Change is in the wind for the nation's companion animals

The second annual No Kill Conference took place last weekend in Washington, DC.

NKAC

 

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In the past couple of weeks, two important events which will fundamentally and positively impact the future of animals in shelters across the nation took place. On July 23, 2010, the First State passed a law which may well put it on track to become the first No Kill state. And from July 31, 2010 through August 1, 2010, hundreds of No Kill advocates from around the country and as far away as Australia attended the second annual No Kill Conference in Washington, D.C.

Delaware passed a version of the Companion Animal Protection Act, a piece of model shelter reform legislation developed by the No Kill Advocacy Center. The Delaware CAPA, known as S.B. 280, is the most comprehensive piece of legislation to protect animals in shelters in the entire country, providing more protections than the Hayden Law, effective in California for ten years, and more than Oreo’s Law sought to provide in New York before it was (temporarily) defeated despite tremendous public support. It is worth noting that the Delaware CAPA passed both houses unanimously.

Why? Because in the absence of fear-mongering about hoarding and dog fighting by those seeking to maintain the deplorable status quo in which shelters have absolute power to kill and rescuers must remain silent about abuse or risk retaliation, the legislators of Delaware recognized that shelters must be held accountable to standards which bring their operations more in line with the animal-loving public’s values. The public pays for shelters and shelters are there to serve the public. Many people might be surprised to learn that shelters don’t already do the things required by this law, such as:

• Have evening and weekend hours so that working people and those with children in school can visit the shelter to adopt or reclaim animals.
• Scan all incoming animals for microchips and check for tattoos to increase the number of animals reunited with their families.
• Vaccinate all incoming animals within 8 hours of intake to prevent the spread of potentially fatal infectious diseases such as distemper and parvo.
• Contact rescue groups so that animals may be transferred rather than killed.
• Post sufficiently detailed descriptions of stray animals on the web so that owners may search for lost pets online.
• Not kill animals when empty cage or kennel space is available, or when animals may share appropriate cage or kennel space with another animal, or when a foster home is available, or when a rescue group is willing to take that animal.
• Hold all stray animals for at least 72 hours to allow them to be reclaimed.
• Provide all animals with a veterinary exam within 72 hours of admission.
• Have a current policy and procedure manual for performing euthanasia.
• Maintain records on intake, adoptions, reclaims, euthanasia, and medical treatment and publish these records quarterly on the shelter’s website.

This is a law that will save animal lives and spare many pet owners a great deal of anguish while forcing shelters to become actual safety nets for animals. Goodness knows, we need CAPA in Georgia, in every city and county, in the whole state. Transparency and accountability are crucial to saving lives.

The second momentous event was the second annual No Kill Conference in Washington, DC. This was the must-attend event for animal advocates and it sold out six months ago. There is talk of holding it in a larger venue next year, to accommodate the burgeoning interest in No kill shelter reform. The keynote address set the tone for the weekend—No Kill is here, it is the future, and it will have to be codified in law. Conference organizers have kindly provided conference materials for download, making the tools for achieving No kill available to those unable to attend. Shelter track materials are available here. Legal track materials are available here. The conference featured four main 2-hour sessions, each with about six concurrent talks. Organizers plan to make recordings of the talks available on disc. Animal Wise Radio broadcast from the conference.

There are a couple of other opportunities to learn more about the No Kill movement and how you can bring it to your community coming soon. Nathan Winograd will be presenting on ‘Building No Kill Communities’ in Raleigh, NC on September 25. Austin Pets Alive has organized a very impressive list of speakers for their No Kill workshop on September 28, several of which spoke in DC last weekend. If you’re interested, get your tickets now. It will sell out very soon.

The Atlanta Animal Welfare Examiner was privileged to attend, and I’ll be writing up the talks I attended with an eye to how they can be applied in Georgia. Look for upcoming articles on:

• Using the Freedom of Information Act and Georgia’s Open Records Act to force transparency in various aspects of shelter operations.
• What successful No Kill shelter directors—those who save all healthy and treatable homeless animals in their communities—have to teach us about saving 90% or more of all animals entering shelters.
• Legislating No Kill—the importance of codifying the protections of the No Kill Equation in law.
• Reducing intake, increasing adoptions and increasing redemptions and getting more animals out of shelters alive, and the new attitudes needed to accomplish that.
• Oreo’s Law—what it sought to do, why we need it in every state, what it would mean in Georgia,  and why it was tabled despite tremendous public support and support from acknowledged experts on animal law, animal sheltering, and shelter reform.
• Reforming your shelter—how grassroots citizen advocacy can force a shelter to change from a culture of killing to a culture of lifesaving whether current shelter leadership wants to or not.

It was a heady two days. Hundreds of No Kill Advocates, ranging from the No Kill movement’s pioneers, heroes, and elder statesmen, such as Richard Avanzino, Nathan Winograd and Michael Mountain, to relative newcomers who are already proving themselves as forces of change in the face of tragedy, such as Jeff Daniels and Billy LeFeuvre of Justice for Bella, gathered together to learn, exchange ideas, inspire each other and recharge their batteries for the battles that lay ahead.

The conference was abuzz with talk about Delaware’s passage of its version of CAPA, with advocates resolving to introduce CAPA in their home states, cities and counties. They’ve since fanned out, returned to their communities all across the country full of energy and ideas and resolve. If Delaware succeeded by keeping CAPA under wraps, shielded from the opposition of large national groups hostile to No Kill, such as PETA, HSUS and ASPCA, what will happen in the upcoming year? Even if such groups could find out about half of what’s in store and they wanted to fight it, as large and well-funded as they are, they would have time and money for little else.

The No Kill movement has arrived. They can’t beat us. Might as well join us.

Video accompanying the keynote address

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