Dogged Blog

How to make anger, outrage and troubling news work for the animals

It's no secret we live in highly polarized political times, leading to a seemingly endless cycle of outrage, fear, and anger played out on the social media stage. You  may have been caught in the crossfire yourself. But what does this have to do with helping animals?

This heightened cycle of outrage has led to the rise of the "rage donation," the act of giving money as a form of expressing anger or disapproval of a breaking news story or new government policy. Primarily utilized as a form of personal activism and expression, it has been stunningly successful at funding the candidates or causes in question.

Of course, playing on people's fears and anger to raise money is nothing new. What's new is the spontaneity with which it's happening, and the enormity of its success. For example, the ACLU recently raised seven times more money in one weekend than they had in the entire previous year thanks to the response to a single federal policy change related to their core mission. What's more, they did little or nothing to spur these donations; they were driven primarily by individual response to spontaneous appeals on social media both from celebrities and average citizens.

This isn't a tactic unknown to animal welfare. Certainly triggering responses of anger, guilt, and even vengeance on the part of animal lovers has been a reliable staple of animal cause fundraising since long before Sarah McLachlan first crooned "arms of an angel" on late night television. And if the stream of horrifying images and stories flooding the feeds of animal lovers across social media are any measure, it's clearly a powerfully grassroots phenomenon in animal welfare, too.

So what's different now, and how can you utilize this information in your animal-related fundraising? And since ethics matter, how can you do it without sinking into manipulation and contrived outrage for the sake of financial gain?

The good news is that ethically centering a fundraising message around genuine and powerful emotions is not complicated, although it does take a lot of groundwork. It's not something you can throw together in a single hour after a news story breaks -- and to be honest, even an hour is probably too long.

Let's look at an example. There's a breaking story in your area that your organization will unquestionably be involved in.  It might be a puppy mill raid, a dog fighting bust, or a large-scale animal cruelty case.

Your social media and development teams -- even if that's one person with a smartphone and a plan -- need to be ready to respond within minutes by sharing the story on Facebook and Twitter. The key to doing this without creating a vulture-like impression or in fact being exploitative is to make sure these three elements are in place:

1. Your organization's involvement is central and confirmed. Fundraising on the back of a crisis when your involvement is tangential or speculative is a quick way to destroy your credibility, not to mention unethical.
2. Be genuine. The most important thing we have in terms of fundraising for animal causes is the deep love our target audience feels for animals. If we waste that in the name of raising money, we've violated that love and damaged our ability to effectively advocate for the animals. So ensure that your tone is sincere, compassionate, and focused on the animals and their needs, not yours.
3. Be transparent, specific, and timely. Tell people what you need the money for in as great a detail as possible, and then report back quickly on how it was used. Don't wait for a quarterly report or even for the crisis to be over. Tell them that evening, "Thanks to your donation of $1,500 in the last hour, we were able to purchase fencing supplies and construct emergency kennels on the grounds of our shelter."

Even if all those elements are checked off, your job is not finished. When you post, you need to ask your followers to share the story. Don't just assume they will; be explicit. On Twitter, add "Please RT!" On Facebook, come right out and ask them to make sure their friends, colleagues, and family members see the story. (Try to avoid using the word "share," as it can backfire, and may also trigger a negative response from Facebook's algorithm.)

One of the most important points to keep in mind is less simple, and requires both careful consideration of your audience and the ability to walk a fine line without falling off in either direction.

While triggering powerful emotions can inspire people to support a cause, negative images and stories can be very disturbing to some people. They've also been found to hamper pet adoption efforts. The last thing you want to do is see dozens or hundreds of angry comments because you posted a photo that was horrifying to your followers, or create the impression that pets who come into shelters are broken, damaged and traumatized.

The problem is that terrible things do happen, and animal organizations need money to respond to them. What's more, giving people an immediate, effective outlet for their anxiety and outrage actually helps them channel those negative feelings into something constructive, which is itself a way to process those feelings and feel better -- that's the very reason the "rage donation" is so widespread.

To improve your chances of walking that fine line, consider these tips:

1. Protect your followers. Instead of posting upsetting photos directly to your social media, publish them on your website and share the link on Facebook with a warning that it contains potentially disturbing images. There's nothing like being hit in the face with a terrible image to create the opposite reaction to the one you wanted, so make sure you're telling the whole story but still shielding your followers and readers.
2. Remind people there are heroes in the world, and invite them to be one of them. It might be a whistleblower, a compassionate law enforcement officer, or the heroic response of your own community or volunteers, but there are almost no stories, however dark, that don't involve some inspiring elements. Find the good in the tragedy and spotlight it, while letting people know how they can be part of the heroism.
3. Emphasize the redemption story. Remind everyone exposed to your message that the pets will be cared for. Share other stories of animals who recovered and went on to be adopted and live happy lives, or even become ambassadors for other abused animals. Don't leave people dwelling in the despair and anger; tell them that their support will turn their outrage into redemption, and show them how.

Definitely don't begin your social media response by asking for money; your first response should be to simply share the story. No one will fault you for asking for donations of needed supplies or volunteers. In fact, doing so makes people feel ownership of the event and your efforts, which can inspire the kind of spontaneous sharing that is so characteristic of the "rage donation." Requests for money should only begin after the event is over and the need is clear, or several hours into the event if it's ongoing.

It's critical that your social media team be empowered to put this plan into action without permission, review, or any other process that would slow the initial response. It's fine to coordinate after the first round of posts go out, but don't put up obstacles to the most rapid possible response once the story breaks, or even a little before if you have some advance notice.

Even though you shouldn't start asking for money right away, it's also important that your team knows how to update your donation page to include this incident, as people are going to be looking for it. Individual online givers are more likely to donate to earmarked causes than to give money to your general fund. They want to feel they're part of your emergency response effort, not that their donation might be used to buy printer ink.

You also need to develop a communications strategy long before the first incident. Your social media team needs updates and they need photos. Have a meeting with your emergency and communications staffers, and make sure anyone who will be in the field understands what's needed to cover an incident, and ensure the organization has the resources it needs to handle it.

Finally, keep in mind the three rules of fundraising: Tell people what you're doing, ask them for help, then tell them what you did because they helped. Don't let the story end until everyone who dropped off a crate, gave ten dollars, or shared your posts on their Facebook page has heard how it all turned out, and that their support truly made a difference. Not only is this simple human decency and good for your organization's image, it lets you make sure the story has a happy, or at least inspiring, ending.  And that will make all the difference the next time you ask for help for the animals.

Negative emotions are extremely powerful. It's not particularly difficult to use them to raise money. What is difficult is doing it ethically, compassionately, and sustainably. That takes preparation and it takes the will to do it; don't let your organization, and the animals in its care, miss out on either.

So you think they can't make people hate cats?

There's an ugly war being fought over the American love for cats right now... and the cats are losing.

Yes, most of us love cats, are intrigued by cats, watch cat videos, and in ever-growing numbers share our homes with cats. But if you'd had your ear to the ground of the last few years, you'd realize there's a force out there trying to change that.

It began with a series of high-profile headlines about how cats are murderous beasts. It was sustained by junk science and "alternative facts" about how many birds outdoor cats kill each year. And it was given credibility by the academic credentials of the virulent cat-haters behind this propaganda war, one of whom actually said in his book Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer that felines should be removed from the landscape "by any means necessary."

(Which to the best of my knowledge is the first and only time a cat hater has quoted Malcom X to support his case. But I digress.)

You might accuse me of over-reacting, and I hope I am. But these guys are playing a long game here, slowly getting the media to pay attention to their anti-cat message and, more frighteningly, attempting to supplant the reality of the cats in our laps with the demonic image of a killing machine with an unquenchable appetite for endangered songbird. They're presenting to veterinary organizations and at science conferences. They're writing articles and books, and doing propaganda-filled book tours. They're courting the media. They're supporting hyped up media coverage of the risks of toxoplasmosis and rabies.

And what are we in animal welfare doing about it?

Good question.

Sometimes it seems we're all so engrossed in our own cat-positive worlds, doing TNR and helping shelters increase their feline lifesaving and singing the praises of community cats, warehouse cats, and barn cats that we're almost oblivious to the propaganda taking hold all around us.

When we do pay attention, we seem to think that cats will be spared by the irony of the fact that, by opposing TNR, these idiots are themselves the greatest barrier to reducing the number of unowned, free-roaming cats. 

We need to wake up. We need to write op-eds, write our own books, go on local radio programs, put our best and most articulate spokespeople forward, fund research, and stop burying our heads in the kitty litter. These guys are trying to eradicate cats from America unless they're safely locked in a high-security indoor environment -- which means they want to kill more than half the cats currently alive in this country.

And they're frustratingly, hypocritically doing it in the name of saving birds... birds who themselves have been responsible for more human and wildlife deaths than any other type of living creatures bigger than a pathogen.

And we're letting them.

Can animal rescue groups survive without adoption fees?

I thought I'd heard all the reasons people object to the idea of free pet adoptions -- but I was wrong.

After I wrote a post about the marketing power of free adoptions, and explained why I think charging adoption fees is an obstacle to our pet adoption mission, I started hearing from many, many rescue groups all over the U.S. that they can't possibly survive as an organization without revenue from adoption fees. Some have gone so far as to accuse larger shelters and foundations like Maddie's Fund of trying to "drive rescue groups out of business."

I'll be honest, I understand their feelings. A change in your revenue model can be a big paradigm change for a small nonprofit, especially one that doesn't have anyone on the team who is interested in marketing, fundraising, and development.

I think, however, that the benefits far outweigh the pain of change.

Let's step back and look at the big picture for a minute. Most nonprofits outside the rescue world don't have a fee-based revenue model. They raise money by cultivating relationships with individual and business supporters, with fundraising events, with retail operations such as thrift stores, and with development of grants, bequests, endowments, etc.

Of course, just thinking about that is exhausting for a small group made up of people who are mostly working in direct animal care rather than organizational work. In fact, we've created a culture where the less effort a nonprofit puts into anything other than direct services the more we praise them.

The problem is, that model is truly not sustainable. It leaves groups without a structure to rely on when market realities change.

For example, the adoption fee model might really go away as more groups realize the huge marketing benefit of fee-waived adoption promotions. Then you'll be competing with groups who adopt out pets for free or for "name your own fee" donations, and you'll be forced to change overnight instead of doing it strategically.

There are easy options to getting all or most of our revenue through adoption fees and tapping into the marketing power of fee-waived adoptions.

For example, what if you went to a local business, shopping center, nursery, big pet supply or farm store, and asked them to do a "We'll pay your adoption fees this weekend!" event in the parking lot? They get tons of customers flocking in, you get your adoptions paid for (plus donations if you play your cards right), the pets get the benefit of the marketing buzz, and everyone wins!

Additionally, you need to think outside the animal welfare bubble. I'm on the board of an animal organization that receives funding from a non-animal welfare foundation that supports charitable endeavors in our region. They give us money because we're local and meet their standards of sustainability, accountability, etc. As far as I know, we're the only animal organization they support at all!

This is why finding a volunteer with an interest in marketing and/or development is critically important for small rescue groups. You really can't survive long just caring for the animals and cramming in the bare minimum of organizational support and development while you have one hand on a kitten bottle and the other holding your eyelids open.

The whole point of finding people to help with this end of things is to free up each volunteer to focus on what she or he does best, whatever it is. After all, direct animal care is necessary! But so is organizational work such as marketing and development. Animal organizations need it all, or they won't be able to survive losing, say, their founder or core group of volunteers, or economic or market shifts.

I feel very strongly that rescue groups are mostly locked into an unsustainable model of helping animals, and I would really like to see us step back from how we are currently doing things and broaden our revenue streams and free ourselves to use the fee-waived adoption marketing model and any other innovations that come along when they're appropriate or helpful. 

The animals need our best, not just in TLC, but in organizational professionalism.

Facebook isn't letting pages share directly to other pages anymore

Update: It looks like the easy share feature is back. Whether it was a feature they abandoned or a glitch is unknown at this time, but definitely take the information I include below about the limited value of pages (not individuals, pages) sharing to another page to heart. This is not a good strategy for getting your message out.

I woke up this morning to a number of people contacting me wanting to know why they couldn't share a post from one Facebook page to another anymore.

This was news to me, but when I got online, I checked, and found it was true for pages that had been converted to the new format -- which is supposed to be fully implemented on all pages by June 5.

What does this mean for animal organizations?

On one hand, it's a good thing, as reach (the number of people who see your posts) is almost zero for shared page posts. It's a bad practice to share from one page to another if you want your followers to see the content you're sharing.

On the other hand, reach is not the only reason one page might share something to another. Often, it's a way to let the other page know what's going on. For instance, this weekend I'm doing social media for Maddie's Pet Adoption Days, and the particiapting organizations have been sharing their posts to the MPAD Facebook page so we'll be aware of their promotions and available pets.

Nonetheless, sharing from one page you manage to another with the idea that people will see those shared posts in their newsfeeds was not a good strategy to get your message out, and the end of this feature is going to prompt you to create original content for your pages, and thus, get greater reach.

For those of us who used the share feature for other purposes, it will be missed.

For however long it lasts, there's a couple of workarounds. First, the easiest:

1. At the top of the page you manage, switch so you're operating as yourself, not the page.
2. Click "share" on the post.
3. Select "Share on a page you manage" from the menu that starts out with "Share on your timeline.
4. Select the page you want to share it to.

If that stops working or for whatever reason doesn't work for you, try this:

1. Add the Facebook share bookmarklet to your browser's toolbar. (You'll find it here.)
2. Go to the post you want to share. If this is a photo, just click on the photo. If it's not a photo, click on the date/timestamp and it will open as a new page.
3. Click on the share bookmarklet.
4. Select "Share on a page you manage" from the menu that starts out with "Share on your timeline."
5. Select the page you want to share it to.

However, given the reality of the changes Facebook is making these days, don't count on this workaround to last.

And more importantly, understand that no one is visiting your Facebook page and seeing what you posted, so if your a post won't show up in people's newsfeeds, you would be better off not posting it at all.

Pet Connection is back - did you miss it?

A couple of months ago, my friend (sister with different DNA, really) Gina Spadafori regained the right to use her PetConnection.com domain again. We discussed opening up the old Pet Connection archive there (my posts were all copied over to this blog, but the PC archive itself, including everyone else's posts, was inaccessible). And once we started down that road, we thought: Should we start blogging there again?

We decided HELL YES, and then we invited two of our favorite dog people on Planet Earth, Kim Campbell Thornton and Liz Palika, to come back, along with our beloved Dr. Tony Johnson.

All said yes, although Tony will only be an infrequent contributor. And we also made the vow: NO ads. NO sponsors. NO mealy mouthed BS. This is just all of us blogging about animal issues for no reason other than a desire to communicate.

So I hope those of you who missed Pet Connection will visit the blog once again, and those of you who missed its heyday will stop by and help us make a new one!

PetConnection.com

The false debate about 'open' vs 'managed' admission animal shelters

A shelter or animal control agency that responsibly manages its intake flow is still an open admission shelter.

Whether you are for or against managed admission, or an apologist for a so-called shelter that proudly calls itself "open admission" as it marches pets from the admission desk to the kill room, or an avid no-kill advocate, it's still highly likely that you speak as if  "open admission" and "managed admission" shelters are, by definition, two different things.

But that's not true. Shelters that fulfill the legal or contractual requirements of their municipality as to what animals they are required to admit, and that additionally have provisions for emergency intake for animals in immediate need, are open admission shelters.

That doesn't change if they work with pet owners to delay intake until the shelter has room, the animal has had vaccinations, or a foster home opens up. Nor does it change if they instead work with the pet owner to try to help them keep the pet, or to find a home for the pet themselves.

Evidence is mounting that the long list of policies and programs we term "managed" open admission save lives, help pet owners in need, get pets needed veterinary and basic care, and do so without increasing pet abandonment nor diverting intake to other facilities.

That's why those of us who support this sea change in animal sheltering should stop letting advocates of outdated sheltering practices choose the terms that describe it.

Managed open admission works. Unmanaged open admission is irresponsible and inhumane. They are both open admission.

 

Fake cat statistics, the sequel

I'm at the Best Friends Animal Society No More Homeless Pets Conference in Jacksonville right now. In the elevator this morning, I  overheard a person wearing a t-shirt supporting spay/neuter efforts tell her companion that two unaltered cats and their descendants will produce... wait for it...  10 million kittens in 12 years.

I interrupted her and told her that yesterday, at the day-long Face to Face with Feral Freedom session, Dr. Julie Levy of the University of Florida shelter medicine program -- who knows as much about community cats as anyone alive, and has done more research on them than anyone, too -- said that no one knows the actual number of community cats in the United States, but the number lies somewhere between 10-90 million.

So those two unaltered cats were pretty busy 12 years ago.

I'm going to reiterate a point I've made before, but this time in even simpler terms: We don't make neuter-return programs more attractive to government agencies, politicians, and community members by wildly inflating the reproductive capacity of cats.

Doing so only creates the impression that cats are a pest species that breeds like flies.

If it were true, not only would cats be the only species on earth, but we'd also have a very hard time convincing anyone to support TNR or any kind of humane, non-lethal efforts to control the population of community cats, because they would think of cats as pests, not companion animals or appealing wild animals.

You may think you're bolstering the need for TNR, but you're making it more difficult to get support for TNR.

The real numbers are somewhere between 50 and 1000 descendants from two unaltered cats. (Source)

Please stop using fake numbers.

Shelter reform on Facebook: Ur doin it wrong

Have shelter reform and no-kill advocacy groups lost their way on Facebook?

I don't normally think of no-kill leader Nathan Winograd as a social media critic, but in a blog post yesterday, he called out a lot of no-kill groups on Facebook for pandering for "likes" and "shares" instead of focusing on their mission:

I see a trend on the Facebook pages of some No Kill educational organizations which show them moving away from substance just at the time it is needed most. Instead of substantive posts, they are posting photos, videos, and stories of animals designed not to empower, but to amuse as these tend to get large numbers of “likes.” Non-shelter No Kill Facebook pages, if they are to authentically serve the cause they claim to support, should be primarily educational tools, posting material intended to elevate the discussion about shelter killing in the U.S. beyond clichés about pet overpopulation and the importance of spay/neuter. They need to be followed by a dialogue on those posts to answer questions, clarify confusion, respond to comments, and to provide assistance to activists as needed.

This requires effort, and it can often lead to friction, but, in the end, it is a necessary precursor to change.

This loss of focus isn't a problem unique to no-kill and shelter reform Facebook pages. The animal welfare movement in general suffers from hopeless message drift, as you can see from ten minutes looking at the long list of rules, requirements, restrictions, and regulations appended to half the adoption listings on Petfinder -- so much so that it's sometimes hard to find the only thing that should be there -- the pet's personal story.

It's in their press releases and story pitches, too, where instead of presenting a single compelling piece of information they layer it with redundant quotes from their president and a quick plug for their upcoming adoption fair and don't forget to spay and neuter your pets and don't breed and buy while shelter dogs die... it's exhausting just reading their signature files!

So it's no wonder this leaked over to their Facebook pages. But when it did, it got amplified in a very disturbing way by two forces.

One, of course, is Facebook itself, which requires you to dance like a music box ballerina whenever they start the music. If most of what's on your page isn't content that drives tons of likes, comments, and shares, Facebook will essentially punish you by showing fewer and fewer of your posts to your own followers by wielding its super-sekrit EdgeRank algorithm.

Since photo posts and cute memes and pandering for engagement ("Like if you love puppies, share if you love kittens, comment if you love both!" "Can you name a dog breed without the letter "E" in it?") result in lots of the elusive likes, shares, and comments, pages advocating for a cause become addicted to the easy boost in EdgeRank and thus, number of fans who view a page.

Then you post something serious about an upcoming meeting at city hall about changes to the holding period at your local animal control, and not only does no one engage with it, but hardly anyone sees it. Talk about negative reinforcement.

But it's not all Facebook's fault. We're guilty, too, of wanting to be liked, wanting to be popular, wanting to have the biggest fan count, wanting to see the comment count tick into double and then triple digits on every post.

Even without the EdgeRank sword hanging over our heads, it's likely a lot of us would still be sweating and shaking with eagerness to be the first one of our network to share today's super-viral Grumpy Cat meme.

I have two things to say: First, we're not here to be liked. We're here to end the use of lethal animal control practices and reform how we shelter animals.

Second, you can actually serve Facebook's algorithmic delusions of grandeur, keep your EdgeRank high so your followers will see what you post, and stay focused on your mission, all at the same time. This is how:

Use Facebook Insights -- their free, built-in analytics program -- to determine what times of day and what days of the week your posts do best. Learn more here.

Use Facebook's scheduler -- also built-in and free -- to schedule your posts for those times, leaving at least a couple of hours, if not 3, between posts. (Too-frequent posting is a guaranteed ticket to Facebook limbo. Watch your post views and see!) Learn more here.

Use relevant photos and memes. You can actually spread your message just fine with memes and photos, and reap the benefit of all that EdgeRank juicy goodness. Just make sure your viral content is related to your mission, not random images of teh coot kittehs there for no purpose whatsoever other than to pander for engagement.

Engage! When page admins, in the name of the page or in their own names, respond to comments, solicit responses, and in general behave... dare I say it? ... socially, engagement on a post will go higher, and thus, more of your followers will see it.

Ask for help! Posts in which a "share" is requested will get more shares than those without a request. I don't mean manipulative share-whoring like this, or this; I mean authentically having a reason for wanting your followers to share your content, telling them what it is, and then asking them to do it. You'll be amazed.

Be interesting. People with something interesting to say, particularly those who say it well, will always have a following. Be that person.

Be sticky. Learn from what communications professionals, advertisers, psychology researchers, and scientists have figured out about what makes messages "sticky" -- in other words, what makes people notice what you're saying, remember it, and act on it.

Stay on message. Why does your organization exist? Nearly all your posts should be mission-focused, with the additional challenge that  you need to find compelling and "sticky" ways of conveying that mission. And of course it's fine to post something silly on Fridays or whenever you sense things need a change of tone, but even the silly, fun, heartwarming things you post can be relevant to your mission. There are thousands of memes out there about pet adoption or the human-animal bond. You can do better than just another adorbs puppy with a tilted head.

Note that this advice is for reform and advocacy groups. If your page is about pet adoption or building community support for your foster, volunteer, and fundraising efforts, you'll want to use a different set of tactics, and yes, "cute" will play a much larger role.

But if you're here to change the world for the millions of pets who are needlessly killed every year, you can and must use the tools at your disposal, including Facebook, effectively and strategically, not randomly and reactively.

Two cats walked into a bar... and immediately had 420,000 kittens

Once upon a time, when I was blogging at Pet Connection before it shut down, I had a large fan base who liked nothing more than to see my head explode.

If you've missed it, you might want to check out a rant I posted on the blog at Connected By Pets Friday morning:

Dear cat advocates: Stop. Just stop.

I am begging you to stop trotting out utterly made-up numbers about the forty gazingazillion offspring that are produced within a few generations by just two unaltered cats.

Read it here.

Know the opposition: 'Will no one think of the strays?'

This is the third in a series of posts examining the comments made by No-Kill opponents in public discussions of the movement to save all healthy and treatable pets in our nation's shelters.

There's a new "talking point" popping up with orchestrated frequency wherever people gather to discuss the No-Kill Movement online. I call it "WILL NO ONE THINK OF THE STRAYS?!?!??" (All-caps and multiple exclamation points and question marks are required to really express the hysteria that underlies this particular talking point.)

Because it's new, a lot of No-Kill advocates aren't quite sure what to make of it -- which is exactly why they thought if up in the first place. It's certainly not because it's true.

To save all healthy and treatable homeless dogs and cats in our nation requires we find homes for around 2.5 million additional pets out of the pool of approximately 27 million households that get a new dog or cat each year.

This simple piece of math puts a huge crimp in the habitual contention of No-Kill opponents that there are "too many pets, not enough homes" and therefore slaughtering homeless pets in shelters is unavoidable.

The other problem with their old math is that communities all over the U.S. are routinely and sustainably saving more than 90 percent of their homeless pets without divine intervention, billions of dollars, or the laws of nature being turned on their heads.

They are doing it by implementing the No-Kill Equation:

• Targeted, free/affordable, accessible spay/neuter services, return-to-owner, and pet retention programs
• Good relations between animal control agencies and private shelters, rescue groups, and the community to maxmize foster homes, other adoption outlets, and volunteers
• Improved adoption programs and customer service, including better hours at shelters, off-site adoptions, and creative marketing
• Compassionate leadership

All of which has left No-Kill opponents in search of something, anything, to change the math. So they came up with strays. I'm sorry; I mean, "STRAYS!!!!!"

What they're contending is that no matter how well shelters perform in saving the lives of the pets who come in their doors, it won't matter nor spell success because there are uncountable quadrazillions of stray dogs and cats all over the country, and if we add them into the equation, there really are "too many pets, not enough homes," just like they always told us back in the days before we learned to count.

The beauty of using this "gotcha" point to argue against no-kill is that it's a sensationalistic, vague, unquantified concept. Advocates of shelter reform could point to success in reducing intake and increasing lifesaving until literally every community in the country was saving more than 90 percent of the pets who enter its shelter system, and No-Kill opponents could still go, "It's all a lie because STRAYS!"

Are they right? No.

First, by their own admission and the best estimates of both feral cat advocates and enemies, the vast majority of unowned, unsheltered pets in this country are feral cats.

Feral cats are not "strays" and they're not "homeless." They are no more or less a matter for shelters to deal with than racoons are, and that is a simple fact we have to grasp if we're ever going to have a reasonable conversation about a humane approach to free-living, unowned cats in our communities.

Second, while there are a few areas with a "feral dog" problem, that's all there are: a few. I live in the Detroit metro area, where there are an estimated 20-50,000 free-roaming dogs on the streets. This is widely acknowledged to be the greatest density of such dogs in the United States. Detroit Dog Rescue fonder Dan "Hush" Carlisle estimates that 80-90 percent of them are recently abandoned pet dogs rather than feral dogs.

Nor are all these dogs homeless; many are currently owned dogs being allowed to run loose by their owners. That's also true in rural areas where dogs run loose. They are also not homeless.

Yes, there are pockets of truly feral dogs in junkyards, remote areas, and abandoned urban neighborhoods, usually running in mixed packs with free-roaming owned dogs. And while no one knows the exact number of truly homeless, free-living, feral dogs in the United States, no credible source contends the number is so large that it significantly alters the bigger picture of canine homelessness and sheltering.

Which is to say, it can be addressed by the No-Kill Equation, ie, targeted spay/neuter, rehabilitation, sanctuary, and adoption when the dog can be safely housed, or killing for the safety of society when the dog cannot be safely housed.

Of course, these facts won't do one damn thing to convince a "THINK OF THE STRAYS!!!!!" devotee to change his or her mind. That's because they didn't come up with it because of facts, they don't post it on Facebook dicussions because of facts, and they aren't even interested in facts. (Which is painfully clear, since they haven't got any.)

This is nothing, really, but baseless goal-post moving, and a reassuring (to us) sign that we have pretty much proven our contention that there are enough homes, and that communities that adopt the No Kill Equation can adopt, return-to-owner, spay/neuter, TNR, and embrace our fellow humans out of shelter killing.

Which is good news for the animals, even if the No-Kill nay-sayers will never admit it.