Let's stop neglect, abuse at animal shelters
Nathan Winograd
Under proposed legislation called the Companion Animal Protection Act, shelters and animal control agencies would be prohibited from killing kittens like these if a lifesaving alternative exists.
It's more than a little disturbing to consider how little actual "shelter" homeless pets receive in some agencies bearing that name. Take Tennessee's Memphis Animal Shelter, for example. Conditions there were so bad that they prompted a high-profile sheriff's raid on the facility in 2009. Investigators found animals starving to death and going without water; there were even allegations of dog-fighting going on at the agency.
After the raid, the city installed webcams inside the facility so citizens could see what was going on behind the scenes, but even then, conditions didn't improve all that much.
Blogger Shirley Thistlewaite, who has been covering the situation in the Memphis shelter for more than a year, posts webcam images from MAS several times a month.
Some of the images show dogs being dragged, terrified, to the kill room. Others show cats being poked with sticks by staff members. There are examples of workers violating city policies, of pets escaping from kennels and cages, even of a puppy being hauled to his death, dangling from a worker's hand that was holding a fistful of the loose skin on the puppy's back.
If you're tempted to dismiss the situation at MAS as an aberration, think again. Other animal control facilities may not have webcams in their backrooms, but volunteers and animal rescuers frequently report abuse and neglect in shelters all over the country.
For example, in Chesterfield County, N.C., horrific abuse at the county-run animal control facility was brought to light by whistleblowing volunteers.
Dogs and puppies were brutally shot in violation of state law, then buried -- at least one still alive -- in a mass landfill on the shelter property. North Carolinalaw enforcement officials are investigating, but no arrests have been made since the incident was discovered in March, and all personnel under investigation are on paid administrative leave.
Nightmares like this don't just happen in other states, either. They happen right here in California.
Zephyr was a 10-month-old puppy in a Los Angeles County shelter who slowly sickened, starved and died of a respiratory infection in a kennel without receiving medical care in 2009. (Note: Disturbing images.)
Zephyr's story came to light when shelter volunteer Cathy Nguyen, with the help of the No-Kill Advocacy Center filed a lawsuit accusing the agency of retaliating against her by dismissing her as a volunteer for speaking out about Zephyr's story and others she witnessed at the shelter.
Her case was successful. The judge issued a stipulated order that the county shelters comply with legally mandated hold periods for animals, provideveterinary care to ill and injured animals, comply with the law that requires all shelters in the state to release animals to rescue groups instead of killing them, not to retaliate against whistleblowers, and to provide access to shelter records.
The court also ordered the re-instatement of Nguyen as a volunteer.
The details of Zephyr's death bring despair to the heart of any animal lover. But it's in the details of Nguyen's court case that animal advocates have identified a strategy that might help pets not only in California, but in every other community in the country.
Nathan Winograd, director of the No-Kill Advocacy Center, the organization that assisted Nguyen with her case, and No-Kill Nation, a Florida-based national group working to end the killing of homeless pets, have launched a campaign to introduce shelter regulation legislation nationwide.
Dubbed Rescue-50, the group's website serves as a clearinghouse for grassroots activists and legislators on how to institute shelter regulation in their states. Central to their effort is a piece of model legislation known as the "Companion Animal Protection Act" (CAPA).
Far from some sort of rainbows-and-unicorns fantasy version of animal sheltering, CAPA has already been passed in one state (Delaware) and introduced in four others -- Rhode Island, Minnesota, Texas, and New York.
CAPA's provisions are meant to protect animals from abuse and death with a set of regulatory guidelines including the requirement that shelters and animal control agencies provide animals with basic care such as regular food and water, as well as necessary medical treatment.
CAPA also mandates that agencies work with rescue groups, rather than leaving the decision to the discretion of shelter management.
This provision addresses one of the main reasons that conditions in badly-run shelters often persist for so long: Rescue groups and volunteers become afraid to speak out for fear of losing access to the animals they're trying to help. With their right of access guaranteed by law, whistleblowers can speak without fear of reprisal.
Mandating collaboration with rescue groups also saves shelters money, one of the reasons CAPA typically enjoys bipartisan support. Dogs and cats will no longer have to be housed for more than the legally required minimum before they can be transferred to private rescue organizations. This also spares agencies the cost of killing and disposing of pets.
Cost savings also come from a requirement to make greater efforts to return lost and stray pets to their owners, since such reunions usually involve some kind of fee or penalty.
Passage of CAPA would also mean shelters would have to publicly report their statistics, including how many pets they take in and how many die in the facility. They'd also be prohibited from killing animals when there are rescue groups, foster homes or other shelters that would be willing and able to take them.
And it would ban particularly inhumane methods of killing, including the gas chamber and so-called "heartstick," a painful direct injection into the heart.
I don't normally get on board the legislative express when it comes to reform. I think that education and advocacy are the best approaches to take when trying to change things. In fact, when Winograd proposed that San Francisco adopt its own version of CAPA at a meeting of the city's Animal Welfare Commission two years ago, I didn't agree. I thought it was micromanagement. I thought it was government run amuck.
I've changed my mind. There are simply too many abuses going on in too many shelters, and too many of them are going unpunished or even uninvestigated. The provisions of CAPA are not outrageous, and most of them are being used already by the best shelters in the country, including animal control agencies in Reno, Nev., Charlottesville, N.C., and Ithaca, N.Y.
Debi Day of No-Kill Nation agrees. "We have been educating and advocating for a long time now," she told me. "Too long, in fact. Really progressive-minded, humane lawmakers, shelter directors and activists all know that it's possible to save and protect the lives of our country's homeless companion animals, and they know how. It's time, that's all."
After the raid, the city installed webcams inside the facility so citizens could see what was going on behind the scenes, but even then, conditions didn't improve all that much.
Blogger Shirley Thistlewaite, who has been covering the situation in the Memphis shelter for more than a year, posts webcam images from MAS several times a month.
Some of the images show dogs being dragged, terrified, to the kill room. Others show cats being poked with sticks by staff members. There are examples of workers violating city policies, of pets escaping from kennels and cages, even of a puppy being hauled to his death, dangling from a worker's hand that was holding a fistful of the loose skin on the puppy's back.
If you're tempted to dismiss the situation at MAS as an aberration, think again. Other animal control facilities may not have webcams in their backrooms, but volunteers and animal rescuers frequently report abuse and neglect in shelters all over the country.
For example, in Chesterfield County, N.C., horrific abuse at the county-run animal control facility was brought to light by whistleblowing volunteers.
Dogs and puppies were brutally shot in violation of state law, then buried -- at least one still alive -- in a mass landfill on the shelter property. North Carolina
Nightmares like this don't just happen in other states, either. They happen right here in California.
Zephyr was a 10-month-old puppy in a Los Angeles County shelter who slowly sickened, starved and died of a respiratory infection in a kennel without receiving medical care in 2009. (Note: Disturbing images.)
Zephyr's story came to light when shelter volunteer Cathy Nguyen, with the help of the No-Kill Advocacy Center filed a lawsuit accusing the agency of retaliating against her by dismissing her as a volunteer for speaking out about Zephyr's story and others she witnessed at the shelter.
Her case was successful. The judge issued a stipulated order that the county shelters comply with legally mandated hold periods for animals, provide
The court also ordered the re-instatement of Nguyen as a volunteer.
The details of Zephyr's death bring despair to the heart of any animal lover. But it's in the details of Nguyen's court case that animal advocates have identified a strategy that might help pets not only in California, but in every other community in the country.
Nathan Winograd, director of the No-Kill Advocacy Center, the organization that assisted Nguyen with her case, and No-Kill Nation, a Florida-based national group working to end the killing of homeless pets, have launched a campaign to introduce shelter regulation legislation nationwide.
Dubbed Rescue-50, the group's website serves as a clearinghouse for grassroots activists and legislators on how to institute shelter regulation in their states. Central to their effort is a piece of model legislation known as the "Companion Animal Protection Act" (CAPA).
Far from some sort of rainbows-and-unicorns fantasy version of animal sheltering, CAPA has already been passed in one state (Delaware) and introduced in four others -- Rhode Island, Minnesota, Texas, and New York.
CAPA's provisions are meant to protect animals from abuse and death with a set of regulatory guidelines including the requirement that shelters and animal control agencies provide animals with basic care such as regular food and water, as well as necessary medical treatment.
CAPA also mandates that agencies work with rescue groups, rather than leaving the decision to the discretion of shelter management.
This provision addresses one of the main reasons that conditions in badly-run shelters often persist for so long: Rescue groups and volunteers become afraid to speak out for fear of losing access to the animals they're trying to help. With their right of access guaranteed by law, whistleblowers can speak without fear of reprisal.
Mandating collaboration with rescue groups also saves shelters money, one of the reasons CAPA typically enjoys bipartisan support. Dogs and cats will no longer have to be housed for more than the legally required minimum before they can be transferred to private rescue organizations. This also spares agencies the cost of killing and disposing of pets.
Cost savings also come from a requirement to make greater efforts to return lost and stray pets to their owners, since such reunions usually involve some kind of fee or penalty.
Passage of CAPA would also mean shelters would have to publicly report their statistics, including how many pets they take in and how many die in the facility. They'd also be prohibited from killing animals when there are rescue groups, foster homes or other shelters that would be willing and able to take them.
And it would ban particularly inhumane methods of killing, including the gas chamber and so-called "heartstick," a painful direct injection into the heart.
I don't normally get on board the legislative express when it comes to reform. I think that education and advocacy are the best approaches to take when trying to change things. In fact, when Winograd proposed that San Francisco adopt its own version of CAPA at a meeting of the city's Animal Welfare Commission two years ago, I didn't agree. I thought it was micromanagement. I thought it was government run amuck.
I've changed my mind. There are simply too many abuses going on in too many shelters, and too many of them are going unpunished or even uninvestigated. The provisions of CAPA are not outrageous, and most of them are being used already by the best shelters in the country, including animal control agencies in Reno, Nev., Charlottesville, N.C., and Ithaca, N.Y.
Debi Day of No-Kill Nation agrees. "We have been educating and advocating for a long time now," she told me. "Too long, in fact. Really progressive-minded, humane lawmakers, shelter directors and activists all know that it's possible to save and protect the lives of our country's homeless companion animals, and they know how. It's time, that's all."
