How a burned-out rescuer got her groove back

It's been a rough few days, with Gina sick and me having my life eaten, as it always is in February, by Chat Month at PetHobbyist.com. But hey... only one more week!



This year, the event was opened with a chat with Nathan Winograd, author of "Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America." (The transcript of that chat is here for those who missed it.)



I've been following the media and blog coverage of the No Kill movement for several months now, and have seen many reviews, both professional and grass roots, of Nathan's book. I've also seen a lot of people find new hope and heart in their struggle to save animal lives from reading it and being exposed to his ideas, and I've seen some who bitterly oppose the message of the book, and "No Kill" in general. Some truly believe it can't work; some truly don't want it to, mostly for reasons I wish I didn't understand.



I rarely blog these little snippets of reaction to the book or the movement. Gina and I have written extensively about the book, No Kill, and Nathan, so much so we actually thought we'd cool it for a while. Until tonight, when I sent Gina a link to a blog post that came in with my latest Google alerts. And she agreed it was something a bit different than we've read before:

I am a veteran rabbit rescuer and have also done bird and cat rescue and we have 3 rescued dogs (and one who was a stray) and I was burnt out and ready to retire rescue until I read this book.

She goes on to outline many of the challenges of doing rabbit rescue, including finding low-cost spay surgeries, given the special challenges of spaying rabbits. Then she tells us that she went looking for a blueprint for running a no-kill shelter, but didn't find it in the pages of "Redemption." She found something else:

I was chagrined to read in this book a quote from my own dog trainer claiming that the shelter where Winograd and company had achieved 100% no kill was fudging the numbers and that this wasn't really true.



HSUS and other groups, and many animal shelters have been put on notice because of this book. My own shelter claims a 99% adoption rate but that is only for animals who reach the adoption floor. Nearly 50% of the animals who come in the back door end up in the freezer. Their claim of a 99% adoption rate is propaganda - a practice now being utilized all across the country to escape scrutiny from groups and individuals seeking to espouse Winograd's new No Kill Equation. That is fine, fudge your numbers, spew your propaganda but it won't work. You can only do that for so long. The traditional media and the blogosphere will expose the real story. Propaganda is only a delay tactic.

I've actually been somewhat demoralized by the ugliness of many of the things I've read about Nathan and the very concept of no-kill, but she found a silver lining even there:

An interesting phenomenon has sprung up like a giant behemoth since the publication of this book and that is a great number of people who attack Winograd and his philosophy in favor of killing animals. This debate, or rather, this WAR between KILLERS and NO KILLERS is a healthy development in the long stagnant animal rescue/welfare arena.



KILLER advocates cite instances of rescue groups gone bad where animals are neglected and suffering in poor conditions. This anomaly in animal rescue is just that, an anomaly. The poorly run kill shelters of the nation far outnumber the poorly run animal rescue groups and WHAT'S MORE, the rescues gone bad often are exposed MUCH MORE OFTEN than poorly run KILL SHELTERS who practice inhumane methods of KILLING such as gassing or just taking the animals out back and shooting them (yes they do that). As a matter of fact, those kill shelters often get very little if ANY negative publicity.



The KILL SHELTERS who practice these inhumane methods have been known about for years and are the inspiration for action of most rescue groups. These horrible kill shelters are not making the headlines among the propaganda of the Winograd naysayers and yet, I would bet you a million dollars that the places where the rescues gone bad exist are right next kill shelters who do gassing and shooting and the people who are part of the rescue gone bad are simply desperate and unprepared psychologically to battle against that.

[....]

This country needs to wake up. It needs to rise up out of the ashes and say, hey if there is ANY POSSIBILITY that no kill might work then we should all be trying it.

This is the Roe v. Wade of animal welfare.

Except it should be called Kronos v. Winograd. The death addicts and pain junkies need to heal. They are human after all but part of their humanity has been trampled and stomped upon by their own love for animals and feelings of helplessness.

It's time to wake up! Never hold so tightly to an opinion that is completely defeatist and negative and violent (killing is violent). There is always hope and even if you don't believe in the NO KILL EQUATION - honestly, what is wrong with trying to make it work?

Yeah. I want to know that, too. When you have a system that does not work, that kills animals daily even though you swear you don't want to do that, why keep working that failed system harder and harder? Why not try another way?



Check out her whole post here... and keep asking why.

Comments

[spotted dog farm]

hear hear! it's great that winograd is giving hope to burned-out rescuers. i find a lot of comfort in his message and his passion. and there seems to be a silver lining in polarizing the shelter and rescue communities: real progress!

[Susan Fox]

I just read her post. Wow. Talk about re-framing the argument. Excellent point also about all the publicity when a rescue gone bad is uncovered while hundreds of county and city facilities kill and kill and kill, often cruelly and don't provide decent care to the,uh,lucky animals that go up for adoption. Like LA, maybe?

[Christie Keith]

I agree, I felt she provided a new slant on a subject I was pretty sure had been set in cement. I'm quite impressed.

[Dr. Patty Khuly]

Here's another notch on Winograd's scratching post: Never before did I think I'd be working at a shelter doing spays and neuters. Though I take issue with using heavy language ("killers" smacks of the "baby killer" rhetoric I so abhor in the abotion debate), I'm gratified to see that Winograd gives new life to many. I just hope the polarization that may result between groups that NEED to work together gets toned down a tad.

[slt]

Christie, could you expand on this bit: "Some truly believe it can’t work; some truly don’t want it to, mostly for reasons I wish I didn’t understand."

Thanks for this blogpost.

[Christie Keith]

I believe that opposition to the no kill movement comes from a large group of people who sincerely believe it cannot work, and a small group of people who are invested in the status quo for ideological reasons (disapproval of how people think about, care for, and relate to companion animals, and in fact, disapproval of the keeping of companion animals; wanting to punish "bad" pet owners, to teach them a lesson, to "hit them over the head with a 2X4" as the former head of one shelter put it; etc.), and a very small number who are protecting their jobs, position in the industry, etc.