Your Animal Advocacy Questions Answered

In my June 7, 2026, blog I invited followers to send me questions on a variety of topics. I was surprised at the range of subjects people wanted to know about. Thank you to all who submitted questions and the time you took to participate.  If you don't see your exact question here, it is because someone else submitted a similar question or I answered your question directly.  You are welcome to contact me any time to ask questions about animal welfare advocacy and the topics I cover on my website as long as you are not seeking my help to take or place specific animals; I lack the ability to do that. 

 Q: The city where I live just made a new law that makes people pay a $250 penalty to reclaim a lost dog and also charges a daily fee. The reclaim penalty goes up to $500 for a second offense. How are people supposed to afford to pay that much money? M.G. in Alabama

A: Fees like this are often put in place by elected officials whose focus is more on punishing the public than helping the public. The theory is that if fines are high enough, people will work harder to keep their pets from getting loose. The problem with this approach is that not every dog we see running loose is the result of people who do not care. Accidents happen. Gates get left open by contractors, children leave doors open, dogs flee their property when scared (by fireworks or other loud noises), dogs dig out from under and climb over fencing and the batteries in dogs’ electronic fence collars wear out. A lot of people simply cannot pay what amounts to ransom to reclaim a lost dog because they cannot afford it. It doesn't matter how much they love their animals - when making decisions about what may be limited resources, paying rent, feeding children and keeping the power on will always take priority over paying hundreds of dollars to reclaim a lost pet. This means the city in which you live will no doubt end up spending lots of money to impound, house and care for an animal before ending the life of that animal which is absurd.

Every instance of a lost pet should be addressed on a case by case basis to determine what happened and how to keep it from happening again, even if that means setting up a fund (perhaps using donations) to give people resources like run lines and pavers (to reinforce fencing) to keep dogs from getting loose. Cities like yours should also create a fee waiver policy so that people who genuinely cannot afford to pay reclaim fees and penalties can get their dog back when the alternative is the city spending money to end the life of that dog. Any city that treats the public like the enemy will never gain the cooperation of the public and be able to encourage them to make better choices or accept help to prevent animals from entering the shelter. I encourage you to band together with other residents of the city and engage respectfully with members of the city council to get this new policy reversed. It is not uncommon for a city to charge a nominal reclaim fee, but these amounts are so punitive that it will affect not just citizens but the shelter operation.

Q: I know there are rescue groups who go to dog auctions to buy dogs and I know you don't approve of that. Don't you think the lives of those dogs are worth saving? P.C. in Florida

A: I think the lives of all dogs have value. In my opinion, the problem with your question relates to use of the word "save."

There was a time when dog auctions were attended by two groups of people: the breeders selling dogs and the brokers buying dogs. There were people in rescue circles who acquired unsold "stock" after auctions ended based on relationships they had curated with breeders and with no money changing hands. It was a quiet exchange out of the pubic eye that put a dog or puppy in the hands of a rescuer while doing the breeder the favor of taking a dog who may be sick or lacking certain breed traits while keeping the breeder from using a bullet, a shovel or a bucket to end the life of the dog. All that changed years ago when people in the rescue community began attending auctions to buy dogs and calling it rescue. As Kim Kavin explored in depth in her Washington Post article, the presence of rescuers in the auction tent forever changed the commercial dog breeding industry for the worse. Much worse. There was nothing quiet or curated about this new relationship as rescuers made not only their presence at auctions known but also their willingness to pay whatever it took to buy dogs from the auction block. Rather than giving unsold dogs to rescue groups after the auction and as part of a quiet exchange, breeders began to see rescuers as a potential revenue source, sometimes breeding dogs specifically for the rescue community to make huge sums of money.  According to Kavin's April 2018 article, one particular Alabama-based breed specific rescue paid more than $400,000 to buy 172 dogs over a period of four years for, "an average price of $2,365 per dog. Last year, more than half the dogs the nonprofit group says it saved were bought at auction." The article goes on to recount an event in which an Alabama rescuer offered to pay $24,000 for two dogs a breeder named Will Yoder had just bought  for a little over 8k. And she did. Sounds crazy, right? Since the article was published in  April of 2018 with who knows how much money being spent to buy dogs in the last 7 years.  I shudder to think how that money was used to expand breeding operations to be able to breed more and more dogs. 

I don't see this as "saving" dogs at all. I see this as enriching the very industry rescuers claim to abhor, making it more profitable than ever and leading to the breeding of more and more puppies while the breeder "stock" potentially suffers out of view of the auction tent.  It may not be popular to say so, but I will: I think it is the height of human arrogance to focus solely on purchasing a specific dog (or dogs) at an auction to be able to say that dog was "saved" or "rescued while remaining willfully ignorant of the fact that the money used to buy that one dog will be used to breed or purchase many more dogs in its place, thereby perpetuating the industry. Rescuers can and should focus on saving animals most in need of rescue in their own areas and without going to auctions at all.

Q: Why are you against mandatory spay neuter since there are states in the northeast where it is mandatory? P.B. in Wisconsin.

A: Despite what you may have been told, there are no states in the northeastern part of the United States where spay/neuter is mandatory for owned animals. The reason more pets are sterilized in those places is because promotion of spay/neuter has been a priority for years and it is more easily accessible than it is in other parts of the country. There are some areas of the country where there are veterinary deserts and there is no veterinarian to which people can take a pet to be spayed or neutered. That is not the case in the northeast. There are also places where veterinarians charge hundreds of dollars for a procedure which can be done for much less at a non-profit clinic that focuses on just spay/neuter. Most states mandate spay/neuter of animals adopted from shelters and rescues as a means of controlling animal populations and to avoid having the offspring of adopted animals enter the shelter, leading to more spending. Even though spay/neuter of adopted animals is the law in most places, there are numerous animal shelters that adopt out intact animals using "the promise method" (in which people promise to have the surgery performed but never do). There are also numerous rescue groups that fault the public for "pet overpopulation" but allow unsterilized animals to be adopted and then lament the number of animals they are asked to help.

To learn more about opposition to spay/neuter which extends far beyond my website, please take a few minutes to read about it here. If we are prepared to punish people who can least afford to have their pets "fixed," we do better to just help those people instead and create relationships with them that extend beyond a single surgery.

Q: What is the biggest mistake you've made when it comes to your advocacy to try to help animals? J.S. in North Carolina

A: I've certainly made a lot of mistakes along the way as I've advocated for animals and systemic change. The mistake that bothers me the most was more of a calculation than anything. I totally underestimated the former shelter director of Huntsville Animal Services in Alabama which was the focus of much of my advocacy for more than 2 decades. Like most people, I presumed that her status as a licensed veterinarian meant she would would be open to ideas on how to save the lives of more animals; there were years when more than 7 thousand animals died in her facility under her leadership. Yes, you read that correctly. I failed to appreciate how fiercely she would fight to maintain the status quo for what was likely the sake of her own mental health. It must be incredibly difficult to realize that so many animals died when they could have been saved. Had I known how hard it would be to get her to embrace a new culture for her city department, the approach used by No Kill Huntsville to try to affect change might have shifted somewhat. We still would have focused on municipal accountability, but could have used different methods to try to gain her cooperation with more sensitivity to her struggle between her past actions and the potential future of Huntsville as a No Kill community. I am proud of what was achieved in Huntsville which is now one of the safest places for animals in the state and even in the country. Did we do the hard work? No. But we changed the history of the city by banding together, speaking out, harnessing the compassion of the public and pushing the city to create a new culture which made it possible for a newe director to be hired whose values are in keeping with those of the public he serves.

Q: I'm worried about the number of puppy mills in the state where I live. It's not obvious where they are located. What's the best place to get information to learn more about mills in my state? A.M. in Wisconsin

A: This is an easy one. Bailing Out Benji, led by Mindi Callison from Iowa. I first learned of Mindi a few years ago through a mutual contact who was saving mill dogs (not by purchasing them) and then when she appeared in a film executive produced by another contact of mine called Dog by Dog which I blogged about before and I recommend everyone watch. The film is just as relevant today as it was when it was released and has national implications. You can watch the film on Google play, Pluto TV or Youtube.

Bailing Out Benji has become one of the most reliable sources of information about the commercial dog breeding industry (as is Harley's Dream) and provides a national map that tracks USDA licensed breeders and brokers by state. Each brown circle on the map represents a broker and each blue circle represents a breeder. You can see details about the licensee by clicking on the circle. For example, the Fairmont Acre Kennel in Ephrata, Pennsyvania, has 154 adult dogs and a history of compliance issues. If you know of a breeding operation that is not on the map, that means it is not licensed by the USDA (although having a license is not indicator of how well the dogs or their offspring are cared for). Humane World (formerly the Humane Society of the United States) tracks the 100 worst dog breeding operations annually. 

(capture of interactive map courtesy of Bailing Out Benji)

Q: I see a lot of negativity on social media about the No Kill movement, some of it by very prominent people. they have called the movement a scam that has led to animal suffering. Why is this happening? J.F. in Texas

A: Let's get to the scam part first. The No Kill movement is a social movement for which we should all be grateful. We have the movement to thank for the fact that our country no longer kills 16 to 17 million animals in animal shelters every year and that number is now less than 1 million. That is still too many, but we've come a very long way. In my opinion, the negativity about the movement is led by people who have not learned the history of animal sheltering in our country to better understand how we got to this point in history and the obstacles overcome to get here. There are opponents of the movement who associate it with a specific organization or platform like the Best Friends Animal Society or Human Animal Support Services. The movement does not belong to those organizations no matter how  much money they have or how large their platform may be. They do not own it. The movement is made up of people like you and me. People in the trenches of advocacy seeking change in their own communities because they view saving the lives of shelter animals as a moral imperative. Focusing on specific organizations and then faulting the movement takes the focus off of our core values in which there are no excuses for killing healthy and treatable animals and the focus is not on math (the 90% reference) but on method. Nathan Winograd of the No Kill Advocacy Center addressed in a recent Substack article in which he wrote: 

I am hearing rescuers and advocates regurgitating excuses for killing we debunked in the 1990s and 2000s: pet overpopulation, irresponsible public, need for a 'no birth' and not No Kill nation. . .When we call for a No Kill nation, we are specifically referring to the promise and success of open-admission No Kill Equation sheltering. We are referring to a shelter in the dictionary sense of the word: “an establishment providing food, protection from danger, and temporary housing for stray or unwanted animals.” The door is always open and animals find a new beginning, instead of the end of the line. We are NOT referring to the fundraising scam where “managed intake,” “community sheltering,” and “Human Animal Support Services” are euphemisms for “no entry” and increases in placement rates are dependent on animals being turned away, abandoned, and left to suffer.

If the goal of a No Kill nation is to truly mean something, we must stay rooted in reality: a placement rate cannot be considered ethical if it comes at the cost of abandoning the very animals shelter staff are responsible for protecting. These animals do not cease to exist simply because municipal shelters fail to count them. They are still suffering, still dying, and their lives still matter."

Q: I've heard there are countries where having a pet spayed or neutered is considered barbaric. Why does the U.S. focus so much on that?

A: You are correct. Some German and Scandinavian countries (including Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) have restrictive policies on neutering. In Germany, the Animal Welfare Act prohibits neutering, except for health reasons or to control populations. In Norway, neutering is illegal unless strictly necessary. The removal of ovaries and testicles is considered to be mutilation, no different from cropping ears and docking tails. The focus on spaying and neutering in the United States is based on our history. There was a time when 16 to 17 millions animals died in animal shelters every year, regardless of age or health. Focusing on spay and neuter as a positive way to keep pet populations from growing while potentially extending the life of the sterilized pet has become a cultural norm while still allowing pet owners to make choices for themselves.

Q: You say that every place is capable of becoming a No Kill community but not every place is ready for that. What does that mean? C.V. in Georgia

A: Every community has limited resources and every community has collective values that represent the priorities of the people that live there. I believe every community in which the lives of companion animals are valued has the capacity to save all healthy and treatable animals -  regardless of resources - by inviting the public to create a new culture that balances public safety with saving lives. Many of the programs that save the lives of shelter animals cost nothing and even those that do require some cost can be addressed using the "pay me now v. pay me later" approach. An example is investing funding into making spay/neuter of pets accessible and affordable (or free) for low income residents. Communities that invest in population control pay up front for surgeries, but pay less long-term because fewer animals enter tax-funded shelter.

Not every place is ready to be a No Kill community because there are many places where the lives of dogs and cats are not valued. If animals are treated as expendable, and the public supports that, there is no incentive elected officials to ensure the tax-funded shelter is managed differently. If a shelter even exists. People who live in those places who do value the lives of animals can focus on getting people elected to represent their values and do what they can in the present to help animals in need. But sometimes we have to follow the advice in the book Twelve by Twelve to see, be, do as we wait for a time when change is possible. Animal shelter reform cannot always be forced through logic, respectful dialogue and political advocacy no matter how much we want it.