Life Savers

that is the definition of Shelter…

Ideally, shelters should be places, way stations where pets get the assistance they need to get adopted. Instead, way too many of them are killing factories … where innocent pets come in and never make it out alive, where animals are killed in horrific inhumane ways, where shelter workers are cruel, insensitive and downright mean and don’t deserve to work with innocent pets…shelters should be saving lives not ending them.  Shelters should be in the LIFE SAVING business. How can WE turn this around???

Imagine…

Follow the money… and Greed… in a country where War is Good Business and Greed is Standard, is it any wonder that homeless and poor people and animals are cruelly disposed of  by the Money/Profit at ALL Cost crowd?  But it DOES NOT have to continue to be this way. There are people making a difference and saving lives.

An interview with Nathan Winograd 

As Director of Operations for the San Francisco SPCA, Winograd was instrumental in advancing some of the most progressive shelter programs in the nation, and helped establish the first No Kill city. By making a commitment to stop the killing as Executive Director for the Tompkins County (NY) SPCA, he put programs in place that took Tompkins County No Kill.

In your experience, what’s the most critical step to build a No Kill community?
If you ask 100 animal welfare professionals this question, all 100 would say spay/neuter. But all 100 would be wrong. That is not to say that high volume, low cost sterilization services aren’t important, they are. In fact, they are crucial. But that is not why most dogs and cats are currently being killed in shelters. It isn’t “pet overpopulation.” What we are actually suffering from as a nation, what is actually killing a high number of animals, is an over-population of shelter directors mired in the failed philosophies of the past and complacent with the status quo. We know how to stop the killing, but many shelter directors refuse to implement the No Kill model. As a result, a widespread, institutionalized culture of lifesaving is not possible without wholesale regime change in shelters and national animal protection groups, replacing them with compassionate leaders who reject killing as a method for achieving results.

http://www.pawschicago.org/animal-advocacy/q-a-with-nathan-winograd/

Simply, shelters are not adopting out enough animals… it is NOT that animals are unwanted, too many (overpopulation) nor is it that there are not enough homes/adopters… 

America’s approximately 4,000 animal shelters are currently adopting out more than 4 million pets per year – between 2 and 3 per shelter, per day. By simply increasing that by an additional 2 pets per shelter, per day, the 3 million healthy and treatable pets who currently lose their lives in shelters will be saved.

http://www.maddiesfund.org/Resource_Library/The_Shelter_Pet_Project_By_the_Numbers.html

A Kentucky community recently celebrated its second No Kill year. A Canadian community reduced killing by 70%. A New Zealand animal control shelter finished the year with a 96% rate of lifesaving. Another in Australia surpasses even that. A municipal shelter in Nevada is saving 95% of all animals, even with a per capita intake rate that is four times the rate of Los Angeles, seven times the rate of New York City, and over twice the national average. How can you know whether shelters are truly doing all they can to save the life of animals? The answer is the “90% Rule.”

http://www.pawschicago.org/about-no-kill/when-is-no-kill-truly-no-kill/

Shelters that work with their local animal rescue organizations, create FUN adoption events, provide low cost/free spay/neutering clinics, photograph animals in a positive way, obtain media coverage on a regular basis, provide necessary services for the animals to make them adoptable, and do EVERYTHING possible to Save Lives and make ADOPTION their FIRST PRIORITY are what is needed. How can YOU support YOUR local shelter to SAVE MORE LIVES???

Great Example of Shelter with HIGH Adoption Rate (low kill rate)

http://www.nevadahumanesociety.org/

I love that they used the Occupy movement in their ad… Occupy Hearts and Homes…

And their INTENTION and goal is to become a No Kill Shelter. Bonney Brown, the Executive Director, I believe, used to work for Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.

http://www.nevadahumanesociety.org/pdf/news/NHS_American-Dog-Magazine.pdf

National Average 2009: 58% (Source-Maddies’s Fund)

Nevada Humane Society Save Rate
• 2010: Dogs: 94% Cats: 95%

Pet Adoptions (Live Release of All Animals)

• 2010: 9,668 up 5% (484 more adoptions)
• 2009: 9,184 up 6% (549 more adoptions)
• 2008: 8,635 up 7% (605 more adoptions)
• 2007: 8,030 up 61% (3,040 more adoptions)
• 2006: 4,990 (pre no-kill initiative)

List of No Kill shelters online

http://www.shelters.globalpetinsurance.com/index.html

http://www.nokillnetwork.org/d/

ALL dogs (and cats and other animals) deserve to be treated with kindness, respect, dignity and love… and who knows that dog you adopted or fostered just may rescue you… like Hercules… imagine what a terrible waste it would have been if Hercules had been killed

http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/state/saint-bernard-saves-ohio-family-just-hours-after-hes-adopted

there are many creative folks doing wonderful adjunct programs, helping to save/rescue animals…folks like those below…

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45227747#.Tr_qSTlwqKx

Good buddies: Grizzled truckers transport rescued animals to safety

In the face of animal overpopulation and abuse, volunteers take matters into their own hands

According to the American Humane Association, about 3.7 million stray and unwanted animals are put to sleep in U.S. shelters each year.

Operation Roger always needs more truck drivers and volunteers to provide layover homes for animals in transit. To get involved, visit the organization’s website or email operationroger01@yahoo.com.

Pilots N Paws always needs pilots to transport animals to safe situations. General-aviation pilots who are interested in helping out should visit the organization’s website or email info@pilotsnpaws.org.

To help support Susanne Spirit’s Musical “Trucking” Dog Adoption Program, visit her website or her Facebook page, or email info@musicaltruckindogs.com.

the big animal organizations who are supposed to be protecting animals such as the ASPCA, Humane Society of the US and others need to get on board with creative, working solutions for increasing adoption rates at shelters, SAVING LIVES and becoming NO KILL not standing in the way of PROGRESS.

http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=7390

in the world of the ASPCA, saving lives is “extremist” but subjecting the animals to daily neglect, cruelty, and the ultimate form of violence—killing—is to be defended and protected.

…the kind of concerted effort to fight No Kill across the country that the ASPCA takes requires people. It isn’t Ed Sayres sitting alone at his keyboard. He and other leaders of the ASPCA may be calling the shots, but the people of the ASPCA are implementing his regressive policies. Ed Sayes may have ordered Oreo killed, but the people of the ASPCA killed her. Ed Sayres may have ordered Oreo’s Law to be defeated, but the people of the ASPCA walked the halls of the state capitol in Albany and lobbied legislators to vote “No.” Ed Sayres may have ordered the ASPCA to oppose No Kill in San Francisco, but the people of the ASPCA testified against it in front of the San Francisco Animal Welfare Commission. Ed Sayres may have ordered sick kittens sent to New York City’s medieval and abusive pound, but it is ASPCA employees who delivered them there to be killed.

…Despite the millions hoarded in their bank accounts raised through emotional commercials that prey on animal lovers by promoting the fiction that they will use donations to save animals, the ASPCA has a long sordid history of not only fighting reform efforts nationwide, but of neglecting the needs of the animals suffering in the shelter down the street, even sending animals to be killed there.

…the ASPCA is committed to killing, to protecting killers, to defending abusers if they happen to run shelters, and to hiding abuse within its own facility as the ASPCA did in trying to protect a veterinarian who kicked a dog to death? Regardless of whether it was run by Roger Caras who called No Kill a “hoax” and a “cancer,” or Larry Hawk, who continued that legacy, or Ed Sayres, who counts over 35,000 dead New York animals as his legacy, there is simply no evidence that the ASPCA “can do better than this” because, when it comes to ending the systematic killing of animals in U.S. shelters, they never have. In fact, they have never even tried, not since the death of their remarkable founder over 120 years ago.

Yes, I am an Extremist according to this…and am also horrified by this info. Had no idea, makes me sick, sick, sick … you would think that people who work with animals would LOVE them and want to save them, protect them, take care of them. Just makes me ill to think that these big organizations all they want to do is kill, kill, kill.  I also wonder if it is Follow the Money…

How MUCH MONEY do they get to Keep on KILLING as opposed to SAVING LIVES???

Are you an “extremist”? Take the quiz.

1. I want the killing to end.
2. I think it is wrong for shelters to neglect and abuse animals.
3. If other communities can end the killing of savable animals, I believe my community should also.
4. I care about animals and because I care about animals, I do not want harm to come to them.
5. I believe in democracy and engaging my elected officials to create social change.

If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, you are an “extremist” according to the ASPCA. If you answered “No” to all of these questions, the ASPCA thinks you’ll make a great shelter director and they will fight to defend and protect you.