Susan Houser
Bird Conservationists – What’s Wrong With This Picture?
Bird conservationists are perhaps the most effective opponents of Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) programs for feral cats. The conservationists...
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Susan Houser
- Aug 25, 2015
- 3 min
“Invasive” Feral Cats Aren’t So Bad After All
These days, almost everyone involved with trying to increase live release rates for cats supports Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) and...
Susan Houser
- Aug 5, 2015
- 5 min
Capacity for Care
The reaction to my August 2nd blog post about the Association of Shelter Veterinarians (ASV) draft position statement on “The Use of...
Susan Houser
- Jul 22, 2015
- 7 min
Guest Post: My New Best Friends: Thoughts and Experiences from the Best Friends National Conference
By Mark Penn OK, I admit it; I’m kind of a conference junkie. A bit of an introvert, so I don’t like to make myself very conspicuous, but...
Susan Houser
- Jul 1, 2015
- 4 min
Mandating No Kill By Law
Is it a good idea for No Kill advocates to try to get states to pass laws mandating various aspects of No Kill programs? The devil is...
Susan Houser
- Jun 24, 2015
- 9 min
Getting the Word Out About Cats
Cats are not dogs. This seems obvious, and yet the correlative to that statement – that we cannot give equal treatment to cats by...
Susan Houser
- Jun 10, 2015
- 4 min
Expert Opinion is Unified Against Gas Chambers
Right now several states still have gas chambers in active use in animal shelters. Reformers are working hard in those states to get gas...
Susan Houser
- May 27, 2015
- 6 min
No Kill — What Does It Mean?
“No Kill” is a loaded term. Some people love it, some people hate it, and a lot of people are just confused by it. How did this happen,...
Susan Houser
- May 20, 2015
- 4 min
The Glass is Two-Thirds Full
If you follow some of the most popular No Kill social media sites, you might get the idea that things for shelter animals are terrible....
Susan Houser
- Apr 29, 2015
- 3 min
Scarlett’s Story
Scarlett, before she was named Scarlett, was a homeless calico cat who lived in a poor neighborhood in Brooklyn. In the late winter of...
Susan Houser
- Mar 17, 2015
- 5 min
Financial Incentives for Catch and Kill
No Kill advocates rarely address financial issues in animal control and sheltering. That’s natural enough, because we believe that the...
Susan Houser
- Mar 15, 2015
- 4 min
The State of No Kill
To borrow a phrase from the last few State of the Union speeches, the state of No Kill — is strong. In fact, it’s great. But the movement...
Susan Houser
- Jan 23, 2015
- 7 min
The Withering Away of the Animal Shelter?
Friedrich Engels, one of the original philosophers of communist political theory, once said that there would be no need to abolish the...
Susan Houser
- Jan 22, 2015
- 4 min
The Cost of No Kill
I periodically get questions about how much it costs a city to transition to No Kill. Based on what I’ve seen in individual cities and...
Susan Houser
- Nov 25, 2014
- 5 min
The End of Shelter Killing of Cats is in Sight
A little more than a year ago an event happened that promised to be a turning point for efforts to reduce shelter killing of cats. That...
Susan Houser
- Nov 9, 2014
- 4 min
Do It Yourself No Kill
“We’ve been begging the city to go No Kill for years and nothing has happened!” How often have you seen a statement like that? Trying to...
Susan Houser
- Nov 1, 2014
- 4 min
Consultants Redux
There’s an article about Target Zero (TZ) in the most recent issue of Animal Sheltering (the HSUS magazine). The article has a pretty...
Susan Houser
- Sep 23, 2014
- 3 min
Not All 90%+ Save Rates Are Created Equal
We tend to think of a 90% or higher live release rate for a shelter as indicating that the shelter is doing its job successfully. That’s...
Susan Houser
- Jun 30, 2014
- 6 min
No Kill and Plain Old Animal Welfare
In Which The Author Looks At Philosophy And Arrives At A Surprising Conclusion About The Best Method For No Kill To Market Itself (with...
Susan Houser
- Jun 15, 2014
- 6 min
Is No Kill Still An Outsider Movement?
I started my first blog keeping track of high-performing public shelters back in July of 2011. At that time most people thought there...
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