More pet shelters and rescues go green!

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

Dear kill shelters: Please close your ‘open’ doors

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.

View the original article here

Are people who bring their cats to shelters ‘abandoning’ them?

Ok now my previous post isnt showing up…I think there are little gremlins in my computer trying to drive me nuts. Little do they know…I’m already there…….one more time:

“Is someone who takes a cat to a no-kill shelter because they have lost their job and their home “abandoning” their cat?”

Yes.

Granted, a no kill shelter is a much better option than a death camp (kill “shelter”) or leaving a pet who hasnt learned how to survive outside like ferals, where they are without someone to care for them.

But this B.S. about “Oh, I lost my job, or home, blah blah yadda yadda, so I cant keep my cat or dog” is just a cowardly, irresponsible, excuse.

You’ll notice that these frauds arent abandoning their human kids, dropping them off somewhere, forever leaving them heartbroken and missing their family, yet they do it to their four legged babies because alot of society has a severe case of ignorance (technical term: Headupthebuttitis), in which the four legged souls of this world are considered “disposable”, whether they are murdered and thrown away in death camps, or dumped off somewhere, it is simply WRONG to violate the promise that one essentially makes when adopting a pet:

To always love them, care for them, protect them, be there for them, and to NEVER abandon them.

If you have money to afford food for your chubby kids, you have money for your cat(s), period.

I once emailed a woman who wanted to give away her cat because “she didnt have money” and reminded her that she was online, paying a monthly fee for having an online service,and that she would save enough money to take care of her cat, if she sold the computer, and thus saving on the monthly fees, and kept her cat.

She had nothing to say.
Because she knew I was right.

If you arent leaving your kids behind, dont leave your cats behind. Period.

If a hotel doesnt accept cats, dont accept the hotel, and find one that DOES accept cats. Many many do.

Adopting a cat is like giving birth: You are FOREVER responsible for your new baby.

There is a double standard that deadbeat pet parents cling to, and it is rooted in the same prejudice that shelter killing is rooted in: Speciesism.

When searching for the right answer to any question, we must put OURSELVES in the position of OTHERS (Treat others the way YOU want to be treated), and in this case, we must ask ourselves this question: “If I was in Morris’s or Fluffy’s situation, would I want my family to abandon ME?”

If the answer is “No” (if you’re honest, it IS “No”), then dont abandon your cat, because they are equally as important and precious as You, I and the rest of us.

Now, if an old 89 year old woman who is confined to a wheelchair and has degenerative
arthritis, is unable to care for and feed her cat properly, then that is a different situation, and a NO kill shelter might actually be better for the cat’s well being, even though He or She would badly miss their loved one.

But using money as an excuse for abandoning your cat or dog, while you still spend money on your human kids, is cowardly and wrong.

Bottom line: If you can take care of, and have room for 190-225 pound human family members, you can take care of, and you have room for a 10-15 pound cat.

To say otherwise is to condone abandonment.
Abandonment is wrong.

Just put YOURSELF in the pawprints of the abandoned, and tell me, how would you feel if YOUR family abandoned you?

Your cat would feel the same way.

Treat others like you would want to be treated.

Society must stop finding excuses to kill and start finding ways to save lives, and society must stop finding excuses to abandon pets, and instead find a way to keep them.

They love you, and need you.

Ask not what our pets can do for us, ask what we can do for our pets.

P.S. If I were the head of a No Kill Shelter, I would tell anyone who wanted to dump their pets off at my shelter, what I just told everyone else, but I would MAKE CLEAR that if they STILL wanted to abandon their cat, I’d glady take Him or Her and show them what having a TRUE loving family feels like….a family who will love them, like cats love us….unconditionally, forever.

“We humans could learn alot from the higher animals”

Comment by Matt — June 24, 2011 @ 8:28 pm

Matt, your arguments are simplistic and unrealistic.

First of all, it would be ILLEGAL for a parent to just “drop their kid off somewhere” and leave them behind. You CAN legally do that with an animal. You CANNOT legally do that with a child. You may believe that is wrong, but that’s YOUR value system speaking out. Whether or not YOU agree with it, the LAW grants a higher standard of protection to children than to animals, and legally, leaving a child behind is just not something a parent can generally do.

Second, a good share of the programs put in place to help those in need (homeless shelters, food kitchens, etc.) prohibit animals. If you feel THAT is wrong, you’d be in good company with many others here. But presently, that’s the way it is. And if a family in dire financial need wants to get the available help, their pets become a hindrance in this situation, so many make the decision to leave their pets at a shelter in order to obtain shelter for their children.

(And no - someone without a steady source of income cannot simply go blithely “hotel-shopping” to find one that accepts pets the same way a person with a dependable income can. The unemployed person is looking for whatever they can afford, and that’s not likely to include allowing animals. Again, if you think this policy is wrong, you’d be in good company, but so far, that’s the way it is.)

You say “Society must stop finding excuses to kill and start finding ways to save lives, and society must stop finding excuses to abandon pets, and instead find a way to keep them.” and I certainly agree with you there. Take the example of FEMA and Hurricane Katrina.

We all remember the tragic images of pet owners having their beloved animals pulled from their arms before being pushed onto the evacuation buses, and other images of owners sitting on their rooftops with the animals they refused to leave behind - hoping either for rescue or the receding of the flood before they ran out of their food and water.

Congress took note of the human cost resulting from FEMA’s inflexible “no pets” policy and passed the “Pets Evacuation and Transportation
Standards Act of 2006” and so now the FEMA policy says “The Post-Katrina Act amends the IHP provisions of the Stafford Act by authorizing search, rescue, care, and shelter of pets and service animals as a type of essential assistance to be provided after a major disaster declaration.”

In other words, in a disaster, pet owner may no longer be forced by FEMA to leave their pets behind.

It’s a start, and we need to keep up the pressure to get homeless shelters, hotels, motels and landlords to end their “no pets” policies and find ways for food providers (so-called “soup kitchens”) to accomodate pet owners without running afoul of Health regulations.

But we’re not there yet, and so in today’s world with today’s realities of life after catastrophic financial loss, families with pets are put at a MAJOR disadvantage (in addition to those they already face). Rather than having THE ENTIRE FAMILY continue to starve and be homeless, the RESPONSIBLE thing to do is to provide shelter for the pets by leaving them somewhere safe which permits the rest of the family to seek the available help and resources that are out there. That way ALL of you can survive.

And if THAT isn’t an example of “FOREVER responsibility”, then I don’t know what is.

Comment by The OTHER Pat — June 25, 2011 @ 6:07 am

View the original article here

Fixing our nation’s shelters: Yes, there ought to be a law

May 25, 2011

It’s true: I was against legislating shelter reform before I was for it.

But a string of particularly horrific stories of abuse and neglect in our nation’s shelters, as well as watching our economy crash and burn because we’d gotten to the point where we were basically letting Wall Street “regulate” itself, have combined to turn me into a shelter reform flip-flopper.

That’s why I’m now strongly supporting passage of laws based on the model “Companion Animal Protection Act” (CAPA) in every state in the U.S. From my column today on SFGate.com:

It’s more than a little disturbing to consider how little actual “shelter” homeless pets receive in some agencies bearing that name. Take Tennessee’s Memphis Animal Shelter, for example.

Conditions there were so bad that they prompted a high-profile sheriff’s raid on the facility in 2009. Investigators found animals starving to death and going without water; there were even allegations of dog-fighting going on at the agency

After the raid, the city installed webcams inside the facility so citizens could see what was going on behind the scenes, but even then, conditions didn’t improve all that much.

Blogger Shirley Thistlewaite, who has been covering the situation in the Memphis shelter for more than a year, posts webcam images from MAS several times a month.

Some of the images show dogs being dragged, terrified, to the kill room. Others show cats being poked with sticks by staff members. There are examples of workers violating city policies, of pets escaping from kennels and cages, even of a puppy being hauled to his death, dangling from a worker’s hand that was holding a fistful of the loose skin on the puppy’s back.

If you’re tempted to dismiss the situation at MAS as an aberration, think again. Other animal control facilities may not have webcams in their backrooms, but volunteers and animal rescuers frequently report abuse and neglect in shelters all over the country.

[....]

I don’t normally get on board the legislative express when it comes to reform. I think that education and advocacy are the best approaches to take when trying to change things. In fact, when (CAPA author Nathan) Winograd proposed that San Francisco adopt its own version of CAPA at a meeting of the city’s Animal Welfare Commission two years ago, I didn’t agree. I thought it was micromanagement. I thought it was government run amuck.

I’ve changed my mind. There are simply too many abuses going on in too many shelters, and too many of them are going unpunished or even uninvestigated. The provisions of CAPA are not outrageous, and most of them are being used already by the best shelters in the country, including animal control agencies in Reno, Nev., Charlottesville, N.C., and Ithaca, N.Y.

Read the complete article, including about the launch of Rescue-50, a joint project of Winograd’s No Kill Advocacy Center and the Florida organization No Kill Nation, to pass CAPA nationwide, here.

Photo: Puppies in a feces-smeared cage in a “shelter,” courtesy of Nathan Winograd.

View the original article here

Cats in shelters: Five ‘freedom goals’ not hard to attain

I have worked as a volunteer in shelters for more than 10 years. Watching my local shelter grow and then go through a major remodel has has been a great joy. The cat area has seen the greatest change, but it wasn’t t until I heard Dr. Kate Hurley (right) speak at the North American Veterinary Conference earlier this month in Orlando that I fully appreciated the work and thought that went into remodeling my local shelters’ cat housing.

When I first started volunteering, the cats at the Naples Humane Society were housed in stainless-steel cages lined against a wall. About five years ago the cages were removed and the cats had one 6-foot-by-20-foot open cat room with a glass wall so the staff and adopters could watch them. Potential adopters were allowed into the room one at a time to visit an animal. The cats had beds and shelves lining against one wall, so there  was only about three feet of room left to meet the cats.

After hurricane damage forced the issue and a successful fund-raiser found the funds, the cats now enjoy the best housing yet. The shelter staff went to great lengths to put into action the “Five Freedoms”  promoted by Dr. Hurley, head of the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program.  Freedom from: Hunger/thirst, discomfort, pain/injury/disease, stifled normal range behaviors, and fear and distress.

Now in our shelter, there are six 12-foot-by-14-foot rooms with additional 10-foot-by-10-foot covered outdoor patios for the cats. The cats have beds, multiple litter boxes and feeding stations, shelves and climbing units. They are segregated according to age. You can see how much room they have now in the picture from when our Dr. Becker visited: That’s him with Michale Simonik, in the kitten room.

Dr. Hurley said a shelter’s housing should try and meet the needs of felines as much as possible. Cats enjoy stretching, eating in peace, looking out windows, hiding, laying in the sun, and playing.

The first few days a cat is in a shelter are very important, she said, noting that this is when the cat is the most stressed, and can be most prone to getting or sharing disease or getting sicker. Cats at this stage need a place to hide, to let them settle in for a week or two before placing them into long-term housing. This helps them cope with stress and also give vaccinations time to work.

Dr. Hurley stressed that the real goal is getting cats placed quickly: Getting them adopted promptly not only places more cats in homes, but also decreases the cat’s chances for contracting disease.

What can a shelter do if a major remodeling isn’t an option? Hurley said that shelters need to move the chances up in their priorities, because better housing saves money in the long run. On the program’s website are resources to show the financial benefits — these can help shelter managers in their planning and fund-raising.

In the short-term, using the stainless-steel small animal cages which many shelters have now, she suggests:

Add shelving in the cage (ex: Kuranda), or inserts that fit into cage to give height. Add a hammock.Cover half the cage front with a towel or handmade curtain.

Dr. Hurley says that each cat having  a carrier of his or her own. The carrier can be used for hiding (if the cage space allows), is good to move cat into while cleaning, transporting for clinical procedures, and then go with the cat when adopted. Using a carrier also allows caregivers in shelters to practice better hygienic care (she showed slides of a caretaker holding cat against her scrubs to move cat — this leads to disease transfer opportunities). Moving a cat in her or his own carrier is better. Once the  cat is in separate long-term housing with more space the carrier should be left in the open. This is a good idea even when cat is adopted and at new home. Goal=carrier is good, not evil.

What else do cats need? Large litter boxes, relief from the sound of dogs, and visual stimulation.

I found her take on cages as a visual challenge interesting. She spoke of how a shelter should tackle the layout of cages. She did not like it when cats had to look at other cats’ cages, which she termed ‘”enforced staring.” Cats have nowhere to hide and just look at each other all day. Again, the cloth covering half the cage opening is easy to do.

Then Dr. Hurley spoke about long-term housing, which is what I witnessed at our local shelter. It may take years to raise the funds for multiple open rooms, or even space for a large open room. Dr. Hurley recommended that if cats are in cages, placing the cages eye level to caregiver and adoption prospects is ideal. Rotate the cats. Put toys in the cage whether the cats use them or not. She said cats may use toys when no one notices and she also noted that adopters look at cats more if there is a toy in the cage. Give the cats room to stretch. Placing a vertical cat stretch in a small cage may not work. A cat needs to be able to stretch to use it.

What really struck me was that cats need more room between each other when in group housing, which made sense, because when cats are vying for territory in group housing, they have to “watch their backs” when eating, and also adjust to new people and cats coming and going on a day-to-day basic.

Dr. Hurley’s  talk  was informative, humorous and compassionate.  Visit the website to check out the resources to provide better care for shelter pets.

******
What does a huge Hershey bar have to do with a shelter? Dr. Becker and his wife, Teresa, brought the bar from Times Square, after Dr. B recorded his recent segment for “The Dr. Oz Show.” The Naples Humane Society has a Valentine’s Hearts and Chocolate fund-raiser coming up, and they needed Hershey props. I once saw a photo of Teresa pretending to eat a huge Hershey bar on Dr. Becker’s Facebook page. So, I asked for his help in finding the candy bar. He insisted on bringing one to us when he came down for a lecture for a separate organization here in Naples. Wow! The fact that America’s Veterinarian hand-delivered this candy bar will go over wildly at the fund-raising event. Big shout out *thank you* to the Beckers. They pretty much will do anything in their power to help animals!

View the original article here