People just never cease to amaze me. People who defend the killing of healthy and treatable animals in municipal animal shelters never cease to infuriate me. I was tagged on a social media platform recently related to a new page that openly and repeatedly defends the killing of healthy and treatable animals in tax-funded shelters. At first I thought I read the name of the page wrong. After my initial reaction of shock, I was reminded yet again that time travel really is possible depending on where you go in America and about which subject you are speaking. The views of this person may have been more easily understood had she stood on a wooden crate in the town square during the days of Henry Bergh. But this is 2025 and not 1875 so her insistence that municipal shelters have no choice but to end the lives of animals for space - and her stories about having personally participated in this process - made me both sick and angry. I have chosen not to share the name of her page here because I don't want to promote it. For me it is the social media written equivalent of a "stuff film." It is a "pro kill" page. But back to the social media page. I tried commenting on a couple of the posts to see if I could get the attention of the page administrator and did not have much luck. I messaged her instead and implored her to learn more about the difference between "pet overpopulation" and "shelter overpopulation" which are not the same thing. She agreed to watch the 27-minute No Kill 101 video from the No Kill Advocacy Center and I offered her a free copy of my book so she could read about how the Equation was used in my area to take the municipal shelter from one that kills the vast majority of animals to one that saves the vast majority of animals. So much for that idea. She watched 3 minutes of the video, reached the point where Nathan Winograd talks about the concept of pet overpopulation being a myth, stopped watching and declared that I am wrong and have no idea what I am talking about. She continues to this day to post on an ongoing basis about shelter killing treating it as a fait accompli when it is not. I tried. I understand there are plenty of shelters that kill healthy and treatable animals while remaining either willfully ignorant or catastrophically uninformed despite the progress achieved by the No Kill movement to prevent that from happening. I also understand there are people that really believe that animals die in shelters due to "pet overpopulation" and "the irresponsible public." They have heard these excuses so many times for so many years that they hold tight to their beliefs with no allowance whatsoever for the fact that they may be wrong. When the Winograds first posited almost 20 years ago that pet overpopulation was a myth, people just could not believe it. They had heard so many times over so many years that animals die in shelters because there are just too many of them that the fact that animals were being killed seemed to confirm that belief. But pet overpopulation is a myth and is not the reason healthy and treatable animals die in shelters. In any given year about 30 million people are looking to bring a new companion animal into their homes and in any given year less than a million animals die in shelters. This is not an issue of too many animals and not enough homes. It is a marketing issue because people get animals from sources other than shelters. Shelter overpopulation is a separate concept and it does lead to the deaths of animals. When a shelter does not take steps to help reduce intake and move animals out faster, it becomes overpopulated. This leads to the antiquate practice of ending lives as a population control measure. If more animals enter the shelter than leave the shelter, the "excess" are destroyed. That may not matter to many people when looking at statistics on a form. But every one of those animals belonged to someone and you would not want that dog or cat killed if he or she belonged to you. As I have written about for years, the cure for the disease that is shelter killing is known and has been know for decades. It is found in the programs and services of the No Kill Equation which provide a DIY solution for any shelter to: 1) reduce shelter intake; 3) shorten length of stay (the phrase used to refer to the amount of time animals stay in the shelter); 3) help the public make better choices which affect how the shelter functions; and 4) focus on public safety so that dogs that are cognitively impaired and genuinely dangerous do not leave the shelter. This is not just something I read about and said, "hey, that sounds like it would work so that is what I believe and will promote." I know the No Kill Equation works because I have personally seen it work from Colorado to Texas to Alabama to Florida and and so very many places in between. I have written about the concept of cognitive dissonance and shelter apologists related to shelter killing of healthy and treatable animals before so I won't restate the whole explanation here. The short version is this. Cognitive dissonance theory states that we routinely resolve the conflict in one of four ways: 1) we change one of the thoughts to alleviate the conflict; 2) we change our behavior to alleviate the conflict; 3) we add new thoughts to rationalize our behavior; or 4) we trivialize the inconsistency. As it applies to people who defend the destruction of healthy and treatable animals in shelters, an example of how cognitive dissonance works goes like this:
Belief: healthy and treatable animals should not be destroyed in shelters is in conflict with Behavior: I support a shelter that destroys healthy and treatable animals Method 1 Change a belief - the shelter I support has no choice but to destroy healthy and treatable animals Method 2 Change behavior - I will not support the shelter because it destroys healthy and treatable animals Method 3 - Add new thoughts to rationalize - the shelter I support destroys healthy and treatable animals because the public will not spay/neuter, there are too many breeders and the public is irresponsible AND I know that the people who work at the shelter I support are good people who don’t want to destroy animals and are doing the best they can Method 4 - Trivialize the inconsistency - this happens across the country and there really isn’t any way to change it The methods I see used most often to alleviate dissonance are adding new thoughts and trivializing the inconsistency. Such is the case with the administrator of the pro kill page. She is not the only voice to defend the killing and she will not be the last or the loudest. While I was typing this I learned about a blog written by the founder of a nationally respected "pet foundation" who claims the "kill" label is killing our nation's pets. Uh, no. They are being killed at shelters that could stop that process by municipal officials and shelter leaders learning there are other ways to function instead of defending a process that is nothing short of an utter betrayal of the public trust. 2025. Not 1875. There are just no excuses since the ways to save lives are known and have been for a very long time.
1 Comment
Liz Stockton
1/20/2025 07:02:01 am
Right on Aubrie. I will share and shout this out. Thank you
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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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