Excerpts from Animal People News. Animal Advocates Society has said all of this for years. This is not rocket science and we do not believe for one second that the BC SPCA did not figure all this out long ago and made its choice to make money at it.
As for all the thousands of rescuers who do the same but not for money? We know they mean well, but they are also the reason that pet ownership and its subsequent abandonment is a huge and growing problem. If getting rid of a pet weren't made so easy by the big business pet disposal agencies and all the thousands of well-meaning animal rescuers, then many people would not get a pet in the first place.
From Animal People News
It is senseless, mindless, and literally the very last thing you ought to be doing.
Shelter-building has proved to be a completely ineffective response anyway to the problems associated with homeless dogs and cats."
"If you think a sanctuary is going to help combat pet overpopulation, forget it. It won't. If you have a significant pet overpopulation problem wherever you are, building a shelter is a completely counterproductive measure.
AAS comment: But very effective if you are in the sheltering "business". Because shelters actually preserve and perpetuate pet abandonment by providing a free place to dispose of unwanted pets, and because it is possible to attract millions of dollars from animal-lovers by seeming to be sheltering animals when you are really only disposing of animals, it is counter productive to your bottom line to find a solution to homeless animals.
"All shelter-building does is divert funding and public attention away from really solving the dog and cat overpopulation problem, while creating the illusion that institutions are taking care of it."
AAS: The great illusion must be protected by every means. The lie - that these big business animal welfare societies exist for animal-serving purposes not self-serving purposes - is maintained through the lazy, unquestioning media, through p.r. and pet-selling campaigns, by blaming those who surrender animals - who are actually this business's supplier of all the free product that stock the shelves of their stores (not"shelters"), by making saints out of career animal killers, and by hiding the knowledge of dog control/disposal contracts.
"Enough shelter space can never be built to contain every dog and cat without a home, so long as dogs and cats breed freely.
Animal shelters will always become death camps and slaughterhouses, if dog and cat reproduction is not controlled BEFORE the shelters are built.
AAS: AAS documented that SPCA "shelters" were just that, and it was not because the problem was beyond its abilities to solve unless it got more money, a scam that was worked on animal-lovers in BC for decades. It was because not solving the problem worked - for them! What has the BC SPCA ever done to put itself out of business is a question that AAS asked many years ago. The only way to put itself out of business is first to control birth, the to control cruelty and abandonment. The BC SPCA is now, at last, controlling cruelty, but if it does not adopt the other controls then cruelty seizures can be seen as no more than grandstanding money-makers
"If the population is controlled, the role of animal control shelters in housing the relatively few animals who require quarantine or special care could be done as efficiently by shelterless nonprofit humane societies, using fostering networks.
If you really want to solve the homeless dog and cat problem, eliminate strays, and eliminate all the problems that go with them, you need to start by providing low-cost or free sterilization and vaccination.
You also need a transportation pool to relay animals to and from the clinic for the rural elderly, disabled, and poor people whose access to transportation may be limited.
Being able to provide feral cat trapping help is also a good idea. If you provide the traps and the trappers, you can be sure that the job is done right and that no animals are harmed. If you merely loan out traps, or provide no practical help at all, mistakes will be made.
Vets, wheels, and feral cat-catchers are the necessities.
If your sterilization and vaccination program is successful, meanwhile, you will never need conventional animal control shelters and so-called full-service humane societies that kill most of the animals they purport to "rescue."
AAS: An aggressive sterilization program would put the "rescue" business out of business. But the BC SPCA does not have one.
"You need a good low-cost sterilization and vaccination program first, because whether or not pet owners are able to afford sterilization and vaccination, or are responsible enough to do it, it still needs to be done, for the benefit of the entire community, including the animals."
AAS: Only a free sterilization program, no questions asked, is an honest sterilization program. Anything that erects barriers will fail. If the goal is making people "take responsibility" then by all means, set up a huge bureaucracy to decided which animals get sterilized and which get turned down based on the need of the owner, not the need of the animal. But if the goal is a solution to pet overpopulation, then make it free to everyone.
"Shelters evolved from pounds during the late 19th century, and the whole purpose of pounds was to prevent animals from running at large".
AAS: This is something that animal rescuers must understand clearly. Dog control does not exist for humane reasons, it exits for public safety reasons and it requires the disposal (by killing if not by selling) of a lot of dogs.
"We have better technology for doing that now. We have not really needed pounds in 80 years, when the conventional sterilization surgical procedures were first approved as safe by the American Veterinary Medical Association, soon after the principle of preventing rabies through vaccination was approved. Building a pound these days makes about as much sense as building a crystal set in order to listen to the radio or buying a manual typewriter to handle high-volume correspondence.
Merely impounding the animals does not serve the need or solve the problem.
After you have a successful sterilization and vaccination program, establishing a pet adoption center might make sense, depending on the traffic patterns of your region, because in order to find homes for adoptable dogs and cats, you need to have them in a convenient location, where it is easy for them to attract people's attention, where the animals can be happy and healthy and comfortable, and where they can get whatever training they may need to succeed in a home while they await adoption.
None of that can be done effectively in dreary rows of steel-and-cement cages out beside the town dump. Placing these animals in good homes requires treating them as if they have value. Treat them as if they have value, and people will want them--and the way you treat animals, as humane representatives, will be perceived as the appropriate standard of pet care.
Let me briefly point out here that dogs do not go kennel-crazy from being in a shelter too long. Rather, they go kennel-crazy because conventional animal shelter design couldn't be better designed if they were put together by mad scientists whose sole object was to drive dogs insane--and, by the way, if you have in mind building any kind of so-called "shelter" that resembles the usual, you are not just doing something that will be counterproductive.
You are also committing an offence against animal well-being, for which the penalty ought to be five days of living on bread and water in the typical "shelter" cell.
The standard cement-floored, cement-and-chain-link fenced, tin-roofed dog run is an atrocity, which thoughtlessly evolved from the layout of horse stalls in the Middle Ages. Humane societies copied the manner in which hunting packs were kept, in spare horse stalls, without giving the slightest consideration to the behavioural differences between dogs and horses.
Dogs need compatible companions, they need room to run, they need security from being stared at from a close distance by strange dogs, they need outdoor air and light, and they need to be able to dig.
Give a dog what a dog needs, and it is very easy to keep dogs happy and healthy. Deprive a dog of any of these things, and you will soon have sick and despairing dogs. "
AAS: This is exactly what AAS has said: That animals die of disease and despair at SPCA Alcatrazes for animals. And it is not because of a lack of money or a lack of understanding that SPCA "shelters" kill animals, it is because there was money to be made at it and the bottom line focus requires that operating costs be kept to a minimum and that is exactly what animals at SPCAs got - the bare minimum, in fact many times less than the bare minimum to be kept alive and that is because the stock was supplied free, daily, by the SPCA's suppliers, the pet dumpers.
"Teach a community to deprive a dog of these things, and you will have a community full of maladjusted dogs being surrendered to shelters or dumped on the street--which may be exactly what you already have, partly because of the past 125 years of humane societies setting a piss-poor example."
AAS: Of all the vile business practices practiced by the SPCA for decades, that is the vilest. That while claiming to be educating the public on humane treatment of animals, it was setting an example of pet abandonment and animal cruelty itself.
"Cats need to be able to climb--and they prefer a quiet environment. There is no animal easier to care for than a cat. Even great apes in zoos often keep pet cats successfully--and so has at least one now deceased grizzly bear.
Unfortunately, great apes and the occasional bear in zoos often have a better sense of what a cat needs than humane society shelter directors.
Too often I visit humane societies full of nervous, panic-stricken, and diseased cats, who are kept in cells the size of a microwave oven, where they have to listen to 100 kennel-crazed dogs barking all night and all day.
That is not a humane way to keep a cat; it is a kitty torture chamber, and if the ancient Egyptians were right that human beings will face a cat on Judgement Day, many a shelter director may be passing a very hot eternity.
If you keep dogs and cats in a facility that looks like a jail and smells like a cesspool, dogs and cats all over town will be treated like prisoners on a chain-gang, because the condition of your facility sends the message that you think this is okay.
If you treat dogs and cats as if they are honored guests, the community standards will rise to your standard. This too has been proved time and again.
Full-service humane societies that can provide emergency veterinary care, do humane education, do animal rescue, and investigate cruelty complaints are also nice to have.
Yet they are also not what it takes to end pet overpopulation and shelter killing.
Go the right way, and you can get to no-kill animal control while solving all the community animal problems very quickly.
Go the wrong way, and you will spend the next century repeating all the same dimwitted mistakes that the U.S. humane community made throughout the last century. "A community placing the first emphasis on developing animal control agencies and full-service humane societies, in short, is just plain going in the wrong direction. It needs to slam on the brakes, turn around, and go back to what really needs to be done.
AAS: With all due respect Merritt, we have to disagree that any of this was a "mistake". We think it was smart business practice.
Merritt Clifton
Telephone: 360-579-2505
[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 9,500 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]
Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton, WA 98236
Fax: 360-579-2575
E-mail: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org
There are many posts on this subject on this board. One of the best is
Dr Craig Brestrup: The immorality of the SPCA policy of unlimited surrender has been known for a long time http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi-bin/newsroom.pl/read/2665
Also Pet Lovers Digest article: Life at the Shelter, stressful and lonely http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi-bin/newsroom.pl/read/2984