Aug 8 2012

I’m back (and off to No Kill Conference 2012)

Valerie Hayes

Xavier, king of the Maine Coons.

My hiatus from writing is now officially over and I will soon be off to No Kill Conference 2012 in Washington, DC.  This will be my 3rd time attending the conference and it promises to be bigger and better than ever.  The conference organizers have dramatically increased the number of available tickets over last year, and last year seemed so much bigger than the year before, with an almost overwhelming level of positive energy.  There will be over 800 attendees this year, and I expect that the energy level will be off the charts.  Many of the speakers have only been part of the No Kill movement for a few years, some even less than that, but the No Kill movement attracts quick studies with a can-do attitude.

The theme of No Kill Conference 2012 is “Reaching Higher”.  No Kill communities save 90% or more of all  homeless pets–the ones that fall into the “healthy or treatable” category.  Some are expanding the definition of “healthy or treatable” and saving 98-99% of all homeless pets.  Conventional animal control kills 50% of all homeless pets, on average.  Some kill nearly all of them, including those that people are on their way to rescue, and puppies and kittens (reaching lower?).

 I will be blogging from the conference (live-blogging, barring any internet connectivity problems) so that those unable to attend will still be able to learn something from some of the distinguished lineup of speakers.  If you are unable to attend, do check out the conference website, this blog, and follow the twitter hashtag #nokill, which attendees will be using to tweet from the conference.  Conference organizers will be making a wealth of  materials available for free download on the conference website, as they have done in the past, so be on the lookout for that.

This is going to be an exciting and educational weekend, and I look forward to seeing some old friends there, and to meeting some new ones, especially if you are from Georgia or elsewhere in the Southeast.

If you can’t make it to the conference or you are new to the No Kill movement or to this blog, check out the “Best Of” list on the sidebar (especially “I was there”), read Nathan Winograd’s book Redemption, watch the short video “Strayed”, keep up with the movement on Facebook at No Kill Revolution and No Kill Nation  and stay tuned…

The theme of No Kill Conference 2012 is “Reaching Higher”. No Kill communities save 90% or more of all homeless pets–the ones that fall into the “healthy or treatable” category. Some are expanding the definition of “healthy or treatable” and saving 98-99% of all homeless pets.


Feb 16 2012

An open letter to Mary Jo White, Chair of the ASPCA Board of Directors

Valerie Hayes

Dear Ms. White,

I am writing to you as a longtime observer and critic of the ASPCA who would like nothing better than for the ASPCA to become an organization  that I could wholeheartedly support.  I love animals and all of my pets are rescues.  Almost all of them are refugees of our nation’s broken animal sheltering system, rescued from, rather than by the shelters that are supposed to be their safety net.  The fact that animals have to be rescued from shelters which are not places of safety but are places of abuse and killing is the irony at the heart of why I cannot support the ASPCA, an organization which claims to be on the side of animals, and was founded to be on the side of animals, but which is instead fighting to maintain the deplorable status quo in NYCACC and “shelters” across the country, and fighting against No Kill shelter reform in Austin, TX and elsewhere (thankfully FixAustin and Austin Pets Alive! won that round).  Tragic irony is the way of the warped world of animal sheltering.  (I almost said “way of life,” but that would have been utterly inappropriate.)

Your ad campaigns are ubiquitous.  When I was sitting down to write this, I found that articles I’d written critical of the ASPCA and articles I’d written about situations which illustrate the need for shelter reform and genuine shelter access legislation had ASPCA ads on them.  One had a total of four ASPCA ads, and it was specifically about the ASPCA’s opposition to shelter reform and access legislation!  No wonder people are so confused and continue to send you enormous amounts of money even as you fail to clean up the mess you helped create in your own backyard and even as you promote legislation like the Quick Kill Bill (sponsored by Assemblywoman Amy Paulin) and oppose legislation  like CAARA (sponsored by Assemblyman Micah Kellner), which would save animal lives and go a long way to advancing the humane treatment of  animal rescuers by guaranteeing them the right to rescue even when they speak out about abuses that they witness.

Oreo--ASPCA irony 3

Ad placement FAIL!

Do not try to tell me that the Paulin bill is wonderful for animals or that the Kellner bill is inadequate.  Nonsense!  I have the unfair advantage of having actually read them both.  I will not be fooled, only further irritated by any such attempts to insult my intelligence, and I’m already pretty ticked off.

I used to live near the ASPCA’s home turf of New York City, and I’ve known the ugly reality hidden behind the cute calendars for many years—since the early-mid 1980s, to be more precise, when the ASPCA ran animal control for NYC, and when I first heard the below parable of the accountant and the veterinarian, which I recounted in a previous article about the ASPCA’s opposition to Oreo’s Law.  It was quite the chamber of horrors back then, worse even than NYCACC is now.  (I’m always perplexed by people who, upon finding out the truth about the ASPCA, think that it has very recently strayed, like in the past few years.  Not so.  It’s just that more people are becoming aware of it)

The ASPCA has long been a nice comfortable killing machine.  It’s really quite amazing how times have changed and not changed…

An accountant was visiting his client, a veterinarian who worked for the ASPCA in addition to his private practice. In fact, he seemed to spend a lot more hours at the ASPCA than he devoted to his private practice, even though they weren’t paying him all that much. The accountant was at the vet’s office wrestling the books into some semblance of order and a very friendly dog with a badly scarred and misshapen head came galumphing over to be petted, and the accountant obliged him. The dog was friendly to the point of making a pest of himself by attempting to be an oversized lap dog. The accountant shooed him away so that he could get some work done. He could hear the clop-clop of the dog’s paws on the floor as he went down the hall, around a corner, and back up another hall to reappear at the opposite door of the office he was working in, with a look on his scarred face that said “Hi, I’m a different dog than the one that was just here a minute ago, pet me too”.

The dog had come to reside temporarily at the vet’s office as a result of the vet’s work for the ASPCA. He’d come in as a badly injured stray. Someone had apparently beaten him and he had multiple fractures to his skull, which the vet, who is well-respected for his considerable skills as a surgeon, had spent hours in surgery wiring back together. He practically donated some very fancy surgery to them because that’s the kind of person he is. They wanted to kill the dog after all that–”a friendly dog who wouldn’t win any beauty contests”, as the accountant described him. The vet removed the dog from their custody instead. The accountant told the vet that while he admired the work he did on behalf of this dog and other animals at the ASPCA, it was his responsibility as accountant to advise him to leave the ASPCA and concentrate on his private practice, and frankly, he couldn’t understand why he took that kind of abuse from them, and for so little money. The vet’s reply was impossible to argue with: 

“The animals need me.”

One protector in the killing machine was better than nothing at all. I can’t imagine how he did it for as long as he did. The tradition of killing animals for being there and abusing those who would do otherwise is a long one there. I am perpetually amazed at people who see it as a benevolent place. Apparently their marketing has done its job, but it would take a lot more than some nice packaging to remove the image of that dog my father described so vividly and what the ASPCA wanted to do to him, and to the vet.

I hadn’t thought of that dog in years, but recent events have made him restless. He’s been making his circuit down the hall, around the corner, and up the other hall, to reappear at the opposite door. Always the same question:

“Will it be different this time?”

When will it ever be different?

Years later, in 2000-2001, I had the excruciatingly painful experience of volunteering at a shelter and fostering a litter of kittens in my home for a month.  They were healthy and delightful little kittens and I did what I was told, returned them to the shelter when they were old enough for adoption.  The shelter reneged on its promise to call me if they were in danger of being killed for any reason and instead killed two of them when I had made it clear that I was only a phone call away.  Boy, was I naive! There wasn’t even any call.  Those two adorable little kittens were instead injected with poison and thrown in the trash as if their lives truly did not matter and I was treated like trash, my efforts, my ideas, my feelings, my personhood of no consequence to people for whom making a phone call was a greater inconvenience than killing two little kittens.  Its not like I was anonymous to them either, I was at the shelter volunteering every week.  Did they think I would take that lying down or that I wouldn’t find out?  Or perhaps, more chillingly, did killing kittens with a human attachment, and to someone they saw every week, have an added measure of attraction?  All of these scenarios are possible, and all of them happen in shelters.  Thankfully, the volunteers at the Tompkins County SPCA rebelled against the status quo.  We looked at each other and realized that we were not alone.  We stood up for the animals and we stood up for ourselves.  The animals deserved to live and we deserved to be treated like human beings.  Less than a year after my kittens were so needlessly killed, Tompkins County made history by ending its killing of healthy and treatable pets and becoming the first No Kill community in the country.  To this day, it remains the only one in New York State.

I was there-ASPCA irony

The ASPCA wasn't there, but their ads sure are everywhere!

What the heck are you people doing with that $140 million that you raise every year?

I wrote about that experience and received many comments and emails that went like this:

I run a rescue group. My local shelter killed animals I specifically called and said I was on my way to pick up. Why? Because like you, I complained about the shelter publicly. I tried to work with them, but my concerns were ignored. They said I was unreasonable because I thought dogs should have access to clean water. I am so sick of people saying shelters have no choice but to kill, that they work hard, that they care so much. Tell it to the two dogs I was on my way to save when they thought they would teach me a lesson by killing them. I will never forget the look on the staff’s face when I arrived. They were smiling and smirking. As soon as I saw them, I knew something was terribly wrong. I just could not imagine that it was that. I’ve not been back since then.

Have you ever thought for a minute what it is like for someone to have an animal they had offered to rescue killed to spite them or because of rampant incompetence?  Have you ever thought about what it is like to have that agony compounded by the knowledge that huge, enormously wealthy organizations not only won’t go to bat for you and the animals you’re trying to save, but that they’ll label you ‘divisive’ or an ‘extremist’ for speaking out about it, that they’ll instead back those who kill animals out of spite and incompetence, even going so far as to enshrine this sort of abuse in legislation?  Spend a few minutes trying to put yourself in the shoes of animal advocates and rescuers.  If you have a pet, hold them on your lap. Picture them being killed in a shelter while you were on your way to pick them up.  How would that make you feel?  How would you feel if you were then called names by your pet’s killers?  What would you do next?  Would you be able to continue rescuing, knowing that this could happen again and again?

Floyd ASPCA irony

Will the A actually do something to prevent tragedies like this from happening in NYS? I sure hope so for the sake of animals and rescuers in NYS, and in GA.

Why on earth should this be allowed?  Why on earth is one of the largest and wealthiest animal organizations on earth trying to pass legislation that would ensure that it continues happening, to block legislation that would make it illegal, and to fight grassroots reform efforts?

Unlike the animals in shelters, and unlike those of us who have experienced firsthand the need for CAARA and other genuine shelter access and reform legislation,   you are in a position that affords you tremendous leverage.  You are Chair of the Board of one of the largest and wealthiest animal organizations in the world.  You could literally turn the world around for the 3-4 million animals who die annually in America’s shelters because what you decide to do right here, right now in New York State will set a precedent for every shelter and every legislature in the country.  You could save so many animal rescuers from the torment they face every day without laws protecting their right to rescue.  You could make a huge positive difference in the lives of shelter employees.  You could spare untold numbers of pet owners the agony of having their pet killed in a shelter before they could get there to pick them up.

Carroll-ASPCA irony 2

Will the A act to end rampant killing in NYS? It would make it easier to do the same in GA and we need all the help we can get. Dead kitties don't make such good valentines.

You have the power to hold your CEO, Ed Sayres accountable for actually protecting animals and animal rescuers for the first time in his life.  You can order him to withdraw ASPCA support for A5449, the Quick Kill Bill and to join the No Kill Advocacy Center, Alley Cat Allies, Best Friends Animal Society, No Kill Nation, and thousands of private citizens in support of  CAARA instead.

You have the power to fire him.

You have the power to hire someone who would make Henry Bergh proud.

You have the power to make it different this time.  You have the responsibility to make it different this time.

I, and many others will rejoice if you do.  We’ll keep fighting if you fail to.

Sincerely,

Valerie Hayes

P.S. I said that almost all of my pets were refugees from the broken animal sheltering system.  Ernest had the good fortune to arrive at the Tompkins County SPCA in August 2001.  She was only 10 days old.  (What can I say? kittens are hard to sex at that age!) She arrived at a shelter that was truly a shelter for her, a place where she and her mother and litter mates were guaranteed continued life and the foster care placement that they needed.  Had she arrived at the shelter just two months earlier, prior to June 11, 2001, her story would very likely have ended in much the same way as those two little kittens I’d fostered only to have the shelter turn around and kill them–luckless, betrayed and dead in a trash bag.

I thought I’d built up an immunity to cuteness, but the charms of the little runt kitten with the Don King hairdo proved too much for me, and I ended up adopting her.  We were both very lucky.  She had a shelter that was truly a shelter when she needed it most.  So many are not so fortunate.  They are the voiceless, the ghosts that haunt the animal welfare movement, the unseen, unsaved millions.

Ernest as kittten

Ernest as a kitten

Ernest

Ernest

Ernest at the window
Ernest at the window

 


Jan 13 2012

Just One Day: Every journey begins with a single step

Valerie Hayes
Just One Day

June 11, 2012, a national day of hope for homeless pets.

June 11, 2012 is a day to remember and to celebrate life in a very practical way.  On that day, animal shelters and rescue groups across the nation will observe a day of not killing any healthy or treatable homeless pets. 

Just One Day is a chance to make a lifesaving difference for over 10,000 animals nationwide. 

A day is 24 hours. A day is how we measure how much time we spend at work. A day can be something we look forward to, a celebration of some kind. But in U.S. animal shelters, a day represents 10,411 lives needlessly lost.

To most people, June 11 is Just One Day. But, June 11 is a day that could change everything for 10,411 companion animals, and a day that can change the world. On June 11, 2012, we could be a No Kill nation.

Georgia has over 400 shelters and rescue groups listed on Petfinder.  According to a report issued by the Georgia Voters for Animal Welfare, an estimated 260,000 shelter pets are killed annually in the state.  Given that June 11 is during the height of kitten season, when shelter intake and killing are higher than at other times of the year, full, statewide participation in Just One Day would mean the difference between life and death for approximately 1,000 animals.  As of this writing, only two Georgia shelters or rescues have taken the pledgeAnimal Ark Rescue and Green Pets America.  If all 400 or so signed on and each did just three more adoptions than usual on that day, it would exceed the goal for Just One Day in Georgia. 

Traditional and animal control shelters can pledge to grant their healthy and treatable homeless pets a reprieve for Just one Day (or longer).  No-kill shelters and rescues can pledge to assist traditional shelters for just One Day (or longer) above and beyond what they already do.  Organizations making the pledge receive a free package of materials including sample press releases and adoption promotions to help make June 11 and beyond a success for everyone.

So, if you run a shelter or rescue, take the pledge.

Ask your local shelter or rescue to participate.  Ask your friends to do the same.  Adopt a pet from a shelter or rescue.  Volunteer or donate to help make Just One Day anything but just another day.   Support participating organizations.  Spread the word through letters to the editor and social media.  Ask your elected officials to support Just One Day. Yesbiscuit! has some great sample letters and ideas you can adapt for your own use.  Everyone can do something.

Let me know in the comments what you are doing for June 11 so that I can spread the word.  Please also let me know of  any shelters that refuse to participate and why so that we can help them see the error of their ways. 

June 11 is a day near and dear to my heart.  June 11, 2001 was the day that a beleaguered bunch of volunteers at a shelter in upstate New York got what we’d been fighting for, got more than we dared to hope for–an abrupt end to the killing of healthy and treatable pets and the creation of the first No Kill community in the nation.  Let the success of  Tompkins and many others be your success, even if it is for Just One Day.

“What saves a man is to take a step.  Then another step.  It is always the same step, but you have to take it.”  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery, quoting his friend Guillaumet in Wind, Sand and Stars


Dec 20 2011

So near, yet so far apart

Valerie Hayes
No Kill Communities in North America as of 12-19-11

A map showing the locations of communities saving at least 90% of the homeless pets entering their shelters. Click to enlarge.

Remember the wonderful positive energy and message expressed in the “Take a Chance on Me” video form the SPCA of Wake County a while back? Although it has since been pulled due to objections from the record company, it showed that an animal shelter could be a place of joy if it was committed to lifesaving. By contrast, a ‘shelter’ that squanders the lives of animals squanders the hearts and goodwill of volunteers. It’s either win-win or lose-lose. Two shelters in the same county, worlds apart.

Back in August, Mike Fry of Animal Ark in Minnesota wrote an article entitled “A Tale of Four Cities” that began:

Geographically, they are widely distributed. Demographically, they have little in common. Yet this strange collection of communities have something very much in common: The old-school “catch and kill” style animal shelters in them are experiencing tremendous upheaval, brought about by a growing and passionate group of no kill advocates.

Perhaps more important is the fact that the dramatic shifts currently underway in Miami-Dade County, Florida; Harris County (Houston), Texas and the twin cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota come on the heels of seismic shifts that have occurred in other communities, like Austin, Texas; Washoe County (Reno), Nevada and others. Collectively, the tales unfolding in these communities prove that the no kill movement is continuing to gain in strength and momentum, and could likely bring about the most important shift within the animal welfare movement ever.

Four “shelters,” far apart, yet with much in common.

Almost ten years ago, when it finally began to sink in that we were really saving all the healthy and treatable pets in Tompkins County, really, actually doing it, I began to think that the logical next thing would be that Tompkins would send ripples locally, that adjacent counties would see what we were accomplishing and would do it too, and that pebble tossed in the water, that Big Bang,  would send out ever-widening circles, extending compassion and continued life to homeless pets as it went.  I was wrong, and there is still only one No Kill community in the state of New York.*

It seemed to make logical sense, so why didn’t it happen?   Why didn’t the spread of No Kill communities follow Waldo Tobler’s First Law of Geography?

Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.

I’ve been wondering about this for a while.  Early in the movement, the No Kill philosophy didn’t travel to nearby communities so much as it leapfrogged across great distances.  It spread, not by diffusion, but by jump dispersal, to put it in the terms of biogeography.  Like windblown seeds, like birds caught in a storm, this extraordinary idea—that we could save them all, that we could leave killing in the dark and distant past—floated hundreds or even thousands of miles, to be taken up by one extraordinary person after another who would work for it, who would fight for it.  It’s a tough little idea with the ability to fly.  It has to be to survive the onslaught it still faces wherever it goes.  Like life itself, it is not easy, but full of inspiration.

It is people, not proximity.  People who are at once ordinary and extraordinary.

No Kill is an idea, and thanks to the internet, ideas can leap across continents in an instant.  More and more people are ‘getting it’.  It is as simple as the Golden Rule–even young children can understand it, yet the current killing paradigm is ensconced in such a morass of excuses, lies and obfuscations that it persists, at least for now.  No Kill communities aren’t correlated with economics—why are wealthy communities not already No Kill whereas less well-to-do ones are? It takes a decision and hard work, often in the form of a fight.

Every No Kill community was once a killing one.  Every single one looked impossible until it was done.  They didn’t “try” for years, they made a decision, and they carried it out immediately.

The No Kill movement has recently begun getting some of the national-level, mainstream press coverage that it deserves, and I expect we’ll see more and more of it in 2012 as we continue to gain traction.  That little document-leaking episode last month was the sputtering of a faltering regime.  I just hope that they read the writing on the wall–that Extremist Agenda graffiti that says we can save 90+% of all animals entering open-admission municipal animal control facilities—and get with the program sooner, rather than later.

Last week, Forbes magazine gave it this mention:

Most people assume that the ASPCA, one of the largest and most well-funded animal-rights groups in the world, who profess to prevent cruelty to animals, would be all for advocating that homeless cats and dogs not be killed at animal shelters. Not so. A big eye opener: The ASPCA has actively fought to prevent cities from establishing no-kill shelters and aggressively fights bills proposed in local city councils that aim to reduce the number of innocent animals being killed. Another shocker? PETA, does too. The true protectors of animals are not the bureaucracy-rich animal rights organizations, but smaller groups and individuals. Nathan Winograd, author of Redemption, and Stanford-law-educated ex-criminal prosecutor and corporate attorney, is the founder of a growing no-kill-shelter movement—and gets my vote for most important intellectual this year. His no-kill actions challenge the status quo by thinking beyond the box. He’s developed a creative and realistic plan that many cities are successfully using to save most of their homeless animals. New York City’s ACC, who murders hundreds of cats and dogs each week needs to reform and implement his ideas.

And, presumably, the checkbooks of a wealthy animal-lover or two accustomed to donating to the ASPCA or PETA, were slammed shut.   Money talks.

A couple of months ago, the Christian Science Monitor profiled Ryan Clinton and the work of Fix Austin and Austin Pets Alive! in making Austin the nation’s largest No Kill community.  It mentioned how they recently formed American Pets Alive! to support grassroots No Kill efforts elsewhere and quoted Clinton, “I really think we are at the tipping point nationally and this is going to happen all over the country very quickly.”

We’ve gone from exactly one No Kill community ten years ago to over 25 now, with several communities poised to join the “90% Club” and many more reform efforts underway.  Still, that amounts to less than 1% of the estimated 3500 animal shelters in the country.  It may not seem like much, but the number is increasing at an increasing rate–most of these were announced within the past year or so.  No Kill Houston and the No Kill Communities blog have been keeping lists of these communities as they pop up, but a visual representation helps to put things in a spatial context.  Cathy Habas of No Kill Louisville put No Kill communities on the map –literally, a Google Map, and that gives us another way of looking at where we are and where we’re going.    There’s a lot of blank space in the Southwest, Southeast, New England, Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands, but there’s a nice cluster developing in and around Virginia and some interesting things happening in Texas.   How impossible can it be if it is all over the map?

If we’re at the tipping point, and it looks like we may well be, then this map and the landscape of animal sheltering in this country will be looking very different very soon, but this isn’t a passive process–it doesn’t just happen by diffusion.  Not yet, and maybe not ever.  It happens by jump dispersal.

A determined leap.

A decision.

A marker is something to celebrate.  A blank space is an opportunity.

 

*New York City has been “trying” to go No Kill for years, missing deadline after deadline.  If the ASPCA were to throw its considerable heft behind making New York City No Kill and ending the rampant abuses at NYCACC, rather than blocking No Kill efforts there and elsewhere, the Big Apple would be the biggest No Kill community in the country tomorrow.

 

UPDATE  12/20/11 From Cathy Habas:  “The “Map of No Kill” just got more impressive. Because it was shared extensively yesterday (600 views in a day! Wow!) I’ve gotten some feedback regarding even more No Kill communities! Seagoville, TX; Brown County, IN; Chippewa County, MI; Allegany County, MD; Ivins, UT; and Vancouver, BC all joined the map.”

UPDATE 12/21/11 Healdsburg, CA joins the map with a 93% save rate in 2010 and a 95% save rate in 2011, bringing the current number of No Kill communities in North America to 34!  Still think it’s impossible?

Click here to see the updated map.


Nov 21 2011

Posts of note: commonplace things usually unseen

Valerie Hayes
Dog shaking dry

Dog shaking dry. Carli Davidson Photography.

One thing that I find very striking/puzzling about the whole “but, but, but…they do so much good” argument is how it only seems to apply to animal “protection” groups.  I have yet to see anyone dare to defend Sandusky by saying that he “did so much good” with his youth group, so lets all look the other way about his being a child molester.  I don’t recall anyone defending the Catholic church along similar lines.  Both have been universally condemned, and deservedly so.  And, although I can’t think of an instance where this has happened, if an environmental group wiped out an endangered species or engaged in toxic dumping, I doubt we’d hear about how much other good they did.  Why do people, and those who like to be seen as animal lovers, no less, defend animal organizations in this way?  It is bizarre.

The perspective of abuse survivors is generally hidden and overlooked.  Whether or not any form of justice is served, the aftermath of abuse lasts and lasts.

Abuse itself is generally hidden, and often in plain sight.  An interesting article in the New York Times looks at the social dimensions of ethical and unethical behavior.

Professor Zimbardo has classified evil activity in three categories: individual (a few bad apples), situational (a bad barrel of apples) or systemic (bad barrel makers).

I’d describe the broken animal “sheltering” system we have today as a classic example of the latter category, and large national groups such as HSUS and the ASPCA as the “bad barrel makers.”  The article concludes:

“The majority of people can get seduced across the line of good and evil in a very short period of time by a variety of circumstances that they’re usually not aware of — coercion, anonymity, dehumanization,” he said. “We don’t want to accept the notion because it attacks our concept of the dignity of human nature.”

While it may be easy to give up in the face of such discouraging findings, the point, Professor Zimbardo and others say, is to make people conscious of what is known about how and why people are so willing to behave badly — and then use that information to create an environment for good.

…Although no one thinks it’s an easy task, Professor Zimbardo is not alone in his faith that people can be taught, and even induced, to do the right thing.

“I am a true believer that we can create environments to act ethically,” Professor Gino said. “It just might take a heavier hand.”

 

I’d never looked at a dog in quite this way.

And photography revealed these fascinating and comical views of animals doing something they do every day–shake themselves dry.  Sometimes you can’t really see what’s right in front of you.

No Kill News

The ASPCA debacles continue and include shipping dogs from one kill “shelter” to another, apparently for the publicity.  Scratch the surface…

In case you still think that “shelters” are full of hardworking people who love animals and hate killing them, there’s Memphis, TN and  McCracken County, KY for you to attempt to explain away.