My 2002 advice to Janie Gale

[Guest guest]

Thank you.

 

With all the controversy surrounding the shelter, do you agree with strays

being euthanised after 72 hours? Wouldn't it be a good start to have animals

that are adopted out microchipped? Do these shelters have scanners? With a

facility of this size, couldn't incoming pets be separated until checked by a

vet? Are there fees for animals turned in by owners? Maybe some of that income

could be used for more low cost spay/neuter clinics. I am just trying to learn

from this sad situation. I hate to think of an owner not going to the right

shelter until is too late and his beloved pet has been put down. Maybe

microchipping should be mandatory just like rabies vaccines. 72 hours doesn't

seem like enough time to try to help an animal.

 

The only Military sponsored adopting agency on Okinawa recently stopped

providing spaying/neutering of animal they adopt out. I found this to be quite

irresponsible, this will only worsen the pet over population problem and the

gassing of healthy, friendly animals. The adoption rates went up, yet the

people in charge claim they cannot afford it. The Military Vet clinic was

working with the kennel and providing at cost spay/neuter. Animals over three

months of age are not allowed to be adopted out at the local pound, even when

healthy, friendly and still young. OAARS has been successful in working with

the local officials and we have been able to save many from the gas, even older

dogs.

 

My thanks to people like Jill Robinson, Amy Hogg and the people at Best

Friends, to the wonderful OAARS' volunteers and to so many others for never

giving up the fight.

 

Liz

Okinawan-American

Animal Rescue Society

www.oaars.com

 

Merritt Clifton <anmlpepl wrote:

For what it's worth, this is what I told Jane Greenspun Gale

back in 2002, when she was still very new in the Las Vegas job--

 

-------------------------

 

Wed, 18 Sep 2002 10:58:18 -0800

Janie Gale

anmlpepl

Re: choice of hats

 

>The major criticism we encounter is that, early on, based on the " no-kill

>city " definition we understood from publications such as yours, we said we

>wanted to make Las Vegas a no-kill city with our new shelter as the

>beginning of that process. Now all the other groups throw that as missiles

>at us, saying we are not no-kill and we are perpetrating a fraud on the

>community. We have learned we can't use that phrase.

 

Dear Janie:

 

You have to use the phrase " No-kill, " or it will be used

against you. But you also have to be very clear about not confusing

process with goal, and not confusing " church " with " state. "

 

The now-defunct No-Kill Directory and all literature for the

No-Kill Conference series, 1995-2001, always carried on page one

the phrase, " Implicit to the 'No-Kill philosophy is the reality of

exceptional situations in which euthanasia is the most humane

alternative available. "

 

Those exceptional situations include irrecoverable illness or

injury, dangerous behavior, and/or the need to decapitate an

animal who has bitten someone, in order to perform rabies testing.

 

They do not include " unadoptable, too young, or too old. "

The object of no-kill animal control is to get into a situation where

the volume of incoming animals is low enough due to successful

sterilization programs and the humane resources in the community are

large enough due to the appeal of the no-kill ethic that there are

good alternatives for the " unadoptable, too young, or too old, "

such as care-for-life sheltering, fostering, and hospice care--all

of which are established solutions, with long histories of success,

capable of handling about 1% of the total dog and cat population of

the typical U.S. community.

 

About 5% of the total dog and cat population of the typical

U.S. community passes through shelters in a year, and the process of

getting to no-kill is finding ways and means of preventing enough

births, facilitating enough adoptions, and keeping enough animals

in homes through good problem-solving outreach to avoid killing three

of these animals out of each five. For one of them, euthanasia will

be unavoidable, and for one more, care-for-life sheltering,

longterm fostering, or hospice care will be appropriate.

 

New shelters don't help anyone get to no-kill. If

well-designed to facilitate rehoming and adoption, they can help,

but they are only a tool, not either part of the process or part of

the object.

 

The process involves enlisting the public to help with those

three animals out of each five coming into the shelters, with the

understanding that you can no more declare yourself " no-kill " and be

there overnight than you can decide you are a marathon runner before

you have trained up to completing 26.2 miles.

 

Richard Avanzino set achieving no-kill as a public goal in

1984. The San Francisco SPCA turned all animal control duties over

to the SF/DACC (which the SF/SPCA and city council created in the

interim) in 1989. The Adoption Pact, formalizing SF as a no-kill

city, took effect in early 1994. The total trajectory took 10 years.

 

Maddie's Fund is trying to get cities, counties, and the

whole state of Utah to no-kill in only five years. I did a lot of

statistical analysis for them several years ago, however, which

indicated that the effective threshhold for no-kill animal control is

killing 5.0 animals per 1,000 community residents, and that the

timetable for getting there is geometric. From 10.0, you can get

there in five years. From 15.0, you can get there in seven and a

half years. From 20, 10 years is possible.

 

The numbers can fall very rapidly until you get to about 20,

when you begin to run out of easily preventable births and easily

adoptable animals, and begin having to make a greater investment for

each birth prevented or life saved. The required investment per

animal will rise incrementally from that point on, with the steepest

rise occurring in the final push from 10.0 to 5.0.

 

This all can and must be explained to the public.

 

Also essential to do is to maintain the church/state divide.

 

Succinctly, the church is a nonprofit organization. People

donate to it as generously as they think is necessary in order to go

to heaven, and the church can therefore do anything it wishes to

promote peace and well-being.

 

The state is supported by tax money. What it can do is

strictly limited by what taxpayers are willing to spend--and they do

not all believe in heaven.

 

If you are a humane society, existing to protect animals

from people, you are the church.

 

If you are an animal control agency, existing to protect

people from animals, you are the state.

 

You cannot be both, unless you figure out a way to create a

clear firewall between the roles and functions. The humane society

must be absolutely and inviolably separated from the animal control

agency in the public mind in order to attract the kind of community

support that is required to build the lifesaving programs that make

no-kill animal control possible.

 

The services provided by the animal control agency must not

be confused with the services provided by the humane society, in

order to avoid taxpayer revolt over the perceived mis-spending to

public money to save animals' lives (even if all that the animal

control contract pays for is housing animals for three days.)

 

I warned Mary Herro about this problem way back in 1994 or

early 1995, before she ever took on any animal control contracts.

More than seven years later, the Animal Foundation is still

suffering from failure to understand the need to separate church from

state, and therefore is still playing right into the hands of your

critics.

 

There are ways and means of building the firewall. Humane

societies which hold animal control contracts are managing to take

their communities to no-kill here and there--but they are not doing

it by trying to wear both the white hat and the black hat at the same

time, on the same head. Try that, and you just look duplicitous.

 

Rather, the successful humane society/animal control

combinations understand that both the white hat and the black hat are

essential roles in the ongoing morality play of human/animal

relationships, and get the right actors to play the parts.

 

John Seals, now retired, used to head both animal control

and the humane society in Little Rock. He had a TV commercial that

actually began with him wearing a black hat, explaining that he was

animal control and he was paid by the government to kill your dog or

cat, if you allowed the animal to run at large, bite people, and

go unlicensed.

 

Fortunately, he continued, in Little Rock there were also angels.

 

Then he would put on the white hat and talk about the humane

society sterilization and vaccination clinics, adoption center, and

other life-saving programs, and finally he would hold up both hats

and say, " It's your choice which hat I wear. "

 

It was very effective in enabling Little Rock to lower their

per capita rate of shelter killing faster than anywhere else in

Arkansas.

 

Cheers,

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing

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