Building a no-kill nation, one community at a time
By Gina Spadafori
November 10, 2007
- Full transcript of Christie Keith’s interview with Nathan Winograd, author of “Redemption”
- Full transcript of Christie Keith’s interview with Richard Avanzino, president of Maddie’s Fund.
- Pet Connection column: What is the “no kill movement” and how it can help put more pets in their forever homes.
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To be perfectly blunt, we’ve never read a pet-related book that has made as big an impression on us as Nathan Winograd’s “Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No-Kill Revolution in America.”
From the review published earlier this year in our nationally syndicated newspaper pet-care column, Pet Connection:
Why are pets being killed in America’s shelters? Ask most shelter managers, and they’ll blame irresponsible pet owners. Pets are just another casualty in a throw-away society, they’ll say.
But Nathan Winograd makes a different case. The attorney, shelter manager and longtime animal advocate blames the killing not on irresponsible owners but on a wrong turn taken by shelters and by national animal groups that can’t jump out of their money-raising ruts to try something new. Killing animals, he argues, has become institutionalized and unquestioned.
In questioning the killing, he lays out the path to a different outcome.
The road to a “no-kill nation,” says Winograd, begins with shelters that no longer view killing adoptable pets as acceptable work for nonprofits formed to advance the humane treatment of animals. Shelters must enlist the pet lovers in the community as partners — not as enemies who must be punished with ever-harsher pet limit and neutering laws. Working harder to make a bad system work won’t fix it, he argues.
His vision isn’t just theoretical. “Redemption” advances strategies that have worked in progressive shelters and offers point-by-point answers to those who have every excuse for why such plans won’t travel. City shelter? Done it. Rural shelter? Done it. Management of feral cats? Been there, done that, too.
Can a shelter go from a one-way door to the euthanasia room to 90 percent adoption rates? The answer is “yes” for any community willing to try, says Winograd, and the only thing stopping change is unquestioning acceptance of the way things have always been.
We believe reading “Redemption” is the place to start, but there’s a whole lot more information and help available. Maddie’s Fund, the Alameda, Calif.-based foundation headed by no-kill pioneer Richard Avanzino, is working to build bridges between traditional shelters and the no-kill movement and to get community buy-in for community-based solutions.
Nathan Winograd heads the No Kill Advocacy Center, based in San Clemente, Calif., and offers his services as a consultant to communities interested in changing the way shelters do business.
And as always, please offer your comments and solutions below. — Gina Spadafori and Christie Keith, for the Pet Connection
I have looked into several shelters in kansas city ks and they ask for too many details as far as need to have a big yard, a fenced yard, have several visits prior to pet coming home to see if we are the perfect match then more visits after the adoption is done,in another place they want to have the whole family come visit the shelter including any other dogs or cats that we may have before they decide if we can adopt the dog.how stick is that? I mean is it realy neccasary to go thru all of this when all I want is to give another dog a chance in life.I had a wire fox terrier for 9 years whom I adopted from a shelter here in kansas which is not to demanding or have alot of rules to their adoption policy,I had him untill he died two years ago,then I still have a chihuahua thats 10 years old, with that background and the money I will be spending on a dog from the shelter do they realy think I would not love my new pet or take care of it?
Comment by angie — November 12, 2007 @ 1:38 pm
some shelters or rescue groups do require lengthy applications, home checks, follow up visits, ect to ensure the animal is going to a great home. it can be hard for some adopters to understand because they are the great homes these groups are looking for. that’s why it’s important to remember not all people have the best intentions or provide great homes to these animals which is why these checks are necessary.
Comment by michelle — November 27, 2007 @ 5:33 pm
Certain procedures and background checks ARE necessary, but some shelters and rescue groups can be ridiculous. A background check is necessary so that Class B dealers (who sell animals for medical research), and people who fight dogs do not get shelter animals- but people who live in apartments, have children, dont have fences etc. CAN be responsible pet owners. There was a dog in my house from the time I was born, and it was never a problem. My sisters all have small children, and they also have dogs- still not a problem. I adopted a dog while I was living in an apartment, and he was well taken care of. Why rule out potential good homes when the other alternative is often killing these pets? Do these shelters think it is better to kill them instead of giving them a chance in a home that doesnt have a fence?
Comment by judy — November 28, 2007 @ 2:32 pm
I would like permission to quote many of your columns in a local fight against the AR crazies and to promote good legislation. Yet another case of MSN being pushed by the rescue folks against the “evil breeders”.
Thanks for your response. And many thanks for the great interviews with Nathan and Richard. Truly thought provoking.
Comment by Tam Cordingley — December 1, 2007 @ 7:36 am
When I was working at a large scale animal shelter, during the busy times, we could take in as many as 35 cats a day. We’d have three spaces open. You do the damn math.
There is no No-Kill Shelter that can handle these kinds of numbers.
No-kill shelters smugly look down their noses at the big houses that turn no one away. Let’s put some “animals in” numbers side by side and they’ll perhaps be a little less smug.
What happens to the ones you turn away? Don’t you ever wonder? I guess it’s alright as long as it’s not you that has to do the dirty work.
Ignoring reality doesn’t make it go away. It perpetuates it.
We need to spay and neuter as many as we can. Period.
I get tired of people that claim to love animals, but in reality, love one breed and only a few of those — at the cost of all the animals out there — it’s so easy to forget when you shield yourself from it.
I’d like to take every damn one of them by the back of their necks and show them the barrels of dead animals that were once loving pets.
And that’s still better than the ones that get stolen for pit bull bait or the so-called Life scientists that forget to mention their research is repetitive and geared to corporate profit.
Take another look at some of the groups that are fighting mandatory spay and neuter. Many of them are more animal exploiters than lover.
Continue to dream, yes. But dream at the expense of reality and it’s not you that pays the price.
Comment by Melissa Celaya — January 17, 2008 @ 5:57 pm
Melissa, your ignorance of what “no kill” means is truly remarkable, as is your idea of what causes those animals to end up in shelters.
“No kill” isn’t about shelters. It’s about communities. It’s about not having 35 cats a day come into shelters with three spaces. It’s about not slamming home the same unworkable solutions even harder with the ridiculous idea that if you take a broken system and work harder at it, it’ll work.
We’re not animal exploiters here. We are looking for something that works. And mandatory spay-neuter ain’t it.
Read the book. Read. The. Book.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — January 17, 2008 @ 9:23 pm
We need to spay and neuter as many as we can—and mandatory spay/neuter doesn’t achieve that nearly as effectively as low-cost or free spay/neuter programs.
Killing unwanted animals is a poor subsitute for offering the kinds of programs and support that help people understand, train, and keep their pets.
Killing unwanted animals is a poor substitute for having adoption policies that actually allow working families to adopt pets, or reclaim lost pets.
My local shelter has weekend adoption hours, offers training classes, has a low-cost spay/neuter program. They promote the virtues of pits and pit mixes as family pets.
They’re not perfect. But they’re not screaming about how they have no choice but to kill lots of animals so that the bad owners will learn better, or pushing mandatory spay/neuter legislation that would only interfere with responsible breeders, whose pups rarely if ever land in shelters, while leaving puppy mills and BYBs undisturbed to keep pumping out the unfortunate animals who are the ones who wind up flooding the shelters.
As Gina says, read the book.
Comment by Lis — January 18, 2008 @ 8:54 am