pet connection

I belong to two writers organizations, the Cat Writers Association and the Dog Writers Association of America. (Knock off the jokes, smart guys. The cats and dogs don’t do the writing … yet!)

They’re good organizations that generally offer a lot of support for those of us who love and write about animals, and they’re especially good for people who are just getting started on the latter. Most of the people in them are very pleasant and caring, and I’ve enjoyed my associations with fellow members throughout the last 20-odd years. I met some of the people destined to be among my closest friends through these groups. A great many people belong to both groups — we’re bi-”pet”al, you might say.

But right now all is not well.

The CWA every year hosts a nifty writers conference, in conjunction with a dinner giving out its annual media awards. The DWAA, which holds its annual award banquet in Manhattan every year on the night before the Westminster Kennel Club Dog show, has historically supported the CWA conference with a modest financial grant, and has had a DWAA mini-meeeting within the CWA fandango.

But not this year, because the keynote speaker of the CWA event is Wayne Pacelle, head of the Humane Society of the United States.

The CWA event moves every couple of years, and this year it’s in Northern California. After all these months of fighting over AB 1634, the mandatory spay-neuter (except for puppy mills and “just one litter” breeders) bill, the victorious (for now) opposition is not in the mood to listen to the head of the HSUS, which supported the bill.

With a lot of reputable, responsible breeders in the ranks of both organizations, what would have been a real plum of a keynote speaker last year — especially since the organization can’t pay — is this year causing no end of ruckus. The DWAA has backed out, and the CWA membership is in turmoil. (Rather like the backlash the California Veterinary Medical Association got when its Board of Governors decided to support AB 1634, a  stand that was later changed to neutral after CVMA members offered some pro bono neutering of their leadership.)

I’ve been thinking about this, and although I usually don’t go to these conferences, I may have to this time.

As readers well know, we here at Pet Connection have been pretty clear about our opposition to this piece of poorly targeted nanny state legislation, that gives the puppy-millers and pet stores a free pass, and seeks to destroy years of reputable, intelligent breeding of many beloved and some very rare breeds of dogs and cats. (Not to mention insisting that any breeding that is done be done before the age when dogs can be certified clear of congenital defects such as crippling hip dysplasia — talk about idiotic!)

We think mandatory spay-neuter is not the answer, and we’ve laid out some alternate plans that actually do target the people who put pets in shelters — and, hint, it’s not those reputable breeders. (In fact, the first step to solutions is recognizing that there are reputable, responsible breeders, an act that people like “the woman behind the bill,” animal-rights activist Judie Mancuso, seem unwilling to do, telling the L.A. Weekly, “There’s no such thing as a ‘hobby breeder.’ Don’t let them fool you. They’re all one in the same.”)

But as strongly as I feel about the idiocy and the motivation of this legislative approach — and some of the misteps made by the HSUS in recent years — I am even more opposed to silencing ideas and free speech. So, if the DWAA is going to boycott and the CWA is going to yowl, I may just have to go to the dinner, sit front and center and listen to what Mr. Pacelle has to say, in defense of his right to say it.

We’ll see if it even comes to that, since signs are such that the CWA may take a financial bath swimming in these troubled waters, and that may force some changes before the conference, which is in November.

My SFGate.com column yesterday, about the common ground between those who support and those who oppose mandatory spay/neuter, drew a lot of comments that reminded me of something that happened back in the dawn of time — excuse me, in the early 90s which for many of you is the same thing. That’s when the San Francisco SPCA did something most people considered completely outrageous: They decided to stop doing animal control for the City and County of San Francisco, and to put into place an innovative program whereby they’d stop killing cats and dogs.

Back then, there were no seminars on the “No-kill Nation,” no other towns, communities, and even states that had begun going down that same road, no organizations like Maddie’s Fund financing community programs to work towards a “no-kill” goal, nor any successful implementations of a program like this for SFSPCA to model itself on.

People who ran or worked in many other shelters in the region — and let me remind you I live here; this is all coming from my own personal experience and things said directly to me or in my presence — ranted and raved that SFSPCA wasn’t actually “stopping the killing,” they were just letting someone else do it, by which they meant them — other area shelters, or the newly-built San Francisco Animal Care and Control Center. SFSPCA doesn’t even take in strays or owner surrenders, they’d add. They just cherry pick the best of the best and stand around being proud of not killing. And we get stuck with the “unadoptables” while SFSPCA looks good.

And they were right. They were absolutely right.

And yet today, San Francisco — not the SFSPCA, but the entire county — sends more dogs and cats alive out of the shelter system (86 percent) than all but one other county in the United States (Tompkins County, New York, which releases 91 percent of its dogs and cats).

Again: Not that one shelter. The whole county.

So you’d think everyone would be happy about that, and say wow, why do we need punitive and intrusive breeding bans and mandatory spay/neuter? Why don’t we just do what San Francisco did?

“What worked in San Francisco can’t work anywhere else,” they said gloomily. “San Francisco is special.”

Then when other communities did what San Francisco did — communities in rural areas, in the South, communities with lots of pit bulls and poverty — they said it was just a numbers game. Definitions of “adoptable” and “unadoptable” and “treatable” and “healthy” were being manipulated to make the numbers look good. San Francisco and these other communities, they said, are just lying. They say they don’t kill treatable animals, but they do.

And I know a lot of you, like some of the people who commented on my column, are sitting there now going “GOTCHA!” You’re wondering how I’m going to argue my way out of that one.

But I’m not. Because you’re absolutely right. While there are certainly definitions of “healthy” and “adoptable” that almost everyone will agree on, they are still ultimately subjective terms and thus, subject to interpretation and “spin.” And do they get “spun”? They sure do.

And so I say, let’s not define them, argue over them, or debate their meaning. Let’s stop using them.

See, I don’t give a damn about how the animals in a community are categorized or defined. I just want to know one thing: How many leave your shelter system alive?

Unlike words, numbers tend to be hard to spin. Not impossible, of course, but much more difficult. So if you focus on the live release rate, what happens to the whole argument over definitions of “adoptable” animals? Poof. Gone. Everyone won.

The No Kill Advocacy Center suggests the goal live release rate should be over 90 percent for a “no-kill” community. This basically means that the only animals killed by a shelter system would be those animals that any loving owner would euthanize for reasons of severe illness, injury, or aggression.

Will there still be some treatable animals, those who with some care could have their illness, injury, or aggression resolved, wrongly put to sleep? Yes. But I see loving pet owners wrongly putting pets to sleep every day, because they couldn’t afford their vet bills, or their vets were unaware of possible new treatments, or because the owner had a prejudice against a certain kind of treatment, such as amputation. We might like to daydream about a perfect world in which no mistakes are made, but that’s not the world we live in. Arguing about that ten percent is a tactic meant only to divide, to divert attention from an achievable, meaningful and relatively objective goal.

So how about we stop wasting time, and diverting attention and energy, with pointless, unresolvable debates over categorizing animals? Let’s focus instead on one more patch of common ground: Sending almost every animal who comes into the shelter system out alive.

Two nights ago Clara the 6-month-old kitten was exercising her lovely sharp claws against the base of the eucalyptus tree in my back yard. Ten second later she was 20 feet up it.

And I was on the ground below, cursing myself for my idiocy. More than that, really: for my pride.

See, I’m an “animal expert.” I’ve been writing about pets and their care for 25 years. Heck, I even co-authored “Cats For Dummies,” still in print, translated into several languages and with awards out the wazoo.

And yet, I suddenly my own kitten — an “indoor kitten” — was 20 feet up a eucalyptus tree.

Why? Because I thought an “animal expert” like me could handle having my kitten out in the yard with me and the rest of the pets for an hour or so on our warm summer evenings. Even though I advise readers all the time that once cats get access to roaming freely, they can be hard to convince stay inside, where it’s much, much safer. (Not to mention better for songbirds and more considerate to the neighbors)

But Clara comes when called — a neat trick that requires little more than consistency and yummy treats to train, clicker optional but recommended — so I thought we’d be OK for an hour or so outside every evening.

And then Little Miss Bravery shot up the tree. And of course, seemed incapable of getting back down, her pitiful meows piercing the darkening sky.

She did get down, but I don’t exactly know how. Because as I was considering the dilemma the phone rang. My neighbor’s dog had collapsed, and she was frantic. When I returned from helping her get her large dog into her van for the trip to ER, Clara was back in the house, sitting smuggly on her cat tree, purring happily and injury-free.

I closed the back door on her, for good.

Clara is most unhappy now, demanding to go out, which is something I could have avoided — and yes, I know this — by never letting her out at all. You can’t miss that which you’ve never had. I know in the days to come she’ll settle back in and be fine. And I’m going forward with the small screened cat-patio I planned for her, the one that got put off with all the recall- and book-writing craziness. (I like cat fencing, too, but it won’t work for my yard.)

Lesson learned. Maybe next time I’ll know to take my own advice. It’s usually pretty good advice, after all.

Now that California’s mandataory-spay neuter bill has been shelved for the rest of the year — and we’re proud to have been part of the effort to keep this misguided bill from passing – we here at Pet Connection have been thinking lots about the “what next?” If mandatory spay-neuter isn’t the answer then what will help?

In her phenomenally popular online column for the San Francisco Chronicle’s Web site, our Christie Keith offers a way through the emotion and disagreement:

Take two groups of people who mistrust and dislike each other. Take a law that one side wants and the other side hates, about an issue they don’t even agree exists, or if it does, what defines it.

That describes the recent battle over AB 1634, which would have mandated the sterilization of all California dogs and cats over the age of 6 months with the goal of reducing the number of these animals euthanized in state shelters. But what might surprise you if you take a closer look at those two diametrically opposed groups of people is that both are motivated by the same thing: A tremendous love of animals.

So despite the gaping chasm between us, I can’t help but wonder if we aren’t missing a pretty amazing opportunity to huddle together on the little patch of ground we share. Because let’s face it: Both sides of the mandatory spay/neuter war share the goal of reducing the deaths of dogs and cats in animal shelters. In other words, we want the same thing.

[...]

What if we treated this as a public health issue? I don’t mean that dogs and cats dying in shelters is literally public health issue (although that’s not as crazy as it sounds). I’m suggesting that we borrow some concepts from public health and use them in thinking about reducing the number of animals entering shelters.

Why will this work, and how? Check out Christie’s Your Whole Pet, over on SFGate.com.

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Our Dr. Becker’s segment on “Good Morning America” this morning was full of lots of good advice and some squiggly pets as well. Yes, blog commentor Kathy F. – writing from underwater England — was right: Tranquilizers are not usually recommended for pets who are going to take an airplane ride. (But as always, check with your veterinarian.)

There’s a whole lot more. This link will take you there.

What kind of pets have the most trouble in the heat? How can you travel safely with your furry family? Should pets be tranquilized to fly? What products will help keep pets cool — and look cool, too? It’s all on “Good Morning America” Tuesday, with our Dr. Marty Becker spelling it all out in his popular regular segment.

You’ll also find out the No. 1 reason why cats go to the veterinarian — and how you can help your cat avoid that trip.

He’s usually the last segment of the show, because he’s so popular they tease him all show long to keep viewers. I’ll my TiVo set … will you?

Funny aside: I got an e-mail from him this morning (probably from the airport in Spokane). He noted that his appearance on the show is mentioned in the TV highlights of this morning’s USA Today. “Guess they don’t have any ‘real’ celebrities to note,” he writes.

Hey … not at all true, Dr. B!