I wasn’t suggesting that because you don’t have local shelters you don’t do much for animals; quite the contrary. I simply meant that local shelters should be judged on their own merits.

As for the gloves, I’m not a member so for me to take that extra step of seeking out the membership department means that I have to put in effort to stop getting something I didn’t ask for.

But again, I really appreciate your taking the time to present HSUS’s perspective. What you say about Vick’s role made me re-think how I feel about it — and that’s a good thing!

The pit bull training team in Chicago has former dog fighters talking to at risk youth, and provides training classes for people and their pit bulls, and it’s been great. People are listening, and joining these classes, which has a positive effect on both the 2 and 4 legged participants!

Since Vick started speaking about dog fighting, we’ve received over 100 calls from communities wanting to start anti-dogfighting programs in their area. This will of course not bring back any of the dogs he killed, but what it will do, is prevent other dogs from meeting the same fate. To me, that makes it pretty effective.

As for local shelters, no, we do don’t run local shelters – I cannot stress that enough, but that doesn’t mean we don’t do a lot for animals. In 2009 121 animal protection laws were passed, that’s amazing progress! It’s hard not to focus on the present and look at the dog in the shelter and say darn it why can’t that HSUS save THAT dog? But that’s not what HSUS is there for – we’re not a local shelter, but we want to help pass stronger laws so that people committing crimes against the animals are actually prosecuted, and that we can prevent animals from ending up in the shelter in the first place.

Lastly, I do want to point out while we don’t run your local shelters, we do have 5 animal care facilities that provide direct care. Now none of these are animal shelters like your local one, that are open admission etc, but they provide direct care. We have the wildlife centers on Cape Cod in Massachusetts and San Diego County in California, and in Broward County, Florida, our Duchess Sanctuary in Oregon for horses, and the Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch, which cares for more than 1,000 large mammals, in east Texas.

Anyways, I just wanted to post my two cents, feel free to shoot me an email if you have questions!

PS About those direct mail gloves etc, you can always call our membership department and ask to only receive mail X number of times a year, so do feel free to do that!

In the earlier postings, someone touched on the fact that shelters that cater to the general public are going to kill at a much higher rate than private rescues such as those specializing in a single breed. Public shelters protect themselves and the public by only adopting out the “safest” animals — those who can handle the trauma of landing in a shelter without trying to protect themselves by snarling or snapping, those without visible health problems, no pit bulls over the age of four months, etc etc. I once pulled from a public shelter a miniature poodle who had both problems — he was blind and sufficiently terrorized to nip at strangers who grabbed him. At the shelter, either problem doomed him. Instead he is now a happy and cherished family pet who chases toys and dances on his hind legs for treats. I turn green when I see supposed animal temperament tests, where, for example, someone sticks a rubber hand in a starving dog’s food dish and declares the dog who bites the hand that is not feeding it — or tries to play with the hand — unadoptable. By all means, give to the good, clean, local shelters that try to find homes for, not kill off, the animals places in their care. Give to breed-specific rescues, which are always starving for money and foster homes. And because not every dog is going to find a home, give to the sanctuaries that provide loving, lifetime homes for elderly, disabled, or otherwise “unadoptable” pets,

And don’t even get me started on PETA…

People need to stop buying from shops and puppy mill kennels per that article Eric provided above. But we also need a better set of defining attributes for what is a “good breeder” and how are they distinguished from the bad guys. It’s all too confusing to the general public. Small family breeders who hand raise to improve the breed, not for the money, need to step up and get rid of the puppy mills. The politics of this gets in everybody’s way and does not one bit of service to anyone but the puppy mills. Oh, and the AKC since they give “papers” to puppy mill dogs now in exchange for fees.

Shelter change issues are of dire import–and that’s where Winograd can shine. I recommended him to the RSPCA in NSW Australia last year in email exchanges. They had remarked on a blog I wrote regarding kill rates and Chicago’s relative success, albeit over five years, of cutting numbers in half, and wanted to know more about how that was achieved. While Chicago Animal Shelter Alliance worked with Maddie’s fund using the Asilomar accords to get everyone ranking animal condition in an easily, mutually understood way, we had no formally written plan, so Winograd’s blueprint was what they needed.

Loved your view on PeTA. “Publicity whores” they are! Any group that kills more than 95% of the dogs and cats they “rescue” needs to be starved out of donations for that purpose.