Dear all,
As you know, we fully support, advocate, encourage, appeal for and practise the no-kill policy in animal protection and all our work.
I have, time and again, written much about this issue and voiced our gravest concern on people who use euthanasia as a convenient way out of taking responsibility and going that extra mile for their sick or dying pet.
We do not at all condone people who do it out of convenience. However, there are also those who do it out of compassion and we will not judge their actions on this. Granted, we know some pets suffer so, so much that the rescuer or owner has no other choice.
But we do really “have no other choice”? Or is it just to relieve ourselves of our own suffering? Again, we are not here to judge others, and we prefer to respect their decision as long as THEY know it’s done out of compassion.
Please read this: http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/pdf/enews_011.pdf (and be inspired to start something like that!)
Let’s work together and promote the no-kill policy, please.
Comments
16 responses to “Please support and promote the No-Kill Policy”
No-Kill Director Nathan Winograd, who is the Executive Director of Tompkins County SPCA says this:
"Understanding that the only rule that cannot be broken is the no-kill rule, the bottom line is this: Evaluate and treat each animal as an individual and stay flexible."
"Too many shelters lose sight of individual animals, staying rigid with their shelter protocols, believing that these are engraved in stone. They are not. Protocols are important because they ensure accountability from staff. But protocols without flexibility can have the opposite effect: stifling innovation, causing lives to be needlessly lost, and allowing shelter employees who fail to save lives to hide behind a paper trail."
"Come what may, you are only successful if the animals go home alive. The number of children reached through humane education is nice, the size of the endowment is nice. None of it amounts to much if the save rate (the percentage of animals going home alive) is not steadily increasing every year. Everyone gets a home."
Let our local SPCA hear! Get relevant and stop the quarreling with others trying to help the suffering animals.
Read full article at http://www.bestfriends.org/NoMoreHomelessPets/pdf/diary.pdf
Kahyein, as "No-Kill Shelter Director" Nathan Winograd, the Executive Director of Tompkins County SPCA explained how to make a community no-kill, "NO-KILL STARTS AS AN ACT OF WILL".
When Nathan Winograd first joined the TC SPCA, not all staff were supportive of the new no-kill order. Over the next 5 months, 7 of the 12 full-time employees on staff moved on, eventually replaced with new co-workers who shared a vision of a no-kill Tompkins County. And in the meantime, not a single animal was killed for lack of space.
He said, "Like so many shelters with animal control contracts to take in all strays and abandoned animals, the TC SPCA had relied on the fiction that the only solution to pet overpopulation is the "blue [euthanising] solution". Staff would shake their heads and continue to blame "irresponsible owners" for the fact that so many animals would go out the door in barrels rather than in the loving arms of families. Like so many other shelters, the TC SPCA never once saw the killing as its own failure to find solutions, meet its real mandate to be an animal welfare organisation, or live up to the very real but often ignored shelter credo that "every life is precious". But a new Board of Directors had decided to make a change."
To our local SPCA, hear! hear! and do learn well, for the good and welfare of the speechess, suffering animals!
According to No-Kill Director Nathan Winogard at http://www.bestfriends.org/NoMoreHomelessPets/localnmhpprograms/0505winograd.cfm, the only true limitation to how many or how few lives are saved is the SHELTER LEADERSHIP.
"The biggest stumbling blocks to no-kill are the DINOSAURS who have been in this movement for a long time," he says.
And Winograd didn't back away from any fights. He joined forces with a small group of feral cat caretakers on North Carolina's Outer Banks to take on the Outer Banks SPCA, and ultimately the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), over a proposed TNR program.
The SPCA and HSUS opined that TNR was inhumane, with HSUS going so far as to urge the local prosecutor to take action against the cat caretakers, claiming they were breaking anti-cruelty laws.
"These were … men and women who are doing the kind of work other people aren't willing to do," Winograd says, and suddenly they faced fines and jail time for helping cats.
Winograd wrote a brief, and ultimately the prosecutor agreed that TNR was not only legal, but humane. No charges were filed.
"That really, really kind of crystallized for me what we were dealing with," Winograd says. "At the time, I felt that the BIGGEST THREAT to dogs and cats was not bad people, irresponsible pet owners, but in large part, especially when it came to feral cats, was a lot of these ORGANISATIONS THAT WERE FOUNDED FOR THEIR PROTECTION."
"I dedicated myself to fighting not only the mentality, but the attack. It's what I've been doing since then, trying to change the landscape. When it comes to no-kill, I'm like the preacher. I believe it to my core."
And in his "spare" time, Winograd is writing a book detailing the history of the no-kill revolution in America, starting with the founding of the first SPCA and following animal shelters for 150 years until the rise of the no-kill movement.
"I hope it inspires and rallies the larger community who love dogs and cats, who have no idea that the 60,000 or so animal shelters in the U.S. are no more than warehouses at best," he says.
Thus far he has written 200 pages of what he jokingly calls the "never-ending project." In truth, he hopes to have it published by the end of the year.
"Hopefully it will mobilize all to hasten the day when we inevitably live in a no-kill nation," he says.
— continue —
Measuring Success
"At the end of the day, you are only successful if the animals go home alive. The number of children reached through humane education is nice, the number of volunteer hours amassed is nice, the size of the endowment is nice. None of it amounts to much if the save rate (the percentage of animals going home alive) is not steadily increasing every year."
To meet that challenge, we need to get the community excited, to energize people for the task at hand. Everybody needs to be a part of the mission. And the measure of how much we succeed – or fail – is a function of what happens to the cat living in an alley in our community, whether the business downtown adopts a 'pets at work' policy, whether landlords will help our livesaving goals by saying yes to renters with dogs, whether our neighbours adopt imperfect pets' because they believe in our lifesaving mission. It is about cafes, the storefronts, the squares, the neighbourhoods. That is how we will be measured. That is what it takes to save all the lives at risk – regardless of how big or how small a shelter is.
By working with people, implementing lifesaving programs, and truly treating each life as precious, a shelter can transform a community. Twenty years after the no-kill movement began, saving healthy every healthy and treatable dog and cat no longer needs to be a dream.
From Michael Mountain, editor of "Best Friends Magazine" Nov/Dec 2000:
Some people still think it will be impossible ever to bring an end to the killing of homeless animals in this country.
Among them are some of the nation's largest, oldest, and most well-known – well-funded – animal rights organisations and humane societies.
They may be right. It may indeed be impossible. Then again, lots of perfectly honorable and decent people, 150 years ago, believed it would be impossible ever to bring an end to slavery, however much they disapproved of it.
50 years later, child labor was still considererd by most people to be another of those "necessary evils" in life. They argued that it was more constructive simply to try to improve the conditions in the factories. (It was the Women's Humane Society of Philadelphia who led the charge to end that kind of negative thinking and abolish child labor altogether).
Today, we all look back at those and other social evils of the past as bizarre anomalies. Yet in our own time, many people, including even the large humane and animal rights groups, still acquiesce to the daily carnage of abandoned four legged family members in "shelters" all across the country.
The bottom line is that as long as people believe that killing homeless pets is one of those "necessary evils" that can never be stopped, then IT WILL NEVER BE STOPPED.
The resources, the talent, and the knowhow to bring an end to this horror within this decade are now with us. All that's required at this point is the ongoing commitment to get the job done.
Everyone knows it's wrong to be killing homeless pets.
CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTOR: SELECTING THE RIGHT SHELTER DIRECTOR
The information needed to obtain No Kill success is readily available to any director serious about saving lives.
If a shelter director failed to create No Kill in their previous community, why should it be believed that he or she will succeed elsewhere?
If a shelter director presides over the killing of the majority of shelter animals in their current occupation, why would their performance be different in a new community?
Humane societies, SPCAs and animal control agencies throughout the country need to stop rewarding failure by hiring directors who have not had lifesaving success elsewhere.
To eliminate recycling directors who continue to fail, job descriptions should eliminate the requirement of specific "shelter experience", seeking instead SKILLS (ACCOUNTABILITY, WORKING IN A TEAM ENVIRONMENT, LEADERSHIP, FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, MANAGEMENT, BOTTOM LINE RESULTS) that can be transferred to the shelter environment.
ALBERT EINSTEIN DEFINED "INSANITY" AS DOING THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN, EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS.
"It is the fate of every truth that it will be rediculed when it is first proclaimed."
"It is not always granted to the sower to live to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in FAITH."
— ALBERT SCHWEITZER —
"Realizing that I was about to ridicule what I did not understand (about TNR, Alley Cat Allies' approach to feral cats), I stopped to think. I thought about how Maricopa County impounded over 20,000 cats a year. I thought about how 10,000 to 15,000 of these cats were feral. I thought about how we had been killing feral cats year in and year out for nearly 30 years. I thought about how we impounded feral cats, held them for 3 days as the law required, and then killed and disposed of them. I thought about the TERROR these cats must have experienced, surrounded by barking dogs and a prodding public. I thought about the stress on my staff, who had to handle and care for these animals. I thought about how EXPENSIVE this whole process was to the county. And then, coming full circle, I thought about how we impounded more cats each year than we did the year before. At that moment, I recognized the INSANITY of what we were doing."
— Ed Bok, Director of Animal Care & Control (AC&C;), Maricopa County.
"Any religion that is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion." – ABLBERT SCHWEITZER
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From Ed Bok, Best Friends Animal Society (www.bestfriends.org):
I am reminded of a letter written by an itinerant preacher named Paul to a group of Romans 2,000 years ago. Remember, this group of Romans were themselves the victims of a "catch and kill" municipality.
They were being caught and fed to some very large feral cats (lions) because they did not share the same religion that good Romans were expected to adhere to.
In his letter to them, Paul addressed the cruelty and evil they were being subjected to by explaining "that where sin, death and violence abound, grace and truth does much more abound."
The darker the world seems to get, the brighter the light of truth.
In a country where the literal wholesale slaughter of animals is common practice, TNR STANDS AS A BRILLIANT CONTRAST AND CONTRADICTION TO THE PERCEIVED DOWNWARD SPIRAL OF HUMANITY.
In a world where people kill each other as they claim they are doing God's will, it is fascinating to hear stories of Palestinians and Israelis PUTTING DOWN THEIR ARMS TO TEND FERAL CAT COLONIES TOGETHER DURING CEASE FIRES.
Today, we listen as our national leaders grapple with the issues of "good" and "evil". They tell us that we are good, and we are at war with evil.
I think there may be a germ of truth to that. I think the war between good and evil is manifesting in our age like no other.
What is interesting about good and evil is that there is really only one way for good and evil to truly be understood or defined, and it is not by what you believe or by what you think.
GOOD AND EVIL CAN ONLY BE DEMONSTRATED BY WHAT YOU DO. GOOD AND EVIL ARE DEFINED AND UNDERSTOOD BY ACTIONS. FAITH WITHOUT ACTION IS DEAD."
Albert Schweitzer warned:
"ANYONE WHO CAN REGARD THE LIFE OF ANY CREATURE AS WORTHLESS IS IN DANGER OF THINKING HUMAN LIVES ARE WORTHLESS."
Ed Bok of Best Friends Animal Society (www.bestfriends.org) writes:
Are we, as a society, in danger of thinking the life of any creature worthless? I think that before TNR came along, we could argue, in our ignorance, that we had little choice, that catch-and-kill was a necessary evil in our attempt to control feral cat populations.
But with clear evidence that TNR is more effective and efficient than any other methodology in reducing feral cat populations, could we not now argue, along with Albert Schweitzer, that to ignore TNR may actually take us one step closer to devaluing human life?
Before you dismiss this question out of hand, consider this. Recent research has demonstrated the fact that there is a link between a person who practices animal cruelty in their youth and that person growing up to practice spousal, child, or elder abuse, or some other form of domestic violence, as an adult.
If that psychological link exists for a person, what makes us think it does not exist for a community?
Can a community's insistence on catch-and-kill, when effective, humane, non-lethal alternatives like TNR exist, be a link that reveals a cummunity's basic lack of respect for life?
Even human life?
— continue —
Certainly we have enough recorded history to understand what happens when a community begins to devalue human life.
But where does that process begin? And once it has started, where does it end?
A community may initially find itself assigning a lesser value to the lives of its enemies.
Once comfortable doing that, it may then find it a little easier to devalue the lives of those who don't agree with its religious beliefs, and then its political views.
And if Schweitzer is correct, this "unthinking" attitude can lead a community to devalue and abuse its aged, its young, its infirm and its most helpless.
When a community begins to devalue life, where does it end? It ends only when a community can value all life.
Only then do we break the vicious cycle of cruelty and abuse.
— continue —
Now, you may find fault with my comparing the lives of people to the feral cats. But if you do, it is because you do not understand the moral of the story.
The moral of the story is not that the lives of feral cats are equal to the lives of men.
The moral is that when we can value the lives of creatures as seemingly insignificant as feral cats, we will finally begin to understand the true capacity of our own souls to make compassionate choices.
Mahatma Gandhi taught us that the only way to determine the true value of a community is to look at how that community treats their animals.
Community value is not determined by our political rhetoric, or by our wonderful community and public programs, or by our art galleries, libraries and parks alone.
Our true value, according to Gandhi, is actually found in the way we treat our animals.
So if we as a city, town, county or nation can develop a life-affirming program for the lowliest of all creatures, our feral cats, what does that reveal about our intrinsic value?
According to Albert Schweitzer:
"IT IS A MAN'S SYMPATHY WITH ALL CREATURES THAT TRULY MAKES HIM HUMAN."
Schweitzer encouraged us to never let the voice of humanity within us go silent, because it is our sympathy for all creatures that defines us as truly human and good.
There was another holy man (for some of us, more than just a holy man) who said:
"FOR AS MUCH AS YOU HAVE DONE UNTO THE LEAST OF THESE, YOU HAVE DONE UNTO ME."
Again, it is not my intention to offend anyone's religious sensibilities, so if you are offended by what might sound like my equating feral cats to the lowliest humans, you have missed my point.
I am still not talking so much about the value of feral cats as I am trying to explain the human capacity to love – the capacity to love not only our family, our friends, our neighbours, or even our enemies, but to even love those damn cats living in your neighbourhood.
When Schweitzer received the Nobel Peace Prize, he gave an acceptance speech entitled, "The Problem of Peace in the World Today."
In that speech he said:
"THE HUMAN SPIRIT IS NOT DEAD. IT LIVES ON AND IT HAS COME TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE FULL BREADTH AND DEPTH OF COMPASSION CAN ONLY BE KNOWN WHEN IT EMBRACES ALL LIVING CREATURES AND DOES NOT LIMIT ITSELF TO MANKIND ALONE."
— continue —
In earlier ages, we are told, we had to rely on physical strength to survive; in more recent ages, we are taught we had to rely on our mental prowess to survive.
Today I think we rise or fall as a species depending on our capacity to love all creatures, great and small.
Our survival as a species depend on our ability to extend the circle of compassion to include all creatures.
The world does not belong to those who embrace hate and terror; the world belongs to those who can love greatly.
Albert Schweitzer, along with many spiritual men throughout the ages, helped us understand the nature of compassion by showing us what it looks like in action.
Compassion manifests itself as acts of kindness and mercy. Once you begin to think kindly and mercifully about life, you begin to truly appreciate the value of life, and when you truly understand the value of life, you evolve into what Albert Schweitzer calls a "thinking being".
And as a thinking being, you find yourself looking for ways to act compassionately toward all life.
— continue —
Schweitzer said:
"THE MAN WHO HAS BECOME A THINKING BEING FEELS A COMPULSION TO GIVE EVERY WILL-TO-LIVE THE REVERANCE FOR LIFE THAT HE GIVES HIS OWN".
In other words, you love your fellow creatures as you love yourself. You extend the GOLDEN RULE to include other species.
According to Schweitzer, a person is not a "thinking being" if he cannot reverance the will-to-live in other creatures.
WHILE GOOD IS BEST REVEALED THROUGH ACTION, THAT IS NOT ALWAYS THE CASE WITH EVIL.
For instance, we can understand that millions of animals are dying in animal shelters every year and do NOTHING about it.
According to Schweitzer, that is a CRUEL act.
He explained: "Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruelty. Most of it comes from thoughlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty are not so much strong as they are widespread.
Think about that. The roots of cruelty are not so much strong as they are widespread. That explains why a single act of kindness is so powerful. It is powerful because it is stronger that cruelty; cruelty is shallow and weak. If all men could live their lives in kindness and mercy toward all creatures, soon the light of compassion would overwhelm the darkness of unthinking and habitual cruelty.
ASK YOURSELF THIS QUESTION: If it can be scientifically demonstrated that TNR is effective in reducing and ultimately eliminating feral cat populations, that what other explanantion is there for a community's continuation of catch-and-kill, except for community-wide thoughtlessness and habitual cruelty?
Albert Schweitzer said a day would come when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it finally recognised that thoughtless injury to life was incompatible with truth, love and compassion.