those numbers are the NYCACC ones. if you don’t know already, the head of the ASPCA came from the SFSPCA. He’s been here for 5yrs i believe. You can bash the ASPCA all you want, but the fact is, for the last 10yrs they have been on a positive road. and they have not abandoned anyone here. just keep in mind that the more you make them out to be the enemy based on their past, the more you hurt the animals we are all trying to help, imo. what about the 5mil grant they gave to nyc or mission orange? we can’t ask people to change if we don’t support the effort.

btw, 2 of my bridge kitties were from the SFSPCA back when they were first starting the road to no-kill. NW may have even been there at the time. sadly, they were still euthing for simple things such as URI’s at the time (a litter went down while i was there getting my boys). yet they claimed a 90+ % success rate for the month. ;)

“until they fess up that there isn’t a pet overpopulation problem . . .”

have they said there isn’t?! responsible breeders taking back their animals keeps them from adding to the shelter overpopulation, same as rescues and shelters also making the same pledge.i ‘m glad you see the practical side of that :) i’m on the microchips of the rescues i’ve placed (not the main contact) and they were chipped through my local no-kill so they can also be traced to them, should need be.

anyway, i hope someday you can see the change at the ASPCA (and other shelters that are trying to be on the right path) :) they really do go above and beyond for the animals there. many shelters would euth for “medical” or “behavior” to make the numbers, they don’t from what i’ve seen.

many good people have turned their pets into shelters believing they would find a home. but on the flip side, there are those that turn in their pets when they become an inconvenience. they actually put things like vacation as the reason for surrender! OY! we really do need the publics’ help to stop the killing, imo. while our euth rates have gone down and adoptions are up (not counting return to owner!), intake isn’t budging as much :( and with our warm fall, we were running a 2fer adoption special on kittens last month at the city shelter. sigh.

oh, and just so you know, their S/N van fixes many, many ferals and works with the local groups. they did 20+ for me one summer, free of charge (at the same time!). they also s/n for free anyone’s pets on PA and 25 bucks for everyone else. they take care of the city shelters s/n’s a couple times a week along with the no kill by me. all steps in the right direction, imo. we’ll get there . . .

bottom line, while i may agree of some of what you say/your feelings, we need the aspca here. i can’t think of another agency that can supply the services they do. and as they reach out more nationally, others will need them also. it’s all towards the same end goal, at least ;)

if you ever want any links to what it was like here before the no-kill commitment, let me know.

http://www.nathanwinograd.com/.....ad_037.htm

Oh, I agree, I think he should remedy that situation on his website. I know real data is hard to find and there are problems with even the current data… but a complete airing of the truth should be encouraged.

That goes for shelters fessing up to their kill/save numbers too.

He has an EXTENSIVE bibliography in the back, but as you say, his choice of notation isn’t as scientific and specific as it could (should) be.

straybaby -

I gave you TWO links to those exact words, on the ASPCA website. If you are unable to read, that’s your problem.

I challenge YOU to show me the ASPCA’s Asilomar euthanization records. I found them within SECONDS of going to the SF/SPCA’s website as well as my own Denver Dumb Friends League.

Why should those be so hard to find at the ASPCA?

With a little effort, you can read the Richmond SPCA records on the ASPCA website (Winograd talks about them in his book), and the SF/SPCA records are very easy to find (Winograd talks about them in his book). So where are the New York numbers?

That’s an ASPCA disclosure issue right there.

Asilomar data is by no means perfect, Winograd gives a breakdown of why they are deceptive and even unenforceable or verifiable in the book, but at least they are data.

You don’t even have to buy the book to read about it, here’s a free PDF file that explains the problems with Asilomar:

http://tinyurl.com/3792qn

Here’s an article from one year ago that still shows that New York kills more animals than it adopts, even if you count RETURNED TO OWNER as “adoptions.”

http://tinyurl.com/2ojdpa

It’s a wonderful article about $5,000,000 worth of renovations the ASPCA did to make their shelter posh and visitor friendly. How nice, that’s one of the things Winograd and others suggest to help improve adoption numbers.

But it still means that New York is MOSTLY killing. And if you’re going to complain that it’s not the ASPCA doing the killing, I’ll note that the SF/SPCA took over all “to be killed” animals from the City Pound when they renounced their role and gave up their city contract to kill pets. They didn’t just abandon the dogs and cats when they abandoned their contract. They made SF a No Kill City even without the SF Pound being No Kill.

The more the *SPCAs get back to their mission of stopping animal cruelty, the better. To the extent that they have done so, they deserve credit. No one is saying otherwise.

But history is relevant, and no one is demanding perfection. Saying something is “not perfect” can excuse any level of evil or incompetency.

We could say that the Nazis were not perfect in their mission to eradicate Jews (and others) from the planet. Should we reward them for their failures (i.e. the countless numbers of emaciated near-death Jews, gays, gypsies, Catholics, etc. that were liberated from the death camps by the Allies)?

The Nazis aren’t killing any Jews NOW, so why don’t we look at the good work they’re doing today and give them a second chance?

You might find my analogy inappropriate, especially since the ASPCA was out to do good, but what do you think the Nazi party was out to do and how do you think they rose to power? They didn’t run on a platform of Evil! They convinced a nation of people that they had to do the hard work, even go to war (i.e. kill other people) for their self preservation. They compromised their morals for what they convinced themselves was self preservation.

The historical ASPCA did the same thing. They gave up their mission to sell out for self preservation. And they carried out a hundred years of animal genocide because of that.

The fact that the ASPCA sold out their cause as soon as their founder died and became the model organization for other SPCAs to “fall in line” is a history they are going to have to fess up to and live with.

You keep hinting that the ASPCA is now different, well good! All the credit they deserve for every step they have taken to abandon what doesn’t work and adopt what does! I sure hope they are different and continue to distance themselves from their past failures and learn from their past successes.

I’ve read those position statements you link to, they even have one about the Asilomar accords and they advertise them self as the “founding signatory” …. but good luck FINDING the actual records.

Winograd also makes an interesting point about the meaningless of their position statements, specifically their Feral Cat statement that seems to support TNR, but is so convoluted and conditioned as to be ‘all things to all people’ and sitting on the fence. That smacks of telling people what they want to hear without making a commitment, waiting to see which side wins out and then claiming that they’ve been supporters all along.

Is that leadership or is that changing only because you have to, to keep the money flowing in?

Despite being illuminating to the horrible paradigm that the ASPCA (and the country at large) adopted towards the “animal overpopulation problem,” Winograd’s book isn’t anti-SPCA, most of his success stories come from SPCAs! The movement he is championing is about getting all of the independent SPCAs to “fall in line” with the new paradigm of shelter ethic. He gives plenty of examples of SPCAs and other shelters that are on-their-way but not there yet and the role model SF/SPCA is the jewel in the crown of the movement.

Winograd isn’t all doom-and-gloom about the SPCA. I am. I’m rather pissed off that groups like the SPCA, HSUS, and PETA cash in on all the wonderful work they are supposedly doing, all the while they are antiquated and hypocritical and they BLAME THE PUBLIC for all the ills, and they blame breeders, and they blame… blame… blame. But once you read the history, you find out that killing isn’t a necessary part of the equation, it’s the SPCAs and HSs being ineffective at beating the enemy, so they joined the enemy or BECAME the enemy.

That pisses me off. It pisses me off that they have killed, killed, killed in the name of “overpopulation” when such a thing does not exist, nor has it. They kill for supposed disease prevention when again, such an element does not exist nor has it existed. They justify killing based on Dogma, not on facts.

How many animals have died at the hands of these people, simply because the public perceived them as GOOD at the job of rehoming animals? How many people turned their pet into a shelter because they thought the shelter would be better at rehoming their pet than they would be on their own? How many of those people were ignorant of the fact that shelters only save 30-40%? If they had that on their front door, how many people would take their pets back home, or perhaps put in just a little effort to find their pet a home themselves.

I have saved a few animals off the street, the most recent this summer, but I did the work of finding their former owners myself. My first dog was also rescued off the street by my Grandmother who drove him all the way across the country to live with me. I never relied on a shelter because I didn’t need to, I could do the work myself. But before now, I would have had no problem dropping a dog off at a shelter if that was more convenient… they save animals professionally after all!

Well, I wouldn’t do so today, unless I looked up their kill rate before hand, and I’d certainly prefer No Kill.

I’m not a No Kill advocate because I don’t believe animals should be killed at all… I am a No Kill advocate because I just found out that they don’t HAVE to be. I was always told that they HAD to be killed and there was no better way. I was fine with that. I’m not now, a better way has been found.

I wrote not so long ago on my blog that the ethic of demanding breeders take back their animals for any reason at any time (the ASPCA lists this as their ethic for breeders on those position statements, too) was silly. And I still think it is. But I have changed my practical position on the matter, since the shelter alternative is such a poor alternative.

Even though something like 20% of dogs in shelters are purebred and 25% are reported to have been purchased from breeders, and even though the same surveys show that only some 20-25% of all the dogs in the country are obtained for a market price from a hobby/professional breeder (those stats are available on the ASPCA FAQ section)…. I would never want a dog that I bred to possibly end up in a shelter that was so incompetent at rehoming dogs.

It’s just like demanding that parents school their own children or that parents take them back if they are bad… well, that seems silly when the schools are good and the jails are efficient, but when the schools suck, many parents DO homeschool their children… and our jails are such failures, it’s no wonder we haven’t demanded that parents take back their delinquent children yet!

Any way, until the ASPCA comes out and apologizes for a century of backward thinking and genocide, and until they apologize for blaming the victim, and until they fess up that there isn’t a pet overpopulation problem and that it isn’t breeders that have fed what problem does exist… I don’t see any reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. I’m tired of being lied to.

i will read redemption eventually, but honestly, i do have projects in front of it at the moment. if that makes my experiences invalid, well, so be it.

Until there is genuine remorse, there can be no forgiveness or redemption….at least not from me.

“what do you think i’ll learn from Redemption that i haven’t learned from working in the shelters here and participating in the no-kill movement from the beginning.”

Um, unless you READ it, you’ll never know what you might learn. That’s kinda the point that’s being made.

Personally, I’ve never turned down the opportunity to learn something. The day you decide you know it all is the day you admit you don’t know much of anything, and are fine with that.

what do you think i’ll learn from Redemption that i haven’t learned from working in the shelters here and participating in the no-kill movement from the beginning. the goal in NYC is to not have any pet of reasonable health and temperament euthed because they don’t have a home. the Alliance has been working with Maddie’s Fund since the beginning and i wouldn’t be surprised if NYC’s plans are pretty much in line with NW. the city’s come a long way from the days of the NYCACC horror stories.

From Christopher above’ “And I suppose that means axing existing leadership and replacing it with people who believe or starting new organizations that can and will compete, making the old organizations obsolete or forcing them to change.” we’ve done that, thank dog! it was a key step at the NYCACC, imo, along with the change of Mayors. the change at the nycacc was pretty immediate as far as rescuing went from my personal experience. a lot of good things have happened in the last few years, although not fast enough for my taste, but then i am a tad impatient ;)

i have no doubt i would agree with most, if not all, of NW’s “path” and i have prob traveled on some of it. i have a stack of other books staring me in the face at the moment though (and collecting dust!) :) my main grip has been what i feel is a misrepresentation of the ASPCA by lumping them in with PETA and HSUS and other remarks. and in the end, all that does is hurt the animals that they are out there helping. counterproductive, eh?

But I have to say that my biggest complaint while reading it (I don’t currently have it in my posession to find you examples) was the lack of cites and footnotes to the many “facts” that Winograd liberally sprinkled throughout the book. Having every fact, figure, and quotation footnoted to a citation would have really helped support what he was saying, IMHO.

I’ve never read Redemtion but my guess is that it applies to more than dogs. We see how hard it is to get people’s attitudes to change when animals are not seen as living feeling beings. You get kids like Huckabee’s who hung that dog just because “He looked mangey…”

If we are going to talk about redemption we need to learn how to give people a choice which means we have to let them know that they came cross over without the perpetual stigma of the past. From that we need to at least consider the possibility that even guys like Vick can choose to learn from what they have done and maybe make up for it in substantive ways if we just allow them to turn the corner.

There can never be real redepmtion without forgiveness.
Sometimes it is harder to make a friend than to make an enemy and in order to make progress we need all the friends we can get.