Avanzino only goes so far, which isn’t enough.

After reading about HSI’s record on MoveToAct, I did a quick comparison with our agencies here in Toronto, Canada. Our Toronto Humane Society, whose intake is at least that of HSI, appears to have paid attention to the SFSPCA experience. It used to have the city contract for pound services. Toronto Animal Services (name changed from Animal Control) is the contracted pound. In 2005, with 50% more animals admitted by the THS than by TAS, the THS adopted out 75% of the total, while euthanizing 9%. TAS adopted out 25%, euthanizing 51%.

TAS licenses the city’s pets under dire threat that unlicensed pets can be seized. It’s a city tax grab, and I shudder to think one of my licensed, microchipped animals might become lost and end up in their kill shelter.

I liked Avanzino’s suggestion that SFSPCA take in any animals that the city pound was planning to euthanize, with a guarantee to move out all of the healthy ones. If we tried that here, it would give thousands of animals a reprieve.

Warren, you are right about agencies creating significant obstructions, and the politics and jockeying for funding getting in the way of animal welfare.

It’s literally a dogfight here, with the wealthy, passionate and aggressive THS, its unionized employees vs. the volunteers, the plodding TAS whose service record is dismal, and the antiquated Ontario SPCA which oversees the province’s inspectors.

I wish we could clone Winograd and Avanzino.

I am so horribly ashamed of myself for believing the old [but still practiced] shelter mentality of LES. [And if you don’t know what that is, you DEFINITELY need to read REDEMPTION.] All these decades and I never challenged the practices in the shelters. Like a sheep, I just followed them in their faulty thinking.

Winograd’s solution is so damned simple. And it’s been there all this time. I am truly, TRULY sick at heart for having believed for so long that the old methodology was the only method. Even worse, I’m heartsick that I never challenged anyone when it was obvious their practices weren’t working. Think of all the animals killed in the meantime.

But it’s never too late to change and he can count me among his avid supporters. Furthermore, any charity that doesn’t support completely Winograd’s solution is off my donation list. And boy there are several of them - very prominent animal “welfare” and “rights” organizations.

One agency can create a significant obstruction in a community from becoming No Kill, and in any community it is the agency (or agencies) that are at the cross road of thousands of animals. The reasons for an agency to be obstructive are well reviewed in Winograd’s REDEMPTION, not the least of which is satisfying the thirst for power and control. What more calculated punishment to the animal welfare community rescue groups and the future animals they save than to wield the power over life and death of animals by refusing to embrace the programs and services that No Kill demands to be successful. What’s more important for the director of the HSI (and other shelter directors) besides damage control and image is “branding” (its name) and “development” (ie fund raising). In private industry “development” is about achieving excellence and this is what the Winograd paradigm has proven to work.

Yes, kudos is in order to the ACO and supporters in Rushville and elsewhere who are saying “enough is enough.”

It is not a matter of IF No Kill will be realized in Indianapolis, or any other community, it is a matter of WHEN - because the collective conscience will not tolerate the satus quo pathology of killing animals for population control.

The folks in LA, Rushville, Indianapolis and elsewhere are not intimidated by slick PR and political manipulations to avoid accountability for their agenda. Animals who come to these shelters (that are NOT safe havens) deserve no less than regime change, and that is the prerequisite in any community animal shelter for an adoptable animal to have the chance to get our alive.

Looking at the half-full glass, their well-paid director apparently was the one that picked up the phone to Mayor Bridges in Rushville and suggested a bail-out and an opportunity to bring down the obscene kill rate. Why Bridges had rejected offers by other shelters during the lockdown is beyond me, although maybe the others were not high-profile enough to give him his Lasting Legacy.

I hope there are more than a handful of people in Rushville who are looking at HSI’s kill rate and thinking maybe they don’t want to send their animals over there.

Someone here, or maybe it is in Redemption, said that a no-kill shelter really needs a no-kill community, so kudos to the assistant ACO, volunteers and supporters that are now demanding reform for the Rushville shelter.

Re: the Rushville shelter…

What is the point of tranfering animals from one kill shelter to another?

The “Humane” Society of Indianapolis’ (HSI) offer to help the Rushville shelter by taking its dogs has all the appearance of opportunistic PR.

A group of local citizens in Indianapolis formed a group “move to ACT” (mtA)www.movetoact.org to encourage accountability of the sheltering industry in their community -especially holding a mirror to the HSI performance after dialogue with directors failed to result in improved policies.

15,000 animals are killed annually in Indianapolis.

Among the many misadventures of the HSI (that can be viewed here http://www.movetoact.org/objective2.html)are: … rewards its director a salary >$110K/yr shortly after tapping a public charitable trust for animals by crying to the probate court “…we’re running out of money” to pay for deficit spending, killed over a hundred asymptomatic cats with the excuse of the presence of panleukopenia - describing the action using the euphemism “depopulation,” does not work liberally with rescue groups, refuses to allow the public access to the kennels when looking for their lost pet, killed a dog tagged with owner name and phone number after refusing him access to their kennel which housed his dog.

With the same frustration as in LA the owner of that dog lost dog killed by HSI has filed a RICO (Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Action)lawsuit against the agency. The agency has a long history of similar misadventures.

Especially telling is that the HSI director, Ms Boden, and staff were a “no show” when Nathan Winograd visited Indianapolis in October.

In every community where policies and practices of the local animal sheltering agency endorse killing animals for population control, are shutting out the public, not liberally working with rescue groups, people will continue to see this perpetual and dismal behavior unless they move to act as are the people in L.A. and Indianapolis.

Thank you for bringing this story of people taking action who are tired of the status quo performance of blatant neglect and killing of animals because they refuse investigate to do otherwise.

http://cbs11tv.com/local/racco.....10050.html

Since it appears that most of the town bloggers are kids, its hard to know what’s really going on but only one person from the town has said what happened was wrong with no if, ands or buts (but the animal was going to die anyway…but haven’t you ever made a mistake).

The town’s bloggers seem a lot more concerned about the town’s image, the damaged self-esteem of the poor racoon murderers, outsiders not minding their own business, wishing death and destruction and those who don’t want this covered up, etc.

And don’t you know that these kids’ parents would be the first ones to complain about falling moral standards due to the behavior of us outsiders. (One of the kids said that I must be one of Those Liberals that support abortion and gay marriage, LOL. Hey, got me there kid, at least partly). If standards are falling, they might want to take a look in the mirror first.

But no matter, I’m keeping a watch on the local papers. If need be I will send additional polite emails to the mayor and school superintendant. And yes, I sign those with my real name.

ACK!

“That’s why I also think its really important for people like us to write to these towns. The town may say its none of our business, but I really believe that putting the spotlight on these practices and exposing them to the wider world can have a profound effect. And we can take the heat, right?”