Resistance

As No Kill animal sheltering gains momentum across the globe and more people realise that the tools and programs that have had success elsewhere not only work in Australia, but can work in their own communities, advocates are going to find themselves more and more often facing a situation of resistance.

Resistance is how a traditional, high kill pound or shelter defends the status quo when it realises that its community has turned against it. For decades these shelters have been taking in pets, saving a few ‘nice’ ones and killing the rest. They have been telling their communities that ‘there is no other way’ and that the community themselves are to blame. “If you people would be responsible,” they scold “then we wouldn’t be the ones doing your dirty work in having to kill all these pets.” But suddenly in the face of No Kill success across the world, across the country and down the road, communities are not only questioning, but demanding change. They want more for their community’s homeless pets than a swift end – they want to see the enormous fortunes donated to these animal welfare groups used for its intended purpose; to give homeless pets a second chance at a happy life.

Shelters can’t openly reject the notion that pets should be offered foster care instead of death, that pets should be given a chance with a rescue group rather than be killed, that pets should be kept healthy instead of allowed to have their health and behaviour deteriorate whilst in care, that pets should be promoted off-site, online and in the local media rather than summarily killed, or that pets should be allowed to go into new homes rather than have potential families turned away by uncaring or bureaucratic staff… because if they reject these notions then they put themselves firmly in the firing line of their community.

Given the loss of support, donors and resources is crippling, they find themselves left with two choices; change or resist. And often, entrenched in the status quo, offended that people are criticising their performance and scared of being forced into transparency and accountability, they choose to resist.

It can be hard to spot resistance. It’s passive aggressive. It’s often dressed up in positive language, a pledge to ‘do better’ and a plea for everyone to ‘just work together’. Sometimes deals are made with the advocates who outed the shelter in the first place; ‘if you just work with us, we promise to improve’. And because No Kill advocates are working only to get a better result for animals it can seem like a good outcome. Of course these relationship quell disquiet and can be drawn out to make shelter reform take five, ten or an undetermined number of years. The community assume that everything is on the mend and the heat is off. Meanwhile pets continue to die.

So how does a No Kill advocate spot resistance, versus a real desire for change when working to overhaul their local pound? And can you move a high kill shelter out of this state of resistance and into real and positive action on behalf of pets?

Resistance: We don’t believe it should be called ‘No Kill’ as this is misleading to the public, because we do still kill hopelessly sick or suffering pets.

The resistance to the idea of calling their procedural overhaul a ‘No Kill’ initiative is simply designed to move attention away from the real issues inside the shelter. If the organisation you are working with is attacking the terminology of the program, while failing to comprehensively implement the programs and services in the No Kill equation, you know you are dealing with resistance rather than a true desire to see change.

At this point many No Kill advocates compromise; “call it what you want, just do it”. But this ignores the real belief being pushed by the shelter – the belief that animals must die at the hands of the animal welfare groups who claim to be working to save them. By making the first step such a huge diversion off the No Kill path, not only are advocates giving away much of their power back to the shelter; “we will follow the No Kill equation, but only if we can pick and choose the bits we like”, but we are buying into the idea that the public are too ignorant and too stupid to understand the No Kill model.

There is an excellent piece by Christie Keith on why we shouldn’t ‘Surrender the Power of No Kill’ when it comes to interacting with the public; we should also be careful not to surrender the power of No Kill when we’re dealing with shelters in the flux of resistance, giving them the ability to dictate which life saving programs they will and won’t implement.

Resistance: No Kill advocates are a militia, their arguments are inflammatory and we see no reason why we should work with groups who have been working against us.

Before No Kill advocates were in their community all was well. Now these ‘militia’ have come onto the scene and the shelter is in a world of trouble with their public. Of course it’s not hard to see these advocates are to ‘blame’ for the new reality. Except.

No Kill supporters overwhelmingly, are their public. They aren’t professional trouble makers and often wouldn’t even consider themselves animal advocates. Who they are is a varied as the community they reside in. The do have one thing in common though; a love of pets and a desire to see them survive their interaction with their local shelter.

These No Kill supporters could and would be the shelter’s biggest champion should it choose to adopt a life-saving focus; they already promote adoption and have adopted pets themselves, they volunteer at the shelter, they donate resources and large sums of money, they care for unowned cats, they would open their hearts and homes to a foster pet, they love their own animals and spend millions on pet care, and they want shelters to be doing all they can to save homeless pets.

To treat these people as the ‘enemy’ is the shelter management turning its back on the desires of their community. In a similar fashion to how they labeled their communities ‘irresponsible’ and arbitrarily decided pets would be ‘better of dead’ than risk them being given to new families or community rescue groups. To suggest that No Kill advocates are extremists who don’t reflect the views of the wider community is one of the strongest forms of resistance; it is also desperately inaccurate in Australia’s progressive, pet loving society.

Resistance: we will work with rescue groups, but only those we choose/who don’t criticise us/for the pets we deem suitable/and we reserve the right to be able to revoke this at our discretion.

There is an enormous difference between wanting to protect pets from harm at the hands of animal abusers and holding pets to ransom to ensure complete compliance from community animal rescue groups. Certainly, anyone convicted of animal abuse should be stricken from the pound’s release list, but should a pet be killed because;

– the animal rescue group speaks out about abuse/lack of performance of the shelter?
– the shelter manager and the animal rescue group don’t get on personally?
– the shelter doesn’t release animals who need ‘work’ with a behaviouralist or vet to get them to the point of being rehomeable?
– the shelter would rather kill the pet today, than risk allowing a community rescue group the chance to find it a new home?
– the shelter would rather kill the pet than release it without charge to a reputable rescue group?
– the shelter manager has found working with rescue ‘too much trouble’ and decides to wind back the program?

Every pet that is killed because a rescue group wasn’t given the opportunity to take it, is a pet held to ransom. This implies that once a pet is in the hands of a pound or shelter that it is then the property of the shelter to do with at they wish.

“What gives any organization, large or small, the right to kill a homeless dog or cat just because they have him or her on their premises? By what right do they deny another rescue group the right to save that animal’s life? On what authority?” ~ Michael Mountain

These groups are funded by the community, to serve the community and should be operating under the mandate that they exist to give homeless pets ‘shelter’. This means offering homeless pets options other than being swiftly killed, of which working with community rescue is a vital part.

Resistance: It’s unfair we’re being judged on ‘kill rate’ alone – we’ve done some excellent work in the community including, improving the fines for dropping dog waste, training for school children, lobbying for laws to mandate desexing, developing a responsible pet ownership event… etc…

Defending poor performance in saving lives is a form of resistance. When a high kill pound is killing the pets in its care, while investing in responsible pet ownership programs for school children, it’s a little like a hospital triage letting people die on trolleys while patting themselves on the back for their investment in gorgeous new drapes. The time for ‘nice to haves’ is after you get your procedures in order and you can spare the resources.

Groups in resistance will counter with; ‘yes, but we have to invest in these programs to see benefit in the future’ which is a strawman argument, given there is already a plan that can lead a community to a place where every healthy, treatable companion animal gets saved – the No Kill equation.

Once all of these are comprehensively implemented and the shelter is no longer unnecessarily killing pets, then by all means get cracking on improving the levels of dog pooh on the sidewalk – but until then buckle down and focus. All the while healthy and treatable pets are dying in your shelter, your shelter is in crisis and should be behaving as so – resourcing only the essentials, putting every energy into rehoming and forming relationships to expand lifesaving and putting all your cards on the table (transparency) to allow your community the chance to assist.

Resistance: We refuse to extend our compassion to pit bulls and free-roaming cats (or our local legislation says we’re not able to). We therefore have no choice but to kill.

Every single community who is either already No Kill, or is looking at a No Kill future, had to overcome community perceptions of pit bulls and free-roaming cats. They had to lobby to change bad laws, or prevent them being enacted. And they had to speak out loudly on behalf of these animals, not taking no for an answer. With the same vehemence organsations have chased unhelpful laws which have backfired (mandatory desexing, pet owner licencing), these organisations now need to lobby for the power to save all animals, not just the cute, easy to rehome ones.

To accept that compassion should only extend to ‘some’ impounded animals is both lazy and deceptive. The community will no longer stand for, nor support those organisations who are only interested in doing the easy half of the job.

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The more resistance you face, the less receptive to change the shelter you are working with is. A shelter or pound who is genuinely wanting to get better outcomes for its pets won’t be niggling over terminology, defending poor performance or trying to think up reasons to shut out rescue groups… but will be at the opposite end of the spectrum – we need you to help us, help us now, in any way you can. These shelters recognise that what they have done to date hasn’t got them where they need to be and are now begging their communities to step up and help. And step up they do.

No Kill is the future of animal sheltering, because shelters should be saving the lives of the animals they are gifted responsibility for. No Kill is the future of animal sheltering, because the public have been donating millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man hours because they want to see impounded pets given a second chance. No Kill is the future of animal sheltering, because the No Kill equation is what the community thought shelters had been doing all along and are disgusted when they find out that shelters choose to kill, rather than implement the programs to stop it.

No Kill is the future of animals sheltering and resistance is just the push back of shelter managers who refuse to change. The truth is those who champion killing overtly, or more subtly through resistance, are simply dinosaurs of another era who refuse to mirror the progressive beliefs of their communities. Don’t waste energy trying to unite with those who refuse to move beyond a state of resistance – they are soon to become irrelevant anyway.