A movement cannot be “rights” oriented as PETA claims to be and ignore the fundamental right to life. If an animal is dead, the animal’s rights become irrelevant. Not only does PETA not acknowledge the right to life, they have rejected it saying that they “do not believe in right to life,” as it relates to dogs and cats.

Of more immediate concern, it is the relationship between Americans and their animal companions that can open a door to larger animal rights issues. In their daily interactions with their dogs and cats, people experience an animal’s personality, emotions, and capacity both for great joy and great suffering. They learn empathy for animals. It is not a stretch that someone who is compassionate—and passionate—about their pets would over time and with the right information be sympathetic to animal suffering on farms, in circuses, in research facilities, and elsewhere.

Right now, however, the nation’s largest self-proclaimed “animal rights” group is actively working to ensure that that door is never opened—by actively and proactively arguing that dogs and cats do not have the right to life, and that killing them is an act of kindness. In my opinion: It is beyond ironic. It is beyond hypocritical. It is beyond a betrayal. It is beyond obscene. Regardless of whether you believe in “animal rights” or you don’t; regardless of whether you are a vegetarian or not; regardless of where you stand on animal issues unrelated to animal sheltering, I believe PETA’s position is insane.

And despite the fact that PETA’s annual killing of thousands of dogs and cats has been common knowledge among the leaders of our nation’s animal welfare and animal rights groups for years, most of these so-called “leaders” have chosen to look the other way. In fact, HSUS invites Newkirk and her cronies to give presentations at their national animal sheltering conference. Two years ago, Newkirk gave a video presentation on what amounted to why Pit Bulls should be killed and this year, one of her devotees will share PETA’s strategy for how to engage in “damage control” and “public relations spin” when a shelter or community which kills is challenged by No Kill proponents. Why are groups like HSUS supporting her? Do they hate the movement to end the systematic killing of shelter animals which No Kill represents so much that they are willing to embrace a person and organization this zealous in support of the killing of dogs and cats? The “enemy of my enemy is my friend” can’t be it, can it? Is HSUS so threatened by No Kill that they are willing to embrace an organization which appears to be working to undermine their other platforms? With friends like these, the animals truly do not need enemies.

In my opinion, PETA’s position on killing of dogs and cats is irresponsible. But as to the question of why they do it, I am not a psychiatrist and I very much doubt that Newkirk and her followers will submit to a psychological evaluation. As a result, I am afraid I have no clear answer, though my personal opinion leans toward Newkirk suffering from the mental illness of Munchausen by Proxy. And if I am correct, she will never stop killing until she is forced to.

PETA’s Board of Directors, PETA employees, other animal welfare groups, and animal rights activists need to stop drinking the Ingrid Newkirk Kool-Aid. They must stop making excuses for the killing of animals. They need to openly reject views that need to be explained in the pages of the Journal of Psychiatry. And, if they are to protect the thousands of animals whose lives are at future risk from PETA, they must work to remove the political cover provided by her association with PETA which allows Ingrid Newkirk to continue to act on what I believe are deeply disturbing impulses that result in animals being killed.

For further reading:

Said the killing apologist to the killer

Who loves PETA?

Please note: The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the writer and no one else, nor any agency or organization. The author is an attorney and notes that the communications are protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Any attempt to infringe on that right, whether actual or threatened, will be considered a strategic lawsuit against public participation.

Said the killing apologist to the killer

A writer for PETA gives a shelter director on the defensive for staggering levels of killing advice on how to attack No Kill generally, and me specifically.

I recently uncovered an e-mail exchange, dated June 2008, between Ed Boks, the then-General Manger of the brutal Los Angeles Animal Shelter system, and Lisa Towell, a writer for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. It provides a rare glimpse into the desperate lengths “catch and kill” apologists will go to reject that which does not fit their preconceived point of view that the killing of animals in shelters is both necessary and acceptable, even in the face of overwhelming—and personal—experience to the contrary.

During his tenure in Los Angeles, Boks oversaw a shelter system that killed roughly 20,000 dogs and cats a year, and thousands of other species of animals. In fact, during the period that marked his disastrous leadership, the number of animals impounded and killed increased for the first time in better than a decade. Not only did his draconian policies cause more animals to be intentionally put to death, but the number of animals missing and who simply died in kennel—a reflection of poor care—also skyrocketed. Due to one scandal after another, the City Council finally gave him a unanimous vote of “No Confidence” and he resigned shortly thereafter. The results caused even his initial supporters to bolt, but they were easily anticipated. Boks came to Los Angeles by way of both Maricopa County in Arizona and New York City, both agencies he left under tenures that were marked by high rates of killing that put the lie to his public claims of success. While running the Maricopa County animal shelter system into financial ruin (opening up a $600,000 a year structural deficit), Boks never achieved better than a 50% save rate—the national average—that saw tens of thousands of animals lose their lives annually. In New York City, independent audits found poor and hostile treatment of animals, as well as increasing rates of animals dying in kennels that culminated in a unanimous vote by his Board not to renew his contract. To the dismay of No Kill advocates, the Mayor of Los Angeles hired him anyway.

Towell is a writer for PETA, an organization which seeks out thousands of animals every year to kill. In fact, from 2000-2008, PETA killed 19,328 animals. Once the 2009 figures are released, it will put the total body count well in excess of 20,000 for the decade. In some years, PETA’s rate of killing was as high as 97%, and 2009 promises to be another bloodbath despite over $30 million in revenues annually and millions of animal loving supporters. The rate of killing has led to calls to reclassify PETA from a shelter under Virginia regulations to a slaughterhouse, since its death rates are so far above even the worst performing shelters in the state. In 2006, for example, of 1,997 animals they sought out, only seven dogs and cats were adopted into homes and another 34 were transferred to a kill shelter whose fates are unknown. The rest were put to death. In some cases, PETA has killed animals in the back of a van within minutes of being taken in, despite promises of finding the animals a home to those relinquishing them. Not content with their own mass killing, PETA also advocates policies around the country to encourage the killing of even more animals, including a call to slaughter every dog someone labels a “Pit Bull” who enters a shelter, calls for the continued killing of free-living unsocialized (i.e. feral) cats, and coming to the defense of some of the most abusive shelters in the country. Indeed, PETA supported a Pit Bull ban even in Ontario, which mandates the pound seizure of animals from shelters by companies who use them for animal experimentation—the fate that ostensibly awaited some of the family pets seized under the PETA-supported breed ban. Those policies have earned PETA’s founder, Ingrid Newkirk, who directs PETA’s assembly line of killing and who freely admits that that PETA kills “healthy” and “adoptable” animals, the nickname the “Butcher of Norfolk.”

Towell opens her e-mail to Boks by saying she was glad to have met him at a legislative hearing in Sacramento in support of AB 1634, the mandatory spay/neuter law which would have given Boks’ shelter, and others like it throughout the state, the power and authority to impound and kill even more animals. But giving shelters this power was not the only topic of conversation between Boks and Towell. The e-mail suggests they spent time at their meeting talking about me, too. In the e-mail, Towell embraces the PETA position that No Kill is to be opposed, rather than embraced. She talks openly about how “great” their views are in this regard and, in fact, offers additional strategies to combat No Kill generally and me specifically: “Here is the information I wrote up on problems with no-kill,” she writes to Boks. “You’ll see that I quoted from your blog posts!” She then writes how she is also sending her comments to Daphna Nachminovich, PETA’s Minister of Killing Propaganda, who routinely defends abusive killing shelters and equates No Kill with hoarding. The rest of the e-mail is an attack against my book Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation & The No Kill Revolution in America.

Apparently, Boks—a man who was chased out of Maricopa County, removed from New York City when his Board unanimously voted not to renew his contract, and who resigned in Los Angeles after a unanimous vote of “No Confidence” from the City Council—and Nachminovich—a killing apologist who lies about PETA’s killing and then justifies it by disparaging the No Kill alternative—are worthy of quoting and trusting, but Redemption, a book which champions a philosophy that says we can and should end the killing, which asks for a more compassionate shelter system, is not to be believed or trusted.

Ironically, even though Towell calls PETA’s attacks against me “great,” she realizes after reading Redemption that their attacks are dishonest. In the end, she admits that she agrees with much of what I brought to light in Redemption: “many shelters would benefit greatly from implementing policies and programs that Winograd advocates in the book,” she writes. Programs, ironically, that the organization she holds out as the standard bearer on how society should relate to animals, opposes.

Towell nonetheless does take a break from drinking the Ingrid Newkirk Kool-Aid by admitting that “there is room for improvement at many shelters (even those short on money and resources), and as a volunteer at one of those shelters, I found parts of Winograd’s book quite compelling.”

Towell gives the following example:

At my own shelter, I and other volunteers tried to work with the staff to implement more aggressive adoption outreach for the cats… Problems we tried to fix: unwillingness to use volunteers more extensively (foster, adoption outreach, etc.), insufficient use of media and internet to promote cats, poor customer service, poor proactivity in managing the less adoptable cats. (As it happens, all of these programs/policies are discussed in Winograd’s book).

We had very little long-term success, despite a positive reception from staff for our proposals. I became convinced that you’d have to fire the supervisor and most of the staff to get a different attitude. So, this part of Winograd’s message really resonated for me—some of the cat killings in the last year were the direct outcome of the shelter staff not making straightforward changes that could have saved their lives.

She then openly acknowledged that she “doesn’t know how common this is across the country” even though a simple Google search would have provided the answer. In fact, it is endemic to animal control. In addition to killing in the face of alternatives, the last year alone has seen a significant amount of nationwide media coverage revealing widespread animal neglect and outright abuse at these very institutions. These exposés show a strikingly different reality than the mythical description of heroic shelters portrayed by PETA for whom Towell writes for:

• In Memphis, TN, shelter workers not only intentionally starved animals to death, they took animals who were still alive to the incinerator.
• In King County, WA, an animal control officer turned whistleblower not only confirmed the neglect and abuse uncovered in three independent assessments of the shelter, but indicated that things are worse than ever for the animals, despite the denials of the guild/union that blindly defends itself and its members.  The whistleblower described “cats dying in their cage for lack of treatment, a dog so sick [he] nearly drowned in a stream of water in its kennel and animals of all types in need of veterinary attention, but not getting it.” This is a shelter PETA defended and, in an effort to sabotage reform, painted concerned animal lovers as “radicals” in a letter to the Council.
• In Lucas County, OH, the local dog warden—an incompetent hack given the job out of nepotism—routinely allowed dogs to get sick and then killed them, despite rescue groups offering to save them.
• In Los Angeles County, a news investigation team uncovered officers physically abusing animals.

The list goes on and on and on and on.

These and other cases show shelter workers and Animal Control Officers (ACOs) who kick, beat, baton, and kill puppies. ACOs who cause animals to suffer and die. ACOs who cause animals to cannibalize other animals in their cages because they go unfed. And the very animal control officers who cause these travesties suffer no repercussions because they are “supervised” by their fellow union and bureaucracy-protected shirkers.

But despite evidence of this pervasive and troubling reality nationwide, and after admitting that the shelter she volunteers for finds killing cats easier than doing what is necessary to stop killing, after admitting that for changes to occur, leadership must be replaced with people who care, and after admitting her ignorance about how truly pervasive and endemic this is in shelters across the country, Towell turns around and suggests that Boks, she, and PETA must work together to “discredit Winograd’s philosophy” by painting me as “well-intentioned but naïve,” because trying to paint me as a liar as PETA has done has fallen on deaf ears.

But who is naïve? Towell herself admits she is ignorant of trends in shelter policy, even as the one experience she has—that of a volunteer at her local shelter—confirms what I write in Redemption. And her claims about how wrong I supposedly am are not based on data, analysis, or experience, but her own wild speculation: always prefaced with “I think,” and “as far as I know,” which she later freely admits later not so much.

Towell also admits that the “open admission” shelters I cite in my book as evidence of the potential we have to achieve a No Kill nation are “among the best-performing shelters in the country.” She further writes that they “must be doing something right” and what she “thinks” they are doing right is implementing the programs and services of the No Kill Equation—“all programs that Winograd advocates.” But she then follows-up with the mother of all non-sequiturs: disparaging the No Kill Equation as “naïve.” It is naïve she writes, because even with the comprehensive implementation of those programs, shelters would still be forced to kill because pet overpopulation is real.

Barfing out sheltering dogma before real reflection begins, ignoring the success of communities nationwide even in communities with high intake rates, and thoroughly ignorant of the data, she avers that shelters can’t “adopt their way out of killing” as I claim in Redemption. Ironically, she comes to this conclusion by doing her own back of the envelope calculations. The only problem is that even her own (inaccurate) statistics prove my point.

Towell says that her “own calculations …. suggest” there are homes for 12 million dogs and cats every year. She then admits that “in theory that’s enough to absorb the 3.7 [million] killed in shelters each year.” In other words, she proves that the issue is not one of “too many animals, not enough homes,” but of market share, exactly as I argued in Redemption. But then concludes from that data that her own calculations “topple Winograd’s overpopulation argument.” The basis of this non-sequitur is a profound ignorance of statistical analysis and trends in sheltering to suggest we can never expect 3.7 million of those 12 million to adopt rather than buy.

First of all, national data show that every year over 21 million homes become available and the trend is toward increasing numbers. Some are already committed to adopting from shelters and they will do so, even with poor customer service, dirty facilities, and other endemic problems. Others got their last animal from a commercial or other source and are committed to getting their next animal from the same or similar source. But the data also shows that roughly 17 million are open to adopting from shelters and can be convinced to do so. These are the people shelters need to reach with proactive marketing and public relations, and by modifying policies and procedures in line with those of the No Kill Equation to successfully adopt more animals to them.

In addition, of the roughly 4 million killed, not all of those need new homes. After backing out free-living unsocialized (feral) cats who need neuter and release or should not be allowed to enter shelters in the first place, after switching from passive to proactive redemption efforts thereby increasing by three-fold the number of stray dogs who are reclaimed by their families, and seven-fold the stray cats who are reclaimed by their families, after removing—at this time in history—those animals who are truly and tragically hopelessly ill, irremediably suffering, and vicious dogs with a poor prognosis for rehabilitation, we can cut the number of animals entering shelters who actually need new homes significantly. What that means is that even if roughly 90% of that 17 million got their animal from somewhere other than a shelter, we could still zero out the killing of savable animals. Or put another way, if shelters increased the market of new and replacement homes (a combination of what statisticians call “stock” and “flow”) over the existing pool of homes by 3%, we would empty all the shelters.

Despite this, she then goes on to downplay adoptions, dismissing their importance in ending the killing, and creating a false “either-or” by stating we must focus—indeed deify—spay/neuter. But this ignores four crucial issues devastating to the overly simplistic, indefensible, and ultimately unethical argument she makes. To begin with, adoptions and spay/neuter are not mutually exclusive. Second, communities that have achieved No Kill success did so despite some of the highest intake rates in the nation before a fully functioning sterilization program was even in place (with the exception of feral cats). Spay/neuter is important to reduce the numbers of animals entering shelters, but it is not a prerequisite before the lifesaving endeavor begins or No Kill is achieved (though it certainly makes it easier and easier to sustain). And third, working solely to prevent future killing through spay/neuter but ignoring the animals alive today and condemning them to death is inhumane and unethical. But what is most devastating to her case, even while high-volume, low-cost spay/neuter is a central tenet of the No Kill Equation, even though I am an advocate for low-cost, no-cost and high-volume sterilization, and even while I offered free sterilization at the shelters I oversaw is this: It is naïve to assume that draconian shelter directors will stop killing even when spay/neuter efforts pay off in the form of lower impounds.

Shelter directors kill because it is easier to kill than do what is necessary to stop it. They kill despite rescue groups willing to save those animals. They kill despite empty cages. They kill while turning away adopters with regressive policies, poor customer service, and lack of public access shelter hours. In fact, too many of them neglect or abuse the animals in the process before killing them, some in the most inhumane manner imaginable. In short, as long as they are allowed to stay in their leadership positions, as long as uncaring government bureaucrats treat municipal shelters as nothing more than “jobs programs” for equally uncaring and incompetent staff who are not employable in the private sector or other government agencies deemed more important, and as long as groups like PETA provide them political cover by falsely painting them as “heroic despite pet overpopulation,” they will continue to kill indefinitely. Towell naively and ignorantly assumes that killing is always the result of supposed “space” issues—when the evidence reveals that most of the killing is a result of shelter directors willfully ignoring readily available lifesaving alternatives.

The organization she writes for proves it, an organization with a global reach, tens of millions in annual revenues, and a support base of millions of animal lovers, that kills over 90% of animals they seek out. The shelter she volunteers for whose staff kills cats because they refuse to implement what she acknowledges are simple, straightforward, common sense alternatives to killing which already exist. Ed Boks, the man she admires and quotes, the recipient of her e-mail, also proves it. As head of the Los Angeles pound, he oversaw the killing of roughly 20,000 animals annually despite a per capita intake rate a fraction of No Kill communities and despite one of the best funded shelter systems in the nation.

Towell ends her attack against me by saying that “Winograd disparages the traditional approach of LES (legislation, education, and [mandatory] sterilization).” And then goes on to conclude that the decline in killing nationally—which she fails to realize coincides with the introduction of the programs and services of the No Kill Equation—is, in her words, a result of LES: “I think at least some of it is due to the very LES he dislikes (e.g., differential licensing fees, mandatory S/N, etc.)” But once again, Towell’s conclusion is betrayed by her ignorance and failure to do the most rudimentary of research on the issue.

In the U.S., these approaches have always been and continue to be a failure. In fact, the irresponsible and disastrous legislative foray she supported for the entire State of California, but was passed only in Los Angeles is responsible for the first increase in killing there in a decade. At a time when other communities were seeing death rates plummet—Towell championed and Boks ushered in a legislative scheme that resulted in a 24% increase in dog killing and a 35% increase in cat killing. That is the standard to which Towell aspires. But it is not compassionate, humane, nor effective. In fact, despite calling me naïve a number of times, it is Towell who deserves the moniker—both in terms of buying into Newkirk’s and Nachminovich’s dark, twisted embrace of killing and her lack of understanding as to what happens when the types of laws she champions are passed.

In the end, however, what Towell does prove in her determination to undermine the No Kill philosophy as championed in Redemption, is how very Orwellian this movement has become. That two individuals—one with a sordid history of killing, and the other a writer for an organization whose leader freely admits to rounding up and killing thousands of animals every year—are capable of a communication implying to one another that they are championing the animals’ best interest by seeking to undermine the message of hope and promise in Redemption shows the level of self-delusion the old party line of the “catch and kill” movement both sanctions and encourages.

Likewise, I found it fascinating to glimpse a communication about me between two individuals who, judging from the tone and content of the e-mail, labor under the illusion that Redemption is a slick, carefully crafted attempt at subterfuge, rather than what it is—a sincere and heartfelt plea for greater compassion towards the animals entering our nation’s abysmal and broken sheltering system. But judging by both Boks’ sordid history of killing animals and Lisa Towell’s association with PETA, perhaps it is no surprise that they cannot conceive of honest dedication to the cause they are, by the nature of their jobs, pledged to promote, but which through their actions, they actively seek to undermine.

Of course, given their reaction to Redemption, there is obviously nothing I can say or do which will change their minds. Their opposition is not born of genuine, though misguided, concern.  In Boks’ case, it is nothing more than naked self-preservation, and in Towell’s, a blind devotion to the murderous vision of the Butcher of Norfolk. In this case, proving them wrong—and laying their true motivations bare—is a job best left to the workings of time and its eventual realization of a No Kill nation. And when that day arrives—as it invariably will—I’d love another insider glimpse such as that afforded by this e-mail. I predict that the self-delusion Boks and Towell will need to employ then in order to reconcile their historical desire to undermine No Kill with a society that has fully embraced—and realized—its tremendous promise, will be equally, if not more, fascinating and fantastical.

Ed Boks E-Mails Reveal Mandatory S/N Law Failures

During his tenure as General Manager of Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS), Ed Boks made headlines in his support of a failed California mandatory sterilization law, Assembly Bill 1634. During legislative hearings, Boks admitted that the legislation was more about expanding the bureaucratic power of animal control than saving animals when a Senator asked: “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.” The bill was defeated.

But Boks convinced the City of Los Angeles to pass its own version. He also demanded more officers to enforce it, and was granted over $400,000 in enforcement money to do so, money that was taken away from truly lifesaving programs. 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.

Boks made further headlines when he abolished the subsidized spay/neuter voucher program a short time later, a program that was aimed at helping poor people comply with the law. A public outcry led to the program’s reinstatement but the subsequent embarrassment, among others, led to a unanimous vote of “No Confidence” by the City Council and Boks resigned shortly thereafter.

Despite public claims of success and the touting of the L.A. law in a bid to pass A.B. 1634 statewide, recently released e-mails show that Ed Boks knew that his much touted mandatory sterilization law was harmful to animals for another reason. According to the e-mails, after the mandatory sterilization law was adopted, veterinarians across the City of Los Angeles sought to exploit the captive market by raising their prices. Veterinarians wanted a windfall, even though cost was—and is—the primary barrier to spay/neuter. The end result was that while spay/neuter was now the law, the effect of the price increases in response to the law put sterilization increasingly out of reach for those at the bottom rung of the economic latter, forcing them to surrender their animals, which the shelters under Boks’ command put to death.

In a 2008 e-mail to Ed Boks, a supporter writes to Ed that “we can’t hide from the fact that veterinarians are raising their prices to a point where people cannot afford the services regardless of the vouchers or financial assistance.” (To help defray these rising costs, the City was offering $30 vouchers, and in a smaller number of cases, $70 vouchers, toward the cost of sterilization.) By August 2008, Boks admitted a problem and indentified what he called the “unintended consequence of s/n law is vets raising prices,” though he did not share this information with legislators he was lobbying to pass statewide mandatory spay/neuter.*

By early 2009, however, Boks could no longer ignore the failure. In an e-mail to his managers and the Mayor’s Office, he admits that the voucher program’s attempt to stem the increases in impounds was largely a failure, saying,

[T]he use of coupons is not cost effective because of our inability to control co-payments. The same is true of the $70 coupons. While they are targeted in a modest way, I doubt that even a subsidy this size brings pet sterilization within the reach of caretakers living in poverty because coupons don’t guarantee that the amount they have to pay themselves, the co-payment, is affordable to them.

Boks concludes that “the failure of our programs… explains why no progress has been made in reducing cat intakes in recent years.” (While he discussed trying to more effectively target indigent people with spay/neuter assistance, less than two months later he simply abolished the program.)

Instead, to defray blaming the spay/neuter law for increased impounds, Boks and his killing apologists in Los Angeles publicly (and sometimes privately) blamed the economy. But the data did not bear out the claim. While the City of Los Angeles had one of the lowest foreclosure rates (1.79) at the time, it saw killing increase following the passage of its spay/neuter law. By contrast, communities with higher rates like San Diego (2.51) and Alameda (2.41), saw killing nonetheless decrease.  In fact, some of the California counties with the highest foreclosure rates during this period saw killing decrease.

Moreover, Washoe County, Nevada provides a striking contrast. As a tourism-based economy, Washoe County (Reno and surrounding communities) has been very hard hit by the economic downturn. Loss of jobs and loss of homes are at all-time highs. In fact, the state of Nevada has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, second only to Michigan. At the same time that LAAS was impounding and killing more animals, Reno increased adoptions rates, increased reclaim rates, and despite taking in over three times the per capita rate of animals than Los Angeles, saved nine out of every ten dogs and, at the time, about eight out of ten cats. Today, 90% of all cats and dogs are being saved.

In addition to the e-mails about the failure of the mandatory spay/neuter law, recently uncovered e-mails were found between a PETA writer and Boks trying to undermine my arguments in Redemption. I will write up a response to those claims in the near future, including an admission by the PETA writer that the shelters I cited for good results, in her words, are “Not perfect… but they are open-admission … and they’re among the best-performing animal shelters in the country.” The PETA writer also goes on to admit that I was right in another regard, citing the example of shelter management at the shelter she volunteers for, which ignored pleas for more comprehensive adoption efforts because they found killing of cats easier than doing what was necessary to stop it. Her conclusion: management should be fired!

Despite these admissions, she (a woman who writes for an organization that wants to see every dog who enters a shelter and is labeled a “Pit Bull” systematically slaughtered, and which also seeks out and kills 2,000 animals a year) and Boks (a man who has made a career around killing animals and misleading the public about No Kill progress) conspire to undermine my philosophy and approach.  Stay tuned…

_______________

* Judie Mancuso, another proponent of mandatory spay/neuter, was, however, made aware of the price increases by L.A. veterinarians, information she too has buried.

Power to the People

Understanding why Ed Sayres, Jane Hoffman, and now Laura Allen oppose Oreo’s Law, even though their opposition means animals will continue to be needlessly killed.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… the fear of a loss of power. –John Steinbeck

When Oreo’s Law was introduced, it quickly gained the support of leaders of the No Kill movement. On behalf of the No Kill Advocacy Center, I wrote in support applauding the “common sense and compassionate approach to protecting animals’ lives and empowering those who want to save them.” The most successful shelter directors in the country, those running open admission animal control shelters saving over 90 percent of the animals, uniformly embraced it, including Bonney Brown, Susanne Kogut, and Abigail Smith. The nation’s top shelter reform advocates, including FixAustin, wrote letters of support. The nation’s top law professors uniformly embraced it. The media, including Christie Keith of the San Francisco Chronicle and Animal Wise Radio, have called for every state to pass such a law. New York-based rescue groups including Pets Alive, Empty Cages Collective, and others, are pushing for its passage. And progressive animal rights groups like Friends of Animals came out in strong support.

Predictably, Ed Sayres—Oreo’s killer—opposed it, even though he supported identical rescue group access rights in California. In fact, given that Oreo’s Law has recently been amended to provide for additional protections, there is no basis on which Sayres can legitimately explain why he supports rights for rescue groups in California, but not for rescue groups in New York State—other than his own unethical motives to bury his killing of Oreo, even at the expense of thousands of animals being killed every year because of it. And to kill Oreo’s Law, as easily as he killed Oreo for which the law is named, Sayres now has two others supporting his position that animals in New York State (NYS) shelters should continue to be killed, while rescue groups willing to save them should be turned away: (1) Jane Hoffman of the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC Animals, and (2) Laura Allen of the so-called “Animal Law Coalition.”

If Ed Sayres is motivated by sheer self-preservation and spite against those who dare question his unfettered discretion to kill animals, what, then, is motivating these two?

For over a hundred years, animal shelters in this country and their allies working at large, national animal protection organizations have argued that the killing of animals in shelters is unavoidable, and that the irresponsible American public is to blame. Without an alternative model to challenge the assumptions upon which these calculations were based—animal shelters were, by default, granted almost unequivocal discretion to kill millions of animals a year, while blaming others for the need to do so.  Not only did this stymie any innovation seeking to reduce the numbers of animals killed, but, having been unchallenged in this course of action for so long, it had the unfortunate side effect of creating the expectation among shelter directors that they should be able to operate without public scrutiny, comment or accountability for their actions and decisions.

In the late 1990’s, when the burgeoning No Kill movement proved that many of the assumptions upon which traditional sheltering were based were, in fact, untrue, and that nearly all animals entering shelters can be saved, traditional sheltering models had by that time become so firmly entrenched—and those championing them so large and influential—that any challenge to their hegemony was met with recrimination and hostility. And since that time, animal advocates throughout the country, working to reform their local shelters by demanding innovation, modernization and greater lifesaving, have almost universally found themselves at cross purposes with not only their local shelters which refuse to reform, but, just as often, the large, national groups, such as the ASPCA and HSUS, which come to the defense of their local shelter and its archaic, regressive policies which favor killing, and, therefore, a continuation of the paradigm upon which their power is predicated.

As a result, it is not uncommon for shelters to refuse the assistance of grassroots rescue organizations willing to save the animals they are determined to kill. Time and again, these organizations hold the animals hostage, ignoring the requests of local sanctuaries and rescue groups willing to assume responsibility and liability for their care, even as they then turn around and kill them, just as the ASPCA did to Oreo.

But these rescue groups are not going away quietly, as the furor over Oreo’s killing has proven. Despite the entrenchment of groups like the ASPCA, the widespread success of the No Kill movement has invigorated animal lovers nationwide, and one of the results of that success has been an exponential increase in the number of rescue organizations. Their efficacy, their dedication, and their willingness to do the lifesaving that shelters and the large national organizations have for so long argued is impossible threaten to expose the lies upon which the historical inaction of shelters and the large national groups is based. It is why Ed Sayres chose to kill Oreo rather than give her to an organization that was willing to go the extra mile for her, when the ASPCA was not, despite raising over $100 million dollars last year from an animal loving American public after promising to do just that in such circumstances, and for such animals.

And it is why Jane Hoffman, who now keeps the rescue groups of New York City under her regressive rule of thumb, is also opposed to Oreo’s Law. Her opposition is, at its core, about fear—a fear of losing power. A fear that Oreo’s Law—by eliminating her role as the unnecessary “middle man” between shelters and rescue groups will render her obsolete, as it should.

Follow the Money

As head of the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC Animals, Jane Hoffman wields a tremendous amount of power, with tens of millions of dollars flowing through her hands. Her group has received over $5 million from Ed Sayres at the ASPCA, and over $13 million to date from Maddie’s Fund. She also received an additional $250,000 from Sayres in 2009.

Given the money that flows from Sayres to Hoffman, is it any surprise that she supports his position in opposing Oreo’s Law? Is it any surprise that she immediately wrote a letter in defense of the ASPCA after the furor erupted over Oreo’s killing? To understand Hoffman’s opposition, one need only follow the money. And, more importantly perhaps, follow it to where it dries up.

While Sayres continues to write checks to Hoffman’s group, such as the additional $150,000 given in 2009 for her discretionary use, the initial $5 million from the ASPCA has been spent. And the Maddie’s Fund project ends this year. The Mayor’s Alliance and her role as its head cannot survive in New York without grant funding from the ASPCA. And there lies the rub. Hoffman needs Ed Sayres’ money and control over the rescue groups to stay in power, and Ed Sayres needs Jane Hoffman’s support to fight a law which will forever memorialize his betrayal of an abused dog. It is an unholy alliance based on greed, naked self-interest, and the preservation of near unequivocal power the two currently enjoy over the smaller non-profits in New York City.

Right now, Hoffman has the power to remove the rights of rescue groups to get animals from New York City’s animal shelters, and she is not shy about telling groups who oppose her of that. In order to be allowed to rescue animals who are on the kill list, Hoffman has to approve them. Like the old “Ward Bosses” of the 19th Century, her power is based on the largess and her unfettered discretion to take away a rescue group’s ability to save animals from death row. But when the Maddie’s funding dries up and without an influx of money from the ASPCA, the power she yields as a result of control over the purse strings also dies. As a result, Hoffman has hatched a plan to expand the alliance to a statewide organization that will have the power to regulate all rescue groups, with—drum roll, please—herself as its head. If Oreo’s Law passes and rescue groups have a legal right to shelter animals, her plan is rendered impotent and consequently, she loses all the power she currently has. Rescue groups will no longer be beholden to her “certification” of their fitness. Subject to law (including an IRS designation, a mission of animal rescue or adoption, and no record of convictions for neglect or abuse), rescue groups can cut out the middle man and Hoffman goes from Ward Boss to persona non grata.

All of the power in the humane movement is consolidated in the hands of the very few, like Hoffman and Sayres, and it is to their advantage to keep it that way. Laws which grant a legal right of shelter access to small, non-profit rescue organizations level the playing field and empower the grassroots, giving them the same rights, privileges and access to animals they exist to protect as the large non-profits enjoy. And that is deeply threatening to people like Sayres and Hoffman. And in their fear of losing power, they deceptively seek to play upon our fears—by arguing that dedicated rescue groups are the real threat—they are what we should fear, because they are hoarders and dog fighters in disguise. And sadly, these deadly, dangerous, and antiquated views have found a champion in another so-called animal activist—and friend of Jane Hoffman—in Laura Allen of the “Animal Law Coalition.”

The Tyranny of Dead Ideas

Laura Allen runs a New York-based group she calls the “Animal Law Coalition.” A coalition, however, is “an alliance of distinct organizations or parties.” But the Animal Law Coalition is a coalition in name only. It is one person: Laura Allen. And Laura Allen has come out in opposition to Oreo’s Law by arguing that shelters should be trusted when making behavioral determinations, by misrepresenting the law relating to California’s Hayden Law upon which Oreo’s Law is based, and by arguing that animals are better off dead than in the arms of the rescue groups which she says are most likely animal abusers anyway.

According to Allen and her anti-Oreo’s Law propaganda, we need to “respect” the decisions made by shelters about which dogs are aggressive. In her latest salvo, despite the fact that the ASPCA refuses to provide the videotape of Oreo’s alleged aggression and Oreo’s Law will primarily save kittens and puppies and healthy/ friendly dogs and cats, Allen writes that:

After months of care and evaluation, the dog was determined to be “unpredictably aggressive,” biting even caregivers.

According to Allen, that is good enough. Rescue groups should not be allowed to second guess these decisions, should not have access to these dogs, should not be allowed to bring in their own evaluators, should not be allowed to employ efforts at rehabilitation, and in light of her opposition to Oreo’s Law, this is true even at shelters that give dogs only the minimum time according to law before they are killed—a paltry five days for strays and zero days for owner relinquished animals.

But while Allen argues that such determinations are adequate for the dogs of NYS—even when it means those dogs are killed while rescue groups willing to save them are turned away—it is not good enough for her own dog. When it comes to the life of her own animal, Allen has an altogether different standard. In opposing Oreo’s Law, she is opposing legislation mandating action which saved her own dog from death.

Allen has never worked in an animal control shelter, and perhaps has never even been to one—except in Seattle, where her and her husband’s dog was impounded after biting someone, was determined to be dangerous, and was sentenced to death. Instead of respecting the decision of the shelter as she admonishes others to do, Allen and husband Russ Mead enlisted a rescue group, Best Friends, to save their own dog’s life from a shelter determined to kill him. And Best Friends did, on condition that the dog never be allowed to leave a lifetime care facility. It sounds remarkably similar to Oreo, where Pets Alive offered lifetime care. The difference of course is that Oreo was not adjudicated to be dangerous by a court and never attacked anyone. The other difference of course is that, in the case of Allen’s dog, the rescue group was given the ability to save a life by being rescued from the shelter, while Oreo, and the thousands of anonymous dogs and cats unknown to her at shelters throughout NYS, Allen’s viewpoint seeks to condemn to death.

The praise and confidence she places in shelter directors throughout NYS does not extend to those who judged her own dog dangerous because when Best Friends invited Seattle Animal Control director Don Jordan to speak at their conference, Allen’s husband Russ Mead called Best Friends and let fly a string of epithets against them for inviting that “*&^%#$” who was going to kill their dog.

Yet in spite of this experience, Allen published an opposition piece when Oreo’s Law was first introduced arguing, of all things, that it should be opposed because it goes “too far” and saves “too many” animals. Allen actually opposed Oreo’s Law because the law was not limited to “adoptable” and “treatable” animals the way she claimed the California law on which it is based is. In other words, she was essentially arguing that the law had the potential to save too many animals. As unethical as that position is, it was also a misreading of California law.

According to UCLA Law Professor Taimie L. Bryant, the Hayden Law’s primary author,

The California version of Oreo’s law did not limit rescue groups’ right of access to shelter animals to only “adoptable” and “treatable” animals as defined in the public policy statutes of the Hayden Law. The specific statutes of the law that give rescue groups rights of access (Food and Agricultural Code sections 31108 and 31752) explicitly exclude from rescue groups only those animals who are irremediably suffering from a serious illness or severe injury such that immediate euthanasia is the only humane alternative.

Language about “adoptability” and “treatability” do appear in public policy statutes that are part of the Hayden Law. However, the purpose of those statutes is to assert the preference of the people of California for adoption and rehabilitation instead of killing shelter animals. There are no specific duties in those statutes, and they do not constrain the application of the specific statutes that provide for release to rescue groups.

Of course, one would expect an “Animal Law Coalition”—even a coalition in name only as her group is—to celebrate, rather than condemn, expanding the scope of the bill to save animals such as feral cats, as well as neonatal kittens and puppies. But equally disturbing is that even after being informed of her misreading of the law, Allen refused to correct the error on her website. To this day, she continues to intentionally promote the misinformation in order to derail Oreo’s Law from passage. And she has even gone so far as to ask people to write the legislature in opposition based on her false assertions and false comparisons to Hayden.

Allen also recently posted another call for opposition to Oreo’s Law, claiming rescue groups cannot be trusted and the animals are better off dead, another equally offensive misrepresentation: Day in and day out, animal rescuers show tremendous courage and compassion—visiting what is often the one place on earth hardest for them to go as animal lovers: their local shelters. And yet they go back, again and again. They endure the hostile treatment. They endure the heartbreak of seeing the animals destined for the needle. They endure having to jump through unnecessary and arbitrary hurdles set by shelter directors who are holding the animals they want to save hostage. They endure having to look the other way at abuse of other animals, because if they don’t, if they speak out, they will be barred from saving any animals. And this law would make their lives easier—their work less difficult. It would empower them, tip the balance more in their favor, and lessen their daily burden. That Allen would fail to support such a law, or worse, would dare oppose it by claiming that these dedicated, hard working rescuers are, in reality, dog fighters and hoarders in disguise not only is offensive, but a betrayal of these selfless, compassionate individuals, and true animal lovers.

Moreover, after all the evidence of abuse, cruelty, neglect and killing that is rampant in our nation’s shelters, how can Allen oppose Oreo’s Law by deferring to their authority? By arguing that animals are better off killed by shelters, who often neglect and mistreat them in the process, than in the protective embrace of rescue groups made up of people truly dedicated to their well-being?

In the No Kill movement, our mission is two-fold. First, we must reform our nation’s broken animal sheltering system so that the animals who enter them will get the chance at life millions are now so cruelly denied. But reforming a shelter, wearing down the opposition, forcing the replacement of a regressive director with one dedicated to saving lives—all of these things take time. And time is one thing that animals entering shelters today do not have. To help these animals, we need to offer something more immediate. They need a way out. They need rescuers who want to save them to have the power to do so even when a director says, “No.” And they need that now, because tomorrow will be too late.

The second goal of the No Kill movement is therefore to arm those who want to save animals with the power to do so. Like the network of “safe houses” which protected runaway slaves as they fled north to freedom, the thousands of rescue groups, No Kill sanctuaries and No Kill shelters throughout our nation are our movement’s own safe houses. And they must be supported, and empowered through law. That goal is, in fact, fundamental to what our movement is all about, because that is what the animals most desperately need. And not only will doing so save animals today, but it will save them in perpetuity since the power of one director to say “Yes” to saving lives can be taken away by the next director who says “No,” absent a law to the contrary. That is why a shelter can be progressive one day, and moving in the opposite direction the next. Animals should be saved regardless of who is running our shelters and legislation like Oreo’s Law gives rescuers the power to do so.

But Allen is no champion of No Kill. In this case, she is a proponent of killing and a prophet of doom. And in the process, she attempts to derail progress by opposing legislation which would empower others to save them, and by throwing up smokescreens such as fears about hoarders and dog fighters to portray greater lifesaving as a threat to the animals. The animals are, in her own self-serving, delusional, and antiquated thinking, better off dead at the hands of even under-performing and even cruel shelter staff than in the protection embrace of animal rescuers: all ideas that successful, progressive, and forward thinking animal activists now wholly reject.

Laura Allen’s Myopia

It is an inevitable part of working in the animal protection movement that one is exposed to dogmas and mythology built up to rationalize and explain the killing in shelters. Too often, activists become blinded by these explanations. Slowly, they stop listening to their common sense, and let their fears and phantoms guide their advocacy. They become lost in the wilderness of their own making, unable to see the forest through the trees, and tragically lose sight of what they—and our movement—should be striving for. As a result, they hinder, rather than promote, the welfare of animals, by advocating bizarre, irreconcilable propositions that make no sense whatsoever: such as arguing that animal rescuers should be denied the right to save animals on death row because they might be hoarders or dog fighters in disguise. In doing so, they advocate positions that are the antithesis of those they should be championing as people who claim to speak on behalf of animals. They fail to do what is required of them as animal activists—recognizing and hailing success, such as the introduction of Oreo’s Law, and helping to ensure its passage.

And, despite Allen’s hair splitting, Oreo’s Law has significant protections that even the California version does not have. And yet even without these protections, the California law has not led to an epidemic of hoarders and dog fighters exploiting it, as was predicted by fear mongers who opposed it then. In fact, it has led to thousands of animals being saved, rather than killed. And while Allen cites Taimie Bryant and law professor Rebecca Huss for her baseless proposition, she ignores the fact that both of them not only support Oreo’s Law, they have written letters to the NYS legislature in support of the law.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself

As a movement, we must be guided by our greatest hopes, and not our darkest and unsubstantiated fears. And when it comes to hoarders, the irrational and at times hysterical phobia of them within the humane movement is wholly out of all proportion to the actual threat. Only 4% of animals in shelters nationwide are impounded because of neglect or abuse (and even a smaller percentage of these are the victims of dog fighters or hoarders). And while that is still too much, it is by comparative standards, rare compared to the 96% of animals who are not. As the comment someone posted on Allen’s website indicated:

The question is, are there more unreputable 501c3s hoarding? Or [shelters] killing animals unnecessarily? I think most people know the answer to that one…So, we must ensure that the minute possibility of an animal making its way into the hands of a hoarder is prevented instead of preventing the REAL probability the animal will die in a shelter?

In short, Allen’s rationale for opposing Oreo’s Law comes down to the disturbing notion that we must kill animals to keep them safe, the very kinds of insidious arguments the “catch and kill” sheltering establishment has been peddling for decades to justify their paradigm of high rates of killing. In 1968, then HSUS Vice-President of Companion Animals, Phyllis Wright, wrote,

I’ve put 70,000 dogs and cats to sleep… But I tell you one thing: I don’t worry about one of those animals that were put to sleep… Being dead is not cruelty to animals.

She then described how she does worry about the animals she found homes for. From that disturbing view, HSUS coined a maxim that says we should worry about saving lives but not about ending them and successfully propagated this viewpoint to shelters across the country. And after turning away both adopters and rescuers, these shelters turn around and kill these very animals.

Despite wrapping opposition in legalese based on a misreading of California law, trying to confuse the issue by discussing other aspects of Hayden, by claiming California passed right of shelter access because of a “crisis” in killing in California which she claims does not exist in New York State (since when did New York State become No Kill?), and by citing both Professor Bryant and Huss out of context and ignoring that both actually support Oreo’s Law, Allen’s opposition amounts to nothing more than: Let’s kill the animals now to keep them safe from possible future harm. An inherently unethical and deeply disturbing contradiction.

But she does not stop there. Allen goes further, by offering three other red herrings. Beyond the fear mongering about hoarders and dog fighters, Allen claims that Oreo’s Law could lead to a future crackdown on dogs  because rescue groups will release dangerous dogs all over the state, which will go on to attack people. Not only has this not occurred in California based on the law which has been in effect for 11 years, it is pure fear baiting.

Second, she cautions that it could undermine the Mayor’s Alliance of NYC, costing animals their lives, without any evidence of how Oreo’s Law would do that. In fact, all Oreo’s Law does is set minimum standards. Shelters and rescue coalitions are free to add more expansive protections if they so choose. Moreover, Oreo’s Law will strengthen rescue groups, and lead to more collaborations of shelters and rescue groups throughout the state. According to Professor Bryant,

In addition to expanding the opportunities for animal adoption, rescue groups have opportunities at adoption events to educate members of the public about various animal-related topics such as development of local dog parks or where to find low-cost spay/neuter services. Rescue group presence in pet supply stores greatly increases public access to information that can reduce relinquishment to shelters. Group members regularly provide information about solutions to common problems such as inappropriate barking or urinating.

Finally, the greater confidence rescue groups have in their continued existence to perform their mission has resulted in increased networking among groups to solve problems or share such information as good deals on pet food and supplies, experiences with veterinarians, and proposed laws that affect rescue group activity. For instance, recently members of different cat rescue groups in California have shared information about and written letters in support of proposed laws to ban non-therapeutic declawing of cats and other animals. Those groups know firsthand the terrible consequences of cat declawing, and their input has been helpful to legislators considering bans.

Now, ten years after it went into effect, it is possible to say that the right of access provision in the Hayden Law was very important to the development of a vibrant network of animal rescue and adoption groups that function more efficiently and optimistically than they could when their ability to rescue animals from shelters was insecure. Animals have benefited directly from their life-saving activities and indirectly from the education and other services they provide.

These are all very positive features of a law that met vehement opposition while going through the legislative process. The stated bases for opposition are similar to those expressed by those who oppose Oreo’s Law: the risk of hoarding of shelter animals, the risk of dogs ending up in dog fighting circles, and increased risks to the public due to irresponsible release of unsuitable dogs to adopters. Despite such dire predictions of increased incidence of public harm and cruelty to animals as a result of passing the right of access provision in the Hayden Law, there is no evidence of increased incidence of either.

Truth be told, Oreo’s Law will undermine Jane Hoffman’s dictatorship over rescue groups in New York City. If Oreo’s law passes, every rescue group in New York will enjoy the privilege she now possesses, and her stranglehold on power will disappear. But that is a good thing and should be actively encouraged. Hoffman’s power in New York is an accident of history and serves no needed purpose. Throughout the nation, there are communities which have greater rates of lifesaving than New York City and have achieved No Kill without a self-serving middle man wielding arbitrary power. They have no intermediary such as Hoffman dictating which rescue groups can save animals, while taking a cut of the funding available to those groups. The Mayor’s Alliance is Jane Hoffman’s personal fiefdom which now exists to serve Jane Hoffman, and not the animals of NYC.

Finally, Allen closes her opposition to Oreo’s Law by suggesting that despite the killing, despite documented cases of shelters killing animals while rescue groups are turned away, Oreo’s Law is not even needed. She says “there is every indication that in New York[,] public shelters are already placing animals with rescuers.”

I love New York City as much as the next person. I used to live in upstate New York and took every opportunity to visit when I could. And since moving to California in 2004, I continue to visit New York City every year. But I am not deluded, like some New Yorkers, who believe that New York City is New York State; that beyond its borders is a vast emptiness that does not matter. Sure, in New York City, animal control does transfer some animals to some rescuers, if Hoffman approves. Yet, that is definitely not true throughout the state, and certainly not enough even within NYC.

I also ran an animal control shelter in the state, the first to achieve a No Kill community. I know firsthand that many New York shelters aren’t doing nearly enough to save the lives of the animals they are pledged to protect, at the same time they turn away the lifesaving assistance of rescue groups who would offer the animals they kill a lifesaving alternative. Oreo’s Law would help remedy this tragic result.

But what does Allen care? She got her dog back, who was given the second chance by a rescue group she would deny Oreo, and insists on denying to the thousands of other animals like Oreo.

The Emperor Has No Clothes

In the end, neither Sayres, nor Hoffman truly fear that the legislation will put animals in harm’s way, because such a claim is nonsensical. Rescue groups take animals out of harm’s way by saving them from certain death. What Sayres and Hoffman fear is a loss of power, and they have now have a puppet—Laura Allen—as a mouthpiece for their cause.

The grassroots of this movement—the small non-profits which do the lion’s share of life-saving and would be able to do much more if not hindered by those in positions of power—must demand the rights that are their due, and which are the animals’ saving grace.

As I write in my book Irreconcilable Differences: The Battle for the Heart & Soul of America’s Animal Shelters,

The goal of every social movement is legislation to gain and then protect the rights of its members or the focus of its efforts, and the No Kill movement must stop acting like it is the exception. The suffrage movement wasn’t just seeking discretionary permission from elections officials to vote, an ability that could be taken away. Its goal was winning the right to vote, a right guaranteed in law. The civil rights movement wasn’t just seeking the discretionary ability to sit at the front of the bus or to eat at the same lunch counters (and so much more). Its goal was winning the right to do so, a right guaranteed in law. The movement for marriage equality isn’t just seeking the discretionary opportunity to marry despite sexual orientation. Its goal is winning the right to do so, a right guaranteed in law. Because without legal rights, one’s fate is contingent on who the election official is, who the restaurant owner is, and who the mayor is. And just as quickly as permission is given, it can be taken away.

However, whenever legislation is passed empowering the grassroots, those in power lose out, including those who claim to desire the very things the legislation seeks to create. In the case of people like Sayres and Hoffman, they claim to want rescue groups to be able to save animals, but only so long as they take a cut of the funding and maintain the imperious power to decide who lives, who dies, who does the saving, and when. They know and fear the truth: That once the power shifts to the rescue groups, animals will be saved in skyrocketing numbers and the sky will not fall as a result. And we will see more clearly than ever that the emperors have no clothes. And neither Sayres nor Hoffman will allow that to happen without a fight.

Learn more at: www.YESonOreosLaw.com

More No Kill News

The Ball is in Ed Sayres’ Court

Despite the fact that the ASPCA’s opposition to Oreo’s Law has nothing to do with the merits of the bill and everything to do with ASPCA President Ed Sayres’ own unethical motivation, Assembly Member Micah Kellner, Senator Tom Duane, and a growing list of cosponsors have amended Oreo’s Law to win over any opposition.

The law has been amended to:

1. Exclude dangerous dogs;
2. Release a shelter of any liability for animals transferred to rescue groups;
3. Exclude rescue groups with charges or convictions involving neglect, abuse, or dog fighting;
4. Provide  notice to rescue groups of animals scheduled to be killed; and,
5. Require rescue groups to take custody of the animal within a reasonable period of time.

This addresses all of the ASPCA’s alleged “concerns.” If Sayres has any integrity, he would withdraw his opposition and embrace the bill because of the potential to save thousands upon thousands of animals across the state.

Indeed, any group who continues to oppose Oreo’s Law—or any group who fails to champion Oreo’s Law, as amended—does not have the best interest of animals at heart. They are taking the position that shelters should kill animals, despite a lifesaving alternative at virtually no cost to taxpayers.

Find out who supports Oreo’s Law by clicking here.

For further reading:

www.YESonOreosLaw.com

The ghost of Ed Sayres’ past come back to haunt him

Courage & cowardice in the fight for a no kill nation

Nation’s top law professors endorse Oreo’s law

Another 5-Star Review for Irreconcilable Differences

Midwest Book Review just published a review of Irreconcilable Differences calling it a “must read” and slamming the “inhumanity” of killing homeless animals.

Find out why The Bark, Animal Wise Radio, and No Kill leaders like Bonney Brown call Irreconcilable Differences “clear and rigorously reasoned,” “excellent reading,” “a real page turner,” “the perfect follow-up to Redemption,” and a “grand slam” by “the voice of America’s displaced pets and the conscience of the animal sheltering industry.”

Purchase Irreconcilable Differences by clicking here.

No Kill Conference Sold Out

Barely a month after announcing it, and almost six months in advance, the No Kill Conference has sold out, a testament to the power of compassion, the strength of the movement, and the draw of its list of excellent speakers.

The Butcher of Norfolk

Killed by PETA & thrown away in a supermarket dumpster

As we roll toward March, it is almost time when PETA publishes it annual killing statistics for the prior year. In 2008, they announced a staggering 96% rate of killing. That sparked calls for the state to reclassify PETA from a “shelter” to a “slaughterhouse.” The total body count from 2000 – 2008: 19,326. Once the 2009 figures are released, the number will skyrocket past 20,000: that’s roughly 2,000 animals a year that PETA has killed every year for the last decade; or over five animals killed by PETA every single day of the last ten years. While No Kill was coming into its own and shelters across the country were saving better than 90% of all animals on a fraction of their budget, PETA continued to move sharply in the other direction. PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk spent the decade not only attacking No Kill, but actively seeking out animals to kill (roughly 90% of them).

Appearances

Join me Sunday morning on Animal Wise Radio, Sunday evening on All Paws Pet Talk Radio, or in person at one of my Irreconcilable Differences book tour cities. Click here for more information.

Our History Through Cartoons

A history of the No Kill movement through political cartoons

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And when those pictures are political cartoons, they speak in volumes. Political cartoons endure precisely because they are razor sharp in their attention, telling us all we need to know for or against some proposition. From the earliest days of our Republic, the political cartoon has served to dramatize current events and put opposing views into stark contrast. And the No Kill movement has been no exception. Here are some cartoons which define key events in the history of the movement, and help to illuminate the fight for a No Kill nation. [Click on each picture for a larger view.]

Trivializing Compassion

Henry Bergh was the 19th Century animal advocate who launched the humane movement in North America. He gave the first speech on animal protection in the U.S., incorporated the nation’s first humane society (the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), and succeeded in getting the New York State legislature to pass the nation’s first anti-cruelty law.

After he succeeded in getting an anti-cruelty law, he put a copy in his pocket, and took to the streets that very night—and every single night thereafter for the remainder of his life—to patrol the streets of his native New York City looking for animals in need of protection. The annals of the ASPCA describe the first such encounter:

The driver of a cart laden with coal is whipping his horse. Passersby on the New York City street stop to gawk not so much at the weak, emaciated equine, but at the tall man, elegant in top hat and spats, who is explaining to the driver that it is now against the law to beat one’s animal.

Among many other achievements, he even invented the clay pigeon to put an end to cruel pigeon shoots.  If he were alive today, there is no doubt that Bergh would be the nation’s most vociferous No Kill advocate and a fierce critic of the ASPCA he founded.

Sadly, the political cartoons of Bergh’s day often mocked him. Here, two cartoons depicting Henry Bergh try to assassinate his character by claiming he cares about animals, but not people. In the cartoon above, Bergh is weeping at a bull fight but telling the poor of New York City to get off his property. In the cartoon below, Bergh is chastising Charles Darwin for insulting the crying gorilla by suggesting the gorilla is related to humans.

Of course, Bergh’s compassion was not limited to animals: Bergh also rescued abused children. In 1874, less than a decade after incorporating the ASPCA, he formed the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the first child protection organization in the nation, effectively launching the children’s rights movement in the United States.

The Death Camps

In contrast to the Pollyanna pieces done by comics such as Patrick McDonnell about shelters (Mutts), this piece actually captured the typical American animal control shelter. Animal control, supported historically by groups like the Humane Society of the United States, consider being a lost, stray or feral cat a death sentence. Animal Control officers are often empowered to round them up and kill them. And these organizations promote and embrace laws which give animal control officers even more power. In California, a proposed law in 1994 would have empowered officers to kill cats immediately upon capture on the street if they did not have proof of a rabies vaccination—which would have resulted in mass slaughter. This 1995 cartoon captured that reality.

While McDonnell’s work is guided by an obvious compassion for homeless animals and he donates proceeds from his book signings specifically to No Kill shelters, his depiction of shelter directors and staff as hard working, compassionate, lifesaving-driven animal lovers crumbles in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Approaches to Spay/Neuter

Rather than accuse people of being irresponsible, rather than rant about “pet overpopulation” and the “need” to kill, all of it of dubious value and truth, and rather than seek mandatory spay/neuter laws which empower animal control to impound and kill more animals, this piece summarized the shelter’s desire in five humorous words. Though not a political cartoon, per se, the Tompkins County ad of my tenure was as biting and dramatic as one (copy of the original from the San Francisco SPCA). Tompkins County became the first No Kill community in U.S. history on the back of strong community support, something “pet overpopulation” “mandatory spay/neuter” and “irresponsible” ranters have never, ever been able to achieve.

The Last Gasp of the Dinosaurs

In 2004, as the No Kill movement gained momentum following Tompkins County, NY’s success and with the founding of the No Kill Advocacy Center, the architects of the status quo met in Asilomar, California to take back their hegemony over the sheltering discourse. They identified the terms “No Kill” and “killing” as hurtful and divisive and demanded that they ceased being used. They argued that the decision to save lives through TNR, offsite adoptions, and other needed programs should not be forced on shelters but left to their own determination. They also argued that killing was not their fault. Despite this, they claimed they were committed to saving healthy and treatable animals, narrowly defined to exclude whole categories of animals including feral cats. Groups like HSUS pledged to enforce the “Asilomar Accords” and traveled the country telling groups they could not call themselves “No Kill” or use the term “killing” for animals killed in shelters. By the end of the decade, only two communities had embraced the Accords, however, and though it lives on for record keeping purposes among some groups, the Asilomar Accords were challenged by the U.S. No Kill Declaration, and found them essentially, “Dead on Arrival.”

This cartoon from the No Kill Advocacy Center shows the dinosaurs trying to cling to the status quo, as they are about to get wiped out of existence by a meteor which represents the No Kill movement. Pictured are some of the Asilomar Accords’ signatories: HSUS, the National Animal Control Association, Denver Dumb Friends League, and Ft. Wayne Animal Control, shelters and organizations with a long, dubious history of killing and/or fighting the No Kill movement’s lifesaving innovations.

TNR Takes the Movement by Storm

The Lumbering Giant says TNR is O.K. except when it is not O.K.

In 2006, after decades of calling Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) programs for cats “inhumane,” “abhorrent,” and “subsidized abandonment,” after asking a prosecutor to arrest and jail feral cat caretakers for violation of state cruelty laws against abandonment, and after calling mass killing of feral cats in pounds and shelters “the only practical and humane solution,” the Humane Society of the United States indicated it was updating its feral cat position to reflect the emerging consensus of the animal control community, a community with a history of mass slaughter. They had no choice.

At the end of the 1990s, only a small handful of shelters embraced TNR as an alternative to killing of feral cats. But cat lovers across the country rallied on behalf of the cats, and with communities like San Francisco using TNR to reduce the feral cat death rate by over 80%, with Tompkins County becoming the first open admission shelter to zero out deaths of feral cats through TNR, and with the advocacy of TNR on a local, regional, and national scale by groups across the country, any question of the legitimacy and efficacy of TNR was erased. TNR took the movement by storm. And HSUS was forced to follow. Their March 2006 statement said “TNR was ok” but only in very limited circumstances, essentially writing in several exceptions that swallowed the rule including:

• TNR efforts must be limited if someone says that feral cats are a threat to wildlife;
• Feral cat caretakers must respect the “limitations” of other groups in the area, including those who may not share their views about feral cats; and,
• Killing of feral cats can continue for an undefined “interim period.”

Taken to their logical conclusion, these “limitations” were so severe they effectively nullified any ostensible support for TNR in the 2006 statement. There is no feral cat colony anywhere in the United States, for example, where some wildlife is not also present. HSUS was asking feral cat advocates to make the decision “about whether to maintain a particular colony” after a determination of “the potential negative impact on local wildlife.” To make this determination, HSUS further asked feral cat caretakers to “respect” the views of all interested parties—which potentially includes animal control and Invasion Biology proponents who do not support TNR.

The unspoken converse to deciding whether to maintain a particular colony is deciding whether to eradicate it. That is the choice presented, providing a powerful tool to the enemies of TNR. Essentially, it means that feral cats can be excluded from locations whenever someone says wildlife is impacted, which could potentially happen everywhere. In fact, these are exactly the types of claims being made all over the United States, and while HSUS says it no longer favors eradication, what is the alternative to TNR, other than doing nothing?

If, as HSUS claims, cats kill wildlife, are a rabies threat and an “invasive non-native species,” and cause neighborhood strife, does this mean that TNR is acceptable so long as the cats are kept away from neighborhoods, people, birds and other wildlife? Because these conditions exist nowhere, it would appear to mean that TNR is acceptable so long as the cats are not allowed outdoors—a logical absurdity.

In the No Kill Advocacy Center’s cartoon above, the lumbering, sleeping giant, HSUS, wants to tell the feral cat community all of this, but TNR proponents have moved on with the firm and unequivocal position that feral cats have a right to live, regardless of what HSUS, Audubon Society and its acolytes, and regressive animal control shelters have to say about it. In a short period of time, HSUS was forced to abandon the statement in favor of more open acceptance of TNR. But by then, was anyone listening?

Angels of Death

The realization that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a group which advocates against killing animals for food, sport, and otherwise, nonetheless opposes No Kill, champions mass slaughter of companion animals in shelters, calls for the ban—and therefore systematic extermination—of all dogs someone says look like “Pit Bulls,” says feral cats are better dead than fed, and kills roughly 2,000 animals every year they seek out, shocks and outrages the true animal lover.

While No Kill was coming into its own over the last decade and shelters across the country were saving better than 90% of all animals on a fraction of PETA’s budget, PETA continued to move sharply in the other direction. PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk spent the decade not only attacking No Kill, but actively seeking out animals to kill (roughly 90% of them). The total body count from 2000 – 2008 (2009 figures not yet available): 19,326. Once the 2009 figures are released, the number will skyrocket past 20,000: that’s roughly 2,000 animals a year that PETA has killed every year for the last decade; or over five animals killed by PETA every single day of the last ten years.

In this No Kill Advocacy Center cartoon above, a dog dresses like a chicken in hopes of getting PETA to care about him, too. Unfortunately, the previous cartoon turned out to be wrong. PETA also kills other animals, including chickens, as well, which it does at its Norfolk, VA facility. The cartoon below turned out to be more accurate, as the chicken in the shelter fears for his life as much as the dogs and cats do.

In 2006, PETA staff was arrested for killing animals they promised to find homes for, and then discarding their bodies into local supermarket dumpsters. Although they were acquitted of animal cruelty and other charges since it is not illegal for a “certified euthanasia technician” to kill animals if connected to an organization that has registered itself as a shelter, testimony during the court case showed that PETA went to shelters and private veterinarians to get animals, telling some they would find them homes, and killed the animals, often within minutes of departing in the back of a van. One veterinarian who gave PETA a healthy mother cat and her kittens testified that the animals were never at risk for being killed in his practice; he was simply looking for homes for them. He gave them to PETA because he thought they would have no trouble finding them homes. PETA staff killed them within minutes. Their bodies were found in a dumpster a short time thereafter.

Riding on Michael Vick’s Bloodstained Coattails

Despite a series of pro-killing scandals that have marked his tenure, Wayne Pacelle, the beleaguered and uncaring CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, shocked even his supporters by embracing Michael Vick, the most notorious dog abuser of our time. Vick took pleasure in seeing dogs tear each other apart. He took pleasure in beating dogs to death. He took pleasure in hanging dogs by the neck. He took pleasure in electrocuting dogs. He took pleasure in shooting dogs. And he took pleasure in drowning dogs.

After being convicted on federal dog fighting related charges, Vick was banned from the NFL. But Vick sought to escape permanent punishment by doing the time-honored tradition of the scoundrel: hire a P.R. team to reform his image, issue a “mea culpa,” do some carefully orchestrated appearances with kids, and then get his old life back. Wayne Pacelle was eager to assist him to do that. With the help of Pacelle, Vick gets his life back, becoming a millionaire once more, while the dogs he killed are, well, still dead. Vick follows up by saying he wants dogs again: will HSUS help him with that also?

While Pacelle, through HSUS, testified that the dogs Vick abused should not be given a second chance and should all be killed, Pacelle said that their abuser should be. Vick became a spokesman for HSUS. Or was it the other way around? In the nokillblog.com’s cartoon, Pacelle rides Vick’s blood-stained coattails to his favorite destination—the front pages of the New York Times, 60 minutes, and other media.

Convenience Killing

As occurs all over the country, Tom Skeldon, the Lucas County, Ohio dog warden, killed animals, despite readily available lifesaving alternatives. Indeed, he killed dogs and puppies even when rescue groups and humane societies offered to save them. In this Toledo Blade cartoon, Skeldon is telling a dog to sit, which the dog does, demonstrating that he is a kind, friendly, and obedient dog, which should please the warden. It doesn’t. Skeldon wants the dog to sit in the electric chair, so he can be put to death. What made this cartoon so dramatic is that it resonated so strongly with the experience many rescuers have of their own dog wardens and pound directors. Skeldon may have been less polished than others, but he was hardly unique. Indeed, this comic could have been published in virtually any newspaper—Houston (TX), King County (WA), Los Angeles (CA), and hundreds of other cities—and it would have had the same meaningful impact. Thankfully, Skeldon was forced out, but others like him remain entrenched in shelters all across the country.

The Meaning of Oreo’s Law

In November of last year, the ASPCA killed an abused dog named Oreo, despite an offer by a No Kill shelter to save her life. In response, the New York State Legislature is now considering a law that would make it illegal for any shelter or pound to kill an animal if a legitimate rescue group is willing to save the animal’s life. But the ASPCA wants to kill the proposed law, the way it killed Oreo, for which the new law is named.

While the animal loving people of New York State flood the legislature with calls of support, while the most progressive voices in the companion animal movement have embraced and endorsed Oreo’s Law, and while rescuers anxiously await legislation that will empower them to save the lives of thousands of animals every year, the leader of the nation’s wealthiest SPCA stands alone in defiant opposition, thumbing his nose at them all.

This cartoon from YESonOreosLaw.com shows a shelter killing dogs and cats that rescue groups are there to save. Oreo’s Law would give them that power but Ed Sayres, the President of the ASPCA, is trampling Oreo’s Law and holding them back, which will cost animals their lives.

Regardless of whether animals and animal lovers win by passing Oreo’s Law in this session of the legislature, Ed Sayres and the hacks he recruits to oppose it (or to remain deafeningly silent) will lose. Indeed, Sayres is already paying a price. While he assured his staff that the anger over Oreo’s killing would subside in a few days, it still hasn’t three months later and the fight for Oreo’s Law is intensifying calls for his ouster. At the same time, the fight over Oreo’s Law has clearly shown rescuers and animal lovers which groups they can count on to champion the animals and which groups they can’t.

And this much is clear: if animal rescuers win, so do the animals. And if Oreo’s Law passes, animal rescuers will win big across the country. As one reformer stated, “Where New York goes, so goes the nation.” Indeed, the next phase of the quest for a No Kill nation will not center on adoption ads or social media—these will achieve widespread acceptance—the FIGHT will be in the halls of Albany, NY, Sacramento, CA, Austin, TX, and other state capitals. Because how do you achieve and sustain a No Kill nation if shelter directors keep the discretion they currently have to avoid doing what is in the best interests of animals and kill them needlessly? You can’t. Oreo’s Law is just the first wave of a national effort to shift the balance of power back to the animals—and their rescuers.

Next Page »