14/07/2022
A critic took issue with my article yesterday asking people to imagine running a shelter, facing a crisis and coming up with a life-affirming approach, rather than reaching for the needle (or stuffing the animals into gas chambers): https://bit.ly/3PqPYFr.
She wrote, in a nutshell, “You do realize that there is a crisis in America right now where we have a huge vet shortage” and “huge employee shortages where an animal shelter used to have cleaning staff, office staff, ACOs on the road and adoption staff and now the same three people have to do all the jobs because no one wants to work at jobs like these right? While the things you are saying must be done are correct maybe 5 years ago, since the pandemic they may not be feasible for most places!”
I believe this is an excuse for killing because not only do we live in an environment of comparatively lower intake rates and higher adoption (vs. buying) rates (where rescue, instead of pedigree, is now the status symbol), but because of the growing number of communities with 99% placement rates. Something cannot be impossible if it has been achieved again and again and again and again. And for one other very important reason.
Shelters have still not fully opened to the public for adoption and they are doing so by choice. It is the result of the deliberate decision to limit their taxpayer-funded services as animal shelters. That means animals are not going out the front door as fast as they could. And not only are some shelters refusing to be fully open to the public, some — like the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control — have announced that they never will: https://bit.ly/2X37Xfh. The reason they are getting away with it is because of large organizations giving them legitimacy and, in fact, encouraging them to do so and because people parrot their excuses before any real reflection begins.
In fact, for 30 years, I have heard this constant naysaying despite the fact that over the years I have published success story after success story which defies the doomsday narrative — a narrative I proved wrong when I ran shelters, when I actually went in and cleaned up shelters (firing underperforming, uncaring staff, rewriting their policies, implementing programs, and hiring a replacement team), and by working with communities that have sustained placement rates of 99% year on year without closing their doors or turning animals away.
These are shelters with the same challenges faced by everyone else (right now, post-pandemic). Moreover, every shelter in every period had and has its challenges. When I ran shelters, we had much higher intake numbers, lower rates of sterilization, more indifference by local governments, rabid opposition to TNR both within and outside the movement, opposition to shelter work by veterinarians, fewer prosecutors taking animal abuse seriously, a greater fixation on pedigree, irrational fear of “pit bulls,” and smaller budgets.
Today and depending on the community, sometimes the challenges are these challenges, and sometimes the challenges are something else. The difference between success and failure then, as now, is the choices made by people who run those shelters in response. Some see them as roadblocks and reach for the needle (or stuff the animals in a gas chamber). Others see them as speedbumps to be overcome and imagine other possibilities. That hasn’t changed.
What also hasn’t changed are the doom and gloom naysayers who provide directors who take the violent and easy way out apologia and legitimacy for killing, while ignoring the progress we made. (My neighborhood has gone from largely purposely-bred golden retrievers to rescued mutts, pitties, and other Heinz 57 dogs.) My advice then is the same as my advice now: those who claim it can’t be done need to get out of the way of those who are doing it.
All that said, I will agree that there has been one significant change post-pandemic and the cynical, self-serving, animal-abandoning approach taken by cruel and uncaring shelter directors across the nation and the once pro-No Kill organizations that now defend them: where we used to have two kinds of shelters, we now have three.
The first kind of shelter are those that embrace the No Kill Equation — foster care, comprehensive adoption programs, socialization and behavior rehabilitation, medical care, working with rescue groups, marketing and promotions, TNR, a robust volunteer base, and more — achieving placement rates of 99%: https://youtu.be/JCTt5JppNA8. Thankfully, there are more of these.
The second are those that routinely kill animals because they find killing easier than doing what is necessary to stop it. These pounds have been with us from the very beginning. Thankfully, there are fewer of these.
And now, we can add one more kind of shelter: those that embrace Human Animal Support Services: https://bit.ly/3sfwVor. These are shelters that get paid to do a job they refuse to do but continue to accept the funding. They simply close the door to animals in need and tell people who find animals that if they don't want to ignore the animals (by leaving them on the street or re-abandoning them), they have to take care of the animals themselves.
