In 2012, Best Friends promised a No Kill Los Angeles by 2017. It didn’t happen and the five-year plan was extended to 10-years. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And if you still do not succeed, well, just go ahead and lie about it. That is what Best Friends has done with this week’s announcement by CEO Julie Castle that the City of Los Angeles achieved No Kill in 2020 with a…
This is Peanut Butter, a healthy orphaned kitten, who was killed by the New York City pound with a rescuer minutes away. According to her would-be rescuer, Peanut Butter was of good weight, “observed to be ‘active, crawling and vocal’: Her lungs were clear, no eye or ear discharge was noted and her skin was free of parasites.” At 4:30 pm “She was told the kitty was ‘prepped and ready to go” and the rescuer…
When it comes to dogs, cats, and other animal companions, the coronavirus pandemic has brought out the best in people. Shelters have put out the call to the community for help with animals and the community has emptied out those shelters, by adopting and fostering. In New York, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, Texas, Nevada, Iowa, and more, shelters are find homes for every single animal in their facility. The placement rate is upwards of 24 times…
Yesterday, I posted an article in response to the false claim by Best Friends and Brandywine Valley SPCA that Delaware is the nation’s first No Kill state. Although killing is down over 90% from its high water mark, Best Friends and Brandywine Valley SPCA had nothing to do with it. In addition, animals are still being killed who can and should be saved; some of them historically killed “off book.” As such, it is not…
Then Delaware Gov. Jack Markell signing a modified version of the No Kill Advocacy Center’s Companion Animal Protection Act into law; a law that the Office of Animal Welfare, the state agency which oversees sheltering in the state, credited with having “improved the quality of care animals receive in shelters and has saved thousands of animals that would have otherwise been euthanized due to outdated policies and practices.” In 2010, Delaware’s brick and mortar shelters,…
Two dogs are dead this week because of the gross indifference and incompetence of the pound staff in Hillsborough County, Florida. Clyde died in what was described by a local veterinarian as a “very painful event.” Clyde ate a blanket, but for six days, pound staff did nothing while the blanket worked its way into the dog’s intestines. “It had tore his intestines apart.” Similarly, Lola dog bled to death because staff once again ignored…
The Henderson, NV, animal shelter reported that it achieved a record high placement rate in 2018. Congratulations to the good people of Henderson. That’s worth celebrating because it means more animals are going out the front door in the loving arms of adopters, rather than out the back door in garbage bags. It also reported, however, that it “qualifies as a ‘no-kill’ shelter for 2018 after it achieved a 91.5 percent save rate.” Unfortunately, to…
What Pixar’s masterpiece says about how far the No Kill movement has come, how far it still has to go, the need for shelter reform legislation, and corruption within groups like the ASPCA. Kitbull is the new short film by Pixar. The name “Kitbull” comes from a combination of kitten and pit bull for the inseparable bond that forms between a feral kitten and an abused pit bull. It is a film that explores…
Almost weekly, my Google alert is telling me of another community that has achieved No Kill because it reached a “90% live release rate.” Using that benchmark, Best Friends recently announced that we now have 4,000 of them in the U.S. But is it true? Unfortunately, it is not. First and foremost, a 10% rate of killing is not No Kill, as I explain below. But even if it was, Best Friends is relying on…
From the No Kill Advocacy Center: Los Angeles Board of Animal Services Commission Department of Animal Services Ani.Commission@lacity.org Dear Members of the Commission: The General Manager of Los Angeles Animal Services is proposing to eliminate the policy that dogs in late-term pregnancy be spayed before they are released. As she noted in a 2013 memo to the Commission, “The spaying of late-term pregnant dogs results in puppies being born by the equivalent of a…