pet connection

This is so meta — our own David Greene and me, liveblogging the presentation by bloggers Brent Toellner of KC Dog Blog and Shirley Thistlewaite of YesBiscuit! talking about advocacy blogging at the No Kill Conference in Washington, DC. That’s Brent, Shirley and David in the photo.

All the usual disclaimers apply: I’m doing this live, there will be typos, and I’ll be updating a few times during the presentation so use your refresh button to check for new material.

By the way, there is a persistent rumor that Shirley is going to sing for us. Brent started that rumor. Shirley says if she does, it will be at the end.

The session starts at 10:45 AM Eastern, so stay tuned!

Brent and Shirley are introducing all the bloggers in the audience. Kathy Pobloskie of Wisconsin Watchdog, the Pets Alive blog, SavingShelterPets.wordpress.com, No Kill Nation, Valerie Hayes from coolcrazybeautifulworld.com, David and me  from PetConnection.com, new blogger from Prince Georges, MD (georgeofdenmarkscounty.blogspot.com), straycatalliance.org (Los Angeles).

Brent has been blogging at KC Dog Blog for around 5 years, Shirley at YesBiscuit!

Brent: How get news has changed. From over the fence to papers to TV news to 24 hour news channels, to media conglomerates.

People losing faith in the news media now. 57 percent have little to no trust in mainstream media (Gallup).

Online news is growing. 41 percent of Americans get news from Internet. Online is single biggest news source, more than TV and newspaper.

This is great for us. Your start up costs of an online community are zero. Go to Blogger or WordPress, it’s free. We can be on the same playing field as maimstream media and cover things they aren’t.

(more…)

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Welcome to our live blogging coverage of No Kill Conference 2011 from the campus of The George Washington University in muggy, warm Washington, D.C.

Christie and I will be reporting and updating frequently over the next two days. You’ll want to check back often, as posts will grow over the course of a presentation. Since we’re going to be live-blogging, there won’t be any time for editing…so that means I apologize upfront for any and all typos, misspellings, and all other manner of fumblefinger errors.  And see that logo there? That might be about it for images for the weekend.

First up, the opening keynote address from Nathan Winograd, starting in about ten minutes….

_____________________________________

Introduction

Attendees have come from 40 states and eight countries.

Keynote – Nathan Winograd, founder and director of No Kill Advocacy Center. Author of  ”Redemption.”

Since 2010, Shelby County, KY celebrated its 3rd no kill year. Charlottesville, VA, its 5th. Tompkins, NY its 10th.  Marquette, MI, too.

The No Kill model is the only model that has proven to be successful.

Austin, TX is the newest star. 90% save rate for dogs and cats: largest community in the nation so far to become No Kill.

(more…)

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Dr. Loretta Mayer needed to study human diseases in mice, so she was working on a drug that could induce menopause in her test subjects. What she found may have a broader and more important application. She appears to have hit on a medication that could create reliable, non-surgical sterilization in female dogs. From the Arizona Republic:

One of Mayer’s greatest hopes for the sterilization drug is to reduce animal euthanasia in Arizona, where shelters are overflowing and thousands of dogs and cats are put down every year.

Maricopa County ranks second only to Los Angeles County in pet overpopulation, according to Bretta Nelson, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Humane Society.

This past year, 94,889 animals entered Valley shelters. The Arizona Humane Society performed nearly 20,600 surgical sterilizations on cats, dogs and rabbits, costing nearly $2 million.

There is still a long way to go before the Food and Drug Administration approves the medication for broad use, but if it comes to pass, the nature of spay/neuter discussions could be fundamentally altered forever.

Worrying rise in parvo has economic roots: Veterinary clinics are reporting an increase in parvovirus, even though it’s easily controlled with an effective vaccine. The instinctive reaction is that the spread of parvo shouldn’t happen, until you think about one reason it is: more and more pet owners are choosing not to take their pets to the veterinarian because of the prolonged economic hard times. Shots are therefore not being administered, and so the deadly incidence is increasing. You can read more at the South Bend Tribune.

Africa’s Dog Whisperer’s dog attacks little girl: If I’m telling you about someone being attacked by a dog, there’s a deeper story. James Lech touts himself as Africa’s #1 dog expert. He calls himself Africa’s “Dog’s Whisperer.” While he was having lunch in a Johannesburg mall, he was accompanied by his Rottweiler. Lech claimed the dog was a service dog. That makes the video accompanying this story from the Times Live so much more disturbing. The Rottie attacked an injured a four year-old girl who was walking by the table. Although Lech claimed the dog was accidentally stepped on, the video indicates otherwise. There’s the background. Now, please read this outstanding response from my friend Nancy Freedman-Smith.

Challenging the veterinary status quo: It’s hard to go against the grain in a respected profession with experts in an established specialty.  That’s why it’s well worth reading this post by Pet Connection’s BFF Dr. Patty Khuly, from her “Fully Vetted” blog. More importantly, be sure not to miss the comment thread that follows.

Lethal heat: Over the past two weeks, triple digit temperatures have blanketed the United States. It’s been brutal for people…and we don’t have fur coats. Imagine what it’s been like for pets. From the Stamford Patch:

Animal Control Officer Chris Martel says that the smart thing to do is to leave the dog at home, even if you don’t have air conditioning. Leave plenty of water, and put on a fan if you have one.

“It can get over 100 degrees in a car in minutes in the summer,” Martel says.

If she sees a dog in a car in a dangerous situation, Martel says, she will not hesitate to issue a summons for cruelty.

If she can’t find the owner of the car, and the dog is suffering, she is allowed by law to break the windows of the car and get the dog out. She can also have a warrant issued for the arrest of the owner of the car, and she says she will not hesitate to do so if the situation calls for it.

If you see a dog – or any animal – locked in a car in a situation that you think is dangerous, you can ramp up your courage and seek out the owner of the vehicle and explain why he or she should get the dog home.

Blog post of the week comes from our friend Heather Houlahan at Raised By Wolves: “Not your stick.”

Video of the week: The kitten is named Visa. The Pitt Bull is named Spike. They fight like, well, cats and dogs. But in a good way. Thanks to Phyllis DeGioia for the tip.

Picture of the week comes to us from my pal Maria Goodavage at Dogster. A Dogster reader named Laura Hickman sent in this picture of an English Bulldog named Elliott. He was the lucky recipient of a cool new bed when neighbors emptied their cooler in an Ohio driveway on a roasting hot day.

Special programming note: Next week, the news wrap will be preempted by special Pet Connection coverage of NoKill 2011. We’ll be live-blogging next weekend from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., bringing you conference sessions by luminaries in the No Kill movement. The presenters will include Nathan Winograd, Ryan Clinton, and our very own Christie Keith. Stay tuned all next weekend!

I always like to hear from readers, especially if you have tips, and links for interesting stories.  Give me a shout in the comments, or better yet, send me an e-mail.

Image credit: Dr. Loretta Mayer, azcentral.com. Elliott, dogster.

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It’s often said that “we can’t adopt our way out of pet over-population.” I say we can’t spay/neuter our way out of it.

I’m not even entirely sure what people mean when they talk about not being able to adopt our way out of pet over-population.

If they mean we have to have a big-picture view of the issue of pets being killed in shelters across the country, and not focus on just one piece of the puzzle, I can go along with that.

But I don’t think most people who use that sentence mean it that way. They seem to mean one of two things.

The first is, “There is no point in trying to adopt out all these pets and we should just kill them instead, because if we find homes for these we’ll just get more in to take their place.” (True also of killing them, but they don’t seem to consider that.)

The second is, “The only way to stop killing pets in shelters is to spay and neuter more of them.”

Now, low-cost/free and accessible spay/neuter is one of the steps to no-kill, and I support and applaud any community that has that in place. Yay.

But I think it’s kind of obvious that spaying and neutering will do absolutely nothing to save the lives of the pets who are homeless right now, nor the ones who will come into your shelter tomorrow or the next day.

The options are death and adoption. Spay/neuter isn’t going to help these pets, and rushing past adoption and waving your little speuter flag is going to mean those pets get dead. And the ones who come in the next day to take their place? Also dead.

I think it’s great that you have an upstream, supply-side plan. Don’t get rid of it. Near-universal spay/neuter has almost certainly accounted for a lot of the gains we’ve made in reducing shelter killing in the last two decades, even if there aren’t really any studies out there to support that. But I’m more than willing to believe that’s the case.

But if you don’t also have an equally strong demand-side plan, you’re going to continue to have the kind of killing rates in shelters that we have today, which are — or should be — absolutely unacceptable to anyone who cares about animals.

Although there are places in the country where there’s still a good amount of lifesaving potential in increasing spay/neuter accessibility and prevalence, in most communities, we’ve already harvested the low-hanging fruit. Most pet dogs and cats are already spayed or neutered, and spending huge resources chasing down the tiny number who aren’t is going to result in ever-dwindling returns, particularly when it’s done at the expense of better sheltering and better adoption, as is so often the case *cough* Los Angeles *cough*.

But adoption? Building better adoption systems is all low-hanging fruit. That’s because there are millions more people every year who get new dogs and cats than there are pets in shelters. Most of them are willing to consider adopting a shelter pet — and millions of them already have, and plan to again. Shelter and rescue group adoption accounts for more than one-fifth of all new dog and cat acquisitions in this country already.

It would take a very small increase in that rate — just up to around one-quarter — to save the lives of every healthy pet, as well as every pet with a treatable or manageable health or behavior problem, in every shelter in America.

Creating better, more appealing ways to get pets adopted doesn’t just help those pets or your shelter, either;  it raises the profile of adoption in general and creates more social acceptance and awareness of adoption.

It both saves lives now, and builds infrastructure to keep saving them in the future. And even more importantly, it builds that infrastructure on a cultural level, not just for that one agency or community.

That’s why adoption is so critical, and in most places is the silver bullet, while spay/neuter is not. As long as you have high rates of spay/neuter in your community already, and a free/low cost and accessible spay/neuter program, all your low-hanging fruit is in adoptions, not surgery.

And if you’re in an area with very low rates of spay/neuter and no services, then yes, you need to get those s/n programs in place immediately. But that’s no reason to ignore adoptions. Those surgeries will only reduce future shelter intake; it takes adoption programs, and better sheltering practices, to save the lives of the homeless animals in your community right now, and the ones who will need your help in the near future.

The next time someone tells you that “you can’t adopt your way out of pet over-population,” don’t believe it. If they tell you that you can’t stop the killing with adoption, believe it even less. Because finding homes for homeless pets is the only way to save their lives.

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It struck me as odd that so many animal control agencies in different parts of the country were responding in the same way to public calls for reform: by shooting the messenger.

From my column in SFGate.com:

There’s an epidemic spreading through the nation’s animal control shelters, and it’s not something a vaccination can prevent. It’s an epidemic of secrecy.

Consider this: Animal control is a government function, paid for with your tax dollars. It’s work done on behalf of the public; shouldn’t the public have some way to ensure it’s being done appropriately?

But in communities all over the country, including here in California, calls for animal control reform have been met with the sound of a door slamming in the public’s face.

[....]

The Central California SPCA, a private organization that holds the animal control contract for the city of Fresno, recently closed its board meetings to the public, sparking a wave of protests, including a July 19 demonstration organized by FixFresno.org, an advocacy group aimed at ending the killing of healthy and treatable pets in the city’s shelters.

It’s not surprising that citizens want to reform how Fresno’s homeless animals are treated; the CCSPCA kills around 80 percent of the pets it takes in, one of the worst kill rates in California and far above the national average of 50 percent.

Recently, animal rescuers in the community have also been alleging mismanagement, abuse and neglect at the shelter.

Until last month, the CCSPCA’s board meetings were open to the public, but on June 16, the president of FixFresno.org, Melissa McDonald, received a letter from the shelter’s attorney, Jeffrey M. Reid, advising her that the meetings were now closed and members of FixFresno.org would no longer be allowed to attend.

Attendance by FixFresno.org members had been permitted previously, he said, after the group asserted that the board meetings were subject to the Brown Act, California’s open meetings law. However, Reid told them this interpretation of the law was incorrect.

He pointed to what is essentially a loophole in the law, which calls for open meetings of private organizations contracted to do government work only in cases where the organization was created specifically to do that work, or if a member of the government sits on the organization’s board. Neither of those provisions applies to the CCSPCA.

Members of FixFresno.org showed up at the next board meeting anyway, only to be met at the door by Reid.

“He said that having us there was too ‘intimidating’ for the board to function,” McDonald told me. “It is sad that they chose to hide what is going on instead of addressing the problems.”

I called CCSPCA spokesperson Beth Caffrey, and asked what prompted the organization to contact an attorney on this matter in the first place.

“We want our board meetings to be productive,” she told me. “We couldn’t be productive because of the disruptive behavior of people who were there.”

In the rest of the article, I update the situation in Memphis and New York City, and have a great wrap-up commentary from FixAustin.org’s Ryan Clinton. It’s all here.

Photo: Courtesy of Celeste Pryor.

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