pet connection

On October 17, 2007, Pet Connection contributing editor Christie Keith interviewed Richard Avanzino of Maddie’s Fund in Alameda, Calif., about the organization’s work towards making America a no-kill nation.

CK: I was living in San Francisco when you were head of the SF SPCA, and the agency decided not to do animal control any more. That was the first time I’d ever heard of “no-kill,” and the first time it was tried on a city- or county-wide basis in the country. How did this come about?

RA: If I can put it at the doorstep of one incident, it was that lady there (gestures to portrait of a dog) — Sido — who, in 1979, died. Her owner, Mary Murphy passed away — actually committed suicide — and left a will stating that Sido should be killed. And at that time, Carl Friedman was our operations director, and he came to me and said, “We have this little dog that was picked up,” because we were the animal control officer at the time. And I said, “I’ve been told there’s a will out there that requires her to be killed, and we don’t allow that to happen with the animals in our shelter. We give them all a chance.” At that time the chance was good, but not good enough, but they all got a chance. We said that she deserves what a stray deserves, at least. Death is not a kindness. Animals, as our best friends, deserve more than an easing into the next world. And the humane community got very angry with us, actually. The formalized, organizational, institutional groups came out against us. HSUS led the charge against us.

As her story broke in the Chronicle, and got wide publicity, everybody rallied. The reporters first, it was sort of like, “What is all this furor over a little creature walkin’ on four legs?” And they would come into my office, and she would walk over to them, and she would put her paw on their knee, and she would lick the hand that was holding the tablet, and she’d look up at them with those beautiful eyes and they said, “I get it. I understand.” And they wrote the story.

And she was a charmer — she was adorable. And she basically said to the world, “Even though my caregiver has passed, I want another chance.” And the world responded to her. And I knew then the American people were ready for a transition away from processing, away from efficiency, away from blaming somebody else. It was the time to basically step forward and do something about it. So that was sort of the turning point for me.

Then it was built in the programs around trying to change the dynamic and growing into greater and greater discomfort in the City. The City, like almost every municipality in the country, under-funded animal control in relationship to the task that the agency was given. And you had a choice — to either perform at the level of funding, or to subsidize the deplorable funding situation with charitable dollars. And it was the Board’s feeling — the management team’s feeling — the volunteer’s and contributor’s feeling that the philanthropy was available to improve the chance for life — not just enforce the pooper scooper law or respond to the barking dog complaints. So we found ourselves more and more out of alignment with the elected officials and the City bureaucracy’s need for municipal animal control. Which is nothing wrong, it just wasn’t why we were there. We were supposed to be the lifesavers and yet we were the biggest killers. That disconnect just became more and more painfully obvious.

So we kept on preparing the City for taking on the responsibility. I think we were the first SPCA in the country to take on the animal control function. And I think we were the first major one to get out of the business. But we needed to prepare the City for the transition, because for more than 100 years they’d relied on the SPCA to do the job and they had no clue what they were getting involved in. So we had to prepare them philosophically, monetarily, and organizationally for the task at hand, and it took us awhile.

So we gave them notice, I believe — well, we gave them notice that we were on that path in 1984, but we actually completed the task in 1989. And they started a good program, and they hired the folks that worked with us, so they were the people we respected; people we had chosen because we knew they were caring. People that we thought would do an excellent job, and they did. And they funded them at a better level than they were funding us.

They were exploiting my co-workers, because we were a charity and people came to work for us as a cause. They were not paid what a City worker gets paid for doing the same or similar job. So when they took over the function, the costs dramatically rose, but it rose as it should have been. As it should have been when they were paying the not-for-profit to do the job. So it had a good outcome, and we wanted them to get comfortable in their skin before we pressured the no-kill agenda. We adopted for ourselves, in 1989, the no-kill methodology, and we were very successful in building programs and building a safety net and preparing ourselves to not only handle our animals, but handle all of the City’s animals as well.

And when we thought the time was right, we approached the City and said, “We want to develop a pact.” And their initial response was “No, thank you.”

CK: You approached Animal Care and Control or the Supervisors, or who did you –

RA: We first approached Animal Care and Control. And then when that failed, we approached the advisory body. It was called the Animal Welfare Division or something like that. And we basically laid the gauntlet down saying, “If you don’t want to do it voluntarily, then we will seek an initiative that requires you to turn the animals over to us if you’re going to kill them.” And they didn’t like that. I think, since one out of every three households in San Francisco supported the San Francisco SPCA, we had a good chance at being successful on the initiative. But we always believed it was best to work with sugar and honey than to work with a stick. And so we entered into negotiations involving a facilitator to reach what came to be known as the Adoption Pact.

And it was the first in the nation to basically institutionalize the rescue mission by having the not-for-profit carry the heavy load and do the heavy lifting when the animal control program had reached its maximum of whatever they could do to try to help the animals that they were responsible for. And it turned out to be wonderful for the animals. The dogs and cats were guaranteed a home and we increased our life-saving abilities month after month, year after year, and achieved, I think, the best success rate in the country among urban areas. The best life-saving record of anybody then or now. So we were very pleased with the progress we made.

We didn’t do it all. We certainly were not all things to all people, and along the way we were constantly attacked by our peer groups. And continue to be so. All the things that we did in San Francisco were initially rejected and received with great hostility. And today, I think I can look backwards and say without almost any exception, all of the programs that the organized humane community fought against, they have now embraced and now made the cornerstone of their own programs.

The Gump’s window was a big deal because they said it encouraged impulse buying. Now just about every big city in the nation has off-site adoptions using the business sectors and the commercial sectors for promoting pets during the holidays. There’s a whole thing called No More Homeless Pets for the Holidays, Home for the Holidays. And all the major organizations have embraced it. When we started the TNR program for feral cats, it was rejected as well.

Sido was the first buzz saw. Well, actually it started on the seventh day that I was there. I came to the San Francisco SPCA and we were 90 days away from bankruptcy.

CK: And you came out of what field yourself?

RA: I was in healthcare planning, human healthcare. I was working for the Orange County Healthcare Planning Agency. The third day that I was there, the City cancelled the contract. And that represented, I think, 58 percent of our revenue stream. So I thought, “Gee, should I take the blame for this?” I mean, I’ve only been here three days. I just found out where the bathroom was. And all of a sudden I was being told that 58 percent of the revenue stream was being eliminated. So that was a shock. We reversed that 30 days later, but that was my introduction.

On the seventh day I was there, I created a study committee, which resulted in a report, which we ended up implementing on the eleventh day, that ended using the Euthanaire machine. Just about everybody in the country, almost without exception, used the Euthanaire machine. And when we stopped using it and it got out that we were no longer using that method, once again, the organized humane community reacted violently. So we are accustomed to controversy. We are accustomed to being bashed and trashed. But we thought we were moving forward. We thought we were doing the right thing for the animals and San Francisco.

And that was really what our focus was. It wasn’t on what people thought about us in other parts of the country or what would work in different communities throughout the land, or how we would be received by our peer group. It was all about, “What do we need to do to save the life of that pet today?” And that was the only focus. And we had to put blinders on to insulate ourselves from the bash and trash. That was the San Francisco SPCA experience.

The Maddie’s Fund effort is a little different, because we are fortunate enough to have this phenomenal amount of wealth made possible through a little dog named Maddie, to be used to basically build this safety net of care throughout the land. We think it’s going be used to build a no-kill nation and we think we will achieve success and accomplish our purpose in less than 10 years. And none of this is controversial.

CK: The main purpose of this interview is to talk about Maddie’s Fund, but I just want to backtrack and ask you one very quick question. I am guessing the organized humane movement’s opposing your stopping using the Euthanaire machine was because it made all the other shelters feel like they had to change what they were doing?

RA: Yeah, it’s the same reaction you’re hearing now, the opposition to the no-kill movement. People put on blinders that it was the only way to do it. A lot of animals were being killed in those days. About 23 million animals were being killed throughout the land. And this was an efficient way to process the sacrifice of tens of millions of dogs and cats. And nobody wanted an end to happen to the animals, let alone this mechanism to be used to take the life. But they had to build a mind-set around it, believing that it was humane. And the theory was, that this was a high-altitude chamber, which replicates what a jet pilot feels when they go into the atmosphere and there’s not enough oxygen in the air, so they black out. There’s no oxygen to the brain. It’s not a suffering condition, it’s a lack of oxygen that basically brings about the accomplishment of death.

I never understood the science, but it didn’t really matter what the science said. The people, even in those early days – and thank God the American people are far better today than they were in those days – I couldn’t understand if there was a non-controversial way to end a life that was received by the veterinary community, and used for everybody’s companion animal when they had to say good-bye to their cherished loved one, why we wouldn’t do the same. Because we were supposed to be the standard, we were supposed to be the humane community, we were supposed to be leading the nation by example as well as by deed as well as by rhetoric as to what should be done for our best friends. So for us it was a no-brainer. But for my colleagues, it was sort of like you’re confronting our ability to do this. You’re suggesting, although you don’t go out and say it, you’re suggesting that it’s not the best way. Our contributors are going to get mad at us. Our co-workers are going to begin to question the procedures. The public won’t understand. And you’re going to make us look bad.

CK: And Sido — what was the problem with you guys saving her? I can’t even begin to wrap my brain around that one.

RA: As I said, it was in the context of more than tens of millions of animals dying. The idea was, if pets are dying because there aren’t enough homes — because of irresponsible pet care, and a caring, loving owner says that they want their animal to be killed — why not put an end to that life when you have other lives that are not under the same interest, or under the same level of concern. Because they’ve already been abandoned by society or by their caregiver. But here we had somebody that was loving and compassionate and devoted who’s basically saying, “Here’s what I want.” And you have over here another dog who doesn’t have anybody to be the champion. And they’re dying in large numbers. Why help this person?

But they did stop the legislation. You know, I used to be a lobbyist when I got out of law school. I worked for the legislature, first as deputy legislative council and then I became a lobbyist for the healthcare industry, so getting bills through both houses was usually a 2-year endeavor. This made it through on house in 17 days. She went to the Senate, where the bill was introduced by a senator from San Mateo County, and she did her shtick – she was sent from central casting – she was just an unbelievable buddy. And they passed it right away. And then, when it got to the floor, HSUS objected because we got out of committee unanimously. And we had something like 72 co-authors, too; it was very, very impressive.

But anyway, HSUS stopped it because they were a very influential spokesman for the humane cause. So they ended up rewriting the law so that only dogs incite this kind of case because initially it was an animal rights law. Then the court ended up deciding this case as the first animal rights case in the United States, certainly involving a shelter animal.

CK: I was just trying to understand the nature of their objection. I think I get the picture.

RA: They were basically in our movement. When millions of animals are dying, they’re – and this exists today – there is a feeling that animals can be prioritized. And the cutes and cuddlies are more important than the old and uglies. And the old and uglies are less important than the animals that are easier to find homes. It’s sort of like saying they don’t matter. A survey was recently done in the Gulf Coast. And it’s very interesting. One of the outcomes of that survey was that people look at their own pets as family members, but they look at dogs and cats in shelters as being something else. And I think the humane community has intentionally encouraged that. Certainly unintentionally, if not intentionally, encouraged that. And that’s because there would be a huge public outcry if we were killing family members in any institution.

But by letting them be considered as a pigeon or as a raccoon or a pit bull or a feral cat where there’s not nearly the connectedness by the vast majority of the American people, they can get away with the slaughter. And, as we try to basically say, they’re all precious. Sido – yes, she was loved, she was the best friend, she was the devoted companion, but she’s no different than a stray dog that just got picked up because his owner abandoned him, or they moved out of town, or they got lost or whatever. They’re all our best buddies. They all deserve to be family members and certainly deserve to be treated as family members.

CK: You just said “Gulf Coast” and didn’t you guys just do a big thing with HSUS? What is that about?

RA: Well, Maddie’s Fund is not the San Francisco SPCA or the counterpart to Nathan Winograd. Maddie’s Fund is a funding agency created through the phenomenal wealth of benefactors in the memory of their cherished and best friend and family member that walked on four legs called Maddie. And to honor her spirit and to reflect the love and joy they felt, they created this organization to basically provide a safety net of care for all companion animals.

And our first goal – it’s not the ultimate goal – our first goal is to create a no-kill nation. Our mission is to revolutionize the status and well-being of companion animals. So our agenda is to basically try to figure out what is the best way, by resource engagement, to leverage their wealth to get to the end goal.

What is one of the other myths that exist in our cause – well, I guess it’s not a total myth, there’s some legitimacy to it – the excuse used by most agencies is “we don’t have enough money.” We have a lot of passion, we have a lot of commitment, we have a lot of caring people as staff, as volunteers, as supporters, but we just don’t have enough money to do the job. And there is some legitimacy to that. I personally don’t think that it is the end answer, however. But when the Duffields offered to create this wealth and to provide the resources, we said ok, now we can use that to basically encourage a system and a mechanism to accelerate the process.

Because a lot has occurred over the last 40 years. I think you’ve seen the numbers. Forty years ago, 23 million dogs and cats were being killed in shelters. Twenty years ago that number was 17 million. This year it’s 3.7 million. Even though Nathan Winograd is making an impact, even though I think Maddie’s Fund is contributing, even though I think San Francisco SPCA has had a role, the public and the love for our family members who walk on four legs is ahead of the curve. They are leading the cause. The cause is not leading the public, the public is leading the humane movement. Which actually is sort of a tragedy.

It’s a lack of leadership, as far as I’m concerned. Because the cause is a strong proponent for attacking people who are cruel to animals, for trying to move the world away from being carnivores towards trying to stop cruel experimentation and a lot of other important socio-economic questions of the day affecting the suffering of animals. Good stuff.

But in the world of companion animals, we have not done our job. The public has. And we’re doing the catch-up. Maddie’s Fund offered an opportunity for agencies to come together to stop the bash and trash, to work in a unified voice, thinking that we could move our cause faster forward if we were working together.

When we look at the political process in California, and how people get elected on the bash and trash opportunity. One of the outcomes is that less people vote. People who do vote are usually looking at the least of the evils, as they see it. There’s very little embracing and excitement about the democratic process and the love of the elected officials and the excitement about how democracy is really the wonderful thing for our country and maybe for other places. And that’s because we are so involved in bash and trash.

Then we have a terrible tragedy like Katrina, and the government fails and there is so much suffering. The public cries out. The public basically rallies. And it’s not what party they’re in, it’s not what socio-economic structure they’re in, it’s not how they feel about various issues. They just want to help. Well, the animals in our shelters need that help now. And I personally believe, and I think our board believes, and hopefully there are a lot of other people who believe, that we have to put aside the baggage, put aside the history. We’ve got to put aside the negativism and talk about what we can do together.

That’s not the Nathan path. Nathan has a very legitimate path. We’re glad that Nathan is who Nathan is. But we’re trying to bring people together to work together. It’s an interesting dynamic as to whether you get people to do for you because you have honey or whether you have a hammer. Some people you beat over the head with a hammer and they get the light. Some people, you lead them with some sugar and they find that this is really in their best interest and it really serves their purpose, and for self-interest reasons they embrace it.

And there are probably a lot of other paths as well. But we are on our path. We actually think we are contributing, I’m sure Nathan feels that he is definitely contributing. We don’t think of ourselves as being at odds with Nathan at all.

CK: You’re the hero of “Redemption.” How could you think that?

RA: Different people have different styles. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. Like I said, for the love of pets, regardless of what impact Nathan does or doesn’t have, or Maddie’s Fund does or doesn’t have, or an organization like San Francisco SPCA does or doesn’t have, the public’s going to get it. They’re on board and that’s the salvation. That’s what’s going to be there as the true safety net for the animals.

There are a lot of people that are getting on board. I don’t want to bore you with numbers, but the exciting thing is, for the last 10 years we’ve – well, forty years ago we had 69 million dogs and cats in homes. Ten years ago we had 135 million dogs and cats in homes. This last year we had 165 million dogs and cats in homes. So we’ve expanded our market big time. Ten years ago, shelters accounted for 17 percent of marketshare. So of all the animals in people’s homes, 17 percent came from shelters. This year that’s 21 percent. When we get to 24 percent no more dogs and cats will die.

CK: And what is that based on? How do you arrive at that? Nathan quoted that to me, too.

RA: Today, there are 3.7 million dogs and cats being killed. We believe that 3 million of that 3.7 are healthy and treatable. So you have to say 3 million. One percent of 165 million is 1.65 million. So two percent of that gives you 3.2 million, right? So if you just went up two percent – one is stock and one is flow. There’s a difference. We hire statisticians to try to interpret for us. So one is we’re trying to get to a stock. The other is how we’re trying to use a flow.

When you have 30 million – your market expands by 30 million. All you’ve got to do is get 10 percent of that market. When you have a turnover, that’s another expansion opportunity. That’s a different thing, that’s a replacement life. So you have a replacement life, expanding market and increasing marketshare. All of those are happening without Maddie’s Fund, without Nathan Winograd, without San Francisco SPCA. I think all the credit goes to the American public.

You bring in the fact that Maddie’s Fund is investing in and demonstrating successful models – and others, not just Maddie’s Fund. There is an ever-expanding number of models that are showing better success rates than the average throughout the country. You have, I would say, better leadership. And when you have a Nathan Winograd who leaves the legal profession and a well-paid job to basically be an animal-lover advocate – that’s happening in greater and greater numbers all the time. And then we’re investing in something called shelter medicine, which we think is going to provide a professional credential as well as an academic experience and a science underpinning that will be able to accelerate our cause. So you have increased professionalism, academic and scientific knowledge, good leadership, excellent examples, and an explosion in resources.

Just one example: about 10 years ago, about a million dollars was being spent on [unclear] spays and neuters. This next year, that number will be 20 million. It’s truly phenomenal.

I talk to people throughout the month and I would say we’re bringing in people who want to give to us, but we don’t accept charity. We basically tell people if you want to give to the cause go to your local organization or think of other agencies because our benefactors are comfortable with the fact that they will fund their approach through their organization.

But I would say I talk to people who have, cumulatively, 100 million dollars a year to put into the cause. That’s a lot. When I worked for the San Francisco SPCA, and we went from bankruptcy to one of the wealthiest in the nation, we didn’t have anywhere close to that kind of philanthropy. And that’s coming from just the high-enders. These are the people who have great wealth, who want to share some of it or all of it or much of it with the animal welfare cause. When you layer on top of that the American people, who have more disposable income than any other generation in our history, and the value to that generation is far superior to my mother’s generation, it’s logical to me that requests will come in far greater volume to the animal welfare cause.

I wanted to also point out in terms of my absolute confidence, that the American public is there already – is what happened in the Gulf Coast, what happened with Katrina.

Fifty million dollars in 30 days would never have been raised, never would have been possible in our country, that the American people would give $50 million in a year to anything was considered mind-boggling. They gave more than $50 million in 30 days. So they’re there. Their generosity, their hearts, their commitment, their interest and involvement and engagement, is already on board. So all we’ve got to do is figure out how to collect it, which is crazy.

This isn’t selling. It’s like this: I listen to KCBS all the time because I used to work for them and they’re talking about, “If we can offer you a better loan — there’s no selling here. You’ll know whether you can save money or whether you can’t.” The public’s already there, all we’ve got to do is understand how to engage them.

Also I want to say something about HSUS. We want to partner with everybody who loves animals. And we aren’t having a litmus test on who our friends are. Anybody that wants to help a pet is our friend. And I don’t care what their history has been. I don’t care how bad they have bashed and trashed me personally or the organizations that I work for. Actually, it does hurt; I probably shouldn’t admit to the pain or associate with that. But the cause can’t afford us to get angry. The cause can’t afford us to make enemies.

When I was dealing with Animal Control in San Francisco, and I would have disagreements with my counterpart at the agency, I would periodically have to swallow my pride and say what is so important in this conversation that I’m going to let that dog die. What can rise to the level where that animal that needs to be saved is going to lose its life because of some personality quirk in either one of us. Or both of us. Fortunately, my counterpart had some of the same feelings.

But when you get it down to what is so important that these animals we love so dearly have to sacrifice their life because we have to say something to get them upset or because we have to make a point or because we’re going achieve one-upsmanship – who the hell are we?

I just talked to Nathan yesterday and he is angry at the engagement with some of the partners that we have. And we invested in programs, and some of the people who are the products of those programs come out and are our adversaries. But we believe that over time, once again, the salvation is the American people. And the adversaries who are taking different points of view or disagreeing with us or approaching it from a new angle will eventually get the same result — not because of anything I say or do or our agency does or doesn’t, but because the public wants us there. And we just have to keep that in mind.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying. Hopefully Nathan’s efforts, my efforts and the hundreds – maybe thousands – of others out there doing the same thing – are contributing, but none of us can take credit.

CK: I know you have heard the “cherry picking” accusation many times, that when an individual shelter becomes “no-kill,” that it’s really just someone else doing the killing. But my impression is that Maddie’s Fund’s focus is not on individual shelters, but communities, a bigger picture. Can you say something about that?

RA: This is moving on to philosophy. The question is how do you institutionalize the no-kill philosophy? I think in the old days, an agency could break away from the pack to get a niche, to basically identify themselves with what they felt strongly, could basically select and call themselves traditional animal control, no-kill, rescue, whatever name they wanted to associate with and feel a lot of pride that they were contributing mightily in that little sector. And I think there’s nothing wrong with that, actually. But I think we have to be more enlightened. We have to act locally and think globally and the globally, I think, has to be on a community-wide basis. Because if we’re doing a great job saving X number of animals, whether it’s a small x or a big X, but down the street a larger number of animals are being killed and we’re not doing anything to alleviate that or not doing as much to alleviate that as we can, then we’re not doing as much as we should. Even though philanthropy is exploding in the animal welfare world, we still don’t have as much of the resources as I think we need to reach out for.

Now as I said earlier, I don’t think resources are the only answer. I think resources are a part of the equation. Our movement thinks it’s the total answer, but if you do believe we have limited resources – and I think there’s room for more resources coming in – then you want to use it effectively. And bashing and trashing and ignoring what’s going on down the street, I don’t think contributes as much. It’s much like living in your house and being concerned about your own family. Hell yes, you should think about your kids and your parents and your spouse or your partner or whoever else that shares your world and your life. But right after that, probably is your next-door neighbor. Because your quality of life might be affected by the person on the other side of that fence. Or the other people that are on that block. Or the people that are in a several-block radius. Or the people in the entire city or town.

It seems reasonable to me that you, over time, try to broaden your circle of intimate commitment. To not only take care of your immediate family, your extended family, your neighborhood, your community. And I think that is the best success on achieving the no-kill nation. And I believe the American public is already there. I don’t think the American public wants to know about the in-fighting from agency to agency. They want to know, is this animal going to get saved? It’s sort of like, somebody gets attacked on the street or a plane flies into a tower; what can we do to help the people that are in the tower? That’s the first reaction of everyone. What can we do to help the people in the tower? And then it’s how can we stop that from happening again? And that’s where I think the American people are at. And I think the humane community to not be cognizant of that and try to build on that is foolish.

CK: There is a lot of controversy over the phrase “no kill” itself. Can you say anything about that?

RA: First, it’s a battle of hearts and minds, but let me back up a little. To me, there are three deaths that occur in shelters. There’s killing, there’s euthanasias and there’s executions. Executions are public health safety reasons. That’s a vicious animal. They can be perfectly healthy – and it’s not a merciful thing to do – it’s merciful, maybe, for the public, but to me it’s an execution. And people don’t like talking about executions because we’re sort of uncomfortable with it in our own species. But in my mind, that’s the three. There are homicides and there’s murder. Both of them are deaths, but it’s sort of the intent that’s behind it that makes it one category versus another. So, I think killing is when you’re putting down an animal that is healthy or treatable.

It is, I think, typical of society and advocates involved in a cause to try to put the other one at a disadvantage. Pro-life, pro-choice. Anti-abortion, pro-abortion. You try to pick the terms that represent you in the best light. Then you fight for the hearts and minds. And the other side always likes to basically say that what you say about us is not fair, what you say about yourselves is not fair. So you try to pick it apart.

I like to consider myself a Christian. Some people would say, “You didn’t go to church on Sunday.” And “I heard the other day you used a swear word. How can you call yourself a Christian?” Well, people self-categorize themselves and they associate themselves with a certain kind of philosophy or a certain kind of description. And it’s always imperfect. There are a lot of people who are pro-life that believe in the death penalty. So the terminology is a short-cut, it’s a summarization, it’s a categorization, it’s always inaccurate in my view. But it sort of captures the people who use it. It captures the essence of what that’s all about.

We now refer to adoption guarantee agencies as opposed to no-kill groups, in an effort to try and reduce the hostility surrounding the rhetoric. We got into something called the Asilomar accords. And the traditionalists wanted to eliminate all reference to no-kill and that hurt, because they felt that it was an unfair depiction. Because they were pro-kill if you were no-kill, etc. And we said, “We’re willing to give up the language, as long as you put the facts on the table.” So if you publish your statistics and a group that’s an adoption guarantee says, “Ok, I killed — euthanized 12 animals, but I saved 115” — the record speaks for itself. What you call yourself doesn’t matter.

And we won’t call them no-kill, but you’ve got to put out the information, because if an agency is taking in 2,000 animals and they’re saving five and the rest are being put to death, we want that disclosed. I don’t care what you call yourself. That sort of says it all. Well, everybody loved the idea of changing the rhetoric, but nobody changed their practice. Including the 18 groups that sat at the table.

Now, with pushing and pulling, that dynamic is changing. So many of the 18 that developed the accords have now signed on and demonstrated by action that they are willing to share the information. I think, for some reason, characterizations and categorizations are always flawed. If you say somebody’s a liberal, somebody’s a conservative, somebody’s a Republican, somebody’s a – I think those things are very easy to get confused about. So I like to get the data out there. And that’s what we think will happen.

But we are trying to build a no-kill nation and we’re not embarrassed about that. And right now it is a lightning rod. And it does generate discussion. And actually, for our movement, I think discussion is very good as long as it’s civil. I think there’s a difference between bashing and trashing and having an honest dialogue about values, about the importance of what people are doing or even their shortcomings – about what they’re not doing. So in this idea of no bash, no trash, that doesn’t mean that we all join hands and sing a song together. That just means that we respect each other, we understand that each other serves different agendas or works in different spheres, but we still acknowledge the fact that they are – well, it’s like I said before about Americans. Doesn’t matter your color, your gender, your preferences and all that sort of stuff, you are an American and I respect that regardless of politics and socio-economic status, etc.

But everybody’s always worried about the terms being hijacked. To me, getting back to what we did in San Francisco when we were constantly being attacked, we can’t worry about everybody else. We have to worry about ourselves. And we should lead by example. We in Maddie’s Fund should not bash and trash, or encourage bashing and trashing. If we get bashed and trashed, then it’s just part of the territory.

I was with HSUS in the Gulf Coast and they were talking about the fact that there is one particular spokesman that doesn’t say very good things about them and I basically said to them, “Welcome to the real world.” As you get more powerful, as you get more influential, as your stature grows, there are always going to be people that basically disagree with you. Run for the President of the United States, and if you think that you’re going to have everybody love you – I don’t care who you are, you’re lucky if you’re going to have 55 percent of the American people agree with you on some issues, right? And some of them are going to be violently opposed to who you are and what you stand for and what you do. And that’s just part of the fact that you’re growing in stature. So I think the no-kill movement, as we grow in recognition, because they still think we’re the minority players in the organized humane community – although I don’t think we’re the minority players in terms of public perception.

CK: A lot of people don’t really even know what a “no-kill shelter” is exactly, but they know what ‘no-kill’ means. It means if they bring in a litter of newborn kittens, they won’t kill these kittens. And that’s what people want. They don’t care about any of that other stuff. They like to think that when they do a good deed, that the animal won’t be killed afterward.

RA: Exactly. And that’s an oversimplification of the world. But, I actually think even though it’s extremely oversimplified, I think it’s still a fair way of looking at the world. Because the traditional world is basically saying, “Too many animals, not enough homes. This is euthanasia, it’s not killing.” We have an overpopulation problem because 3.7 million dogs and cats were killed. And that drives me nuts because it’s, yes, 3.7 million, but 700,000 in my mind were either executions or merciful deaths that any pet owner would have done for their own companion. But we always oversimplify. And we talk about 3.7 million, 23 million — whatever it is — and it’s a broad picture to try to make your point and get people convinced that you have the right message.

CK: I’m wondering if you have anything that you wanted to put out there that’s a particularly big issue for Maddie’s Fund right now.

RA: Well, because the cornerstone of my belief structure is that the American people have already got it and it’s catch-up for the humane community, the best accelerant out there, or the most hopeful thing to really get us to go all in the shortest amount of time is transparency and accountability. While Nathan disagrees with us on this, we believe that the shelter statistics need to be reported in a consistent format so that we can have a comparative base.

CK: Can you explain that?

RA: Nathan has his own definition of what – we sat down in Asilomar and came to a compromise consensus document from 18 points of view. Organizations that didn’t particularly like each other, most of which didn’t talk to each other, and we wanted to reach common ground. We sat at the table because we think if we can have a consensus document that we basically say, “This is the language you’re going to use.” It’s like religion. There’s a King James version of the Bible, and there’s the English version of the Bible, and we’re all going to sit down and read the King James version because we wanted to be on the same page. So when you say, “God means this,” I guess I got it from the same book.

So we wanted to have common language, common definitions that we could basically say are the national standard. So we could say this is where we’re starting from, sort of like having the Bill of Rights. It’s not perfect, but it’s a beginning. The people who created the Bill of Rights were flawed. They were slave owners and they were bigots and they didn’t believe in equal opportunity at all, but they came up with a document. And the document over time has evolved and gotten better and been improved on and reflected a broader group of people. But it was a nice beginning.

So I want to have this common definition and a common set of statistics. We’ve designed a Web site now so people will be able to search to find out, “Ok, I’m living in Lodi, with communities of similar size and similar demographics, how well are they performing in terms of life saving? Am I as good as? Am I worse than? Am I better than?” And we’d like to have that so an investigative reporter can look at it, so Boards of Directors of various non-profits can look at it – because they’re always trying to analyze are they getting the straight scoop from their management team – so the managers can look at it to find out the same questions, so contributors and benefactors can look at it, so the general public can look at it. Volunteers could look at it.

Because it’s like having a financial audit of a corporation. It doesn’t say if you’re Enron you’re not going to get away with embezzlement or something like that. But it’s a common set of data that, in that case, shareholders and government agencies can look at to give you a glimpse. It doesn’t tell the whole story, but it gives you a little glimpse into certain financial things that they’ve agreed to under generally accepted accounting principals.

I’d like to have generally accepted life-saving principals. Nathan doesn’t like our definition of “treatable.” The scientists doing another study for another group, they didn’t like the definition so they came up with their own. Well, I’m really annoyed by that because every time everybody comes up with their own – I don’t care whether they’re right or wrong, if they come up with they’re own then we have ten versions of the same Bible. And it’ll be very hard for Christie, for Rich, for an elected official to figure out what’s going on because you don’t know which Bible to go to.

So getting back to the point at hand – we’re into accountability and transparency. We think that agencies should be required to publish, to develop the numbers so that they can look at themselves to find out, ok, the animals that are dying in my shelter – are they dying because they’re healthy – which means, they don’t need medical treatment or behavioral rescue – are they dying because we haven’t got a home for them? So that means expanded hours of operation, that means taking them into the community, that means putting out a PSA. That animal needs a home, not medical intervention.

If it’s a treatable animal, what kind of treatable is it? URI, is it parvo, is it broken bone – what is the treatable condition and what do we do about it? Can we get a veterinarian to set this leg? Can we get some vaccine to inoculate against URI – what is the “treatable”? And then if it’s non-rehabilitative, why is it non-rehabilitative? Is it vicious, or is it because this is the merciful thing to do? Most shelters just process the animals. They’re all the same. And they have no uniqueness. But if you’re managing a situation, you’ve got to know the composition of your population to basically have the right interdictive strategy.

So I think the shelter needs it first and foremost for its own purposes. Secondly, we would like to have it so we can have a common database so you don’t identify the individual shelter, but you can say, “Ok, how does San Francisco compare to Sacramento? How does it compare to Lodi? How does it compare with Mobile, Alabama?”

And then it should be used for an instructive tool so people can say, “Ok, if we’re behind the curve, maybe I should go to Mobile, Alabama because they seem to have solved the problem better than we did here,” or “Maybe I should go to New York or maybe I should go to Chicago.” So accountability and transparency, I think, is the next major area to institutionalize the life-saving record.

But if you believe in the power of the people, you’ve got to give the people the information so that they can use their influence to bring out change. If the animal is dying because it doesn’t have a home, the pressure should come to bear on the leadership – boards of directors, manager of the agency. The people involved as volunteers say, “What are you doing about the homes?” Because to basically say, “Ok, you killed 5,000 animals last year, you got to make that 4,500,” – it doesn’t help them at all. You’ve got to get that medical treatment, you’ve got to get a veterinarian. Or you’ve got to get a technician. So you’ve got to know what the problem is before you can provide the cure.

CK: Nathan talks about using the live release rate…

RA: And live release rate is something we use all the time. That is a bogus number. If you were a perfect agency, you would have a zero live release rate. Because you would only get the animals that needed to be euthanized. Because the pet owners would be taking care of seeing that they don’t go to shelters. If you live in San Francisco, for example – the volume of animals coming into San Francisco is far smaller than any other metropolitan area. Why? Because San Franciscans put a very, very high value on their animals and they’re not going to turn them over to an institution – which is excellent. But it’s still an uncertainty. When they can talk to their coworker, they can talk to the people in their church…

CK: So an unnaturally high number of animals in genuine need of euthanasia or the ones who are executed…

RA: We look at these as dials. Live release rate is a dial. Another is deaths per thousand. Deaths per thousand human people. That’s another one that people use. Another dial, from my point of view, is economic investment in animal welfare in that community, which in San Francisco’s case is how much is the Board of Supervisors pay for animal control and how much does the private contributor give to the San Francisco SPCA? That creates a resource pool to tell you, “Ok, we’re spending $82.75 per pet that’s in the shelter system. As opposed to Fresno, who’s spending $17.50 per.” So these are all indicators — what is the rescue potential and what is the rescue result? Of saving animals in need?

So basically, it’s like going into the cockpit of an airplane and saying, “Ok, I’m only going to look at the gas gauge. I’m not going to look at the altometer. If I’m two feet off the ground, I’ve got a full tank of gas, I don’t have to worry about it.” Nope, you can’t do that. You say, “I’m flying at 50,000 feet. Let me look at the gas gauge because I’m flying at 50,000 feet. I’m going to be fine.” No, you’ve got to look at the wind speed, you’ve got to look at all the dials to get a fair picture of what’s going on.

CK: It does seem to me if you come into a bad situation that the live release rate is a much more significant measure. I’ve never thought about what you’re saying here, about how it would apply in an area that’s already been reformed -

RA: Well, if you at Tompkins County, he had a 92 percent live release rate, which is phenomenal. I think it’s probably the best if not the best. But you can have a community that doesn’t take in any cats whatsoever and they could have probably 100 percent live release rate. New Hampshire, for example, is used as one of the shining examples of a state program, and Peter Marsh who’s a very articulate spokesman for spaying and neutering and a targeted spay/neuter effort for low-income people supported by the government. But most of the New Hampshire shelters don’t take in cats. You can’t compare a community that takes in dogs and cats.

CK: They don’t take in feral cats?

RA: They don’t take any cats at all. Many of the shelters in the United States, probably 40 percent of the shelters don’t handle cats. Because Animal Control was set up, basically, to handle rabies. It was set up to basically get animals vaccinated and to get ‘em off the street because we were scared to death that we were going to get this zoonotic condition. If you’re in communities that have temperate climates, like San Francisco, you’re going to have a large feral cat problem. If you’re in frigid zones, in Montana probably, in the mountain areas, they don’t have a large feral cat population. If you’re in rural zones where they have a lot of coyotes, you don’t have large feral cat problems.

So to basically look at live release rate/deaths per thousand, without having a picture of all these other things – now, if you’re going to compare San Francisco to Chicago, to New York or Los Angeles, there’s probably a lot of legitimacy there because there’s diversity of population, there’s difference in cultures, there’s difference in economic levels. So probably the urban centers are more typical. But once you get out in Alameda, Dane County, Wisconsin, etc., it becomes far less clear. In New York, the deaths per thousand rate is very, very good. And that’s because nobody takes their animals to Animal Control. And part of that is, first, it’s a very urban center. A lot of the people who do have pets walk ‘em on a leash and they’re pretty darn responsible. But also, a lot of people, because New York Animal Control traditionally has had a rotten reputation for killing everything, people who cared about their animals didn’t want to take them to Animal Control. I would say in San Francisco, which generally has a good reputation as being a caring institution – whether it’s Animal Control or the SPCA – people are going to feel more comfortable if they have to.

So as somebody who’s looking into this, as you know as a reporter and a journalist, you have to scratch the surface because what we all say is spin-heavy. And that’s why I want to get back to the statistics. That’s why I want to get back to a database. Because everybody can represent what they think the data means, everybody can make their own representation. But without having any database at all, how can you really analyze what’s going on?

CK: I understand. I just get frustrated at the constant debate over whether an animal’s really treatable and adoptable. And shelters say, “Oh, we don’t kill any treatable, adoptable animals.” And yet their statistic is just the same as shelters who don’t have any -

RA: And you don’t know until you dig — that’s why, once again, I go to public disclosure. In our collaborative projects everybody sits at the table. So if you’ve got 82 different agencies in New York and Lynn’s with one agency and you’re with another and I’m with another and Lynn says, “I’ve never killed an animal.” I say, “Your former volunteer is now working with me and your operations person is now working with Christie and tell me this again, now?” Because when you’re in a peer group, that’s what the professional societies do – they have their peer group to basically have checks and balances on misrepresentation. And when you disclose the information – typically in our field right now, Lynn will say, “I’ll give you 13 percent of the information that proves my point.” Christie will say, “I’ll give you 11 percent of the stuff that proves my point and I’ll give you my own five percent.” But the percentage that we’ve carved out is not the same percentage in the piece of the pie. So there is no way in hell for you to understand what’s going on.

What we came up with in Asilomar accords is to basically say it’s a community standard. So in San Francisco, what would the reasonable animal lover do in taking care of the treatment for this dog. If the dog got hit by a Mack truck, would they spend $14,000 putting Humpty Dumpty back together again? Well, would they do the same thing in Lodi as they do in San Francisco? Maybe not. But we basically said it was a community standard. Nathan basically says it’s his standard. Well, if it’s his standard, it’s good if you like Nathan and you believe in Nathan, but then Christie might come up with her standard and Lynn comes up with her standard, and one of the standards could be whatever modern medicine can do no matter how much suffering goes along with it. Let’s say, if we could put this animal on life support for five years, and do transfusions and organ transplants and the animal was in constant surgery, is that the standard? Because the animal could be saved. If you do all this sort of stuff, forgetting quality of life, forgetting suffering, forgetting what the animal has to endure, could you do that? That would be one standard.

The other standard is what this shelter worker thinks of the American public. Well, they’re usually seeing the animal that’s a stray or has been given up by a pet owner who sometimes is irresponsible. So they’re not seeing the top of the line, they’re seeing not necessarily the middle of the line, many times they’re dealing with the poor part of the line. The shelters want to basically see what they can afford. So it’s only based upon resources. If they don’t have a veterinarian then nothing is treatable.

So you can draw the line anywhere you want. What we had hoped to do, just like they do with financial audits, is to have generally accepted practices. I mean, using generally accepted accounting principals does not mean you’ll always find fraud, embezzlement and criminal conduct. It basically says we just report this information in this way.

The common language today, and unfortunately it hasn’t changed with some of the groups since the Asilomar accords, is”we’re saving the adoptables.” “We’re saving the savables.” “We’re saving all the animals and we don’t put down because of space or time or resources.” But you say, “What does that mean?” What is a savable animal? It’s savable if it gets home? If it doesn’t get home it’s not savable?

But getting back to where I think our salvation is – because I think that’s where it’s all got to start and end – is the American public wants to know. About 60 percent of Americans like companion animals, and of those 75 percent consider their relationship one of family members. So that’s a huge constituency out there. The problem with accountability and transparency is that the agencies that aren’t doing as well as they want to do – regardless of whether they’re doing a lot or not very much, they’re not doing as much as they want to – they don’t want to disclose what that is, fearful that the American people will penalize them.

The Oakland Zoo was characterized as one of the ten worst zoos in the United States 25, 30 years ago. And the public got rid of their director, got in a new director and started funding them, and now they’re probably one of the best in the country. The San Francisco Zoo had a few exposes, some of which we were involved in. They are far better off today than they were in the early days. And that’s because when the public gets a chance to see that things are bad, they want to correct it. Sometimes at the expense of the leadership; maybe that has to be one of the casualties. But they have to know, otherwise the status quo just continues to schlog along.

CK: This is the role I think Nathan plays right now, today. That he’s attacking the heads of the shelters — the buck stops at the shelter director’s desk.

RA: But so many of those things – and Nathan points it out – but so many of those things have to do with what the shelter decisions are. I would say to a shelter director that feels that they are overpopulated, don’t take in feral cats. Lock your doors. Feral cats don’t come in here unless they’re injured. If they need a merciful end, then they cross your threshold, but if they’re yowling in the back yard and upsetting the Mayor, move it somewhere else. But don’t bring it in to be killed.

So a lot of the decisions that are made on hours of operation, on what population you take in, do you charge an owner surrender fee, all sorts of different devices that are out there to try to get additional help, encourage more participation, getting the community involved, are very controversial. When people say, “We’re not going to have a volunteer program.” “No, we’re not going to charge an owner surrender fee.” “No, we’re not going to reduce our adoption costs.” It all comes back to how many animals die.