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I was connecting with Liz Stockton of X-Port Paws recently about No Kill philosophies and specifically about how some people say that if we just did ________________ (fill in the blank with one thing) the problem would be solved and all the healthy and treatable animals in our nation's tax-funded animal shelters would be saved. I wish it was that simple. Really. I do. If you are familiar with this blog or my website at all, you know I promote the No Kill Equation and have since I first learned about it almost 20 years ago after reading Nathan Winograd's groundbreaking book: Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America. The short explanation is that the Equation is a DIY series of programs that work together to help reduce the number of animals entering shelters (while helping the public) and that help animals who do end up in shelters to be placed faster (know of as a shorter "length of stay"). All shelters can and should learn about the Equation and take immediate action to stop the outdated (and I would argue unethical) practice of ending the lives of healthy and treatable animals for space or convenience. There are other ways to function and to the extent any shelter purposefully remains mired in the past, I view that a betray of the public trust. After speaking with Liz, I wanted to address the "If We Just Did This One Thing" theories I hear about most often.  Spay and Neuter. Not a week (often not a day) goes by when I do not learn of someone saying, "if people would just spay and neuter their pets, animals would not die in shelters." It is absolutely true that if more people spayed and neutered their pets in any given community, there would be fewer animals in the community which may mean fewer animals entering the tax-funded animal shelter. I know some veterinarians charge hundreds of dollars for the surgery and a lot of people just can't afford that while trying to pay rent and feed their families. We can tell them that it costs more to care for a litter than to just have animals sterilized but that's a hard sell when your kids are hungry and there doesn't appear to be an immediate risk your dog will cause a pregnancy or become impregnated. Access to high volume/low cost spay neuter is one of the 11 elements of the No Kill Equation which helps keep pet populations low which, in turn, reduces intake. In the city where I work, there is a nonprofit spay/neuter clinic that is open to anyone no matter where they live or how much money they make. The city also funds a spay/neuter program for low-income residents so they can have pets sterilized for $5. This program, the availability of the nonprofit clinic and other factors have helped cut the shelter intake at the tax-funded animal shelter in half over a period of about five years. Communities that make an investment in programs like this are getting ahead of the issue by spending to prevent births as opposed to spending to impound, house and then destroy animals. I also support laws that require any animal adopted from a shelter or rescue group to be sterilized. I know there are some animal shelters and rescue groups that transfer ownership of animals old enough to be sterilized who are still intact. For shame. I know this happens a lot and it is irresponsible. The "promise method" some shelters use to try to get people to have animals sterilized after they are adopted seldom works. People may agree to have the animal spayed or neutered and may even sign a document in which they agree to do that. Once ownership is transferred, enforcement of the promise method is practically impossible. People often mean well and plan to have the surgery performed but then other priorities (either financially or based on busy schedules) prevents that from happening. Once ownership has changed hands, the shelter can't just demand the animal be returned and even if someone signed a document promising to have the surgery peformed, it becomes a civil issue to be handled legally, something I have never seen a shelter attempt. Ever. I do not support mandatory spay neuter for owned animals, often called MSN. This is punitive legislation that tries to force people to have all owned pets sterilized. Even in places that have MSN, there are exceptions for breeders, exceptions for people who do not want their pet sterilized on advice of their veterinarian and enforcement is almost impossible. I blogged about this fairly recently and will not cover this same topic in full again. I do encourage anyone who believes forcing people to have pets sterilized (as opposed to making it easy and affordable) to read my blog linked above. If you still support MSN after having read it, feel free to contact me so we can talk about your position. As Nathan Winograd says in his video No Kill 101 (which I share with elected officials often): "for decades, spay/neuter has been hailed as the singular solution to shelter killing, though it alone has never successfully created a No Kill Community. Why? Because spay/neuter focuses primarily on those animals who have yet to be born, leaving the animals already in shelters and who are under an immediate death threat with no protection from killing. In other words, while a significant investment in sterilization can reduce intakes over the long term, and that is important, it is no substitute for saving lives today."  Rescues and Transports. There are those who profess that the single solution to end shelter killing is to get more rescue groups to help get animals out of shelters to transport more animals to different parts of the country. I've read a number of blogs recently that say just that. Rescuers are some of the most hard working people in the country and are to be applauded by us all. But for rescue groups, many more animals would die in tax funded shelters than do now. I clash with some people in animal rescue circles because their adoption fees price the animals they are trying to place out of the market (as they try to recoup veterinary costs through adoption fees alone), because they refuse to limit their efforts to a geographic area (in their efforts to help more animals than they can responsibly care for) and because so many of them have such loathing for people. Animal problems are people problems and it really is not possible to help animals without helping people in some way. In progressive communities, shelter liaison with rescue groups is incredibly important and is one of the 11 elements of the No Kill Equation. Rescue release should typically be just a fraction of all live outcomes with the other live outcomes being the result of returns to owner and adoptions. I know some in rescue refuse to adopt animals locally because they say the people in their area are too irresponsible, can't be trusted, etc. I once had a contact who drove dogs about an hour to a pet store location to hold adoption events. When I asked her how she was ever going to connect in a positive way with the people in her own community if she acted like they could not be trusted, she could not respond. When I hear or read that THE solution to keep more animals alive is for rescues to pull most of the animals (in most cases to transport them to other areas) I simply cannot agree. There are cases in which nonprofit organizations with a physical shelter contract with one or more municipalities for animal control and sheltering. Most rescue groups, however, are foster-based and function off of donations and grants with no tax-funded support. Rescue groups cannot carry the burden of life-saving for any community not only because they have a limited amount of space to house animals and limited funds to help animals, but also because doing so enables the failures in leadership that create unreasonable reliance on the in the first place. If a rescue group in any particular area is pulling the vast majority of animals, what incentive is there for elected officials to take responsibility for how their shelters function and how money is spent? None. I know a lot of people in the rescue community view saving animals as a life calling. My argument is that they should be considered part of the solution and not the only solution. The No Kill Equation is not rescue release, rescue release, rescue release, rescue release, rescue release, rescue release, rescue release, rescue release, rescue release, rescue release and rescue release. I know a lot of rescuers are frustrated now, particularly those who have historically relied on transports to other states to move animals. That became abundantly clear during the pandemic, when receiving states would no longer take animals from the source states. I know there are times when people find an animal on a site like Petfinder located hundreds or thousands of miles from them or otherwise learn about an animal on social media who is located far away and decide to adopt. I do not oppose transport for the sake of getting a specific animal from Point A to Point B for those long-distance adoptions. I do oppose mass transports from source locations to receiving locations where the lives of animals are already at risk. One such example is the pipeline between northern Alabama and Chicago. People may like the idea of saving southern animals from what they consider a fate worse than death by shipping them north. But news flash. There are plenty of animals in Chicago already who need help and importing them from other states only makes it harder to place local animals in need. And when nothing is done in the source location to address the reasons why so many animals need help, it is another enabling behavior. I know thousands of animals are transported from Texas to Colorado every year. Every life saved is a wonderful, positive outcome. But if we aren't doing anything to stop the flow of animals from Texas we are doing a disservice to the people who live in Texas and the animals being shipped north. A contact of mine who is the president of a local nonprofit phrased it this way years ago and I have always remembered what she said: the number of animals needing help is like the flow of water through a faucet. If we ever hope to stop the volume of need, we have to turn off the faucet. Yes, Jane.  Stop dog breeding. The third solution I see most often, particularly on social media, is the way to keep more shelter animals alive is to "stop people from breeding animals." I do not discount that the volume of animals bred in our country, particularly commercially, contributes to the volume of animals in shelters. Millions of puppies are born and sold each year; it is a multi-million dollar industry. I am not aware of any study that shows a direct connection between dogs bred in Missouri with dog intake in Florida or Tennessee or California. It is logical to assume, however, that because millions of dogs are bred in the U.S. and are sold on websites and by brokers using creative marketing that appeals to consumers, people looking for a dog to add to their family often buy dogs through those methods like they would by a laptop or a sofa. I've written many times about issues related to the commercial dog breeding industry which I oppose and which is often supported by the rescue community. I have also written about the fact that dog breeding is legal and as much as people chant, "don't breed or buy while shelter dogs die," that is just not realistic. I always encourage people to adopt as a first option; I do all I can to persuade them they can find a great fit for their family and that shelter animals are not damaged. As much as I would never buy a dog from a hobby breeder (someone who breeds dogs on a small scale for the love of the breed) or small-volume breeder, many people do and that is their right. A co-worker of mine recently bought a Jack Russell from a breeder in Georgia. Do I wish he had adopted instead? Of course. But it was his choice and not something I was able to influence in any way. For people who genuinely feel that breeding is an issue in their community and is leading to more shelter intake, I encourage those people to create and advance local legislation that requires breeders to pay fees for their business, that creates standards for those operations, and that provides criminal penalties for failing to adequately care for the breeding dogs and the dogs they sell. I also encourage them to get involved on the state level to advance similar legislation for the sake of not only the dogs being bred, but the people who adopt them to make sure the dogs are healthy (something severely lacking in many dogs bred in commercial operations). Local ordinances that prevent pet shops from importing dogs for sale in a retail setting are also important to keep businesses like Petland from setting up shop; once a store is open and is selling their puppies, it is almost impossible to stop.  Fires and How to Extinguish Them. In thinking back about my conversations with Liz, there is one other issue I want to touch on related to solutions to shelter killing. I am aware of people who spend a lot of time traveling around the county to bring awareness to what happens in our nation's animal shelters, who blog on that topic and who post about it on social media. I firmly believe that awareness leads to education leads to action leads to change. As much as people in animal advocacy and rescue circles believe the public should know about what is happening at their local shelter, most people just don't because it is not on their personal radar. It's incredibly important that we let the tax-paying public know what is happening at the shelter in their community so they know what they are paying for while they are, in most cases, blamed for a process that leads to the death of healthy and treatable animals. Only when people know what is happening can they participate in the political process and let elected officials know what they want and expect, perhaps even voting them out of office.
What I take issue with is the functional equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded room. Don't raise awareness - on any platform - to the needless deaths taking place nationally without also providing information and tools people can use to understand how we can change our society related to how shelters function. And without claiming it will just take __________________ (fill in the blank with one thing) to fix systemic issues. Don't yell "fire!" (animals are dying) without also pointing the way to the exits and explaining how the fire can be extinguished (saving animals using proven programs). The solutions have been known for almost 20 years and are available for the taking. The No Kill Equation can be implemented in any community and will always look different from location to location based on resources, challenges and the amount of public support. If, for some reason, you are not convinced the Equation works anywhere it is fully implemented, fine. Then develop or find some other solution that actually works and which does not rely on the "If We Just Did This One Thing" theory. I think you will find that to be incredibly difficult but am capable of learning new things. If someone can convince me another methodology works better than the Equation, I will consider myself schooled. If you live or work in a community where the tax-funded shelter ends the lives of healthy and treatable animals, speak out. Seek better. It may be necessary to become politically active as part of a group to try to "fight city hall." Don't wait for a large national animal welfare organization to come to your area to save the day because that's just not gonna happen. If you don't hesitate to complain about potholes in the road, timing of traffic lights, garbage pick-up and police response i your area, you can (and should) also be clear about how you want your money spent when it comes to balancing public safety with saving the lives of companion animals. Nothing changes if. . .nothing changes. As Margaret Meade once said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has."
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I was contacted by a friend of mine recently who shared a blog she had seen on social media about myths related to No Kill animal shelters. This particular author said that animal welfare is her life but it was also making her lose her mind. How every unfortunate not just for her related to her mental health, but because she chose to share information that is not accurate. I presume she means well. I also presume she has read information to cause her to be hypercritical of the No Kill movement. There is no shortage of negative information to be found online. Opposition to progressive animal sheltering has existed for decades back to the early 1970s when large national animal welfare organizations (or so they claim) promoted the idea that killing was kindness and there is much opposition even today by organizations like PETA. I reached out to the author to try to start a dialogue with her in hopes of advancing her education. Will it work? I'm not sure. Cognitive dissonance abounds in animal shelter and animal rescue circles and it can be really hard for people to recognize what they believed for years was, well, just wrong. I will not link to the blog here. I originally planned to write a blog to counter most of the author's claims, but ultimately decided that would not help many people. I've decided instead to talk about myths and truths so the information can be used by others as they advocate for animal shelter reform in their own communities. And so they can counter false information when they see it. As the saying goes, everyone is entitled to their own opinion but we are all bound by truth and share one set of facts. I won't cover the myths already addressed in my book because they have already been covered. If you want a copy of my book and are not a "hold it in your hands" reader, let me know and I'll share the pdf with you for free. No money is being made on the book when you buy it from Amazon (you are paying to have it printed ) so I share it as a pdf file often.  Shelters exist because of the negligence of the general public. If every member of a community were mindful and responsible, shelters would sit empty. This is not true. Shelters in most states exist related to public safety laws that require a place for animals not vaccinated against rabies to be housed, to house dogs running at large and to house animals in suspected cruelty cases pending due process determinations by courts. The fact that the best shelters also function as animal care facilities and not disposal facilities is a response to public expectations. Just because a dog is found running at large does not necessarily mean someone has been negligent. There are some people who let dogs run loose in more rural areas which is clearly irresponsible; that's a huge problem where I live and I see the results of that every time I get in my car. Most loose dogs are lost or displaced due not to negligence but due to some unforeseen circumstance. Doors get left open by children, gates get left open by contractors, dogs dig under and climb over fences, fireworks startle dogs, vehicle accidents happen and natural disasters happen. Ask Davyd Smith of No Kill Colorado how many times his dogs have gotten loose and he'll tell you his stories. Cruelty cases often end up related to a form of mental illness called "Noah Syndrome" about which I have written before and while these cases are tragic, they often result in no criminal consequences. As for the claim that shelters would sit empty, that is an incredibly naive statement. There will always be animal shelters and they will always be needed for both public safety purposes and to help those animals who either were, or could be, someone's beloved companion. That is what the public expects and I just don't see that changing any time soon. In fact, as time goes by more and more people are learning about animal sheltering and about No Kill philosophies as they seek better use of their tax dollars consistent with public values. Shelters are forced to make hard decisions to remain available to the public, including euthanizing for space. This is not true. The only hard decision any shelter need make it to stop killing healthy and treatable animals while calling it euthanasia and behaving as if there is no other way to function. The cure for the disease that is shelter killing has been known for almost two decades and it is the No Kill Equation, a series of programs that work together (thus, use of the description "equation") to reduce shelter intake and increase shelter output while helping the public instead of vilifying the public. To the extent any shelter has not learned about proven programs to help resolve systemic issues that lead the unnecessary killing of animals, that shelter is mired in a past that has not kept up with public expectations and advances in shelter medicine. Theirs is a betrayal of the public trust.  Rescue organizations should not boast about being No Kill. I honestly know of no rescue organization that is NOT no kill. Rescue groups function off of donations and grants. Exceedingly rare is the non-profit organization that receives any type of funding from tax dollars unless that organization is contracted to handle sheltering as is the case in Fremont County, Colorado led by the inspiring Doug Rae. To take on more animals than the organization can actually care for and place would be irresponsible and is a kind of hoarding. Yes, rescue organizations sometimes euthanize animals who are suffering, irremediably ill or present a genuine public safety risk and we should expect no less of them. But they don't end lives as a from of population control killing. Having said that, I am the first to admit that some tax funded animal shelters describe themselves as being No Kill operations when they are anything but. They do so to garner public favor and even donations while at the same time either warehousing animals or ending the lives of healthy and treatable animals while claiming they were "unadoptable" or "aggressive." That is why it is up to all of us who care about how animal shelters operate (or at least about how tax dollars are spent) to learn about how shelters can and should operate so we can see through use of the phrase No Kill by bad actors and call them out of those false claims. Animals who end up in shelters are unwanted, thrown away and forgotten. As explained above, just because an animal enters a shelter does not mean that animals is not wanted, has been forgotten or has been thrown away. When shelters take that type of attitude, the public becomes the enemy when it is that same public the shelter needs to adopt animals, foster animals, volunteer at the shelter and at events and even donated to the shelter. Doing so is totally counterproductive toward the goal of modifying public behavior = helping people make better choices. When the public becomes the enemy, it creates a divide between the shelter and the public being served (or rescue groups and the public) in an us v. them way that is just not helpful. Change comes when you first demand it from the members of your community. This is not true. Demanding people behave differently presumes they are doing something wrong in the first place. Whether people in shelter or animal rescue circles want to acknowledge it or not, most people give very little (if any) thought to their local animal shelter or how their personal choices affect how shelters operate when it comes to having pets spayed and neutered, making sure pets can be identified if displaced and making plans for someone to care for their pets in the event of their death or some live crisis. It is up to us to help educate the public so they can make better choices that help keep animals out of shelters. A couple of the websites I manage have content for this very purpose. To help people. In places where the shelter went from ending the lives of most animals to saving most lives, the public did not suddenly move away to be replaced by more responsible people. What changed was the culture that the shelter which decided to save lives instead of end them and be seen as places not of judgment but of help and positive outcomes. Think about it.  |
AuthorI am an animal welfare advocate. My goal is to help people understand some basic issues related to companion animals in America. Awareness leads to education leads to action leads to change. Categories
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image courtesy of Terrah Johnson
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