pet connection

You know, I can barely stand to read Yes Biscuit! these days, because all the Memphis Animal Shelter webcam pictures of dogs being dragged to the kill room gut me.

But this afternoon I was thinking about how people say those webcams make doing their jobs so much harder for the staff at the facility, and make them worry about their personal safety, and give Memphis a bad name and could be taken out of context and all the other things they say about the webcams.

I typically responded to that by saying, “Yeah, well, at least you’re not being dragged to your death under horrible circumstances,” but you know what?

What we’re seeing on those cameras is cruelty to animals, but it’s also cruelty to the people who work at MAS. If it’s not making them wake up screaming every night with terror-filled dreams, then it’s eroding their compassion and deadening their empathy. It’s consuming their humanity, one needle full of Fatal-Plus at a time.

We know this because we’ve been told again and again by people who do it what the effect of shelter killing is on them. We can see it right in front of us when we look at those webcam shots, and imagine how the shelter workers have to shut their eyes to the terror of the dogs they drag down that hall.

Have to watch a garbage can full of squirmy puppies grow still and stop moving.

Have to see the rigid terror of the cat at the end of the catchpole relax into death.

Have to do it over and over again, hundreds of pets a week, an avalanche of death and fear and piss and shit. It never ends. Three out of four dogs and cats who come in the doors of the building where they work are going to be fed by them and watered by them and then dragged or carried down that long hallway, step by fearful step, until they’re killed.

And one day, they just can’t care anymore. And that’s the day a part of them dies, too.

So even if you think that Memphis is doing the best it can for the animals — which it’s not — tell me, do you think it’s doing the best it can for the people who work there?

Imagine for a few minutes that instead of experiencing this:

… the staff at the Memphis Animal Shelter, like their counterparts at the Nevada Humane Society, could feel like this:

It’s not impossible. It could happen.

Here’s how.

Photos: Top, a MAS staffer and a terrified dog. Bottom, two Nevada Humane Society staffers celebrating an adoption.

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It may be time to come together to save the animals in Miami, but what exactly is the community supposed to come together and do?

This morning the Miami Herald published an editorial exhorting local activists to “put down their signs” and unite to help the new shelter director do a better job for the animals of Miami-Dade.

Specifically, it urged them to abandon their current form of activism — organized protest — and instead work to implement and support spay/neuter programs, calling them “the only proven method to bring down the shelter population.”

To paraphrase Senator Daniel Moynihan, the Miami Herald, like all of us, is entitled to its own opinions — but not its own facts.

Spay/neuter programs, while essential, are not the “only proven method” of reducing shelter population.

Innovative return to owner programs — like those in Reno, Nev., and Calgary, Alberta — have been proven to bring down shelter population.

Foster care programs have been proven to bring down shelter population.

Aggressive, creative adoption programs have been proven to bring down shelter population.

Owner retention programs — support and assistance to pet-owners who are struggling to keep, feed or get vet care for their pets — have been proven to bring down shelter population.

Great community relations so you can have lots of rescue groups, volunteers, supporters and donors to help get pets rehabbed, treated and adopted have been proven to bring down shelter population.

Bringing in great people who know how to get community and local government support has been proven to bring down shelter population.

A good relationship with the media, in order to get the word out to the community about adoptions as well as spay/neuter and owner retention support, has been proven to bring down shelter population.

Putting the entire burden of improving shelter intake and shelter numbers on spay/neuter just creates a sense of helplessness in everyone currently working to save animals, from the local government to the shelter director to the local media to the volunteers, staff and rescue groups all the way out to the entire community.

That’s because spay/neuter is always “someday.” It does nothing to save the lives of animals already born, nor those in the shelter right now. This means people put all their effort and energy into something without any immediate reduction in the suffering and death of their community’s animals. It’s demoralizing.

All those other proven programs, on the other hand, create excitement. They give people a sense of purpose. They create immediate gratification, thus rewarding volunteers, activists, employees, fosterers and rescuers for their efforts — which typically causes people to try even harder.

The animals those programs save are also pretty glad about it.

It’s possible, Miami Herald, to ask your community to come together and get a job done without asserting as a proven truth something that isn’t so, and asking them to embrace a paradigm that is both ineffective and demoralizing.

By all means, beg them to keep your community’s low-cost spay/neuter program in place. But to say that’s the whole game? You are doing your community, its animals and the shelter staff and director a huge, huge disservice.

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Embattled Memphis Animal Shelter administrator Matthew Pepper threw in the towel on August 9. The story broke this evening on WMC-TV; h/t to Ryan Clinton:

Pepper sent his letter of resignation to Director Janet Hooks on August 9.

Pepper was named to the position in February of 2010.  In the year since he took the job, the shelter has been plagued with problems, including employees charged with animal cruelty.

Blogger Shirley Thistlewaite at Yes Biscuit!, who has been covering problems at MAS relentlessly for more than a year now, had this to say:

He leaves in his wake a city pound in turmoil, with one ACO facing criminal charges on multiple counts of animal cruelty, daily webcam images which appear to show needless killing and abuse, and locks on the doors to the stray area where hundreds of dogs languish without hope.

I hope, with all my heart, that the annual slaughter of thousands of healthy, friendly Memphis pets ends here.

[....]

This is your moment Memphis.  You have a choice.  Please, stop the abuse.  Stop the killing.

From your keyboard to Dog’s ears, Shirley.

Photo: Just one of thousands of heartbreaking images from the MAS webcam, as published on Yes Biscuit!

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If a person were taking in 10 pets a day and killing 7 or 8 of them every night, then taking 10 more in the next day, would you call them an “open admission pet-owner,” or a serial habitual animal abuser?

Seriously — if I see one more “shelter” defend their killing rate by proudly pointing out they’re “open admission,” I’m going to scream. I think continuing to take in animals you have no room for is stupid and immoral, and ten times more so when you then turn around and kill them. And to brag about it? Are you nuts?

Take the Michigan Humane Society, which kills nearly three-quarters of the animals it takes in, does not hold an animal control contract, and proudly brags that it’s “open admission.” I have a suggestion for you, MHS: Close your freaking door and stop killing all those animals.

That goes for Memphis Animal Shelter, too. They recently justified their kill rate, also around 75 percent, by saying they are the only  “open admission” shelter in their entire region.

Using the term “open admission” this way is the latest iteration of the “there’s no such thing as ‘no-kill,’ it’s just ‘someone else kill’” defense. Essentially it’s the implication that as long as strays are taken in and people are given the option of seeking shelter for a pet anytime and for any reason, the only possible outcome is that some — often most — of those animals will be killed by the very organization that takes them in. If they were “no kill,” by this logic, they’d say “no” to some pet owners, who would just head for the “shelter” up the road that would say “yes” and then kill them.

Why do they think it’s moral to take in animals you’re only going to turn around and kill? Because of the “fate worse than death” defense.

Essentially organizations like this contend that an “open door” to animals who will be killed is preferable to an uncertain fate on the other side of that door.

Are there really only two options for these pets, death or “a fate worse than death”? Of course not.

Just look at Washoe County, Nev., and Calgary in Alberta, Canada, where innovative return-to-owner programs have reduced the intake and sheltering of stray dogs to such low numbers that the community can save the few who aren’t able to go back to their families.

And look at shelters experimenting with making appointments for owner surrenders, places like PAWS Chicago. They save enough space in their program so they can take in urgent cases on the spot. However, they ask other pet owners to make arrangements for a future surrender date.

What they’ve found is that that most people are fine with that, knowing that if things become urgent the door is open, but happy to know that their pet will be given the shelter’s full attention and a careful, loving re-homing at a planned, future moment.

Anecdotally, and this is something I think most rescuers have seen, I’ve observed that once a person knows there is an “out” from the pressure and stress of whatever is leading them to give up their pet, they sometimes see their way clear to keeping the pet, or become more able to find the pet a home themselves, or at least, they get enough relief from the stress of worrying about it that they’re okay waiting for a little while.

Since there’s no data that I’m aware of — and if you know of some, I’d like to see it! — demonstrating that the “open door” does  a better job of preventing these pets from being abandoned than programs like that do, you’d think it would be a moral imperative for self-described “shelters” to not take in animals they’re going to turn around and kill, and give those programs a try.

Instead, they keep that damn door open as wide as possible and then brag about it — even though what they’re really bragging about is bad management, a lack of planning, and a failure to implement creative alternative strategies that are working in other communities.

All in the name of finding a scrap of moral high-ground to stand on while taking another pull from the bottle of Fatal-Plus.

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The best parts of the weekend in Washington weren’t liveblogged. Sorry, but it’s true. Spending a sublime evening with Christie on the roof terrace of the Kennedy Center and enjoying quality time with two dear friends in Maryland are just a couple of the memories from the weekend I’ll keep long after the content of any particular session fades away.

Then there was the lunchtime talk on Saturday, given by Seth Godin. Seth is one of the best speakers and thinkers out there these days. If you’re not familiar with him, I urge you to read his books, particularly “Tribes.” Additionally, if you ever get a chance to see Seth’s presentation in person, please don’t pass it up. He’s worth every second. Seth talked about how our methods of communication, and therefore how we interact with each other have been revolutionized in the past decade. He challenged the No Kill 2011 attendees to not wait for someone else to take the initiative in transforming their city’s shelter philosophy, but to be that visionary. There may only be one Nathan Winograd, but there is always room for the next Bonney Brown or Ryan Clinton to step up and grab the initiative. Why didn’t I blog Seth’s speech? I was too busy paying attention. His slide show alone is worth the price of admission. Also, I was eating lunch.

That brings us to the most important conversation of the weekend for me. Sunday morning, I joined Christie and Shirley Thistlethwaite (of YesBiscuit! fame) for breakfast at a downtown hotel. Shirley’s work on the ongoing tragedy in Memphis alone makes her an indispensable voice in the No Kill blogging community. It’s been more than a year since I composed a news roundup before checking in to see what Shirley’s up to first. She’s always working hard, staying current, and challenging the powers that be to protect the dogs and cats that are still being killed at an alarming rate from sea to shining sea.

Christie, Shirley and I talked about Seth’s charge to the conference, particularly in light of what is taking place in Memphis. Dogs and cats are dying, and it’s expected the webcam that afforded Shirley the glimpse into the horrors at the Memphis Animal Shelter will be shut down. My question was who is (or would be soon) taking the lead on the ground? I suggested that someone needs to “fire on Fort Sumter.”

Before the Civil War started, the question of slavery was on everyone’s tongue. The rumors of an impending showdown bubbled for years.  Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” woke the nation to the horrors of what slavery really meant to the degradation and destruction of innocent human beings. Still, until Fort Sumter was fired upon and the the war began in earnest, the issue wasn’t going to be decided. That one event finally lit the fuse. In Memphis, in New York state, and other regions of the country, innocent animals are being slaughtered daily, and we’re waiting for the battle to be joined. I’m a journalist, and I’d like to hope that over the sweltering weekend in Washington, I witnessed the kindling of a renewed fight against the forces of inertia, laziness and expediency. But if nobody steps up, this golden opportunity to make a difference is squandered. We can’t afford that, and most importantly, dogs and cats everywhere can’t afford it. They’re not just numbers. They’re furry balls of love, and their fate sits squarely in the hands of the people who listened to Seth Godin’s challenge on Saturday to stand up and take a chance.

Nathan, Ryan, Christie and other speakers sketched out the requirements for the next generation of leaders. Now it’s up to the No Kill 2011 attendees to heed Seth Godin’s challenge. They must create their own road maps. The resistance against change is intense and intimidating. Success will require much more than a love of animals. It demands a steadfast refusal to compromise.

Real No Kill progress from the new generation of shelter directors will depend on imagination, determination, compassion, and a stubborn resolve to not allow killing as an option. Only time will tell, and I’d suggest the place to watch today is Memphis. Has Shirley’s bright spotlight spurred real change? Will someone answer Seth Godin’s call? Will we see the next great success story to follow Austin, Charlottesville and Reno?  If so, we can pronounce this past weekend a triumph. If not, more animals will pay the price.

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