Articles

Recapturing My Roots

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A Parade Magazine article from the early 1990s.

In the coming year, my work to help animals will include a new focus. As I explain in my blog “Who Is Nathan Winograd?” recounting my history in the cause of animal protection, I entered the movement as a young law student at Stanford, interested in pursuing a career in animal rights law. Given my experiences at Stanford working to protect the free-living cats on campus and the troubling education it afforded me as to the dysfunctional nature of not only the animal sheltering industry but the animal protection movement, companion animals became my primary focus and has remained so throughout the past two decades.

Since graduating from law school in the 1990s, I have had the privilege of running and then consulting with some of the most successful shelters in the country. Recounting those experiences in my book, Redemption, I helped to educate others about The No Kill Equation, a model of animal sheltering which replaces killing with humane alternatives. And as founder and director of the No Kill Advocacy Center, I have, among other things, been able to codify No Kill policies and procedures at our nation’s animal shelters into law through the passage of our model legislation, the Companion Animal Protection Act and to witness the positive influence our annual No Kill Conference has had upon those of other organizations, forcing them to evolve the messages of their conferences from how to kill and defend killing, to how to save lives. With the pending mass release of the documentary based on Redemption which will be distributed to every rescue group and shelter in the country for free, I hope our influence will be even greater, pushing the envelope of lifesaving throughout the country to even greater heights. And with Welcome Home, my fifth book on companion animals, in production and with the No Kill movement making tremendous headway, I believe the time is ripe for me to recapture my roots in the cause of animal protection, to not only focus more heavily on the law and litigation, but the welfare and rights of other species of animals whom I have always cared deeply about, too.

This summer, the No Kill Advocacy Center will be expanding its efforts to protect animals through litigation. Going forth, my work will not only find me in court more than ever before, but will expand beyond cats, dogs and other companion animals to include protecting other species of animals also being systematically abused and killed as well. This is an exciting evolution for both our organization and for me, the fruits of which I hope will bear the same sort of positive impact for other animals that our efforts have historically had for companion animals.

Stay tuned:

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