Please read the following and take action!

We must not accept the status quo! Those who advocate for animals and/or rescue animals from these hell-holes must not remain silent! We must demand that the agencies involved stand up and be held accountable to tax-payers who are paying their salaries. We can no longer stand by as these slaughter-houses continue to do the same-old-same- old "catch'em and kill'em"! Demand change! Demand accountability! No more good old boys networks of political appointees to jobs that need experts trained in animal care.

From: No Kill Advocacy Center

Sent: November 21, 2006

Subject: A visual tour of U.S. animal shelters

A visual tour of U.S. Animal Shelters

We are a nation of animal lovers. But the shelters we expect to provide dogs and cats a second chance are instead killing five million of them. And for far too long, we have been told that the killing is exclusively the public's fault. That shelters--through no fault of their own--are merely performing the public's dirty work--with skill, compassion, and dedication. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Shelters kill every day in the U.S. despite empty cages

. Empty cages mean less cleaning, less work, less effort or shelter staff. Empty cages can be found in many shelters throughout the country. Here, a shelter keeps most of the cat cages empty during the height of the busy summer season despite falsely claiming it has no choice but to kill cats "for space."

Staff cut corners by cleaning dog kennels with high pressure hoses and caustic chemicals while leaving the dogs in the run, instead of removing them as they should. The dogs either become sick or become fearful of people and then are killed as "unadoptable." Here, dogs are wet and shivering after being sprayed with water and chemicals.

They call it "humane euthanasia" but shelter killing is often anything but humane. Even the methods used are troublesome. Some shelters place dogs and cats in gas chambers like the one here. Gas systems take time to kill--during which animals experience distress and anxiety, and can struggle to survive. They can result in animals surviving the gassing, only to suffer more. And they take longer to kill if animals are young, old, or have respiratory infections, which can be common in shelters. They are designed for the ease of shelter workers, not care and compassion for the animals and should never be used.

The preferred method of killing in the U.S. is an overdose of barbiturates. Although better than gas systems by far, lethal injection is not always painless either, as anyone who has witnessed the killing of animals in shelters can attest. With some animals, there is fear, disorientation, nausea and many times even a struggle. A dog who is skittish, for example, is made even more fearful by the smells and surroundings of the animal shelter. He doesn't understand why he is there and away from the only family he has ever loved. To kill this dog, he may have to be "catch-poled" a devise that wraps a hard-wire noose around the dog's neck. He struggles to free himself from the grip, only to result in more fear and pain when he realizes he cannot. The dog often urinates and defecates on himself, unsure of what is occurring. Often the head is held hard to the ground or against the wall so that another staff member can enter the kennel and inject him with a sedative. While the catch-pole is left around the neck, the dog struggles to maintain his balance, he tries to stand, but his legs give way. He is frightened by the people around him. He does not understand what is happening. He goes limp and then unconscious. That is when staff administers the fatal dose.

We are a nation of cat lovers. The cat is the most popular pet in America, with about 90 million of them sharing our homes. The vast majority will be killed, many without ever being offered for adoption. Here, a filthy litter box--one hour after the cage was supposedly "cleaned." In the center, a cat declared "aggressive" and scheduled for destruction as "unadoptable" by untrained shelter staff. The same cat cuddling up to someone.

To this day, animal shelters continue to ignore their own culpability in the killing, while professing to
lament it as entirely the fault of the public's failure to spay/neuter or to make lifetime commitments to their animals. Instead of embracing the No Kill philosophy and implementing the programs and services that have been proven to save lives--what we collectively call the No Kill equation--many shelters are still not sterilizing animals before adoption or providing the public with affordable alternatives. Some do not have foster care programs and do not socialize and/or rehabilitate dogs with behavior issues. Still others do not take animals offsite for adoption, have not developed partnerships with rescue groups, limit volunteerism, are not practicing trap-neuter- release for feral cats, and still retain adoption hours that make it difficult for working people or families to visit the shelter. The failure to implement these programs is mostly the result of one fact: they believe a certain level of killing is acceptable. Indeed, some would go as far as to deny they are even killing.

In March of 2006, at the largest national animal sheltering conference in the United States, a featured speaker and expert on "euthanasia" flatly denied that shelters were even killing animals:

"We are not killing [animals in shelters]. We are taking their life, we are ending their life, we are
giving them a good death... but we are not killing."

When you sugarcoat the words, you do not make the act more palatable.

The power to change the status quo is in your hands.

We have a choice. We can fully, completely and without reservation embrace No Kill as our future. Or we can continue to legitimize the two-prong strategy of failure: adopt a few and kill the rest. It is a choice which history has thrown upon us. And a challenge that the No Kill Advocacy Center is ready to take on.

The shelter in your community belongs to its citizens. Force it to reflect your values.

Get informed. Read Building a No Kill Community.

Demand change. Read a step-by-step guide to Reforming Animal Control.

Embrace No Kill. Demand endorsement of the U.S. No Kill Declaration.

Stay informed. Become a member of the No Kill Advocacy Center and receive No Kill Sheltering, the magazine for saving lives.

Click on the title or go to www.nokilladvocacyc enter.org

PO Box 74926 • San Clemente, CA 92673

To make a donation in any amount to our campaign for a No Kill nation, click here.

We should all be working on is getting ALL these shelters to sign on to Nathan Winograd's NO KILL SOLUTIONS! In fact we ought to demand this of all our local Town Boards that oversee the animal shelters. Millions of healthy, loving, innocent animals killed each year and all we do is piss and moan... or take momentary pleasure in saving the life of the one cat or dog that has come to our attention... and this is not, by any means, meant to belittle the efforts of those in the trenches who work day and night to save lives.

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness! We need to start a revolution that will turn this heart/gut wrenching misery around 180 degrees. Many of these pounds/shelters are run by people who are on power trips... are indifferent to the lives of the animals in their care... are just doing a job...or are there for any one of 100 different reasons....They are often small minded, people with little imagination or desire to change the status quo. After all, who do you think would go into a job/profession that involved catching, incarcerating and killing animals? Certainly not your average rocket scientist, animal lover, or guy on the street....although there may be some individuals who are actually there to help or bring about change. So taking that as a given, (in most cases), it behooves the animal rescue/advocacy community to seek and demand change; to shine the light on the dirty little secret of the mass killings that go on daily. Many rescues are threatened into silence, fearing that if they speak out, they will no longer be able to save animals. That may be the case in the short run, but exposing the slime and horrors to the light of day, can only bring about more positive change in the long run.

Sometimes it only takes one or two people to stand up and say the right thing. It starts with: making a FOIA request for intake numbers and euthanasia/adoption /returns of cats and dogs over the past 5 year period, in order get the trend and big picture;

it takes knowing if there is a mandatory spay/neuter policy enforced before animals are adopted out;

if there is a volunteer program that welcomes help from people who care about animals;

if the shelter works with rescue groups to increase the numbers of lives saved;

if there is any educational outreach to the public in general and to kids, schools and civic organizations; teaching them responsible care and pet guardianship;

if there are special adoption days-events; if there is any effort to use media (local TV, newspapers) to advertise animals that are in need of a home;

if the shelter welcomes the public and makes an effort to involve the community.

and finally, it takes writing letters to the editor, taking up petitions, going before Town Councils to speak out and demand change.

And that's only half the job because the next piece involves getting mandatory spay/neuter policies passed in every community in order to shut down the backyard/hobby breeder and set standards for the stupid or negligent owners who refuse to spay/neuter pets. It seems that such legislation has just passed in Los Angeles.

Then, the puppymills must all be legislated out of existence... and only then, will mass killings end.

(IF YOU HAVE THE COURAGE, IF YOU HAVE A STRONG HEART, CLICK ON THE LINKS FOR THESE SITES AND ASK YOURSELF, "WHY"?)

http://www.shelterrescue.org/id20.html

http://brightlion.com/InHope.aspx