The No-Kill Conference was overflowing with people who have actually DONE it…actually taken their major city or metropolitan area from killing animals to NOT killing animals. One of my favorite parts of the No-Kill Conference was Nathan Winograd (“New York doesn’t NEED a Nathan Winograd” – Jane Hoffman) asking speaker after speaker “After you decided not to kill animals anymore, how long did it take to become no kill.” This confused most of the people he asked. “Uh…it was instant.” “One day.” “That same day.”

Jane Hoffman and the Mayor’s Alliance and the organizations who are reliant on the money that comes from the Mayor’s Alliance (Maddie’s Fund money) have been at this for YEARS and the CACC still reportedly kills at least a thousand animals A MONTH.

That means that at the CACC alone they kill three times as many animals in a year as my entire state (Connecticut) does.

If you want to see all the arguments the other side has for continuing to kill animals, I am reproducing an email we received recently. Embedded in this email are all the arguments the Mayor’s Alliance and the ASPCA are using to keep Oreo’s bill from passing and to keep control over the lives of the animals in New York city, deciding who will live and who will die. Please read through the email and we’ll talk about it afterword. It is actually in response to my blog Best Friends Welcome to New York. Here it is:

This sour grapes is astonishing.

Or maybe it isn’t….maybe its just sad.

I work with a no Kill rescue that pulls and places over 600 NYC Companion animals every year with just a handful of volunteers.

And frankly, I wouldn’t leave a rescued hamster at Pet’s Alive. It was a horrific hoarding facility before BF spent all that time and money in rehabilitating not only the facilities, but the hoarding mindset that was entrenched there. The especially painful thing is that Pets Alive has reverted to some really awful practices that lead to death after death of the animals in their care….all while they point fingers at other shelters that do their killing more honestly and directly. But dudes, death is death. And withholding medical care from sick animals in your care is imposing a truly horrific death on those poor captive animals.

Which I guess is why, rather than keep on watching cats in your care die of stress induced dehydration and anorexia, you are implementing the release NON FERAL domesticated cats (most of whom have been living in cages for years and have no survival skills) out into….well, the streets, basically.

Nice job! You don’t have to take direct responsibility for the deaths, but you wash your hands of the responsibility.

Watching the battle between you and Mayor’s Alliance is like watching two pigs in the mud calling each other “dirty”.

I can’t fault Best Friends for wanting to distance themselves from the failure they had in getting you guys to do the right thing.

Since Oreo’s law would have forced the city to hand over dogs and cats to facilities like yours, I was against it as well. And, as I said, I work with an exclusively no kill rescue. None of the local NK rescuers I know feel any differently than I do, about Oreo’s law, nor about Pet’s Alive.

The national PR campaign has been brilliantly run, however. I have to give you that.

Arguments against Oreo’s Law and against no kill in general can be distilled into the following:

1. Why can’t we all just get along? So we see things a little differently (we want to kill animals and you don’t). Stop pointing that out to everyone. We are supposed to be in this together. I actually had someone tell me at the no-kill conference that “we are on the same team.” I said “Really? I’m on the team that doesn’t kill animals. What team are you on?”

2. You suck. You are hoarders, crazy people, idiots, bullies, terrorists, Republicans. And everyone knows it.

3. You’re just doing this for your own gain. You just want publicity, money, recognition, etc. What we find really ironic is that this is usually said by people who take donations from people and then pay themselves salaries of several hundred thousand dollars.

4. We know better than you. Who do you think you are, daring to suggest that there is a better alternative than killing? This usually starts with some inflated credentials of the person making the excuse and then is normally followed by excuse 2 – You suck.

5. We don’t kill animals — we end their lives. This was started by an HSUS killing technician that was giving a killing seminar at one of their conferences. The idea is that the kill shelters do the best killing, but it’s not really killing. It’s helping healthy, adoptable animals by ending their lives. That’s not a joke.

6. Moral relativism. Some animals are better off dead. One animal’s life is more valuable than another’s. And they are definitely better off dead than with you.

Notice something very important. All the arguments are about either US or THEM. They are not about the animals and their lives.

So let’s analyze this email using those arguments.

This sour grapes is astonishing.

So I’m confused already, and I’m 5 words in. Sour grapes? Aside from the fact that this person is leading their debate argument with a hackneyed cliche, where are the sour grapes? Sour grapes is an expression originating from the Aesop Fable The Fox and the Grapes. It refers to envious behavior, especially pretending to not care for something one does not or cannot have.

What are we envious of? Best Friends? The Mayor’s Alliance? Hardly. I’m guessing this is a combination of excuses 1 – Why can’t we just get along and 2 – You suck.

I work with a no Kill rescue that pulls and places over 600 NYC Companion animals every year with just a handful of volunteers.

Uh oh. Credentials are being whipped out. Expect the one two punch…excuse 4 – We know better followed by excuse 2 – You suck.

And frankly, I wouldn’t leave a rescued hamster at Pet’s Alive. It was a horrific hoarding facility before BF spent all that time and money in rehabilitating not only the facilities, but the hoarding mindset that was entrenched there.

Bang…there it is. Textbook. We suck. And I don’t even know where to start. Just look at this sentence, the terrible sentence structure and use and the pretzel logic that ties itself up into knots. I understand why this person would go out of his or her way to mask their identity. Wow.

1. What’s your beef with hamsters? Made me think of PJ and the Empty Cages Collective. They SAVE hamsters.

2. It was a “horrific hoarding facility.” Facilities can’t hoard. Yes…Sara Whalen in the last few years of her life, developed brain cancer and things went downhill. And yes, BF did spend that time and money “rehabilitating” the place. I’m not sure how you rehab the mindset of a dead person…Ouija board? Seance? Channeling?

Okay, so this person sets it up that Best Friends “fixed” the hoarding problem, right?

The especially painful thing is that Pets Alive has reverted to some really awful practices that lead to death after death of the animals in their care….all while they point fingers at other shelters that do their killing more honestly and directly.

We have? What practices would those be? How many animals have we killed? Death after death? Wow…someone needs to fill me in. Ready folks? Here’s a statistic for you. Since Kerry and I took over, here are the number of animals euthanized that weren’t suffering:

0. Zilch. None. Nada.

So I ask this person to come forward and provide the proof to back up the statements. This is, of course, excuse 2 – You suck with a little of 4 – We know better. But to be fair, we have made baseless anonymous accusations against organizations that are definitely actionable (that means can be sued over). Oh wait…that would be YOU.

I want you all to pay very close attention to the end of this paragraph. This is 5 – We don’t kill – we end lives rearing it’s ugly head. Can you possibly imagine someone making the argument that they kill better than we do? That’s exactly what this says: shelters that do their killing more honestly and directly. That’s what we want to fight for…honest and direct killing. Sigh. We’re not even in the same universe here, let alone on the same planet.

And withholding medical care from sick animals in your care is imposing a truly horrific death on those poor captive animals.

Which I guess is why, rather than keep on watching cats in your care die of stress induced dehydration and anorexia, you are implementing the release NON FERAL domesticated cats (most of whom have been living in cages for years and have no survival skills) out into….well, the streets, basically.

Huh? We do what now? We withhold medical care from sick animals? That would come as a surprise to Janet, our medical liason, and to the cadre of vets we paid $150,000 to last year to care for our animals. It’s on the 990. See for yourself.

And we’re what? Releasing domesticated cats on to the streets? We are? Where and when? Let’s see one shred of evidence of any of this.

Yawn.

My mind wandered as I was reading this prattle and for some reason I thought of the scene in Ghostbusters (one of the greatest New York City movies of all time) when Bill Murray is trying to convince the mayor that there are some serious problems coming:

Dr. Peter Venkman: Or you can accept the fact that this city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, “biblical”?
Dr. Raymond Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor– real wrath-of-God type stuff! Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…
Winston Zeddmore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!

Nice job! You don’t have to take direct responsibility for the deaths, but you wash your hands of the responsibility.

Huh? What deaths? Who’s hands?

Watching the battle between you and Mayor’s Alliance is like watching two pigs in the mud calling each other “dirty”.

I can’t fault Best Friends for wanting to distance themselves from the failure they had in getting you guys to do the right thing.

We’re fighting with the Mayor’s Alliance? Where? And again…first hamsters then pigs. What’s your beef with pigs now?

Best Friends is distancing itself from a failure? They are? So that was a DIFFERENT Best Friends we worked with to save 120 Beagles on Independence Day? You know, the video that was viewed by 50,000 people? If you combined ALL of your loyal supporters of all time, supporters who believe in you and sustain you and spend their hard earned time and toil to help you, would it add up to anywhere near 50,000?

Since Oreo’s law would have forced the city to hand over dogs and cats to facilities like yours, I was against it as well. And, as I said, I work with an exclusively no kill rescue. None of the local NK rescuers I know feel any differently than I do, about Oreo’s law, nor about Pet’s Alive.

A-HA! So here we are at the core of this “argument.”

That paragraph encapsulates just about all the excuses above. We suck. They know better which lives should be saved and some animals are better off dead then with us.

Oh and by the way…all of the NK rescues agree. ALL of them? In the whole state or city of NY? Does that include the ones that call us every day and beg us to take their animals? The ones like Empty Cages Collective and the many, many others we work so well with? Or does it really just include YOU and the other stooges that need the money that is on the table more than you need to stick to your ethics and your morality?

That’s ok. We’ll do it without you.

So…who wrote this? Honestly I really don’t care. It’s someone who doesn’t have the stones to identify themselves. Someone who has used an email address that appears nowhere else on the Internet. This is basically an anti Pets Alive rant. And it’s not even original. At first I thought it was the nutjob we had to throw out of the cat house because he was, well, crazy. But there are too many big words and not enough grammatical errors.

I traced the IP address to a Roadrunner POP on 89th St. between 2nd and 3rd. Interestingly enough that’s where the ASPCA’s Roadrunner would terminate, as well as a building on 83rd St. that houses Blackstone Investments, where Jane Hoffman’s husband works and an address with which her name is connected. Hmmm. (I’ve been doing this since 1993. I will always find a thread to tug on.)

Here is my challenge to the writer of this letter. I will have them picked up in the city and driven to Pets Alive. Nice town car. They can sit in the back and be a big shot.

They can get the tour and they can present the evidence of all the accusations they have made.

That day they can either apologize and start working with us to end the killing of animals in New York, or we will admit that they are right.

Easy deal. Never happen. I’ve made it a dozen or so times and not a single person would take it. I’ll even throw in a network camera crew to film the entire event. If “all the groups in New York” agree, then all of you should get together and take me up on the offer. You can get rid of us once and for all. Yeah. I thought so.

So let’s get to the important part of this blog. How to counter these arguments. These arguments are non-sensical and designed as sleight of hand to move the debate away from the facts and on to us. That’s called ad hominem, which means insulting or belittling one’s opponent in order to invalidate their argument.

So how do you invalidate these arguments? Simple…

Keep the Oreo’s Law argument as a debate about right and wrong.

Here:

Opponent: Well, Pets Alive is Satan. Living and breathing and walking the earth.
You: Do you think it’s right to kill an animal when there is another alternative?

Bang. Right between the eyes. That’s all this debate is.

It’s about what’s right. It’s about saving the lives of animals. When they use scare tactics get them to admit they believe only THEY know what’s good for these animals. Good equals right. So killing them is sometimes RIGHT.

NEVER. Killing an animal when there is another alternative is WRONG. That resonates time and time again. It’s, like Oreo, black and white. Simple. All the smoke and mirrors in the world will never change that. Oreo is NOT better off dead. She is better off in a brand new run with our trained employees and volunteers caring for her and loving her. But she’s dead. So she can never get better. Killing her was WRONG.

Morally WRONG. And you have not only the right but the OBLIGATION to point that out. Don’t let them bully you.

What I find absolutely fascinating about the other side saying that only THEY know which organizations are best for these animals is language that a horder would use to justify hoarding. Just for giggles I included the language from the New York City Bar Association, one of Jane Hoffman’s puppet organizations that outlines some of the reasons Oreo’s Law could never work below:

The Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals, Inc., founded in 2002, is a coalition of more than 160 animal rescue groups and shelters that are working with the City of New York to place shelter animals. The groups and shelters are vetted and meet minimal requirements. The Mayor’s Alliance reports that 1,500-1,700 animals each month in New York City alone are sent to rescues by Animal Care & Control.

The Proposed Legislation may well undermine a collaboration already working to save New York City’s animals. It would be advisable to evaluate whether similar collaborations or transfer arrangements exist or could be established in New York State before passing legislation that does not require and enforce standards for humane care and treatment or otherwise establish that the 501(c)(3) is indeed a “responsible” and reputable” alternative.

Hoarders. Hmmm. Only they know who is responsible and reputable, and saving more animals will undermine their coalition who have taken eight years and need another five to solve the problem other communities have solved instantly. There’s a word for that…failure.

Fight for Oreo and the other innocents who will lose their lives because of people who place their egos and money in front of doing the right thing.

Lock and load.

ShareThis

I left the conference with the same familiar feeling…so honored and proud to have the privilege of working on this team and an overwhelming sense that we need to do more.

This time was no different, except that we arrived home with four cats from the DC shelter and a sweet, precious little girl with a shattered pelvis from the Baltimore shelter. She followed us home. Really. Kerry’s email to staff had me roaring…”Ok. Look. We’re coming home with four cats and a dog that needs rehab and/or medical attention. And one of the cats may be sick. None have heartworm tests and aren’t spayed or neutered. Before you say anything just shut up.” We are total saps. We arrived after hours and of course Janet and Jen and Juan stayed to make sure we got in and the animals got attention.

They will, of course, have all their tests and get altered and shake whatever they may have before they go on to their forever homes, happy and healthy.

Being at the conference allowed Kerry and I to talk with other people who do what we do, face the same problems we face, make the same mistakes we make. We love it. We love it when other shelters invite us in, other organizations ask to come see us, people who are starting sanctuaries ask for our advice. We learn from all of it, and if we take even ONE thing from the sessions and the one-on-one conversations we are thrilled. I know at one point I ran out of paper from taking notes, and my mind is still spinning from all the great stuff that was flying around in my head that whole time.

Advocating a no-kill position can be difficult and dangerous, and makes you a target for other people’s guilt, indifference and ignorance.

One of Pets Alive’s expansion plans (the seed of which was ripped off from Best Friends and/or Michael Mountain, which most of our greatest ideas are) is to put together what we’ve called the Pets Alive Local Advocate Network.

Best Friends has its Ambassador program, which conjures pictures of guys in top hats (or gals in business suits) wearing sashes, sipping wine and politely discussing merits. The program has been very successful in fulfilling its mission.

We had something different in mind. An advocate is someone who argues a position on someone’s behalf — someone who pleads the cause of another. We’re looking for soldiers — people who understand that no matter how it is fought this is a war of life and death.

We are going to put together a training program and you’re going to help us spread the word about no-kill and you can be sort of a cross between Superman and a tape recorder. But you don’t have to wait for us to put it all together — you can become a no-kill mercenary on your own.

So many people came to me at the conference who paid their own way and had no sponsoring organization. They did it because “they want to do something. Want to be active in saving animals.” Well guess what? You’re ALREADY a mercenary. And today I’m going to give you the universal weapon for fighting people who are against no-kill. Lock and load.

The other day we played a game called Who’s the hypocrite? Today’s game is more of a puzzle. Below are a bunch of statements from a bunch of people. Please read them and tell me what they have in common:

We had several issues with the bill. One was the language around who would be approved to claim an animal from a shelter. The Kellner/Duane Bill allowed any animal 501(c)3 to do so, but excluded competent rescues that weren’t federally tax exempt…We also felt the reporting requirement in the bill was unrealistic for some small rural shelters to meet.

Ultimately we believe it made no difference, with regard to its passage, whether or not we supported the bill. We had some issues with the bill and the way it was written, but more to the point was that without support from two of the biggest organizations in the region (ASPCA and the Mayor’s Alliance), the bill simply wasn’t going to pass.

Francis Battista, Best Friends, in their statement on Oreo’s Law.

I was very saddened to read Nathan’s blog today. While the words were mostly polite, he really tried to shine a negative light on BF because of their decision to remain neutral over Oreo’s law. I believe in the work that you do, therefor I trust in the decision you made.

Debbie Hunsinger posting on the Best Friends Facebook page that same day.

My family & I are long time supporter of the Jersey Shore Animal Shelter & will continue to do so. The folks at the shelter work very hard raising funds & taking care of our furry & feathered friends.

Maureen K. defending the Jersey Shore Animal Center for intending to kill 5 FIV+ kittens and their mother.

Okay. Let’s stop here for now. I have tons and tons more, but let’s lay the foundation. So what do these three statements have in common?

Here’s the first one. They are all different ways of debating the same question. All of your battles, regardless of with whom, where and why are about the answer to this question:

Should an animal be killed when there is another alternative?

In the cases above, each person is attempting to frame the debate in such a way that it denies a discussion of that question. Whether it is intentional or not it is irrelevant. Your job is to be the advocate for the animal whose life is being debated, whether by proxy, straw man or right out in the open.

When you understand your job it’s easy. Then you need to find the person who controls the life or lives in question and get them to understand that question and realize the magnitude of making the wrong decision.

This is ABSOLUTELY not about whether the organization saving the dog is a 501(c)(3) or has to fill out too much paperwork to save the animals, or even if the biggest groups support the killing (Francis Battista), not about prior good deeds or the tone of the argument (Debbie Hunsiger), and not about how long they have been working, whether or not you support their actions or help them raise money to continue those actions (Maureen K.).

This is about what is right and what is wrong. This is about whether it is WRONG that Oreo should be killed when there is another alternative (Francis Battista and Debbie Hunsiger), or whether a mother and her kittens should be killed because they have a disease which is neither life-threatening nor debilitating (Maureen K.).

THE ARGUMENT IS ALWAYS, ONE HUNDRED PERCENT ABOUT THE LIVES OF THE ANIMALS.

So, Francis Battista, why have you decided to kill Oreo?
Well…there are people who might want her that don’t have a 501(c)(3) designation from the IRS. Also, the paperwork is too much for some of the smaller rescues. Oh…and the ASPCA thinks she should be dead. So kill her.

See…the ludicrousness of the argument shines through when you frame it in those terms.

Let’s try Maureen’s.

Maureen, why should we kill those FIV positive kittens and their mother?
Well…I am a supporter of the shelter and have been for years. They work hard to raise money. And they take very good care of the ones they don’t kill. So let them kill the rest.

Again…you can see how nonsensical the argument becomes.

Be a missle. Move right past the chaff that gets thrown out there and hone in on the moral argument that they are all afraid to debate you on — right and wrong. Life and death. Black and right. While they may claim, like Ed Sayres, that No-Kill doesn’t have the moral high ground, reporters, supporters and the general public knows the truth. This is an innocent life in danger of being needlessly extinguished. Want to try a few more?

Obviously New York is not California and a law that might work in California won’t necessarily work in NY. Not to mention the process for passing a law is different and the stakeholders are different. Not to mention that California’s law is not named “Oreo’s Law”: Words do matter and the proponents of Oreo’s Law WANTED this to be a divisive attack on ASPCA. I’m even suspecting that at some point the proponents stopped caring about passing the law at all… there were many things they COULD have done that they chose not to do.

Emily S., Absolute lunatic on YesBiscuit! after Oreo’s Law was shot down.

When California passed a law like this in 1998, they knew the risk of having animals end up in the hands of some criminal, terrible people. They decided so many animals were dying in shelters, that they should risk it.

The California law was passed in 1998 as part of a comprehensive effort to save adoptable or treatable animals in shelters that refused to release them and instead euthanized them. The California law is not limited to adoptable and treatable animals but guided by that goal.

It is not the same desperate situation in New York in 2010. Mayor’s Alliance working with more than 160 rescues moves 1500-1700 animals from the New York City shelters each month. The rescues are vetted.

Laura Allen of the Animal Law “Coalition” on Oreo’s Law.

So let’s use our newly minted skills to identify and counter what’s being said here, starting with Emily S. I chose her because I’ve had “debates” with her if you want to call them that. She is not very intelligent and not very logical. If she were someone who actually held the key to the life of an animal I was trying to free I would definitely go around her and work on someone else. The idea in a public debate is to engage her and let her show everyone else what you already know.

So, Emily, why should we continue to kill dogs by not passing Oreo’s Law?
Well, just because it saved thousands of dogs in California it won’t work in New York. And the way they PASS the law is different in New York. And there are different PEOPLE involved in saving animals. And using the name Oreo in the title of the law is mean. In fact, I think the people who are proponents of this law didn’t really want it to pass because they didn’t do MANY things they could have done to get it passed. So keep killing animals because words have consequences.

So how do you counter what Emily says? Picture yourself with Ted Koppel on a split screen with Emily on Nightline. She says what she said above. What would you say? Shrug. I’d say “there is ten years’ worth of data on the Hayden Law in California that proves it works. We can save so many innocent lives by trying it here, and what’s the down side?”

Now…picture your Mom or Dad or grandparents watching Nightline. Which side do you think connected with them — someone whining about the title of the bill, or someone getting right to the moral argument here, which is all about right and wrong. And we threw in risk and reward as a bonus. There really IS no downside. See how easy it is to win?

Again, every debate, whether it is one on one or on the national news, needs to be torn down to its foundation — that killing innocent animals is morally reprehensible. Period. It would be very difficult to get someone to disagree with that, most times even your opponent. That’s why they will go off and start talking about the number of words on the page or the way you are presenting your argument or which way you should part your hair.

Shine the light of truth on them and hold their feet to the fire until they are forced to defend a position that even the most uninterested observer understands is the wrong side. WRONG. Get it? No wishy washy crap about moral equivalence. WRONG. That’s the sword you need to wield.

My opinion of Laura Allen and the Animal Law “Coalition” changed dramatically during the battle for Oreo’s Law. As a quick aside we don’t subscribe to the “let’s all get along” Kum Bay Ya method of saving animals. If you stray over to the WRONG side of things, meaning that you’re no longer advocating for the lives of these animals, then you need to be called on it and given a chance to come back into reality.

Laura Allen was given many chances, and she’s too intelligent not to realize that she has misrepresented many things about Oreo’s Law. Misrepresent is a nice way to say LIE. So let’s take a look at her stuff.

So Laura, why should Oreo’s Law not be passed and 25,000 animals a year be killed?
Some of the animals may end up in the hands of bad people, and California was willing to take that chance in 1998 because many animals were dying in shelters, but not so in New York. The Mayor’s Alliance is doing such a great job we don’t need to save the rest of the animals that don’t get saved.

And the law in California was only a PART of the effort to save more animals. If we can’t do the rest of the stuff they did we might as well keep killing animals. Oh, did I mention that the Mayor’s Alliance is doing a great job?

Sigh. I call these arguments “Chinese Food Arguments.” They seem like they’re going to fill you up but you just go hungry an hour later.

So…you say that the California law had the potential to put animals in the hands of bad people. Uh…it’s been on the books for 12 years. Has it? Where are the statistics that can either prove your argument or destroy it? My guess is that since you conveniently leave them out we can guess the answer.

And we need a comprehensive plan for saving animals. Great. Draw it up. In the meantime let’s save some animals with Oreo’s Law. And if the Mayor’s Alliance was actually doing its job New York would be No-Kill.

Why can’t we have both? Who died and left Laura Allen and Jane Hoffman of the Mayor’s Alliance the Mayors of Dogtown? Again…shine the light of the truth on this cockroach den and they scurry off in all directions. The fact is that this law will save 25,000 animals. Do you want to be on the side of the animals or not? Right or wrong? Life or death?

Keep the argument where it needs to be and you will always win.

I have like ten more that I collected but I’m going to save them for another time. Instead I want to show you what happens when you call these people out. This is the kind of stuff you get back:

Pets Alive has started a viscous [sic] campaign against the Jersey Shore Animal shelter, a non for profit shelter in Brick NJ. They are using bully tactics, threats, inciting the public to engage in terrorist activity against the shelter and generally trying to control the Rescue Community with THEIR philosophies. Pets Alive, for those of you not aware, are KNOWN throughout the legitimate Rescue community as bullies and ignoramuses concerning animal behavior, which I have studied for 20 years. You see in Rescue, Great Dane Rescue does NOT dictate policy to Schnauzer rescue and so on. Mr D’Angelis seems to feel he has the right to create the standard for all rescues in this country. Please feel free to call or e-mail him through the website and let him know your rescue is working just fine without his input. Unfortunately though if you contact them, and after my conversation with him recently, please use small words and keep things simple. His Co-President is not the brightest bulb in the batch either. A high school diploma might be of some help to her lack of civilized language.

As someone who has worked and donated all training and behavior work to rescues for twenty years, this is unprecedented. But the egos of the President (who is apparently anatomically inadequate since he threatens and bullys’ women) and his organization of HOARDERS are apparently fooling the public with scam after scam. Including Rock Star Rob Thomas, who is handled by the same management as my cousin and is now being made aware of Mr D’Angelis’s and his ship of fools, and their Mel Gibson rants at the women at Jersey Shore. Threatening women????? Gee, You must all be sooooo proud. Will you be invading playgrounds next???

Rescue work is all volunteer and involves many judgement [sic] calls. The last thing we all need right now is some fat guy with an even bigger ego telling REAL rescues what is in the best interest of the BIG PICTURE. He has scammed the public into believing his hoarding operation is actually working.

I have worked with the Jersey Shore Animal Shelter for over 10 years now. They have a 95% rate of successful adoptions. They are true pioneers in rehab and finding forever homes. I myself have certified several hundred of their dogs for Therapy Dog work. My school has been featured on national TV, published articles on behavior and received two awards from the Governor of NJ for our work with Therapy Dogs and Autistic children. Some of these dogs have come from the Jersey Shore Animal Center and with REAL rehabilitation (not just the weekly petting sessions offered by Pets Alive) are now serving the community. These people do good work and as non profit volunteers, only an inadequate piece of scum would pick on them. I beg the public to do your research about the Pets Alive rescue and you will see that the liars in this case are Mr D’Angelis and his assistant who I didn’t feel had the brains enough to learn her name.

Sigh. I was going to excerpt this email but it’s too perfect not to show in its entirety. So where do I start?

Remember, this is about us insisting that these ignoramuses not kill six cats just because they are FIV positive. That’s it. This was about those lives. We got that message across and the shelter got inundated with phone calls and emails and faxes and it all got covered by their local paper and tweeted around the world.

And they made the same mistake most others do when faced with this…they don’t realize that they are representing wrong in an argument about right and wrong and right is getting ready to kick their @ss all over the universe. For some reason this is where they get arrogant and say some equivalent of “it doesn’t matter what the truth is…we are going to do what we want.” That’s loser talk.

So..let’s get back to this guy. “bully tactics, threats, inciting the public to engage in terrorist activity.” Yes, we wrote letters, made phone calls and sent faxes. And we encouraged our supporters to do the same. That makes us terrorists. I would call that the definition of the word advocate. So…uh…do you still support the killing of these cats who could have a forever home?

And oh my God…we are guilty of “trying to control the Rescue Community with THEIR philosophies.” Uh, again, that is what being an advocate means. And while I was flattered by this man inadvertently attributing the no-kill philosophy to us, we are not the initiators of No-Kill. Oh, and speaking of that — do you plan to kill those cats when homes could be found for them?

Not only that, but we are are KNOWN throughout the legitimate Rescue community as bullies and ignoramuses concerning animal behavior, which I have studied for 20 years. Wow..ignoramuses. The expert dog trainer can’t spell vicious, but he can get ignoramus right. Now tell me…if we’re known throughout the rescue community, why do we get emails from, on the average, 500 rescue groups a week asking us to take their behaviorally challenged dogs? Oh, and by the way — are you still going to kill those cats? And how many behaviorally challenged dogs have your shelters killed that didn’t need to be killed? But let’s stick to this case first.

“Mr D’Angelis seems to feel he has the right to create the standard for all rescues in this country.” This one I LOVE. I am NOT dictating the standard for any rescues. The Creator of the universe did. He (or she) created a right and a wrong. Killing is wrong. Killing innocents is very, very wrong. And you are on the side of the killers. And incidentally, do you still intend to kill those innocent kittens?

I will leave out the personal attacks on my intelligence and sexual prowess. Shrug. If you can’t debate the facts this is what you turn to.

Please feel free to call or e-mail him through the website and let him know your rescue is working just fine without his input. Hmmm. Isn’t that bullying and using terrorist tactics and inciting and blah blah blah? I guess only if even one person does it. No one did. And I was just wondering…do you still plan to kill those cats for no reason?

The last thing we all need right now is some fat guy with an even bigger ego telling REAL rescues what is in the best interest of the BIG PICTURE. He has scammed the public into believing his hoarding operation is actually working.

Um. Sorry, but the ONLY thing we need right now is someone to tell the “rescue” in this case what is in the best interest of the animals for which they are morally responsible. Uh. Don’t kill them. Do we need to draw you a picture. That IS the big picture, little picture, only picture. And yawn, yes. I have scammed the public into believing we save 1200 animals a year from being killed at shelters like yours. Ya got me. Now please don’t kill those kittens.

The next paragraph is a chest thumping resume about how he’s been doing this for decades blah blah blah has been on TV and is friends with the governor. The President sends me a Christmas card. So what? In fact, if he’s so knowledgeable this email should never have been written and he should spend his time getting on the right side of this, which is DON’T KILL THOSE CATS.

Some of these dogs have come from the Jersey Shore Animal Center and with REAL rehabilitation (not just the weekly petting sessions offered by Pets Alive) are now serving the community. These people do good work and as non profit volunteers, only an inadequate piece of scum would pick on them. I beg the public to do your research about the Pets Alive rescue and you will see that the liars in this case are Mr D’Angelis and his assistant who I didn’t feel had the brains enough to learn her name.

Yes..we just pet the dogs. That’s our secret. That’s how we take in aggressive dogs, get them rehabbed and get them adopted. Dogs that, if left in his hands and the hands of those he works with would be dead. Period. End of conversation. And they do, after all, do good work. Not sure how the animals they kill would perceive their work, but that’s a detail. And also, could you please not kill those kittens?

Yes, do the research. That’s how we doubled our donations this year and are expanding like crazy to SAVE MORE ANIMALS like the kittens they are trying to kill.

But the worst part of this for Kerry is in that paragraph where he called her my assistant. I laughed for hours.

Tell me…would you allow this man to work with your dog? I certainly would not.

We saved the kittens and the mother, and we are hopefully going to sit down with these people and help them stop the killing of the animals in their care. It was obvious to me that some members of the board are appalled by this just as we are, even if the guy that sent me that email thinks killing is perfectly okay.

We are going to publish a kind of handbook on advocacy that shows you step by step how we achieve success. But remember it all falls back on one thing. The real terrorist here is the truth.

Right and wrong.

Saddle up.

ShareThis

Oreo’s Law is a huge topic of conversation here, and we’ve learned a lot from it. “The Movement.” I didn’t realize I was part of the movement until Paul Berry used those words at Pets Alive in 2007, which seems so far in the past when I look at it now.

It’s never really been a “movement” to me. I’ve always seen it as a simple recognition of our moral responsibility toward companion animals. We have a moral obligation to each and every one, and we should not allow anything to get in the way of that. Pets Alive has been successful because that is the overriding tenet that controls everything we do.

There were four people speaking here today that really connected with me personally. Really touched me deeply and really helped me to understand that this is truly a movement in the purest sense. It’s a shift in ideas, in foundations, in manners of thinking and acting. And that’s what we’re witnessing.

We don’t have to kill adoptable animals. That is something that all of us respect, understand, and appreciate. Even the ASPCA, which has put itself out there as the kill shelter poster organization because of their words and actions, pays lip service to the idea that killing should be a last resort.

We all believe this. It is part of our core and flows logically from the stuff inside of us we call our morality. There can be no moral equivalence for death, which is a nice way of saying we don’t throw around the phrases “fate worse than death” or “better off dead.”

1. Rich Avanzino

Kerry was reluctant to go to a seminar today called Using the Law to Save Animals, because she thought it would be too dry. Boy was she wrong! It was given by a guy named Rich Avanzino, now the President of Maddie’s Fund. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Maddie’s Fund, it is the largest funding source for no-kill in the history of no-kill. It was set up by the couple who started PeopleSoft, an HR software system designed to get Human Resource people off of mainframes and on to PCs. Great idea. Very profitable idea. Maddie was their beloved rescue dog, and Maddie’s Fund was set up to help make the USA no-kill.

Rich has an impressive resume that includes being President of the San Francisco SPCA. His list of accomplishments is truly amazing, and it starts with the story of Sido, the little Collie mix that started the no-kill movement. And Rich has been called the father of no-kill, a title he has truly earned.

To make a long story short, Sido’s caretaker, Mary Murphy, committed suicide in 1979. As part of her will, Mary specified that Sido be killed. The SPCA and Rich were not about to let that happen.

“The law says a pet can be destroyed like a piece of furniture,” he told the Anchorage Daily News. “We’re saying that’s wrong.”

WRONG. Not illegal. WRONG. Morally reprehensible. They saved Sido and she lived with Rich and his family until she died on her 16th birthday.

What absolutely blew me away beyond words was his reaction to talking about Sido. Let’s remember this happened three decades ago. I was sitting in the last row and I could see the pain on his face and hear his voice crack as he talked about it. This is someone who has been in animal rescue and animal welfare his entire life, is an attorney that has argued and directed animal law cases, is someone with a true presence, and is the financial lifeline to the no-kill movement, making him a very powerful man.

And he was still pained by the death of this dog that he saved and loved.

Kerry and I and the rest of us at Pets Alive talk often about how anyone could kill animals — how they could kill animals like Oreo who could have lived. It happens hundreds and thousands of times per day. And it came to me in that instant that they are incapable of the compassion and empathy displayed by people like Rich and you and me every day.

One of the board members in the Brick shelter asked me why I would care about the FIV cats. Why was I making such a big stink about 6 cats? Would that person ever get up before a group and still feel the tremendous loss of an animal they saved thirty years ago? Do they ever go to bed and wonder about the animals that went home, grin ear-to-ear and kiss their own animals on the top of their heads?

Are they ever haunted by the animals that didn’t get saved? The endless parade of pictures and emails and people begging to save the animals they are morally responsible for? Do they ever shed their own tears, feel their own voices crack, feel the debilitating wave of sadness for that one soul that was snuffed out that didn’t have to be?

No. I would argue that they have to be incapable of all of that or they simply couldn’t kill an innocent animal, or even be an accessory to killing an innocent animal.

Ironically enough, Rich ushered in what should have been a golden age for San Francisco and its animals — a no-kill community. His successor destroyed both the organization and no-kill. That would be, of course, Ed Sayres of the ASPCA, Oreo’s killer.

Sayres inherited an SPCA with a strong infrastructure, departments that had become the envy of the growing No Kill movement, and a fundraising apparatus that had amassed an endowment of over forty million dollars.

When he got through he had squandered money on stuff like trying to figure out how to contact dead animals and they were now losing $3,000,000 a year. And he demolished no-kill in San Francisco.

Wonder how he sleeps?

2. Micah Kellner

Micah is an anachronism — a politician with a moral compass. That’s why he, like the rest of us, got rolled by the ASPCA (without help from other organizations who will remain nameless) when it comes to the law he authored — Oreo’s Law.

I had the same a-ha moment I had with Rich when Micah was giving his speech today at the conference. I lived the story but I was captivated by what was being said. I kept glancing over at Nathan Winograd who was even more involved than me, and he was rapt as well.

Micah is a foster home for cats. He heard about Oreo from one of the organizations he works with. Later on when Jane Hoffman of the Mayor’s Alliance wanted to club people who supported Oreo’s Law she spent a lot of time seeking out Micah’s friend to ostensibly try to put them out of business. I include that to illustrate that with the dirty tricks they are trying to play on his friends, imagine what kind of stuff they’re trying to stab him with?

Did I mention that the ASPCA is in Micah’s district? That’s a lot of money and a lot of power up against you. And Micah didn’t cave. Why? Because he was doing the right thing. Because someone had to do it and he was that someone. Period.

We lost. But in January we’re coming back and we’re taking no prisoners.

How do you think Micah sleeps at night? I wondered at lunch today if Jane Hoffman climbs into bed with the thoughts of the thousands of animals SLAUGHTERED at the CACC every day because she is more interested in keeping her power than doing the right thing. Again, not the legal thing. The right thing. She can’t possibly be capable of the empathy and compassion necessary because if she did she wouldn’t be able to handle the abdication of moral responsibility for those souls whose blood is on her hands. She couldn’t lie to our faces and then bring those lies into the New York Assembly to kill Oreo’s Law and 25,000 animals a year with it.

We hold the moral high ground here by a huge, incontrovertible margin.

Even Micah’s legislative pals made fun of him because while they were trying to come up with a budget for New York he was reading Nathan Winograd books and as they said, “playing with animals.” I smiled today thinking that he managed to get Oreo’s Law written and into committee and they still don’t have a budget.

Go Micah. I am honored to know you.

If you live in his district, vote for him. If not, find some other way to support him because we need more people with moral clarity in government, especially in New York.

3. Nathan Winograd

I totally identify with Nathan — people say the same things about him they say about me. They call us obnoxious, say we go too far, they “agree with what we’re saying but not the way we’re saying it.” When the naked, unvarnished truth is a monster unleashed by one of us and slowly gnawing a hole through your torso you tend to try to distract everyone from the monster by complaining that he needs a haircut. That’s what crap like those sentences mean to me.

I think Nathan is a genius. I think he has worked tirelessly, pounding away at person after person, organization after organization, leaving them no choice but to think about the monster instead of the haircut. That’s something I’ve always been able to do as well.

No one ever notices the fifty things you try to do before you go after someone. No one ever says “it’s a real shame Nathan had to bludgeon Ed Sayres, but Ed probably should have listened when Nathan gave him one hundred opportunities to get on the bus before it ran him over.”

Again, I’ve been there. Every time someone confides to me that they would love to work with us but are afraid to deal with Nathan I burst out laughing and shrug. He’s the team, babe. Get on the bus or get under it. Those are your choices.

I met his lovely wife Jennifer today. Very sweet woman. She told me that when they all turned on him he was really upset. Yeah, that’s another one of my faults. It hurts when you put all your passion into something, and you pour out your heart and soul to try to get across the feeling that makes Rich’s voice crack when he looks at Sido’s picture in his own presentation, or makes Micah grin from ear to ear when he mentions the cats he fosters, or when Nathan actually giggles about the slide in his presentation that shows his own animals.

Can any of us picture Ed Sayres feeling that feeling, let alone conveying it? If so, how could he possibly kill the animals that bestow the unconditional love to us that makes that feeling possible? How could anyone who in any way grasps that passion and that feeling allow any companion animal to suffer when they could be in a great home?

I know exactly how Nathan feels. It hurts me deeply when I make a cogent, brilliantly thought out argument and someone tells me back that he’s surprised I can see past my Big Mac. Shrug. People suck. They don’t understand that you can’t fight the truth forever. It swallows you up.

Nathan, my friend, we always have your back. We are doing the right thing, and you are fueling the machine. Thank you so much for all that you do.

4. Michael Mountain

I saved Michael for last because he’s a standout in this group of amazing people. He saved something so precious to me I can’t express it in words without being overcome with emotion. He is largely responsible for Pets Alive’s doors being open today. His ideas and his principles are the ideas and principles that have rebuilt Pets Alive. Kerry and I owe Michael a debt of gratitude that we can barely express, let alone hope to repay.

Michael Mountain is an icon of the no-kill movement. He, like Rich, was one of the engineers of the no-kill movement, and his successes have saved an incredible number of animals and made it possible for all of us to do what we do, while paving the way for no-kill’s next level.

Imagine how difficult it would be to leave the labor of love that you worked tirelessly on for decades. I’ll tell you — I am not the man Michael Mountain is. Michael Mountain is a man of tremendous integrity, unwavering passion and principle toward animals and the no-kill movement, and the humility to always put the cause before himself, something I am not sure I could do.

Person after person came up to Michael today while I was standing with him chatting. Many of them (mostly young women oddly enough) expressed to him that he was their hero. They asked if he was still with Best Friends. He answered with a “No” that left no doubt that he had nothing else to say about the matter. That’ s it. It’s over and it’s no longer important.

I can’t tell you how many people told me that Oreo’s Law would have passed this year if Michael were still President of Best Friends. That is one hundred percent true.

Best Friends is an organization that we love like a big brother. It hurts us tremendously to watch them turn into just another big humane organization…watch their soul being torn from them. I cannot imagine how Michael must feel.

Michael, if it helps at all you will always be the father of the child Pets Alive has become. Standing on its own legs, awkward and unsure. We know we always have the principles, the passion and the moral clarity that made your Best Friends our inspiration, and made you the New York Yankees of the no-kill movement.

And at the risk of making a very poor analogy, you’ve fathered many children that are all trying to make you proud.

Thank you for all you’ve done for the no-kill movement. Thank you for everything you’ve done for Pets Alive and for always being there for us.

Those are four heroes. I’d also like to mention Sido and Oreo who helped these heroes change the world.

This is simply about understanding in your heart, feeling in your soul that the killing is wrong. It’s not about sitting behind your desk and ordering your own staff who is begging you not to kill Oreo to “shut up and do your job.” It’s not about attorneys, officers of the court with a code of conduct and a code of ethics, lying to the public and state legislators to protect your own power, knowing that you are signing the death warrants for 25,000 animals.

It’s about understanding on a metaphysical level that the death of these beings, these sentient creatures that are aware that you have killed them, is morally reprehensible and wrong.

It’s about loving these creatures and accepting responsibility for their safety and their souls. These heroes have sacrificed and led and saved millions of innocent lives.

What will you do to honor them?

No more excuses.
No more compromises.
No more killing.
No-Kill now.

ShareThis

We are currently waiting for the vet from the Jersey Shore Animal Center to examine the kittens and determine if they are too sick to live.

Our attorney is going to get in touch with their attorney in the next day or so.

Other attorneys are getting involved and there will probably be a lawsuit.

Pat Wallace, their Executive Director, is a liar. My impression of their board is that they are weak and don’t challenge what Ms. Wallace says. Been there. It never ends well. Ms. Wallace is an arrogant tyrant who views animals as “her property.” Here’s what she said to one of our supporters:

“they are our property and we have rules.” I replied that considering them property may be the problem. She also said that the woman who found them should have done her research prior to dropping them off.

That’s gonna make a great deposition, isn’t it?

They are misinformed about feline FIV, feral cats, and how to run a shelter. That’s not unusual. What I guess amazes me is that their arrogance and indifference to the lives of these animals.

I’ve spoken to three members of the board. I email or call Ms. Wallace every day to ask her not to kill the kittens, but rather to hand them over to us. The disgust and contempt in her voice when she hears my name makes this all worthwhile. She’s an animal killer. I don’t like her. I’m happy we’re making this difficult for her.

She called us terrorists in the press. One of their board members called us terrorists today. Terrorists? Wikipedia says terrorism is

“violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for an ideological goal, and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians).”

Let’s play a game I like to call who’s the terrorist?

violent acts – Our acts so far are words, via phone calls, faxes and this blog. Unless you can die from a paper cut, there’s no violence. They intend to kill, violence of Biblical proportion.

intended to create fear – They are certainly telling us over and over that they don’t fear us. Pat Wallace’s famous words to me are “HAVE AT IT.” So we are. Wonder if those innocent kittens waiting to die fear for their lives.

Perpetrated for an ideological goal – This one we are guilty of. Not killing innocent animals is sort of an ideological goal, though I just consider it an act of morality. Their ideological goals seem to be control and the triumph of arrogance over right and wrong.

Deliberately target or disregard the safety of innocents. Hmmm. Who are the innocents here? Certainly not these hard hearted rubes. It’s the animals.

So the terrorists here are actually the Jersey Shore Animal Center management and board, and the terrorist acts are against innocent kittens, though honestly calling these people terrorists is an insult to terrorists worldwide.

One of the board members said to me today that we are “ignoring all the good they do and focusing on this one incident.” For some reason at that moment an old joke one of my former bosses used to use all the time popped into my head…”other than that Mrs. Lincoln how was the play?”

This is what we call a Red Herring., which, again according to Wikipedia is a rhetorical tactic of diverting attention away from an item of significance.

This was the defense of the ASPCA in killing Oreo as well, and Best Friends remaining neutral with Oreo’s Law. That is called Moral Relativism, which states that morals and ethics can be altered from one situation, person, or circumstance to the next. Uh, no. One animal’s life is not better or worse or more or less important or worthy of saving than the next. Period. Nice try though.

Perhaps the most amusing conversation through all this was a “gentleman” by the name of Peter Campione of Kindred Souls Canine Center who harassed Jen this morning and then threatened me. He told me that everyone in New Jersey knows that Pets Alive is a bully, and all we want to do is fight with them. He also told me that “we’re going down.” If I had a dollar for every time someone told me I was going down I’d be rich. Hmmm.

Yeah…I’d much rather be talking to this meathead from Jersey than be home in my hammock sipping a cold drink and reading my book. You betcha.

So we’re bullies. To treat in an overbearing or intimidating manner. Hmmm. Not sure I have a defense on that one. The thing everyone misses is that we always start off asking nicely. Then we offer a way out. Then we call in the troops. Shrug. Sorry. That’s what it takes sometimes.

Apparently Mr. Campione has some information about my male anatomy of which I was not aware. I’m not really sure if that’s relevant to this argument, but it certainly is a big red herring. My apologies to the ladies who follow this blog but I just couldn’t help myself.

So let’s see if our friends in Jersey find the truth. Honestly it’s going to have to find them.

This is their chance to do the right thing. If they don’t the gloves are coming off.

Thanks for your support and thanks for helping us save these innocents.

Oh, and by the way. Remember how in my last blog I posted picture of  our FIV kittens and cats playing in our FIV room? Happy. Healthy?
Now THESE pictures? These are all of FIV positive kittens and cats that have been ADOPTED from Pets Alive. All still alive, and all still happy and healthy.

ShareThis

Looks like a nice place.

They kill innocent animals that other reputable organizations ask them for.

We’re all familiar with the story now…it’s the same one that 70% of the rescue groups surveyed are familiar with. Same thing the ASPCA did. Same thing that happens day after day after day in this business. In this case a mother cat and her 5 kittens are going to be killed when they could be here at Pets Alive lounging in a cat room or living comfortably in someone’s home.

Same old story. Ignorance and indifference on the part of the people who have a moral responsibility to those animals and were trusted by the people who brought them there. Here’s the full story:

A very nice woman from New Jersey found a mother cat and 5 kittens under her garage. She took care of them for a few days and decided that they were better off in good homes than under her garage. She called many organizations trying to find someone to take them. She struck out until she called Jersey Shore Animal Center. JSAC agreed to take them. And if you read their mission statement it seems like a good fit:

The JERSEY SHORE ANIMAL CENTER is committed to the rescue and care of unwanted, abused, abandoned, sick animals and to the adoption of these animals to responsible, loving homes.

So she brought the cats to the shelter.

She called the next day to ask how they were doing.

She was told the mother tested positive for FIV (Feline Aids), and the mother and kittens were being killed tomorrow.

She told them she would take the cats back. She was told she couldn’t have them back. Sigh. So we come to the first alternative to death. But Jersey Shore Animal Center had decided that killing the mother and the kittens was better than letting the person who saved them have them back.

So she called us.

Again…as we always do, we thought this was a no-brainer. Maybe we just don’t get it. JSAC is, frankly, a group of people who are appallingly ignorant about caring for animals in general and about feline FIV specifically. First off, JSAC never tested the kittens before deciding they needed to die. Mother cats don’t always transmit FIV to kittens. So if that was the reason for putting them on the death list it was not necessary.

And even if they ALL had FIV, it’s hardly a big deal. Here are a couple of articles that they obviously didn’t read:

Good Article here

And here too

Here’s some interesting stuff:

A long term FIV Monitoring Project was carried out at Glasgow Veterinary School over a number of years and the results indicated that a higher percentage of FIV negative cats died during the period of the study than FIV positive cats!

But Pat Wallace, Director of the shelter says that they are better off dead, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

We were deeply offended by this lack of respect for the lives of these animals, so we started calling around. That’s when things really got ugly. I called Ms. Wallace and asked her if we could just work this out. Simple…give us the mom and the kittens and they can live out their lives in our FIV room. She said it was their policy to euthanize FIV cats (same thing she said to Kerry) and NO they wouldn’t make an exception. She and their lawyer backpedaled later in the day under pressure from the press, but she didn’t return my call to say come get the cats…we’ve decided not to kill them.

Kerry and I both asked her for the names of the members of her board, information we are entitled to under federal and New Jersey law. She refused. I formally requested a review of their financials and board meeting minutes at their office. She told me that they would call the police if I showed up. This is a direct violation of Article 15A:5-24 of the New Jersey state statutes.

These people are amazing. They are ignorant of the law that applies to their businesses. They are ignorant of the disease that affects their animals. They are morally reprehensible to a person.

So I did some research and came up with the person who I thought was the President of the organization. Her name is Rosemary Todino. She lives in Point Pleasant Beach, NJ and she’s in the book. So I called her. She returned my call this afternoon and it’s obvious that this fish stinks from the head down, as my grandfather used to say. She assured me that she knew what was going on and when I asked her point blank if she condoned the killing of these cats she said “absolutely” without hesitation. She mumbled something about their being strays, [so they deserve to die].

Any relation to Ed Sayres? There is no moral relativism. If you say these cats deserve to die, then all animals deserve to die. She dismissed me when I dared to state that, heaping derision upon me. Then she hung up in my face, something that seems to be the corporate mantra at JSAC.

So the board believes these cats should die. The director believes the cats should die. How do I know? THEY TOLD ME.

When a reporter for the local paper called them for comment they, through their attorney of course, insisted we had misunderstood what they said. “We don’t euthanize FIV cats as a matter of policy” he crooned. “And no decision has been made on whether to euthanize these cats.”

And my attempt to exercise my right under both state and federal laws to view their books was considered a threat by their hired shark. That’s funny.

So here we are my friends in another quest to save innocent animals from the stupidity, arrogance and ignorance of those entrusted with their care.

If these cats were in Delaware or California they would be safe. Not so New York thanks to the ASPCA and not Jersey either.

Let’s change that.

Oh, and by the way…all the kittens pictured in this blog?
They are all FIV positive kittens, living happily in our FIV room.
Did THEY deserve to die too?

ShareThis

Unlike certain people and Presidents, I do not apologize for being American. This is the day I celebrate with my friends and family the fact that this is the greatest country ever created. On July 2, 1776 (yes, it wasn’t actually July 4) the Second Continental Congress approved a resolution of independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. On July 4 they approved the formal Declaration we all know.

This was the document marking the birth of this nation. My den has many pictures and photos on the wall, but the one that hangs over the desk where I work and write and think has a large painting of George Washington addressing that Congress so that I always remember the toil and sacrifice those great men made so that we can enjoy the freedoms we have today.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Those words have been called the most potent and consequential words in American History.

Freedom. Freedom is the ability to make choices without constraint.

Liberty. Liberty is the right to behave according to one’s own personal responsibility and free will.

Have you ever considered that the root word of liberate is liberty? A few weeks ago we got a call from our friends at Best Friends. They had been contacted by Win Animal Rights (WAR), a New York City based organization that had gotten wind of an animal testing lab in New Jersey that had gone bankrupt. There were 120 Beagles and 55 monkeys that had been left there to die.

66,000 dogs and 26,000 cats were used in labs in 2005. While some of the animals are purpose bred (like our beagles), meaning that they are born to be experimented on and then disposed of, but most are supplied by so-called Class B dealers who buy them from auctions, shelters and newspaper ads and send them to the labs.

So our beagles were born with neither freedom nor liberty, while most lab animals have both their freedom and liberty taken away.

Are animals entitled to liberty? That’s a debate for another time. I believe they are within the context of our stewardship of them. In researching this blog I came across a succinct argument that sums it up:

Any animal that has the capacity for suffering pain has a right not to be tortured; and the reason for this is connected with the fact that suffering pain is intrinsically bad. Similarly, if we grant to men a right to liberty simply because we regard liberty as something good in itself which men are capable of enjoying, then we must also grant a right to liberty to any other animal that is capable of desiring to act one way rather than another.

Lab animals suffer. They are in steel cages most of their lives without contact with other animals and with people who treat them as objects rather then sentient beings. They are called companion animals for a reason. They are meant to be our companions and we have a moral responsibility to care for them.

Kerry was very excited as our caravan of four white vans headed toward the lab in New Jersey where we would pick up our beagles. “These are animals that were bred to be experimented on and thrown away. They were never meant to have homes, never meant to be loved, never meant to have lives. And now they will.”

I thought about that a lot yesterday and repeated it to the press many times. It is the essence of why we exist as a humane organization.

When we pulled up to the lab I was surprised at how nondescript it was. It looked like a house with some outbuildings, even though if you looked closely there was security fence around the entire property and none of the buildings had any windows. Great way to live.

They wouldn’t let us all on the property and they wouldn’t let more than one van in at at time. Kerry and I went in first.

We were greeted by four guys, two in Tyvek suits with earplugs in their ears. We would not be allowed in the area where the dogs lived, but they would be brought out one at a time and placed in the van. Standing around talking to these guys I was struck by the contradiction of their affection for the animals and their enabling their suffering. One of them actually decided to adopt one of the animals in their “care.” They asked us to be sure to keep the air conditioner on for the dogs and to take good care of them.

When we stopped for gas just before we got there we ran into a former employee of the lab who told us that they were going to start performing “electrical testing” on the dogs just before they closed, and I wondered how the guys in the Tyvek suits could possibly live with themselves for allowing that to happen.

The first Beagle came out. There was a number on her crate but no name. These dogs are nameless. She was so small. She was absolutely beautiful. And gentle. And terrified. How much had she endured? What had been done to her? What was her life like? The thought of her being experimented on cast a dark shadow across my soul that left me with a combination of despair and profound anger.

We needed more crates, so it was decided that Molly, the photographer from Best Friends and I would drive back with the first vanload of Beagles and get things ready for the rest. As we were leaving Molly thought we could fit one more if she rode in her lap. I thought this was a great idea. Molly walked back up the driveway and returned with another sweet little Beagle.

We named her Liberty. She had never seen a van before. Never been in motion (she vomited violently). Never been in someone’s lap. She was scared for the first half hour and didn’t really do much as we rode through the back roads of New Jersey. We got a peek into her sweet, gentle nature though. One of the sickest dogs was in the crate closest to our seats. Every time he would stir she would look at him and wag her tail. It was really heartwarming.

When she got comfortable, she was interested in everything. She poked her nose against the window. She climbed on to the center console. She tried to jump over into my lap. She licked Molly’s hand. She swatted at Molly’s camera. And every now and then I would reach over and gently rub the side of her face. She leaned into my hand and closed her eyes. I’ve always thought dogs know when they’re safe, and while their lives had suddenly expanded so far beyond the sterile metal cubbyholes they lived in alone, they all knew they were finally free.

Freedom. It’s truly relative, isn’t it? In China today you can’t even surf the Internet without being censored. In North Korea three generations of your family can go to the slave labor camp if you say something negative about Kim Jong Il. And freedom for Liberty can mean something as simple as feeling the warmth of the sun on her face.

We saw the American flags and the bunting as we pulled into Pets Alive, and we were swallowed up in a sea of Pets Alive t-shirts and cooing voices and loving arms for each of these sweet animals, and it really touched me. I went up into my office to be alone for a few minutes and returned to the pasture that the dogs would call home.

I have to tell you that being at Pets Alive has brought me pain that is so deep and so profound that it is debilitating. But it also brings joy that is absolutely indescribable. As I walked down the driveway across the street from my office I felt that deep, uplifting, amazing joy that is almost overpowering. It was amazing. There was a line of people curled around the table where Janet and Jen were examining each dog. Every person had a beagle in their arms. They were being cradled gently and lovingly. Every single dog was being hugged by someone in a Pets Alive T-shirt. Some were scared, leaning against their person, trying to bury their little heads in their shirt. Some were thrilled to be held, little eyes darting back and forth trying to drink it all in.

What brought me such joy were their tails. Every single one was wagging. Some were thumping gently against their person’s stomach. Some were whipping wildly back and forth. But every single dog was happy. They may never have gotten this much love, but they knew how wonderful it was right from the beginning. And that’s freedom for them as far as I’m concerned.

It was difficult for me to not get choked up walking through their living areas. The tail wagging continued unabated. It was absolutely amazing. As we started pairing them up (same sex because they’re not altered) I could see them sniffing each other tentatively. In minutes they were chasing each other around the kennels. I saw one tackle another and start playing. I could hear little Anna squealing as two of them chased her while the two in the next kennel stuck their noses through the fencing to play with the bottom of her clothes.

But what touched me the most profoundly was Liberty. She was sprawled out in the middle of her kennel in a patch of sunlight that was shining in to her area. Her mouth was open and she had a face of contentment and happiness. Her kennelmate was inches away from her enjoying the sunlight as well. She was four years old and had never seen the sun, or felt the grass, or ever seen another animal let alone lie next to one.

Our eyes locked and her tail started wagging. She has her freedom from pain and captivity and anonimity. And she has liberty, even if that just means she can lie in the sun when she wants to.

I watched a beagle walk tentatively on the grass for the first time and felt the same joy in my heart. Later I took one of them out of her crate and stood in line with her. She was wet from her own vomit and obviously scared. I had to coax her out of the crate because she was afraid to put her paws down on the grass. But the whole time that tail wagged and she looked at me with love in her eyes.

I placed her gently with another dog and watched her freeze on the grass, sniff it a few times and take her first tentative steps toward the other dog. They sniffed, tails wagged and they were pals. Just like that. Another dog free.

This morning when I opened my eyes to Roscoe and Tyson running at full speed across my bedroom floor, one of my socks dangling from Roscoe’s mouth I thought of these little dogs who had been bred to be experimented on and then thrown away like sponges or test tubes. In my mind’s eye I saw Liberty running across the room with one of my socks in her mouth and I laughed out loud.

Freedom and Liberty are something we are born with. Something we celebrate on this Independence Day, with fireworks and barbeques and Nathan’s Hot Dog eating contest. But let’s also take a moment to celebrate the lives of these animals that we have had the honor to liberate this weekend, and pause to mourn the lives of those we haven’t.

Thank you to Best Friends Animal Society for being our best friends, thanks to Camille and W.A.R. for caring about these sweet animals, thanks to Anthony and our friends at Enterprise for scaring up four vans and charging us next to nothing for them. Thanks to our friends in the media for coming out to record this event. Thanks to our wonderful volunteers and supporters who showed up in droves to shower these sweet gentle animals with love. And thanks to all of you who support us for giving Kerry and I the honor of doing what we do.

God Bless America.

ShareThis

When I used to travel for business people used to ask me where I was from. When I said Connecticut they would say “where’s that?” So I just started saying New York. New Yorkers are different. We are tough, we are driven, and we are brash. We don’t sit on our front porches and sip sweet tea and fan ourselves with shell-shaped fans. We get stuff done. Competition is tough and fierce and if you make a mistake you get eaten alive. New Yorkers are very fair and have the most well defined bulls–t detector I have ever seen. Having spent a lot of time in other parts of the country it became obvious to me that as a New Yorker I could run rings around most of my competition, because truly, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

Best Friends has failed here.

Instead of saying “Hey…we could have handled this better.  In January we will get behind you guys just as we should have in the first place,” Gregory Castle, who I thought knew better, issued a self-serving press release yesterday basically bashing Pets Alive and Nathan Winograd, and saying that this is about personalities.  The press release was littered with outright lies.

Here are the real facts:

1.    In 2007, Best Friends rescued a failed and dilapidated Pets Alive sanctuary by investing over a million dollars and 8 months of a rotating cadre of Best Friends staff to get the organization back on its feet.

The amount of money Best Friends allegedly “spent” at Pets Alive keeps growing like the size of a weekend fisherman’s catch.  We never said we didn’t appreciate what they did, but it certainly doesn’t make them any less wrong.  Best Friends didn’t buy us, nor did they buy our conscience.  This is a shameless attempt to make us look ungrateful.  We’re not.  We’re not the ones forsaking animals lives for money.

2.   Best Friends was instrumental in the survival of the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals and We have worked with Ed Sayres since his days as President of PetSmart…

I was personally appalled to find that Best Friends would include two people personally responsible for the killing of thousands of animals a year as allies.  Hoffman and Sayres are not believers in the no-kill movement, nor are they friends of animals.  And truth be told Best Friends gave them cover in killing Oreo’s Law and supported them in not stopping the killing of 25,000 animals a year. Period.

3.   Our desire to pursue a mutually satisfactory resolution to what became the Kellner / Duane fight was as much an effort to heal a rift among people we still believe should be working together rather than sniping at each other.

Oh please. Best Friends never really understood New York and New Yorkers. This ain’t some rinky dink little town in Utah. If you want our money you need to actually get off the fence and take a stand. We’re tough and we’re smart. You don’t get a pass because you’re Best Friends, and you can’t spin your way out of your mistakes. We bent over backwards on Oreo’s Law to meet demands we thought were frankly, ridiculous. And then you reneged on your promise to support Oreo’s Law and went silent. You’re getting called on it now. If you want to keep spinning instead of doing the right thing and admitting your mistake and supporting the right side of this, you do so at your own peril. You might want to save the civility card for Best Friends Europe.

Welcome to New York.

4. The Kellner / Duane bill never fully conformed to this despite our collaborative efforts with the bill’s sponsor, Micah Kellner.

I spoke to Assembly Member Kellner personally and at length about your “collaborative efforts,” and I’m going to leave it to him to characterize them, but I think we both know that Best Friends is being disingenuous here. You supported the Hayden Law, which is almost word for word Oreo’s Law, but you are parsing words and picking nits here. You’re not fooling the people who count though. And your actions are directly responsible for killing animals. You have failed.

And you have lied and mischaracterized and spun and played politics with the lives of animals.

In fact, what makes me the saddest is the chest pounding and self aggrandizement. Heaping scorn upon us lesser organizations, reminding us that we would be nothing without them. Admonishing us that they bought us with their assistance and we should shut up and move on sounds just like the other humane organizations that have jumped the shark like the ASPCA and HSUS.

Personally I am beyond disappointed and will no longer support Best Friends. I’ve listened to the arguments that Best Friends deserves a pass because of all the good they’ve done. I agree they’ve done good. But that doesn’t give them the right to hold it over our heads, nor does it give them the right to play politics with the lives of the animals they claim they are going to save. Best Friends was the only organization other than Pets Alive that was in my will. I left them a substantial amount of money that I now redirected to Pets Alive.

In my opinion if you’re going to be part of the no-kill movement, let alone a leader of the movement your moral responsibility can’t be part time. Either saving animals is your mission or it isn’t.

As Judge Judy (the consummate New Yorker) would say “Did you think you were coming here for a tea party?” People give us part of their hard earned money to protect and save animals. They don’t want excuses or bull. Especially not New Yorkers.

The assertion that Best Friends didn’t get more involved because, God forbid, there was a clash of personalities is laughable and proof that Gregory Castle signs off on the drivel his communications department puts out without reading it.

So as they are putting the needle with the blue liquid into the veins of 25,000 animals in New York we can say “sorry you’re dying little guy, but Best Friends decided they couldn’t save you because Nathan Winograd called Ed Sayres a jerk.”

Here’s a piece of advice. The buck stopper for me is trying to put my words and actions in the context of one of our supporters. I choose a particular supporter. I’ll call him Bill. Bill is a retired New Yorker and on a very tight budget. Every month he sends me two one dollar bills along with a personal note thanking us for what we do and telling me he wishes he could send more. I always try to think of what Bill would say about whatever it is I’m contemplating. Tell me gentlemen…does Bill care about the nuances and personalities (really egos) of the people involved here? How do you feel about using his two dollars, which means a lot to him, to withhold support for a law you know will save animals to appease a tyrant who happens to be the key to the checkbooks of well-meaning people who have more money than Bill?

I can’t betray Bill’s trust and I can’t waste his money. If you read your own Facebook page (before someone deletes the negative posts of course) you will see that your supporters are telling you the same thing.

I could go on, but I still believe Best Friends is saveable. One more time Francis and Gregory…you need to be on the side of the animals, regardless of the political cost. Yes, we are friends. But don’t take advantage of that friendship, and don’t believe for one second that I wouldn’t throw you under the bus to save an animal, let alone 25,000. In a New York minute. And once upon a time you would too.

And if you’re going to play in the big time then you need to start standing on your principles.

Own up to your mistake and get on the right side. Or maybe you should choose another area of the country to prime for donations.

Welcome to New York.

ShareThis

>>In 2007, Best Friends rescued a failed and dilapidated Pets Alive sanctuary by investing over a million dollars and 8 months of a rotating cadre of Best Friends staff to get the organization back on its feet. Best Friends has spent millions of dollars and countless hours of staff and volunteer time in the past few years bailing out or cleaning up after 501c3s and rescues that have gotten in over their head with animals they can’t handle. These include Pets Alive, Gabbs, Nevada, FLOCK in Las Vegas, Oasis Sanctuary in New York….

…In fact, a number of dogs from Pets Alive, to whom the current management did not feel they could do justice, and who had languished there in squalid conditions prior to our intervention in 2007, were taken in at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah.<<

Yes, Best Friends, this is true. Well MOST of it. It wasn’t a million dollars you spent here. We know, because we got the bill from you that your past CEO, Paul Berry eventually waived, when he saw how great we were doing and how we would become a force for animals in this area. That bill, before it was waived, was just under $500,000. A minor point, but please, no need to inflate it. Let’s stick to the facts here. We have not bad mouthed you or beaten you up – in fact when people were saying they were going to withdraw support from you, we said “DON’T DO THAT”!  We have stressed how we disagree with your opinion on being neutral about this and how critical we needed your support on this bill. That’s it. Others have run with it and it has gone viral but to attack us isn’t really necessary. We didn’t…we COULD. Remember all the things that happened in those eight months? Ouch. We all know each others secrets, don’t we? Secrets that are better left between us, yes?

WE – Pets Alive – don’t really have any secrets. Our bad history has been all over the web (and we include it on our website). In fact, we make no secret about it at all – I am the one that called you when I saw Pets Alive, and how bad it was. I was the one that personally begged you to come down and save all the animals. WE, the people here now, are NOT the people that were here THEN when the situation was so bad. YOU put us here, YOU trained us, WE are YOU. We follow all your protocols, and all your job descriptions and indeed use YOUR adoption contract, and YOUR surrender forms, and your hiring methods – we are you. We are what you trained us to be. And you trained us to always be on the side of animals and speak out and help where we see wrong.

That is what we have done here…when we tried to save Oreo. When we try to save animals from other shelters that will kill them, if there is any way that we can help.

But most of all…we do what you asked us to do. What your former CEO’s (Michael Mountain and Paul Berry) asked us to do when they left. They said “We will absolve your debt to us. Instead pay it forward. Help other rescues like we helped you. Help animals. Be the GOOD in the world. Be the change. Do what you can to make things better for animals in your neck of the woods.”

I get up every single day with that intent, and that goal, and I take that promise that we made to you very seriously. We have done that. We did what you asked. Let me give you a little summary.

• We have helped make FOUR shelters no-kill. We take in their over-flow, we help them develop programs, we help them by inviting them to our adoption events, or putting their animals on our petfinder or by directing our people to them. How many animals have they now saved as a result? How many less have died as a result of what happened with Pets Alive? We ask them what you asked of us – Pay it Forward. Help others. And they do. How many more will THEY then help and so on? So was your dropping half a mil here a waste? Do you regret it? Let’s look….
• We have adopted out over 1000 animals from our own site every year since you left. That is over 2300 animals right from here. 2300 that have lived as a result of us being here.
• We have saved countless numbers of others by putting them in touch with OUR adopters when we don’t have a dog or cat to match what they are looking for – we help them find that animal in a local (or even NON local) shelter and help facilitate getting that animal to them. Those numbers are not counted, but they are there and they DO count.
• We have become the resource for new shelters starting out. This “dilapidated place” as you call us?… well, other shelter directors and managers come here in DROVES every year to take a tour, ask us questions, learn from us and brain storm with us. We ask them to go and help animals, and call us no matter what they need. And we are always there for them – late at night, early in the morning with advice, sharing our resources, helping however we can.
• We started a Humane Education program. We teach kids about empathy and about how animals feel and what THEY need to do to BE THE CHANGE in their generation. Teach them to go forth and speak up if the see animal cruelty or lack of animal care. And those kids – they are our next generation to try to make a difference.
• We have gone in and done mass rescues. The most recent in West Virginia where we saved 78 animals from a bad situation, brought them here, worked with a dozen other rescues and shelters to place them, get them into good homes and get them vetted and cared for. It was a massive undertaking for a small organization like us.
• We started a foster program- moving seniors and hard to place dogs into foster care to help them become more adoptable….we’re in the wee stages but so far it has been very successful.
• We allow kids to come and volunteer here. Something almost no other organization allows. Little children are here every week, playing with animals, walking them or just sitting and talking to them. We have helped families reconnect and teach their children about charity and love.
• We take in animals that have no other place to go – the ones that need surgeries, or have issues, the ones that no other place will touch and we get them here and we fix them up and we find them homes. if not then we provide a great quality of life for them here.
• We take surrender requests and we put those people in touch with our trainers to try to show them that they can keep the animals there in the home with them and they can work on the problems rather than giving up the dogs or cats.
• We have provided boarding or animals for other shelters when they had over flow, or for military having to go overseas.
• We are building and raising money for a medical building. When done, it won’t just be for US. We plan to offer to EVERY no-kill shelter in the area, or ones trying to be, the use of our facility. They will pay ONLY our cost for any treatment that any of their animals need. We will help other rescues and shelters save money to help develop programs and other ways to help their animals find homes, so that medical costs do not need to stand in the way.
• The medical facility will also offer low or no cost spay/neuter and inexpensive basic medical care to the community residents.
• We have bailed out another rescue – one that is three times the size of us – because they are no-kill, and because to lose them in the community that they are in would be devastating to animals. This was a huge undertaking and frightening for us but it looks like we may just pull that off. Then there is another facility – this one that can house 300 dogs and 200 cats that would otherwise be dead. We paid that forward and we’re still struggling there – don’t suppose you’d like to help?

So Best Friends. When you belittle us and accuse us of not being grateful…what more could you have asked for?
What more could any mentor have asked for, than what we have become?

And when we came to you with a plan to save thousands upon thousands of animals- your only answer is to refuse because you don’t think everyone is being nice enough to each other?
You have broken my spirit.
Broken it.
I had total faith and total belief in you. You were the leader, my mentor, the place that I put all my faith and trust in, and all my belief that things CAN be better that things WILL be better.

You are wrong on this issue and instead of stepping forward and contacting us to try to work it out for January, you instead malign us on your website. I’m so saddened by this. I still believed that you would step up. Right up until today’s post…I still held out. Ask Matt, ask Nathan, ask anyone. They have been telling me that you have gone to the dark side and I said no way….wait and see they will do the right thing. I am so sorry to be wrong. I am deeply broken over this.

I wish, more than you could know, that you were by our side.
I get it though now. I finally get it.

We could have done GREAT things in New York together.
WE – Pets Alive – still will.

Read John Sibley’s blog. Your own staff recognize the negative changes in your organization.
Why can’t you?

ShareThis

Pets Alive has been part of Oreo’s Law since the beginning.  As you recall it was us who asked the ASPCA of New York to give us Oreo instead of killing her, and it was the ASPCA and its President Ed Sayres who killed her instead.  We have been intimately involved with this process, and we have first hand, behind-the-scenes knowledge of what has transpired.  Kerry and/or I have been on many phone calls and in many meetings.  Assembly Member Micah Kellner, who with his legislative aide Ilyana worked tirelessly to write Oreo’s Law and try to get it passed, was honored at our Hudson Valley Fur Ball.  He sat at my table and we had a great conversation.  We regret that we weren’t more personally active in helping to get this law passed, but you can be absolutely certain that come January when we try again we will be much more involved.  Hopefully at that time the Agriculture Committee will have a new chairman.

I’d like to offer our own insights that we gained from this entire process.  We commend Nathan Winograd for working tirelessly to get Oreo’s Law passed.  I’ve read the comments about Nathan — about people who “scorn” him but respect his ideas.  I’ve been involved in politics since I was 18 and heard the same crap.  “Matt, I like what you’re saying but you need to say it a different way.  You need to be more civil.  You need to say it this way or that way.”  Sometimes the only way to get your ideas across when the deck is stacked against you is through confrontation, which rubs some people the wrong way.  Shrug.   Nathan is both a leader and an asset to the no-kill movement.  He has vision and passion, is a brilliant writer, and retains the moral clarity that I think has left organizations like the ASPCA and seems to be circling the drain at Best Friends.

Ah..so Pets Alive and Matt DeAngelis are siding with Nathan Winograd over Best Friends?  On this particular issue, as with any issue we confront, we side with the animals.  In this case Nathan is on that side and Best Friends is not.

Before I get rolling I would hope that you look at this through the same lens that I do.  After 35 years we came up with a mission statement for Pets Alive: Our mission is to improve the lives of companion animals everywhere by any means possible, including rescue, adoption, advocacy, collaboration, intervention and education.

Very simple.  At least I thought it was.  Let’s apply that to Oreo’s Law.  There are no reliable statistics on the number of animals killed in New York each year.  I took the California statistics and matched them to the population of New York.  My WAG answer (Wild-@ss-Guess) is five hundred thousand.  So let’s cut that in half.  Let’s say two hundred fifty thousand animals are killed in shelters in New York every year.

We have Hayden’s Law to show us how many additional animals were saved in the first few years of the law’s passage.  Oreo’s Law in New York is Hayden’s Law in California, and gives us an opportunity to see the results of the law.  I used a very, very conservative 10% number as the number of additional animals that would be saved by Oreo’s Law.  So that means that my estimate is 25,000 animals will be saved by Oreo’s Law.

That is roughly the population of people of Middletown, NY.  Those of you who are in this area think about that for a moment…replace the entire population of Middletown, NY with dogs, cats, horses, goats, lizards, guinea pigs and any other animals you can think of.  Every single person.  That’s how many animals are killed each year in New York because there is no Oreo’s Law.

For our friends at Pets Alive Westchester, picture the entire population of Elmsford, Ardsley, Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow the same way.

Why wouldn’t any animal welfare organization jump at the chance to save that many animals at one time?  Why would any so-called animal welfare organization make the law necessary in the first place?  But they did.  The king of animal welfare.  The original animal welfare organization in the US, the ASPCA, wielded the sword that killed this bill.  But there were other organizations and people, including Best Friends, that need to accept responsibility for its death.

One of the reasons I admire Nathan in this fight is that he worked hard (with Micah Kellner) to broker a deal that would make everyone happy.  He was told that the ASPCA was offended by the name Oreo’s Law because it embarassed the ASPCA.  He and Micah Kellner offered to change the name if the ASPCA would support it.  Nathan offered to disappear and shut his mouth if the ASPCA and the rest of their alliance supported the bill.   That gesture is the essence of Nathan Winograd — while he wears his personal opinions on his sleeve he never, ever forgets what is most important here, even if everyone else has.

I think No-Kill comes out of no particular philosophy. It comes out of using common sense. No-Kill really emerges when people have direct contact with an animal. It’s kind of a bottom up grassroots movement because it stems from people who are involved in rescue and can connect with the animal on a very personal basis and understands that this animal has intrinsic value. This animal has desires and makes choices and he/she has a life that cannot be minimised – that’s the basis of it.

Well said Nathan.

Wait a minute…that was not a quote from Nathan.  It was actually a quote from Francis Battista, one of the founders of Best Friends.  What is the “value” of 25,000 of those lives?

Look…we owe our existence to Best Friends.  As do many other organizations I imagine.   We have been struggling with our feelings of disbelief and betrayal and disappointment over their role in all this, unsure of how to address it.  I was standing in line at the bookstore yesterday and I looked up to see the famous Ghandi quote:

Be the change you want to see in the world.

And I suddenly understood.  For us to remain silent in this means that we are doing exactly what Best Friends did…not pointing out to someone on our side that they are on the wrong side of this.  I guess where the wheels fall off the bus for me is that instead of admitting they screwed up and played politics with the lives of 25,000 animals, Best Friends decided to spin this and villify Nathan Winograd, one of their longtime supporters.

Looking over the debate on Facebook, they’re not really fooling anyone.  As far as Nathan is concerned (and I have to say I agree with him), the no-kill debate is very simple: either you are for killing animals or you are against killing animals.  On this issue it appears that Best Friends condones (or refuses to not condone) the killing of an entire city’s worth of animals.  They can spin it any way they want, but that’s the bottom line, as much as it hurts to say it and think it.

Best Friends apologists…save it.  You’re wrong in this case.  Yes, Best Friends has done much for the no-kill movement and until recently has been one of the leaders.  I don’t want to hear the spin.  Yes, Nathan Winograd personally doesn’t much care for Ed Sayres.  Neither do I.  That has nothing to do with right and wrong here.

Either you believe killing Oreo was wrong or you don’t.  I was told by Best Friends that they thought it was wrong to kill Oreo.  Early in this whole thing they asked why they hadn’t been contacted, just as we did.  That seems to have been lost in the ensuing support for the ASPCA.  And yes, I’m sorry, but the ASPCA opposed this bill.  They sent lobbyists (lawyers) to Albany who misrepresented the law and its intended results.  How do I know that?  I was privy to a conversation between a staff member of the Chairman of the Agriculture Committee and one of our supporters.  I offered several times to set the woman straight but she had no interest in hearing the truth, nor did she apparently have an interest in reading the bill.  “Why would the ASPCA not be on the side of the animals?”

And here’s where the Best Friends train hits the brick wall.

If you’re going to lead, you can’t be neutral when it comes to change.  As Ghandi said, you need to be the change you want in the world. The change Best Friends has been telling us it wants to be is the phrase they trademarked — No More Homeless Pets.  They weren’t the change in this case.  Best Friends supporters (including me) write them checks with the idea that they will always be on the side of the animals, even if it costs them money or they have to take an uncomfortable position against someone they like and respect, like they forced me to.

They failed in this case, and their supporters are taking them to task for it, as they should.

And they are not neutral.  It is clear by their Facebook post that they are against Oreo’s Law.  And that’s the wrong side of this.  Rescue people I know and Best Friends supporters know that we are close to the Best Friends organization and are asking us why they abandoned us and the animals in New York.  I have no answer to that.  The excuses for not supporting the bill (some rescues aren’t federally recognized charities so wouldn’t be able to get animals under Oreo’s Law) are frankly, insulting to our intelligence.

So…Francis Battista, Greg and Julie Castle, and the rest of the Best Friends senior management…what do you plan to do in January when Oreo’s Law comes up again?  10,000 emails were sent to the agriculture committee in the week before Oreo’s Law was tabled.  They were ignored.  Your own supporters asked you to take a stand.  They were ignored.  We begged you to help us.  We were ignored.

Either you are going to be the change or you are going to be just another large “welfare” organization that only cares about raising money.  The choice is yours.  We need your support and will be asking for it again later in the year.  No more private conversations or kowtowing to Ed Sayres and the ASPCA.  Either you are with us or you are not.  And we all need to make that known to the rescue community and our supporters.

Ghandi also said that A man is but the product of his thoughts.  What he thinks, he becomes.

What is Best Friends thinking, and what is Best Friends becoming?

ShareThis

It’s a classic David versus Goliath proposition, and Goliath is winning.
They’ve convinced the chairman of the Agriculture Committee (Robert
Magee) to table the bill because the “language isn’t clear.” What part
of “if a qualified rescue requests an animal that would otherwise be
euthanized the request must be fulfilled” don’t they understand?

Emails and calls are pouring into Magee’s office and the other members
of both the Senate and Assembly Agriculture committees are getting them
as well. Animal lovers and voters are making it clear that they will
hold these people responsible for the innocent lives that will be lost
should this bill die in committee.

I have been watching the email servers at the Senate and the Assembly,
and they are bogged down with emails to the point where we have to send
over and over again to get them through. This is fantastic! Keep it up,
my friends. In a election year that has a tremendous anti-incumbent
sentiment we need to let them know that we’re watching, we vote, and we
will blame them for the lives that would be lost should this bill be passed.

Ed Sayres of the ASPCA, Jane Hoffman of the Mayor’s Alliance, and groups
like the Animal Law “Coalition” have poured money and lobbyist time into
killing this bill. Let’s show them that in the end the PEOPLE of New
York decide the POLICIES of New York, not some power hungry elitists
with our money spilling out of their pockets.

I, Matt DeAngelis, promise that should Mr. Magee table this bill I will
personally pour my own personal time, energy and money into ensuring he
is defeated this November, WHEN HE IS UP FOR RE-ELECTION.

We need you loyal supporters. Go to this page:

http://petsalive.com/email

And send emails to the Ag Committee members letting them know this is
their last chance to choose life over politics. Urge them to vote YES in
getting the bill out of committee, rather than tabling it like our
opponents want to do.

Please…do it now. If you’d rather call, please do. But do it today. This
is our last chance (all the assembly phone numbers can be found here: http://bit.ly/9nC0z2).

Call and email friends and tell them to do it too.

Thanks. Together we have made such a tremendous difference in the lives
of companion animals, and here is an amazing opportunity to save
thousands. PLEASE. Act now.

Matt

ShareThis