Book Review: Redemption - The Myth of Pet Overpopulation & the No-Kill Revolution in America

This book by Nathan Winograd is now the undisputed benchmark for companion animal welfare in America. It exposes the nation's best-known animal welfare groups, specifically HSUS, for being addicted to killing animals. The whole HSUS issue aside, I bought this book thinking it would give me a formula for no-kill.

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

I greedily digested this book hoping to come away with a 1-2-3-action plan for no-kill for my rescue efforts. I did not find such an action plan within the book. At the end of the book is a 10-point "No Kill Equation" which details the 10 things Winograd says are the most important steps to success for achieving a 100% no-kill rate.

At first I was disappointed. All the points of the No Kill Equation seem obvious and pretty much were already in place at the shelter where I volunteer, which, for rabbits, had a 50%, kill rate when I started volunteering there.

I did come away with a detailed history of how Winograd achieved this no kill solution and I suppose that is all I really need to know.

But the book really did open my eyes to the psychology of animal rescue and Nathan Winograd is really an amazing person. I was chagrined to read in this book a quote from my own dog trainer claiming that the shelter where Winograd and company had achieved 100% no kill was fudging the numbers and that this wasn't really true.

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

Since reading this book, I was so inspired that someone somewhere sometime had achieved 100% No Kill that I started my own 501c3 nonprofit animal sanctuary, Bright Eyes Sanctuary, and started volunteering to help rabbits at one of my local shelters. Not the shelter associated with my dog trainer, mind you. I have great respect for her and all she does for animals, but the shelter where her husband is the director is not by any means an example of a proactive shelter. Hundreds of animals are killed there every week and it seems nothing is done to counter act it, no education, no public outreach, just reaction: killing healthy animals.

Just so you know, Winograd worked at a shelter in San Francisco that for four years was open admission - turned no animals away - and was 100% no kill. That is phenomenal. But critics claimed it was only achievable in San Francisco which has a high homosexual population and there is a perception that homosexuals care more about and take the best care of their animals.

That perception aside, I do find that some of my best adopters have been gay but I also know plenty more gay men and women who despise animals - so that is just a stupid stereotype - on the other hand one of my vets told me her best clients have always been gay - whatever. To prove to the critics that his No Kill Equation could be done anywhere, Winograd took his philosophy to upstate New York and did the same thing again. All the while the county adjacent to his county's shelter had an abysmal adoption rate.

My first thought about him trying to replicate his good work in upstate New York was, well if you could find anywhere in the eastern US that is most like San Francisco in terms of politics and culture, it would be upstate New York!

As for the No Kill Equation and rabbits, the equation is more complicated. Part of the NKE is low-cost spay/neuter (duh). Although it can be possible to find low cost neuters for rabbits, low cost spays are a lot harder to find. I did find one vet 75 miles away who does spays on rabbits for $35 but it costs me $60 to get there! So I can't afford that as I've been paying for the spays & neuters at my shelter. Now the shelter is paying for it but the only local vet who can do rabbit spays is charging us $80. That is not low cost. Since doing this surgery (rabbit spay) requires special training, it is very difficult to find a vet to give a discount on it. The one vet who gives the $35 spay is a special angel on this Earth and she is one of a kind, literally. How do you adequately thank someone like that?

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

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

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

This brings up another thing that Winograd naysayers love to shout about. HOARDERS! People who love to be judgmental have often labeled me a hoarder. In fact, I find one of the main problems with animal rescue groups is that control freaks and megalomaniacs who live to be judgmental of others run the larger groups. I admit I'm a bit of a control freak myself but I'm not a hoarder. Hoarders do not take their animals to the vet, hoarders do not provide the very best, premium foods to their animals, hoarders do not spend 1/3 of their household income on animal care. I do all of these things and yet there are those judgmental kill-advocates who love to use me as their scapegoat, their excuse for killing.

That should speak for itself. Those kill advocates who say people like me are one reason they should be able to keep killing expose their addiction to pain and death with their evil philosophy.

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

And who will judge the killers and the no killers, who will honestly say who is a true hoarder and who is not, who will say which rescue is bad and which is good, who will say which animals are in good situations and who are not? Who will decide all this?

Public opinion.

So be warned. Public opinion will only listen to cold hard facts and you better have lots of photos of bad rescues, you better have impartial reporting, you better be prepared psychologically and philosophically to do battle on this front because the war of killers versus life savers has just begun and I for one will always be someone commenting and reporting on it and sending out my ideas to the powers that be (which I have an uncanny ability to do).

This is the Roe v. Wade of animal welfare.

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

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

Tell me that and I'll respond. I'll show you where your philosophy is tied down in chains of pain.

Get the book. Read it, ponder it and do something about it. Don't just make accusations and be judgmental. Help some animals with your own bare hands not your mouth.