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King
County (WA) Embraces Bold No Kill Initiative
The King County Council votes
to embrace the No Kill philosophy and mandates that its animal
control shelter save 85% of all dogs and cats within two years.
In
a historic vote for the animals, the King County (WA) Council
voted to embrace the No Kill philosophy and require King
County Animal Services to save 80% of all dogs and cats in
2008 and 85% in 2009. In so doing, it embraced the
programs and services of the No Kill Advocacy Center's
No
Kill Equation, the only model nationally that
has been successful in creating a No Kill community and
the model responsible for success in Washoe County, NV (saving
over 85% of dogs and cats this year), Charlottesville, VA
(saving 92% of dogs and cats), Tompkins County, NY (saving
over 90% of dogs and cats since 2002), and other communities.
The
Coalition
for a No Kill King County spearheaded the effort locally
after it was introduced in the Council. The No Kill Advocacy
Center worked closely with the Coalition for a No Kill King
County, the Feral
Cat Spay/Neuter Project, and King County Council Member
Julia Patterson's Office to set a target of 85% within
two years and to include the programs and services of the
No Kill Equation as the framework for the future.
As
a result, programs like Trap-Neuter-Return for feral cats,
working with rescue groups, off-site adoption events, foster
care programs, medical rehabilitation and behavior socialization
programs, and working with volunteers are now official policy
in King County.
The
effort also received broad and overwhelming support from
other shelters, rescue groups, and animal lovers from the
Seattle/King County area and nationwide.
Unfortunately,
the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the nation's
wealthiest animal protection organization, attempted to stop
this week's vote. In a formal letter and testimony to
the Council, HSUS officially asked the Council "to
abstain from voting on the proposals at this time,"
disparaging the No Kill philosophy, and arguing for more
study and analysis.
The
No Kill Advocacy Center responded to HSUS' allegations
showing that communities which embrace the No
Kill philosophy and comprehensively implement the No
Kill Equation can save in excess of 85% of animals in
less than two years.
We
also argued that:
Not
only should the council ignore HSUS and not abstain from
voting, it should signal its desire to end the killing
by unanimously voting to achieve it by 2009. King
County has the power to build a new consensus, which rejects
killing as a method for achieving results. And the animals
and citizens of King County can look forward to a time
when the killing of savable animals in shelters is viewed
as a cruel aberration of the past...
A
yes' vote (and follow-through by the animal services
agency) will have two profound effects. First, it will
save thousands of dogs and cats in King County who would
otherwise be killed. Second, it will cement the County's
place historically nationwide and encourage others to
embrace the No Kill philosophy as well: If they can
do it in King County, we can do it here!'
Thankfully,
the voices of compassion prevailed. And No Kill is now official
policy in King County. The next - and vitally important
step - is to ensure that the Council's mandate
is carried out by the King County Animal Welfare Advisory
Committee and King County Animal Services.
*
* * *
To
read the No Kill Advocacy Center's letter to the King
County Council in response to HSUS, click
here.
To
learn more about creating No Kill in your own hometown,
contact us at the No Kill Advocacy Center by clicking
here.
To
learn more about the effort in King County, contact the
Coalition for a No Kill King County by clicking
here.
If
you are from the King County (Seattle) area and want to
help feral cats--or if you are from another County or State
and want to learn more about saving feral cats--contact
the Feral Cat Spay/Neuter Project by clicking
here.
The
Power to Change
Remember:
The power to change the status quo is in your hands.
No Kill will be achieved when citizens demand that their shelters
fully and rigorously implement the programs and services of
the No Kill Equation
.
If
you want to make a difference, do the following:
All
of these documents are available on the No Kill Advocacy
Centers website in the Resource Library section: www.nokilladvocacycenter.org
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This article was written by Nathan
J. Winograd, the Director of the No Kill Advocacy
Center. Mr. Winograd has been instrumental in bringing
thriving no kill programs to communities from California
to New York.
We agree with him that we must not let any 'old
guard' shelter director tell us it cannot be done.
Never take no for an answer.
This editorial is a reminder to all of us to look
critically and carefully at the positions of all
shelters and the groups attached to them and decide
whether they are part of the problem or part of
the solution.
Directors who throw up their hands and say they
can't possibily run a no kill program are dinosaurs.
Their time has passed and it is a new day in the
animal community. It is up to us to usher in this
new day for the animals.
I recommend that you subscribe to Mr. Winograd's
enewsletter for a clear, compassionate and informed
discussion of no kill issues.
His group is No Kill Solutions
www.nokillsolutions.org
Salise Shuttlesworth JD
Executive Director
Friends For Life
nokill1@aol.com
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The first step
to No Kill is a hard working, compassionate animal
control or shelter director not content to regurgitate
tired clichés or hide behind the myth of “too many
animals, not enough homes.”
Unfortunately, this one is also oftentimes
the hardest one to demand and find. But find him
or her we must. Because the public wants No Kill,
the animals deserve it and if it requires regime
change to get it, we must fight for that too.
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"There are
a thousand hacking at the branches
of evil to one who is striking at the
root."
--Henry David Thoreau
It is has been twelve
years since San Francisco became the first city to end the killing
of healthy dogs and cats. The programs and services
which made this possible are the same programs and
services that allowed Tompkins County (NY) to achieve
No Kill in 2002. Following the same model, Charlottesville,
VA saved 87% of dogs and 67% of cats last year and
pledged to do better this year—to date, over 90%
of dogs are finding homes; while the City of Philadelphia
went from killing nearly 9 out of 10 dogs and cats
to a fraction of that.
These communities
achieved or are achieving success because of rigorous
implementation of the key programs and services
outlined in the U.S. No Kill Declaration
(www.nokilldeclaration.org). These programs, collectively
called the No Kill equation, include: a TNR program
for feral cats, high volume low-cost spay/neuter,
rescue group access to shelter animals, a foster
care program, volunteers, comprehensive adoption
programs including offsite adoption venues, pet
retention programs, medical and behavior rehabilitation,
good customer service, and public relations/community
involvement.
To the extent
a shelter isn’t implementing this model, animals
are needlessly being killed. And because No Kill
advocates must represent the interests of the animals,
they must first demand these programs, and then
fight for them. But throughout the United
States right now,
there is a major roadblock to this occurring. The
roadblock is the old guard of shelter directors
who will not implement these No Kill solutions because
they are content with the status quo. They have
accepted killing even in the face of lifesaving
alternatives. No amount of excuses can change the
simple fact that the biggest barrier to No Kill
success in any given community is often a single
person. Who runs animal control or the large private
shelter in a community can make—or break—No Kill
success. So the first order of business is regime
change.
Why is killing
still occurring at rates in excess of 50%, 60%,
70% or higher in almost every single community in
the United States?
Is it because there are too many animals? Is it
because there are not enough homes? Is it because
of irresponsible people? Is it because we don't
have enough mandatory laws like cat licensing? Is
it because the animals aren't adoptable? We have
been conditioned to believe those are the reasons.
But most are
being killed for one reason—failure. A failure to
learn from the past. A failure to implement the
programs and services that save lives. A failure
of caring. The buck stops with the shelter's director.
Many shelters
are not sterilizing animals before adoption or providing
the public with affordable alternatives. Some do
not have a foster care program, nor do they work
with or socialize dogs with behavior problems. Still
others do not take animals offsite for adoption,
have not developed partnerships with rescue groups,
limit volunteerism, and still retain adoption hours
that make it difficult for working people or families
to visit the shelter, the very people they should
be courting to adopt the animals in their care.
Or they do not implement Trap-Neuter-Return programs
for feral cats.
These shelters
continue to ignore their own culpability in the
level of killing, while professing to lament the
continued killing as entirely the fault of the public’s
failure to spay/neuter or to make lifetime commitments
to their animals. When you deny any responsibility
for the killing, the impetus to change your own
behavior which might impact that killing disappears.
In Missouri, a shelter run under
the auspices of the county health department is
filthy and teeming with cockroaches, flies and fecal
matter. These same conditions in someone's home
would cause the health department to issue citations
but there is apparently no contradiction when it
is their own facility. In Georgia, a rural
shelter overseen by the chief law enforcement official
in the county turns a blind eye to cruelty and neglect
that results in animals unnecessary dying in the
shelter. In California, a humane officer
unnecessarily beats a dog repeatedly with a baton
until there is blood all over the cage. The officer
remains employed. And despite unnecessary high rates
of shelter killing, leadership is satisfied
with the job their agency is doing in animal control.
In an New
York shelter, over eight
out of ten cat cages are kept empty during the busy
summer season to reduce staff workload, while the
vast majority of cats are killed—some ostensibly
“for space.” In Maryland, a dog sits in a
kennel for days with a broken leg with no care or
treatment of any kind. While in a Florida shelter, a mother
dog unable to nurse due to poor nutrition watches
her puppies die of starvation and dehydration, while
shelter staff walk by oblivious to their condition.
But the uncaring
need not be so blatant. A shelter may be clean,
it may have competent staff, and it may have good
customer service. But if the shelter director
does not implement a foster care program, he or
she is needlessly killing animals and has tacitly
accepted that it is more convenient to do so. If
a shelter director does not have a TNR program,
he or she has decreed that feral cats can and should
be killed. If a shelter director does not take animals
offsite for adoption, he or she is accepting a body
count associated with failure to do so.
And that takes
us to perhaps the most important element of the
programs and services that make up the No Kill Equation
(See No Kill Sheltering, Vol. I Issue 4, July/August
2006). The first step to success is often the hardest
one of all—a hard working, compassionate animal
control or shelter director not content to regurgitate
tired clichés or hide behind the myth of “too many
animals, not enough homes.” Unfortunately, this
one is also oftentimes the hardest one to demand
and find. But find him or her we must. Because the
public wants No Kill, the animals deserve it and
if it requires regime change to get it, then we
must fight for that too.
The Dark Side
of Collaboration
So why are activists
putting aside blame and focusing instead on collaboration
with these very directors? Unfortunately, they cling
to the erroneous view that collaboration is
the key to No Kill success. But it is not. A community
which implements each and every program and service
of the No Kill Equation comprehensively will
succeed. Those who focus on collaboration instead
will fail so long as the director(s) of the community’s
major shelters are not committed to the No Kill
paradigm.
While the job
is certainly made easier if all parties are willing
to work together, collaboration only works when
animal control or private shelters are dedicated
to the No Kill endeavor. If they are not, a focus
on collaboration can actually delay lifesaving efforts
or even doom them altogether. In such cases, the
effort at coalition building detracts from the real
impediment to saving lives: reforming the animal
shelter or regime change within those agencies that
continue to cling to outdated models of sheltering.
In fact, there
is not a single community in the United States
where collaboration has actually led to No Kill
success. If collaboration is so important, why hasn't
it created No Kill? It has utterly failed and will
continue to fail for the simple reason that while
the large national organizations like the Humane
Society of the United States continue to push the
idea that all humane societies and animal control
agencies are interested in the same goals, the facts
frequently tell a different story—one of intransigent,
reactionary policies that cause animals to needlessly
die even in the face of lifesaving alternatives
as demonstrated by No Kill success in progressive
communities nationwide. Programs and services such
as Trap-Neuter-Return for feral cats, foster care
for sick, injured, unweaned or traumatized animals,
and working with rescue groups.
We have known
for over a decade that if No Kill is going to be
achieved, shelters must put in place these key programs
that have proved successful at saving lives. Why
are some shelters still killing rather than sterilizing
feral cats? Why do shelters still refuse to work
with rescue groups? Why do they continue to keep
volunteers out? This is the status quo in many communities
throughout the United States and it begs the question
of why animal activists—despite overwhelming evidence
to the contrary—continue to believe that collaboration
is the key to No Kill Success?
The Future
of No Kill
Whether we realize
it or not, whether we appreciate it or not, whether
we believe it or not, as history marches toward
greater compassion for our four legged companions,
No Kill’s conquest of the status quo is inevitable.
But we are wasting precious time and energy trying
to rehabilitate animal control directors who do
not want to change. And, consequently, an opportunity
will be lost to speed that process along. The price
to be paid for our refusal to seize this opportunity
will be the lives of millions of dogs and cats needlessly
killed in shelters next year. And the year after
that. And the year after that.
We have a choice.
We can fully, completely and without reservation
embrace No Kill as our future. Or we can continue
to legitimize the two-prong strategy of failure:
adopt a few and kill the rest. It is a choice which
history has thrown upon us. We are the generation
that questioned the killing. We are the generation
that has discovered how to stop it. Will we be the
generation that does? Only if we are willing to
demand leadership changes in our local shelters
when they have failed to get the job done. We must
hold shelter directors accountable for failures
that are theirs, and no one else’s.
The most important
question we can ask ourselves as animal lovers who
want to end the killing in our communities is this:
Is the animal control shelter and/or large private
humane society in my community rigorously implementing
each and every program of the No Kill equation?
If the answer
is “No”—as it is in all but a small handful of communities
nationwide—the next step becomes increasingly apparent.
Because there is simply no excuse for continued
delay. Delay means unnecessary killing.
And no amount of collaboration with directors who
have not felt the internal compulsion to implement
these programs on their own accord will change that
fact. It is time to replace them with compassionate
ones who will. It is time for widespread regime
change in shelters across the country.
The future of
No Kill depends on it.
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Companion Animal Protection
Act
The No Kill Advocacy Center
is proud to announce one of the most important pieces of shelter
legislation in decades: The
Companion Animal Protection Act of 2007. The legislation
is part of our national strategy to end the unnecessary killing
of millions of animals in U.S. shelters annually. |

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From the Desk of:
Nathan J. Winograd
Executive Director
August
14, 2007
Dear Friends:
A story in USA
Today this week portrayed No Kill shelters in a negative
light. The article quoted the Humane Society of the United States,
the ASPCA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and
other groups who legitimize shelter killing as saying that No
Kill was akin to warehousing animals and that No Kill groups
were derelict because they refused to kill animals. In an astonishing
statement, the head of the ASPCA, Ed Sayres, went so far as
to say "there is no room for No Kill as morally superior."
It is deeply lamentable that agencies founded to care for animals
in need would claim that killing is on equal footing to saving
lives. But it is not surprising. While taking the lion's
share of funding for companion animals, these groups do very
little to save the lives of animals in U.S. shelters, while
continuing to champion failed models and promoting the Orwellian
logic that "killing is kindness."
At open admission shelters in Tompkins County (NY), Charlottesville
(VA), at the Nevada Humane Society in Washoe County (NV), shelters
with a history of dirty facilities and an over-reliance on killing
became transformed virtually overnight when they replaced their
long-term directors with animal lovers dedicated to lifesaving.
Where there was little more than killing, these communities
are now saving over 90% of all the animals, reserving killing
to the hopelessly ill or injured, and truly vicious dogs. As
one such agency tells it:
"Ever creative and resourceful, we find ways to tap
the pet needs of a compassionate community and match all of
our animals with the right adopters in due course. And while
pets reside in [our shelter], they live in an environment as
close to residential living as possible, not in cages. They
enjoy a great measure of socializing, exercise, premium …
foods, and the best medical care available. And thanks to our
award-winning team of volunteer foster families, shelter capacity
can be stretched by sending our animals to temporary homes until
it’s their turn to find their forever home."
As the incredible and often immediate lifesaving results reaped
by shelter directors who have embraced the No Kill philosophy
and its programs and services over the last decade have demonstrated,
we know how to end the killing of homeless animals. The same
programs and services have resulted in success in every community
in which they have been implemented comprehensively and with
integrity. Unfortunately, few communities have done so, and
most lack the political will to implement them. This is because
most animal control directors are content not to and groups
like HSUS and the ASPCA continue to provide them political cover.
It should also be noted that HSUS has never run an animal shelter
and does not do so today. Nor are we aware that their Director
of Animal Sheltering has ever run an animal shelter and certainly
not one that has achieved No Kill success. It is time that the
humane community and city governments cease relying on the advice
of agencies and individuals who has never achieved lifesaving
success. In fact, it is irresponsible for individuals associated
with groups like HSUS to be offering themselves as No Kill experts,
in light of the evidence that they are hostile to No Kill, have
at best only a superficial understanding of it, have never had
success at saving lives in shelters or have never run a shelter,
and are ignorant of the dynamic and exciting changes occuring
in the field of animal sheltering as a result of the No Kill
movement and the models which have proven successful in those
communities which have implemented them.
So why do groups like HSUS continue to ignore
this and continually mislead the public by framing the issue
in a negative light? Historian John Barry writes that "[i]nstitutions
reflect the cumulative personalities of those within them, especially
their leadership. They tend, unfortunately, to mirror less admirable
human traits, developing and protecting self-interest and even
ambition. They try to [create] order [not by learning from others
or the past, but]… by closing off and isolating themselves
from that which does not fit. They become bureaucratic."
One of the fundamental downsides of bureaucracies
is their focus on self-preservation at the expense of their
mission. And in the case of animal shelters and the national
allies who supported them, this bureaucracy leads to the unnecessary
killing of animals.
As a result, regressive shelters and
their national allies have long painted No Kill in an unfair
and untrue light. Roger Caras, the late-President of the American
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals called No Kill
a "hoax." The National Animal Control Association
published articles indicating that No Kill was a "delusion"
and perhaps even "cruel." And the Humane Society of
the United States has likened them to a "glorified collector"
at worst, and as leading to animal abandonment at best. This
type of cynicism has in design only one purpose: to defend those
who are doing a poor job at saving lives from public criticism
and public accountability by painting a picture of the alternative
as even darker. The picture these naysayers have painted of
No Kill is one where dogs and cats live out their lives in filthy,
cramped quarters prone to disease and mental deterioration.
It is a point of view that has been spread with such venom and
rigor that some animal lovers have started to believe it. No
Kill shelters, a rescuer writes, "are nothing more than
collection stations where animals are condemned to live (if
you can call it that) the rest of their lives spending the hot
summers in sweltering heat and humidity and most of the rest
of the year in rain, mud, muck and cold. ... I have come to
realize that there are worse things than death, and that No
Kill has only become an excuse for hoarding!"
Animal hoarding, however, has nothing to do with the No Kill
movement. The No Kill movement seeks to end unnecessary shelter
killing. Animal hoarding, by contrast, is not about the animals.
It is a mental illness and a crime perpetrated by individuals.
And it should be treated and punished as such. That some hoarders
might call themselves "No Kill shelters" is irrelevant.
If No Kill did not exist, they would just call themselves "caring
pet owners." Would we condemn pet owning because of that?
Of course not. Indeed, newspapers and news stations periodically
report stories of child abuse perpetrated by foster families.
Does that mean we should condemn foster care for children? Should
we call for the elimination of orphanages and demand that killing
of homeless children be the norm? Why then do we allow groups
to paint a distorted picture of No Kill shelters? And, more
importantly, why do we believe and internalize these pernicious
representations?
If anything, true hoarders thrive in high kill shelter communities
because they can rationalize to their friends and family the
accumulation of too many animals. They have no choice but to
keep these animals, they say, because their local shelter will
only kill them. With shelters committed to No Kill solutions,
there would be no excuses.
But instead of No Kill shelters and No Kill communities, we
have the opposite -- shelters that are firmly grounded in killing,
have no foster care programs, won't let volunteers in the
shelter, are opposed to non-lethal feral cat programs like Trap-Neuter-Return,
limit the number of pets a family can have, won't work with
rescue groups, and don't proactively address the issues
of homelessness, all protected by misinformation from their
national shelter allies. This appears to be what these
shelters, the national groups who legitimize them, and people
who have internalized the "No Kill equals hoarding"
view seem to be advocating for. They are trumpeting the cause
of failure and the continued but wholly unnecessary killing
of millions of animals every year in U.S. shelters.
So when so-called "animal advocates"
imply that it is acceptable to kill animals because the alternative
is a shelter that is overcrowded, where no one gets vaccinated,
where filth is the norm, and therefore we should kill animals
because otherwise they do not enjoy quality of life, we become
our own worst enemies.
There is a false assumption at work here, the fault of which
lies with the traditional "catch and kill" crowd.
The rise of the No Kill movement has led to severe defensiveness
and outright maliciousness on the part of the architects of
the status quo. Groups like the Humane Society of the United
States, the ASPCA, and many local animal control agencies, have
painted a distorted picture of No Kill to deflect blame for
the killing.
In an article entitled "I Used to Work at a 'No-Kill'
Shelter," a program coordinator for HSUS writes that she
left a No Kill shelter because she "wanted to be a shelter
worker again, not a glorified collector." Another HSUS
staff member stated last year that "in order to be No Kill,
you have to adopt Pit Bulls to dog fighters." Yet another
stated that feral cat caretakers were "closet hoarders."
True animal lovers need to stop listening, and more importantly,
internalizing these viewpoints. The views of HSUS on this issue
should be rejected. We must accept the reality that opponents
of No Kill who mislead and obfuscate, like HSUS and other reactionary
agencies are not part of our movement no
matter how hard apologists for killing try to pretend otherwise.
In fact,
No Kill is the opposite of hoarding, it is the opposite of filth,
and it is the opposite of lack of veterinary care. In 1998,
No Kill advocates in California pushed a major animal shelter
reform package through the State Legislature. One aspect of
the reform was the requirement that shelters had to provide
care to impounded animals (socialization, nutrition and veterinary
care.) It also required shelters to assess cats to differentiate
between feral cats and shy or frightened cats. It required shelters
to offer animals for adoption. It required them to provide lost
and found information to the public. And more.
The law was uniformly supported by No Kill shelters and rescue
groups around the state. It was, however, opposed by many of
the large national organizations and by virtually every major
animal control shelter in the state with a few notable and progressive
exceptions. This is what happens when you value animals so little
that killing them for expediency becomes preferable to putting
in place a foster care program, a medical and behavior rehabilitation
program, to opening the shelter up to the scrutiny of the public
and to their support through a volunteer program, by sterilizing
rather than killing feral cats, and by taking animals the to
offsite adoption locations to better help find them homes.
In fact, there are a lot of traditional shelters that are filthy.
Their logic: Why clean so much? Why spend the money on vaccinations?
Why provide veterinary care? Why socialize the animals? Why
do all of these things -- which require enormous compassion
and dedication -- when you are just going to kill the animals
anyway? There are also many that are very clean. In the latter
case, where animals are well cared for, vaccinated, provided
routine veterinary care, and are socialized -- for the five
days before they are injected with poison from a bottle marked
"Fatal-plus" and their bodies thrown in an incinerator.
So to imply that No Kill by definition means filth and hoarding
is a cynicism that has in design only one purpose: to defend
those who are doing a poor job at saving lives from public criticism
and public accountability by painting a picture of the alternative
as even darker. The philosophical underpinning of the No Kill
movement is to put actions behind the words of every shelter's
mission statement: "All life is precious." No Kill
is about valuing animals. And valuing animals not only means
saving their lives, it means good quality care.
Saving lives requires a shelter to keep animals healthy and
happy, make the shelter more inviting for the public, and allow
animals to move through the system as quickly as possible.
Remember, No Kill doesn't mean announcing
a policy change and then getting bogged down with animals because
you do not have programs to keep animals moving through the
system and into loving homes. No Kill means comprehensive implementation
of the No
Kill Equation which includes adoption, foster care, transfer
to rescue groups, pet retention programs, spay/neuter, and helping
people overcome medical, behavior and environmental conditions
which may cause people to relinquish their animals. Doing so
eliminates the problem of "overcrowding," unreasonably
feared by sincere animal lovers and unfairly painted by cynical
proponents of the status quo.
We need to send a message to people like Ed Sayres of the ASPCA,
Kim Intino of HSUS and all the other dinosaurs quoted in the
misleading article: No Kill is morally superior to killing.
To claim otherwise, is to abandon the very principles of compassion,
caring and kindness that are the underpinnings of this movement's
founding. But take heart, the days when killing was considered
kindness are coming to an end. And the dinosaurs of this movement
will soon be swept aside.
For the Animals,
Nathan
J. Winograd
P.S. Take a tour of U.S. shelters and see for yourself. Is
this really what we should be championing? Click
here.
www.nokilladvocacycenter.org
Legislating the "Humane" Back into
"Humane Society"
This
year, nearly five million dogs and cats, and hundreds of thousands
of other animals, will be killed in U.S. animal shelters. For
well over a decade, we have known how to bring this killing
to an end. The programs and services, which we collectively
call the No
Kill Equation, include:
- shelter
accountability
- affordable
spay/neuter
- rescue
group access to shelter animals
- comprehensive
adoption programs including evening and weekend hours and
offsite venues
- a
feral cat neuter and release program
- medical
and behavioral rehabilitation
- public
relations and marketing
- use
of volunteers including foster families
- socialization
program, and,
- a
compassionate, hard working shelter director who is not content
to hide behind the myth of "too many animals, not enough
homes"
Nonetheless,
too many shelters are not voluntarily implementing these programs.
As a result, animals are being needlessly killed. In response,
the No Kill Advocacy Center has developed model legislation
to help animal advocates force an end to the killing in their
own communities: The
Companion Animal Protection Act of 2007.
This
law:
- mandates
the programs and services which have proven so successful
at shelters which have implemented them
- follows
the only model that has actually created a No Kill community
- focuses
its effort on the very shelters that are doing the killing
As
a result, it provides a framework for success unavailable from
traditional
legislative models such as punitive legislation aimed at the
public or through counterproductive
national efforts that legitimize the killing.
Companion
Animal Protection Act highlights:
- establishes
the shelter's primary role as saving the lives of animals
- declares
that saving lives and protecting public safety are compatible
- establishes
a definition of No Kill that includes all savable animals
including feral cats
- requires
shelters to spay/neuter before adoption
- protects
feral cats and their caregivers
- makes
it illegal for a shelter to kill an animal if a rescue group
or No Kill shelter is willing to save that animal
- requires
shelters to provide good quality care to animals
- requires
shelters to have fully functioning adoption programs including
offsite adoptions and use of the Internet to promote animals
- requires
shelters to be proactive in reuniting lost pets with their
families
- prohibits
shelters from killing animals based on arbitrary criteria
such as breed bans or when alternatives exist
- requires
animal control to allow volunteers to help with fostering,
socializing, and assisting with adoptions
- bans
the use of gas chambers to kill animals
- prohibits
pound seizure where animals are sold to laboratories
- requires
shelters to be truthful about how many animals they kill and
adopt
- requires
shelters to notify people surrendering animals about the likelihood
their animal will be killed
- requires
revenues from dog licenses to be used solely for spay/neuter
and medical care for animals in the community
- provides
free spay/neuter for all feral cats and for the pets of qualified
low-income households
- repeals
laws that unnecessary kill animals such as pet limit laws
and laws that prohibit the feeding of stray animals
- allows
residents to sue the shelter and compel compliance if shelters
fail to do so
To
download or print a copy of the law, click
here.
The
Companion Animal Protection Act mandates the provision of low-cost
spay/neuter and medical care. Because many shelters have fees
which are not "low cost" despite the claim, we also
recommended a fee schedule for services at public sheltering
agencies. For a copy of the recommended fee schedule,
click here.
To
read why mandatory spay/neuter and licensing laws do not work,
click
here.
To
start the process of reforming animal control and private shelters
in your community, click
here.
|
Please
note: No law can anticipate every contingency and the Companion Animal
Protection Act is no exception. It is not intended to be complete or eliminate
the need for other animal protection laws. Nor is it intended to reduce
stronger protections that animals may have in a particular jurisdiction.
The legislation can and should be modified in these circumstances. However,
if animal advocates are aware of any unintended consequences, we encourage
you to share your comments with us so that we may strengthen it. As such,
it is considered a work in progress.
The
No Kill Advocacy Center would like to thank the following for their extensive
review, comments, and assistance in drafting the legislation: Claire Loebs
Davis Esq. (Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati), Kristen Stilt, J.D.,
Ph.D. (University of Washington School of Law), Rebecca Guinn Esq. (LifeLine
Animal Project), Taimie Bryant, J.D., Ph.D. (UCLA School of Law), and
Susan Cosby (Philadelphia Animal Care & Control Association).
The
No Kill Advocacy Center would like to thank the following for their review
of all or parts of the legislation: Guy Krogh Esq. (Thaler &
Thaler), Wendy Anderson Esq. (Alley Cat Allies), Ken Ayers Esq., Joan
Miller (Cat Fanciers Association), Karen Johnson (Johnson Pet Products),
Dr. Diana Lucree DVM (Nevada Humane Society), Michael Baus (San Francisco
SPCA, retired), and Denise Stevens (Nevada Humane Society). Review and
comment does not necessarily imply endorsement of all aspects of the law.
*
Q&A about the Companion Animal Protection
Act.
We asked Nathan J. Winograd, the Director
of the No Kill Advocacy Center and a lawyer who has helped write state
and federal legislation, about his goals for the Companion Animal Protection
Act.

Q: What makes the Companion Animal Protection
Act different from most animal control laws?
A: Two things. The first is what the
law does not do. The law is not another punitive mandate that punishes the
public by threatening to impound and kill animals if they do not act the
way the shelter wants them to act. If one is truly focused on lifesaving,
it makes no sense to support a law that subjects animals to being impounded
at a kill shelter because they are now in violation of some new law or ordinance.
Since shelters kill the bulk of their occupants, animal advocates should
not support laws that empower them to impound and kill even more. The second
thing that makes this law different from most animal control laws is what
the law does do. To achieve No Kill, a community needs full and rigorous
implementation of the programs and services we call the No Kill Equation.
These include, for example, shelter accountability, affordable spay/neuter,
rescue group access to shelter animals, comprehensive adoption programs,
including evening and weekend hours and offsite venues, a feral cat TNR
program, medical and behavior rehabilitation, and utilizing volunteers.
Since these programs are key to ending needless killing and most shelters
are not voluntarily implementing them, the law mandates that they do. Unlike
most laws which punish the public for shelter failures to do what is necessary
to stem the tide of killing, the law is aimed at those very shelters. Since
these are the very agencies doing the killing, it can do something about
it. Philosophically, however, what makes it unique is that it gives the
public important legal rights to remedy the situation when shelters kill
in the face of alternatives, something shelters do too often, and rights
the animal loving public currently does not have.
Q: You are constantly focusing on improving
shelters, is the killing really the fault of shelters?
A: Yes, while people often surrender
animals to shelters, it is the shelters that kill them, and one does not
necessarily follow or excuse the other. In fact, public irresponsibility
is one reason why shelters exist. But to simply say that they have no choice
but to kill is incorrect. Other social service agencies deal with public
irresponsibility, but they do not use that as an excuse to kill. Can you
imagine what would happen if Child Protective Services, which takes in abuse
and neglected children, tried to solve their challenges with killing? The
humane community needs to move past the notion that animals are dying in
shelters because the public is irresponsible, because there are too many
animals for the too few homes that are available, or because the community
lacks tougher laws aimed at the public. Animals are dying in shelters because
shelters are either mired in defeatism and the ineffective policies of the
past, or the shelters are simply inefficient, ineffective and indifferent.
In short, animals in shelters are dying because people in shelters are killing
them. When that is addressed, a community will be well on its way to No
Kill. And if shelters won’t change willingly, they should be forced
to. The Companion Animal Protection Act is one more tool in the animal advocate’s
arsenal to do that.

P.O. Box 74926 San Clemente
CA 92673
www.nokilladvocacycenter.org
This listserve is self administered. To unsubscribe
or change your e-mail address, do not reply to this e-mail as it will
not be retrieved. Follow the link at the bottom. For all other inquiries,
visit the Contact Us page of our website.
This is another article written
by Nathan Winograd of No Kill Solutions. He challenges all
of us to rethink what we expect from animal shelters. We do not
have to be content with the killing. We can change it. The first
step is knowing the truth. The second is telling it. Please join
us.
Salise Shuttlesworth JD
A
visual tour of U.S. Animal Shelters
We are a
nation of animal lovers. But the shelters we expect to provide
dogs and cats a second chance are instead killing five million of
them. And for far too long, we have been told that the killing is
exclusively the public's fault. That shelters--through no fault of
their own--are merely performing the public's dirty work--with
skill, compassion, and dedication. Nothing could be further from
the truth. |
| 
Shelters
kill every day in the U.S. despite empty cages. Empty cages mean
less cleaning, less work, less effort or shelter staff. Empty cages
can be found in many shelters throughout the country. Here, a
shelter keeps most of the cat cages empty during the height of the
busy summer season despite falsely claiming it has no choice but to
kill cats “for space.”
Staff
cut corners by cleaning dog kennels with high pressure
hoses and caustic chemicals while leaving the dogs in
the run, instead of removing them as they should. The
dogs either become sick or become fearful of people
and then are killed as "unadoptable." Here, dogs are
wet and shivering after being sprayed with water and
chemicals.

They call it "humane euthanasia"
but shelter killing is often anything but humane. Even
the methods used are troublesome. Some shelters place
dogs and cats in gas chambers like the one here. Gas
systems take time to kill--during which animals experience
distress and anxiety, and can struggle to survive. They
can result in animals surviving the gassing, only to
suffer more. And they take longer to kill if animals
are young, old,or have respiratory infections, which
can be common in shelters. They are designed for the
ease of shelter workers, not care and compassion for
the animals and should never be used.
The preferred method of
killing in the U.S. is an overdose of barbiturates.
Although better than gas systems
by far, lethal injection is not always painless either,
as anyone who has witnessed the killing of animals in
shelters can attest. With some animals, there is fear,
disorientation, nausea and many times even a struggle.
A dog who is skittish, for example, is made even more
fearful by the smells and surroundings of the animal
shelter. He doesn't understand why he is there and away
from the only family he has ever loved. To kill this
dog, he may have to be "catch-poled" a devise that wraps a
hard-wire noose around the dog's neck. He struggles
to free himself from the grip, only to result in more
fear and pain when he realizes he cannot. The dog often
urinates and defecates on himself, unsure of what is
occurring. Often the head is held hard to the ground
or against the wall so that another staff member can
enter the kennel and inject him with a sedative. While
the catch-pole is left around the neck, the dog struggles
to maintain his balance, he tries to stand, but his
legs give way. He is frightened by the people around
him. He does not understand what is happening. He goes
limp and then unconscious. That is when staff administers
the fatal dose.

We are a
nation of cat lovers. The cat is the most popular pet in America,
with about 90 million of them sharing our homes. The vast majority
will be killed, many without ever being offered for adoption.Here, a
filthy litter box--one hour after the cage was supposedly "cleaned."
In the center, a cat declared "aggressive" and scheduled
for destruction as "unadoptable" by untrained shelter staff. The
same cat cuddling up to
someone.
Whose
fault is it
anyway?
To this
day, animal shelters continue to ignore their own culpability in the
killing, while professing to lament it as entirely the fault of
the public's failure to spay/neuter or to make lifetime commitments
to their animals. Instead of embracing the No Kill philosophy
and implementing the programs and services that have been proven to
save lives--what we collectively call the
No Kill equation--many shelters are still not sterilizing
animals before doption or providing the public with affordable
alternatives. Some do not have foster care programs and do not
socialize and/or rehabilitate dogs with behavior issues. Still
others do not take animals offsite for doption, have not developed
partnerships with rescue groups, limit volunteerism, are not
practicing trap-neuter-release for feral cats, and still retain
adoption hours that make it difficult for working people or amilies
to visit the shelter. The failure to implement these programs is
mostly the result of one fact: they believe a certain level of
killing is acceptable. Indeed, some would go as far as to deny they
are even killing.
In March
of 2006, at the largest national animal sheltering conference in the
United States, a featured speaker and expert on “euthanasia” flatly
denied that shelters were even killing
animals:
"We are
not killing [animals in shelters]. We are taking their
life, we are ending their life, we are giving them a good
death... but we are not killing."
When you sugarcoat the words, you do not make the act
more palatable.
The
power to change the status quo is in your
hands.
We have a
choice. We can fully, completely and without reservation embrace No
Kill as our future. Or we can continue to legitimize the two-prong
strategy of failure: adopt a few and kill the rest. It is a choice
which history has thrown upon us. And a challenge that the No
Kill Advocacy Center is ready to take
on. |
|
This is
an update on the animal topics covered on her 12/04/06 show from
Janice Blue, host of Go Vegan Texas! on KPFT 90.1 at 10 am Mondays.
We
thank her for her loving support of the animals of all kinds and her
support of Friends For Life
specifically. She is one of our foster parents and opens her home and
heart to many wayward souls journeying from local kill shelters to
safe rescues then on to their forever homes. We appreciate Janice's
tireless work on behalf of the animals.
We
encourage everyone to give a listen to Go Vegan Texas even if you
are not a vegan. The issues of compassion concern us all and the
topics covered are very broad. Go
Vegan is about an awful lot more than tofu !
Salise
Shuttlesworth JD
Executive
Director
Friends
For Life
Adopt
a Friend – KPFT’s daily animal show hosted by Anne Kilgore,
now airs at a new time: 4:58pm to introduce the community to
shelter animals: cats, dogs and horses in need of forever homes. (See
below for more details)
Alternative Gift Giving...Stop shopping the malls and supporting
sweat shop businesses...Support local artists, buy books from local
bookstores and small publishing houses, order a copy of Maria Daines,
UK singer-songwriter’s newly released CD “Music United for Animals”
(see below). Please suggest other ideas and we will add them to the
list and announce them on our December shows. Write: info@govegantexas.org
Shop Compassion This
Holiday – Gift your loved one with a donation to animal sanctuaries
and rescue groups that work year-round to help the animals in need,
like today’s featured group: Road Home Animal Rescue in
Crossville, TN and local rescues like: Friends of BARC,
Rescue Bank, Friends
for Life, Scout’s Honor, Saint Francis Wolf Sanctuary,
Spirit Acres Farm Equine Rescue & Sanctuary , Habitat for Horses,
to name just a few of the worthy causes...Many offer an “adopt-an-animal”
program.

“When
You Flee Domestic Violence, Guess Who Stays Behind?
We
Will House Your Pet While You are in a Shelter”
---
poster for Road Home Animal Rescue
serving
all of Tennessee

Road
Home Animal Rescue now! Needs Rescue
Tennessee’s
only rescue for animal victims of domestic violence in danger
of closing its doors
a
global effort has been launched to save this little Appalachia shelter
with
our guest
Houston-born
Howard
(Zeke) Loftin
Founder/Executive
Director, Road Home Animal Rescue
shares
his story “I saved Maximus and He Saved Me Right Back”
about an old 130lb
black lab brought to the shelter by a couple deployed to Iraq
&
we
open with other
Animal Stories with happy endings (or rather) beginnings
Drew
Dearwater
Fifth
Grader, Boy Scout and Animal Lover
talks about a kitten who swam across the cold Brazos River last weekend...and
warmed his heart
“
A Cat Named River”
and
Lydia
Caldwell
BARC
volunteer
takes home a condemned to die HW+ BARC dog to spend her
last days with a loving family
and finds one, two, three,
four, five, SIX surprises in the dog house the next morning
“Happy’s
Thanksgiving Tails”
Go
Vegan Texas!
Mondays
@ 10am (CDT) on Pacifica Radio, KPFT, 90.1 FM
Quotes
from Howard (Zeke) Loftin:
“Sad,
but Christmas is our busiest season of the year.”
“When you’re extricating yourself from violence, you don’t leave a family
member. And a pet is a family member.”
“Abusers have been
known to threaten pets in order to keep the victim from leaving or bribe
them into returning home.”
“Studies show that, on average, victims of domestic violence try to
leave their abusers five times before they’re successful. My sister
(a domestic violence victim) tried to get out. There’s always something
that keeps them there.”
“We have never told a domestic violence victim, ‘No.’ We care for her
pet(s) while she gets her life together again.”
Howard
(Zeke) Loftin, our guest this morning on Go Vegan Texas! was
born in Heights Hospital, Houston, and grew up in a home troubled
with domestic violence. His mother married seven times, leaving each
relationship when it turned abusive. After one severe beating
from one of his step fathers, Zeke ran away from home at age 13 and
hitchhiked to Austin, where he lived in a half way house and, then came
to Houston in the early 70s, where he lived at the Family Connection,
up the street from KPFT, and remembers taking naps on the KPFT couch,
hanging out with the Grateful Dead DJs, and going
to an Anita Bryant rally. Years later, in an adult male relationship,
he was severely beaten by his partner and became the first male
client of the Avalon Center in Houston.
Then, in his late thirties, he left Texas for Tennessee to take care
of his ailing mother and there, five years ago, with his life savings,
he opened up the first animal shelter for victims of domestic violence,
Road Home Animal
Rescue,
with the memory of his only sister, a domestic violence victim, who
stayed in an abusive relationship because her animals were used as pawns
to keep her from leaving.
Zeke has offered safe haven to animals caught in the middle of domestic
violence and, sometimes it is, sadly, too late, if the woman and children
flee and leave the animals behind. Zeke has kept Road House going
with only a $10,000 annual grant from the the state of Tennessee, rock
concert benefits and donations that come in the morning mail.
“These days, “ he says in a discouraging tone of voice, “There
are more bills than gifts and we may have to close down. We have overdue
vet bills staring us in the face...and those mount when animals are
brought in with injuries.”
It is our hope that in the spirit of gift giving, people will send donations
to Zeke’s website: www.roadhomerescue.org. If Road House closes its
doors in January, there will be no other animal shelter in the state
of Tennesee for victims of domestic violence, like the 17dogs
Zeke rescued in an extreme case over a year ago where a husband
tried to set his wife on fire. The husband was charged with 17
counts of aggravated animal cruelty, which recently became a felony
offense in Tennessee, but the abuser was given a lenient sentence, only
six months in jail, in a plea bargain.
Lydia Caldwell, an active BARC volunteer and animal advocate, will co
host today’s show.
Thank you for listening with an open mind and heart today to Go Vegan
Texas! and let’s show the people of Tennessee how generous the people
of Texas can be by helping keep the doors open for animal abuse victims
at the Road Home Animal Rescue,
Janice Blue
Host, Go Vegan Texas!
Every Monday @ 10am (CDT) on Pacifica Radio
KPFT-Houston, 90.1 FM and 89.5 FM-Galveston
Listen live on http://www.govegantexas.org
Or later on the KPFT Archive: http://archive.kpft.org
Every Animal You Eat
Was Running for Her Life
-------------------------------
Show Compassion! Go Vegan!
Contact Information on Today’s Guests:
Announcements:
Adopt
a Friend - KPFT
Anne
Kilgore, producer
http://www.kpft.org
Photo album: http://houston.kpft.org/site/PhotoAlbumUser?AlbumID=6289&view=UserAlbum
Airs daily at its new
time: 4:58pm, daily, right before the 5pm KPFT local news
Adopt
a Friend is part of a community effort by KPFT listener sponsored
radio and Houston area animal rescue groups to introduce animal friends
for adoption that are in need of a loving forever home. Each week,
several animals from BARC (Bureau of Animal & Regulation
& Control) as well as animal friends from other animal control
facilities and animal rescue groups are featured.
Tune in each day @ 4:58pm to the Adopt a Friend show and help us find
homes for these great companion animals --- cats, dogs, and horses.
Remember, adopt and discover a friend
for life.
Music United for
Animals - CD
newly released CD by UK singer-songwriter, Maria Daines
A compilation of 13 powerful and at times, tender, songs about animals
http://www.maria-daines.com
And VOTE for MARIA
DAINES, UK singer songwriter with newly
released CD, Music United for Animals for
BEST BAND-NO LABEL on
http://www.myrockinprofile.com/categories/best-political-cause/
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