Berkeley is a city of 113,000 people just across the bay from San Francisco. Berkeley Animal Care Services (BACS) handles animal control and sheltering for Berkeley. BACS also handles animal sheltering for the nearby cities of Piedmont (population 11,000), Emeryville (population 10,000), and Albany (population 19,000). (Emeryville contracts with Piedmont for animal control, and both cities contract with BACS for animal sheltering. Albany contracts with BACS for both animal control and sheltering.) BACS moved into a new shelter building in early 2013. The history of BACS and the decade-long effort to build the new shelter is described here. I called BACS to ask about their owner surrender policy and was told that residents of the four jurisdictions served by BACS may surrender an animal at any time with a small fee ($20 for a cat, $20 for a licensed dog, and $30 for an unlicensed dog). In 2012, BACS had a 91% live release rate with an intake of 1863 animals (scroll down in the link for the report). The shelter reported zero animals in the “died/lost in shelter care” category during the year and 3 owner-requested euthanasias were performed, so the live release rate is unchanged if those categories are counted as euthanasias. In 2013, BACS took in 1641 dogs and cats and had a 90% live release rate. The shelter reported 1 owner-requested euthanasia and 1 animal in the died/lost category, and the live release rate is unchanged if those deaths are included with euthanasias. BACS transfers a high percentage of its animals (796 in 2012 and 668 in 2013) to community organizations. Two private organizations —  the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society (BEBHS), and Home At Last Animal Rescue (HAL) — are part of a coalition to support BACS. The group is known as the Berkeley Alliance for Homeless Animals Coalition (BAHAC). Berkeley, California, was originally listed by this blog on April 18, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Roscommon County is located in the northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, in the Au Sable State Forest area. There are no incorporated cities in the county, but there are a few rapidly growing unincorporated towns. The population of the county is over 25,000. Animal control and sheltering is done for the entire county, including the unincorporated towns, by the Roscommon County Animal Shelter, which is run by the county. The shelter has a waiting list for owner surrenders. The Michigan animal shelter database report for the Roscommon County shelter for 2013 showed a 99.3% live release rate, which  dropped to 95% when owner-requested euthanasias were included. Total intake for the year was 1006 cats and dogs. The reported live release rate was 99% in 2012, but it dropped to 91% when owner-requested euthanaisa was included in the euthanasia total. The live release rates for the years 2009, 2010, and 2011 were 95%, 98%, and 99% respectively. Roscommon was one of 10 counties in Michigan recognized by the Michigan Pet Fund Alliance for 2011. A September 12 article about the shelter’s director offers insight into what has made this shelter so successful. The article describes how Terry MacKillop, the shelter director, was asked to help reform neighboring Saginaw County’s animal control system. In the article, MacKillop mentions the importance of several factors, including infection control policies, calling rescues to help place animals, and leadership. The article cites MacKillop as “saying that reducing the euthanasia rate to near zero in Roscommon County was the result of a lot of community outreach, education and building relationships with rescue groups and other organizations. ‘Mine didn’t happen overnight,’ he said.” Roscommon County, Michigan, was originally listed by this blog on May 19, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Colorado is one of the states that require animal shelters to report their statistics to the state. The reporting form is pretty detailed and, although it’s not perfect, it elicits a lot of information. I posted last year on Colorado’s statewide statistics for 2012, which showed a consolidated live release rate of 85.5%. In this post I’ll take a look at Colorado’s statewide statistics for 2013. INTAKE Total intake of dogs and cats in Colorado shelters in 2013 was up slightly, at 168,841 as compared to 159,183 in 2012. Dogs were 101,771 of this total, and cats were 67,070. The increase in dog intake was almost entirely due to transfers, including an increase in transfers into the state of 4766. Most of the increase in cat intake was also due to an increase in transfers from out of state, which more than doubled over 2012. The total intake of dogs and cats in 2013 was 32 animals per 1000 people, up slightly from 31 per 1000 people in 2012. Average shelter intake per 1000 people in the United States is estimated at anywhere from 15 to 30 animals per 1000 people. The fact that Colorado can do so well with a high intake is evidence that high intake is not an excuse for a high rate of killing. LIVE RELEASE RATE The consolidated live release rate for cats and dogs for all reporting shelters in Colorado for 2013 was 89%. This is remarkable for an entire state, and represents an improvement of more than 3% from 2012, even with the increased intake. The live release rate for dogs was 92% and for cats was 83%. All Colorado has to do to become a No Kill state is to implement some of the recommendations being made by many people around the country today as to handling of community cats. Colorado shelters do not report as a coalition, and so there might be some double counting of live releases in the “in state” transfer category. Most of the in-state transfers probably go to non-reporting rescues, though, and so to the extent that this is a source of error at all it would be a very small one. In fact, even if we assume that all in-state transfers went to other reporting organizations, the live release rate is reduced only 1 percentage point, to 88%. If the number of dogs and cats who died in shelter care are included with euthanasias in calculating the live release rate, it drops 1 percentage point. Shelters can include owner-requested euthanasias in the “Other” live-disposition category in Colorado, so it is not possible to break them out. ADOPTIONS One of the notable things about Colorado’s 2012 data was how well the state as a whole was doing with adoptions. That trend continued in 2013, with Colorado shelters reporting that 87,223 dogs and cats were adopted. This was an adoption rate of 17 animals per 1000 people, a slight increase over 2012’s rate of 16 per 1000 people. RETURN-TO-OWNER Colorado shelters returned 64% of the stray dogs they impounded to their owners, an improvement over the 59% figure for 2012. Among cats, 25% of strays were returned either to an owner or a colony. This is a high rate for cats compared to the nation as a whole, but if Colorado could increase this rate by doing more shelter-neuter-return it would become a No Kill state. BREED-SPECIFIC LEGISLATION Colorado has a state law prohibiting breed-specific legislation, but the law has an exception for local breed-specific ordinances that were in existence at the time the law was passed. The state’s largest city, Denver, still has one of these “grandfathered” pit-bull bans. Several small cities and towns in the state still have such ordinances as well.

When people talk about the San Francisco model of No Kill, they are usually referring to a set of programs that were developed by Richard Avanzino and his team at the San Francisco SPCA in the 1980s and early 1990s. The team developed lots of programs, but some of the most important were fostering (1980), mobile adoptions (1980), animal behavior (1983), pediatric spay-neuter (1989), landlord-tenant assistance (1991), and Feral Fix (1993). Underlying all of these programs and extending through the 1980s and 1990s were the volunteer program, modern marketing, community engagement, provision of veterinary care, and spay-neuter efforts. Avanzino says that the volunteers were particularly important because many of the programs grew out of ideas originally suggested by volunteers. A lot of attention has been devoted to the San Francisco programs, and rightfully so, because they have proven to be the foundation of No Kill. We can accurately say that No Kill, as far as the programs were concerned, was in place in San Francisco by 1993. But there is another piece of the puzzle that is often overlooked by people who focus solely on the programs, and that is the importance of cooperation in making No Kill work in San Francisco. Up until 1989 the San Francisco SPCA held the contract to provide animal control and sheltering for the city. In that year, the SPCA gave up the contract and the city created its own agency to do animal control and sheltering. From 1989 on, the role of the SPCA was to support the city shelter, not to be the city shelter. It turned out that the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. The two agencies – the San Francisco SPCA and the new city Department of Animal Care and Control – were so effective that the live release rate for the city increased substantially. In 1994 Rich was able, in spite of initial resistance, to get the city to agree to sign the historic Adoption Pact. The Adoption Pact guaranteed a home to every adoptable dog and cat that entered the shelter system in San Francisco. “Adoptable” meant healthy and of reasonably good temperament. Animals who were old, blind, deaf, or handicapped were considered adoptable if they were medically healthy. The fact that the city agency did the work of animal control and basic sheltering meant that the SPCA could focus on saving the animals who were not adoptable due to health or behavior conditions. In addition to taking in overflow of healthy animals that the city shelter could not place, the SPCA saved many of the treatable animals as well. The combined system had more resources (because the city was paying its share), and the division of responsibility allowed the agencies to increase their efficiency. The years since 1994 have shown us that the San Francisco programs by themselves can work well in smaller communities, especially if those communities are progressive and the shelter is a private humane society. In a community of up to 150,000 or so people, a single organization can do very well just by implementing the programs. Examples that come to mind are the shelters in Otsego County (MI), Charlottesville (VA), Lynchburg (VA), and Tompkins County (NY), all of which operate as the sole shelters in their communities. In larger cities, though, what we usually see is a cooperative effort with at least two large agencies working together. A few example are Jacksonville (the city agency works with the Jacksonville Humane Society and First Coast No More Homeless Pets), Washoe County (the city agency works with the Nevada Humane Society), Austin (the city agency works with Austin Pets Alive! and the Austin Humane Society), and Richmond (the city agency works with the Richmond SPCA). Informal consortiums of many organizations and agencies working together have also been effective. Examples are New York City and the metro areas of Denver and Portland, Oregon. The bottom line is that the San Francisco programs are important, but efficiency derived from sharing of tasks is also an important component of No Kill success, especially in larger communities. Indeed, cooperation may be the fastest, surest way for most large communities to get to No Kill. No Kill advocates who are frustrated with a slow pace of progress in their communities may want to look at the structure of sheltering locally. Does the agency that handles animal control and sheltering have enough support? If not, what can advocates do to provide that support? No Kill seems to require an infrastructure that is strong enough to allow the No Kill programs to be deployed, and in larger cities that may mean that the shelter should not have to go it alone.

There are two types of No Kill activists. Those of you who have been around for a while know exactly what I mean. For people who don’t, here’s a summary: Purist No Kill Advocate: Believes that shelters should find live dispositions for all savable animals. Sees No Kill in moral terms and makes statements like “I have no problem holding my local shelter to high standards because animals continue to die.” Does not work or volunteer inside a kill shelter, believing that would be too painful or would help enable killing; instead, works or volunteers for a No Kill shelter or rescue, or carries out activism on social media or by writing or lobbying. Believes that all shelter directors could stop killing quickly if they chose to, and when they don’t it’s because of laziness or ineptitude or because they like killing. Believes that governments have a duty to save the lives of shelter animals and that political pressure must be used to force governments to hire No Kill shelter management and to enact laws forbidding shelter killing. Uses the term “No Kill” a lot. Believes that every animal, or almost every animal, can be saved. Pragmatist No Kill Advocate: Believes that shelters should find live dispositions for all savable animals. Sees No Kill in utilitarian terms and makes statements like “we should all work together toward the No Kill goal.” Works in and with kill shelters to help them reform, including volunteering in a traditional shelter, forming a non-profit to work closely with the shelter, or winning a contract to run the shelter. Believes that getting to No Kill is a complicated and sometimes lengthy endeavor that requires marshaling resources and building cooperative networks and infrastructure. Does not spend much time trying to lobby local government or pass laws, is willing to assume responsibility for creating no kill without waiting for government to do it. May use the term “No Kill” rarely or not at all because it alienates the traditional shelter officials the pragmatist is working with. Thinks that the proportion of animals who can be saved depends on the available resources and the mix of intake that a particular shelter gets. As you can see, the first bullet point in each description is the same. Both purists and pragmatists believe that shelters should find live dispositions for all savable animals. This is very important, because it shows that both groups are starting from the same place with the same goal. Where they differ is in how to get there. In general, pragmatists are willing to engage with the traditional shelter system directly and take personal responsibility for change. Purists believe that the traditional shelter system must be smashed and rebuilt and that it is the job of government to do the rebuilding. There are far more purists than pragmatists. This is not surprising, since being a pragmatic advocate requires a lot of work inside traditional shelters and a lot of literal blood, sweat, and tears. In spite of the much larger number of purist advocates, what I see in city after city where a successful transition to No Kill has taken place is that pragmatists have been central to the change. It is rare for No Kill change to happen without considerable boots-on-the-ground intervention by pragmatists. That makes sense because at some point the actual work has to be done, and who is better able to do the work of No Kill change than No Kill advocates. Although pragmatists are essential for No Kill change, purists also have an important role to play. Every movement benefits by having a lot of debate and a lot of discussion of ideas. The purists provide this, and it may serve a function in keeping the pragmatists from getting too pragmatic. Another reason that purists may be essential to No Kill is that the moral clarity and black-and-white presentation of issues by the purists is good for drawing people in, and some of those people, as they get more involved in No Kill and come to understand the complexities, will become effective pragmatists. No Kill as a movement has a serious problem in the relationship between purists and pragmatists. Some purists regard the pragmatists as kill enablers, because the pragmatists are willing to work with people whom the purists see as the enemy. In some cases purists have deliberately tried to silence or discredit pragmatists by trying to shut them out of the debate or bullying them. And some purists have undercut the work of the pragmatists by demonizing and threatening the traditional shelter officials that the pragmatists are trying to work with. This is why many pragmatists have stopped identifying themselves as No Kill advocates. Few people within the purist faction have spoken up to condemn the behavior of the bullies. The pragmatists, for their part, have not done a good job of communicating with the purists. The purist group contains many new advocates who do not have a deep understanding of how shelters work or the complexity of reforming shelters. Pragmatists often see the purists as a distraction rather than as people they need to engage and educate. And pragmatists, who tend to be cooperative by nature and do not want to criticize others in the movement, have failed to push back against those purists who are bullies. One way in which the pragmatists have failed to communicate with the purists is by failing to make the case for private action in shelter reform rather than government action. Many purists have mistaken beliefs such as that shelter animals have a right to life, or that government has an inherent obligation to provide live outcomes for shelter animals. Purists may overestimate the number of voters who are willing to make their electoral choices solely on the issue of change at the shelter. These mistaken beliefs encourage purists to spend their time hectoring public officials instead of creating change themselves. Demonstrating by case histories and statistics that No Kill change in most cities has occurred with the participation of the private sector would go a long way toward helping purist activists understand the advantages of pragmatism. The traditional shelter industry is starting to build its own internal momentum for lifesaving change, and that will go on regardless of what No Kill advocates do. But the process of shelter reform will go a lot faster and a lot smoother if the No Kill movement can begin to coalesce around approaches that have the best track records. Cory Booker, U.S. senator from New Jersey, is an animal advocate who has done as much for animals as any legislator in the country. In his speech last night to the Democratic convention, he said words that could apply to the No Kill movement – when we work as a team “we will rise.” Let’s get out of our silos, have respect for each other, make the effort to understand each other, and rise together.

It’s too early for 2014 stats to be out, but not too early to look at some No Kill shelters that had very good years in 2014: Lynchburg is a small city of 76,000 people in rural Virginia. The Lynchburg Humane Society (LHS) has a contract with the city of Lynchburg for animal services. The director, Makena Yarbrough, recently posted a blog talking about events in 2014. (The blog is accompanied by a photo of a 12-year-old adoptee who may be the cutest dog ever). The shelter took in over 800 more animals in 2014 than in 2013, including 368 pets saved from neighboring shelters. The brand-new shelter building, paid for by donations that LHS raised (way to go community!) is almost ready and is slated to open in February. They had a very successful special effort during kitten season in 2014 to get kittens out of the old shelter building quickly so they wouldn’t get sick, and this effort sharply decreased their shelter deaths. What a great 2014 – and they are planning to make 2015 even better. Jacksonville also reached out to help neighboring communities in 2014. First Coast No More Homeless Pets (FCNMHP), a Jacksonville non-profit that has been a major part of the city’s success, has been helping neighboring Nassau and Clay counties to sharply reduce their kill rates. Nassau County Animal Services recently announced that they increased their live release rate by 20 points in 2014 and plan to become No Kill in 2015. Rick DuCharme, FCNMHP’s director, wants to expand assistance to additional neighboring counties, including some that are sparsely populated and have few resources. Kansas City, Missouri, is a city of 464,000 people. A group of pet advocates formed the Kansas City Pet Project (KCPP) in 2011 and took over the city pound on January 1, 2012. Brent Toellner, president of the board of directors, posted a retrospective of the last three years. Their staff has grown from 18 to more than 60 and they have opened two satellite adoptions centers. Fosters, volunteers, adopters, and community support have all grown. The shelter has a tradition of being open on New Years Day, as they were on their first day of business in 2012. They did that to show the community that it was not going to be business as usual with KCPP, and they kept their promise. Christie Banduch, the director of the tiny Kirby, Texas, No Kill shelter, developed a very ambitious plan in 2014 to make the unincorporated parts of Bexar County, where Kirby is located, No Kill too. She spotted an opportunity when the city of San Antonio, which is also located in Bexar County, decided to stop providing animal control and sheltering for the county. When that happened the county was left with no shelter. Kirby’s shelter is too small for the number of animals they take in, so an agreement for Kirby and Bexar County to partner, hopefully with Banduch in charge of the whole thing, would be serendipity. And last, but far from least, 2014 may turn out to be the year when the entire state of Colorado went over the 90% live-release-rate mark. The state hit an 89% live release rate for 2013. Unfortunately, if this year is like last year we will be waiting several months on the data. Colorado would be the first No Kill state ever, though, so it will be worth the wait. In addition to saving so many of its own animals, Colorado also saved thousands of animals transferred into the state from kill shelters. In addition to these stories there were hundreds of other communities whose shelters did great things in 2014. 2014 was the best year yet for No Kill, and all indications are that 2015 will be even better.

The Clear the Shelters adoption event is coming up on July 23, 2016. Last year, in its first year as a nationwide event, almost 20,000 animals were adopted out. Adoption fees were waived. This event has the potential to develop into a major step forward for No Kill. Clear the Shelters is a project of NBC and Telemundo television stations. It appears to have a somewhat loose organizational structure at this time, with local television affiliates offering publicity for shelters that sign up. Last year roughly 400 shelters participated. Support for the event appears to be coming from a variety of organizations depending on the location. The beauty of this arrangement is that it is enlisting traditional shelters as well as No Kill shelters. This makes sense since the event offers free publicity, and most traditional shelters are accustomed to looking to local media for publicity. The event can be a way for shelters that have been reluctant to participate in discounted adoption events to take the plunge. Another huge benefit of this event is that volunteers are being drafted to be adoption counselors for a day. This gives volunteers at these shelters something to do beyond walking dogs and socializing cats, and gets them involved in shelter marketing. When volunteers see the effects of adoption specials, they will be motivated to try new methods of marketing. And not to be ignored is the importance of the timing. July is one of the highest intake months for shelters, if not the highest, due to kitten season and an increase in stray intake. The Clear the Shelters event can be carried on for more than one day in cities that are having particularly high summer intake. Dallas Animal Services, for example, is carrying on the event for the entire month of July. The event started in 2014 in northern Texas as the brainchild of Corey Price, director of the City of Irving animal shelter. Irving is a city of about 230,000 people and is part of the Dallas metro area. That first year, in 2014, the event was known as “Empty the Shelters,” and 33 shelters in northern Texas participated. A map of participating shelters for 2016 shows that so far participation has been primarily in northern Texas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, northern Georgia, North and South Carolina, central Ohio, Chicago, Minneapolis, Buffalo, Miami, and the northeast corridor. But there is no reason that the event could not spread to virtually any community with a local television station, which is virtually all communities. Kudos to Corey Price for her great idea of using local television stations to serve as a focal point for recruiting shelters and promoting the event. This event, with its synergy between shelters and local media, could eventually rival Home 4 the Holidays in the number of lives saved.

I usually report about No Kill efforts that already have a track record of success. But not infrequently I get questions or comments from people who say that there is nothing going on in their city or town – no type of No Kill effort at all – and they wonder what to do, how to get started. Based on the stories of successful No Kill leaders I’ve interviewed, there does not seem to be any one path to accomplishment. However, in this post I list some themes that have turned up over and over in my talks with successful leaders. Please note – I am not a consultant and have never worked for pay in a shelter. The following is based on what I have learned from interviews with lots of people in both No Kill and the traditional shelter industry in my five years of reporting on No Kill. So take it for what it’s worth. Seek out inspiration. A common theme with successful No Kill leaders I’ve interviewed is that they actively sought out inspiration. Robin Starr went to San Francisco in the 1990s to see in person what Rich Avanzino was accomplishing at the San Francisco SPCA. Rick DuCharme went to Lynda Foro’s 1997 No Kill conference in Massachusetts and met Peter Marsh, who told him about the impressive results of New Hampshire’s approach to No Kill. Rebecca Guinn attended the 2002 Best Friends conference and received encouragement to start a non-profit. All three of these people went on to have a major part in making their cities No Kill. If you are a new No Kill advocate wondering what to do, you cannot do better, in my opinion, than attending the Best Friends conference. There are other great conferences, including American Pets Alive! and HSUS Expo, but I think Best Friends is particularly helpful because they present workshops by people who have been key in getting their cities to No Kill. It would be nice if Best Friends would stagger the schedule of these workshops so an individual can attend all or most of them. But in addition to the workshops themselves the Best Friends conferences offer a great opportunity to network with those successful leaders. If I were a new advocate I would ask the successful people what were the very first things they did on the way to No Kill. Makena Yarbrough raised a lot of money and built a fabulous shelter for the Lynchburg Humane Society, but that was not the first thing she did. Rick DuCharme’s organization works with other organizations to put on gigantic mega-adoption events in Jacksonville, but he did not start out doing that. Find one thing that you think will put you on the path to No Kill, something that’s doable starting out. It may be transports. It may be a TNR program. It could be starting a volunteer program for the shelter, or a foster program, or a help desk. It might be building a grass roots organization to work at creating a city council that is more friendly to animal issues. It isn’t a bad thing to start small, and learning how other people have succeeded can inspire you to realize that small efforts can grow into big organizations. Ask for help. Once you decide what you want to do, ask for help. There is lots of help out there, but if you want people to help you, you really need to have a plan. People are much more likely to want to help you if you have done your homework, know what you are talking about, have made contacts within No Kill, and above all are practical about what you can accomplish. You must be able to articulate specifically what help you want and why you think your plan will make a difference. Some of the best places to look for help are: (1) No Kill shelters near you. I have yet to meet a successful No Kill director who does not want to help neighboring communities go No Kill. A No Kill shelter in your area can do several things for you, such as alert you to local resources, help you build a grass roots group, and maybe even stage regional events. And when you are trying to convince city leaders that No Kill is possible in your city, they will be far more impressed by what a neighboring shelter has accomplished than a shelter hundreds of miles away. (2) State federations. These are really an overlooked resource. Some state federations, like the one in Virginia, are fabulous and very committed to No Kill. Even some of the more traditional federations may have people who are successfully raising live release rates, but who do not advertise that fact or call it “no kill.” The state federation is definitely worth checking out. (3) Consultants. The most productive way to use a consultant is if you can have the consultant meet the shelter director and make an inspection of the entire animal control and sheltering system in the jurisdiction. That’s not always possible, but if it is, a consultant can be incredibly helpful. Today there are shelter veterinarians who offer consultations, and they may be a little less intimidating to a traditional shelter director than a No Kill consultant. Lots of people seem to start out by focusing on getting donations or grants. Donations and grants are critically important, but it seems like people are much more successful at getting them once they have at least a little bit of a track record or institutional backing. Asking for donations or grants for a brand-new enterprise that hasn’t done anything yet is a tough sell. Not impossible, but not easy. Build bridges. I’ve seen some people who advise new No Kill advocates to view themselves as superheroes who are coming in to destroy the old system and raise a new system in its place. That does not appear to be a very effective method. Virtually all the successful No Kill efforts I’ve reported on involve people who built bridges to city leadership and to other organizations in the city. Building bridges does not mean you all get together and sing kumbaya. It means that you conduct yourself in a businesslike, professional way. Perhaps the most important part of building bridges is to prove that you are willing to work. No one likes an armchair quarterback, and any advocate who just stands back and tells people what to do, even if they frame their message politely, is not going to be very effective. The beauty of building bridges is that you may find help where you were not expecting it. Even if you don’t, you have left open the possibility of a future coalition. And by having an open dialogue with the other players in the city you will learn a lot more about the situation than if you wall yourself off in a silo. Building bridges may help the work you are doing, and it certainly will not hurt. Burning bridges, on the other hand, can permanently make your job harder. There has been an unfortunate tendency among some No Kill advocates to demonize people who work in traditional shelters. The psychology of traditional shelter workers and the interface between the traditional shelter industry and No Kill has deep historical roots, and a thorough discussion of it is beyond the scope of this blog post, but suffice it to say that there are all kinds of people who work in traditional shelters. Just don’t pre-judge them, take each one as an individual, and you will do fine. Analyze the situation. One might think that “analyzing the situation” should be done earlier in the process. As a practical matter you will be analyzing the situation all the time, right from the start. But it is difficult to analyze a situation accurately until you are pretty familiar with it. And getting too wrapped up in an analysis can slow you down if the analysis turns out to be wrong or incomplete. So by all means analyze the situation, but don’t get too invested in the analysis until you are sure of your ground. Many of the successful No Kill leaders today started out in one direction and then either changed directions or added additional initiatives as they went along. That said, you do need to know the basic facts about your community. What is your shelter’s policy toward cat intake? Does the shelter make traps available to people? Does animal control actively seek out free-roaming cats to impound? Do they only accept cats over the counter? Is there a TNR program? What is intake per 1,000 people? What is the breakdown between strays and owner surrenders? Between dogs and cats? How long is kitten season in your location? How much money does the shelter receive? How old is the shelter building? How convenient is it for adopters? What are the state and local laws, regulations, and ordinances that affect the shelter? Who on the city council or among the county commissioners is friendly to animal issues? Are there a lot of free-roaming animals in the city? What organizations and rescues pull animals from the shelter? What is the shelter’s social media outreach? How many non-euthanasia deaths are there each year? What categories of animals are dying of disease? What percentage of dogs and cats are killed for behavior? Does the shelter do owner-requested euthanasia, and if so how many and what are the requirements? Does the shelter vaccinate on intake? Does it require an appointment for owner surrenders? Knowing the answers to these questions and a lot more like them can help you decide what needs to be done and how to focus your energies. In starting out you want to pick a goal that will have an impact and is big enough to attract other people to your effort, but not so big that it becomes unfocused or overwhelming. Don’t get discouraged It is possible that you will struggle for months or maybe even years and feel that you are not accomplishing very much, but in fact you really are. Maybe your effort to persuade the shelter director to meet with a consultant failed, but if you have been polite, constructive, and professional, and have done a good job explaining the advantages of a consultation, you will have made an impression on the shelter director. And you will have learned something about that director. Maybe you set a goal to do 1,000 free spay-neuters in the city’s poorest neighborhood in your first year and you only did 500, but 500 is far better than nothing. And you will have established contacts that can allow you to do better next year. Just talking to people about No Kill and making the effort is important. If your projects fail, they will still help pave the way for people after you to succeed. Regardless of what you might hear, No Kill is almost never easy. In a tiny town where the shelter receives a few hundred animals a year, you might be able to achieve No Kill overnight, but not in Memphis. Or Dallas, or Houston, or Detroit, or any of a lot of mid-sized cities and counties. Be realistic, not ideological. Above all, make your own way.

We have achieved very high spay-neuter rates for owned cats and dogs (83% for owned dogs and 91% for owned cats*). If people are to have dogs and cats, the dogs and cats must come from somewhere. Hence the title – are we in danger of cutting the number of dogs and cats available for adoption to the point that we see negative consequences in the form of shelter shortages? Will spay-neuter programs that are too successful wind up driving potential adopters into the arms of puppy millers? For cats, the answer to the question of whether we are going too far with spaying and neutering is a resounding “no,” at least for now. Owned cats are perhaps no more than half of the total number of cats, and feral and community cats will continue to supply kittens to meet the demand for the foreseeable future. For dogs, the answer is “maybe.” The dog supply differs from the cat supply in two important ways. First, unlike with cats where we have perhaps as many as tens of millions of feral and community cats, feral dogs have almost disappeared in the United States. There are persistent reports that a few areas (Detroit, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston and parts of the southwest are often mentioned) have a feral dog problem. We don’t know for sure because there have been no studies to find out one way or the other, but if there are places with feral dog problems they are rare. The second way in which the dog supply differs from the cat supply is that breeding on a large commercial scale is common with dogs and almost unheard-of with cats. The reason why large-scale commercial breeding of cats is almost unheard-of is that there is much less diversity in the cat population than the dog population. Although there are cat breeds, in most cases the differences from one breed to another are relatively minor – differences in coat characteristics and color and slight differences in size and build. Brachycephalia (a harmful genetic mutation) is unfortunately present in a few cat breeds, but overall you do not see anywhere near the size, conformation, and temperament variations in cats that you do in dogs. Because cats are mostly of one type there is less reason for people to want “purebred” cats than purebred dogs and less incentive to breed cats in large numbers for commercial gain. Lucky cats! In the last 40 to 50 years the percentage of people who buy their dogs from a commercial breeder as opposed to adopting from a shelter or rescue has decreased. There are many reasons for this. Knock-off breed registries have been created to undermine the near-monopoly that the American Kennel Club (AKC) used to have on purebred-dog registration. Commercial breeders embraced these new registries because they were less expensive than AKC registration. The existence of a multitude of registries may have cheapened the overall worth of the “purebred” concept in the public’s eye, since the new registries have exposed the fact that a pedigree is just a piece of paper with little intrinsic value. Another reason that people have become disenchanted with purebred dogs, in my opinion, is because show breeders have pursued ever more extreme “type” in their dogs, and as a result the health and soundness of purebred dogs has declined. A recent survey by the Kennel Club in England indicated that the lifespan of purebreds has dropped. No surprise to anyone who looks objectively at what is being rewarded as the ideal breed type at dog shows. Yet another reason why mixed breeds have become more popular in recent decades is that the advent of the computer made it much easier to adopt a dog. Petfinder, which started up in the mid-1990s, evened the playing field between commercial breeders and shelters, giving shelters a way to publicize their animals. Petfinder and the increasing number of pet stores that feature homeless animals also seem to have led to a big increase in the number of rescues that take in owner surrenders and pull mixed-breeds from shelters. They too now have ways to compete with the commercial breeders. And there has been a change in the attitude of the public toward shelter animals. That is partly because of all the efforts that shelter workers have made to make visiting a shelter a better experience. It also may be because people today more and more view their own pets as family members, and that increases their empathy for homeless animals. All these changes mean that today we have more demand than ever from the public to adopt shelter dogs, at the same time that we have less supply of dogs. Today, spay-neuter programs for dogs are concentrating less on the overall number of dogs and more on an imbalance in the demand for dogs. Shelters in most places consistently report that they have too many large dogs, especially of the so-called “pit bull” type, and too few cute, fluffy, small dogs. People will stand in line at the shelter to adopt a 20-pound poodle mix, but a healthy, friendly, well-mannered 60-pound pit mix may have to wait months before an adopter comes along. So the answer seems to be that we still need to go full speed ahead, all hands on deck for feral and community cat sterilization, but for dogs we need a more targeted approach. The difference between today and the situation we faced 25 years ago, when the big spay-neuter effort of the 1990s started, is that today we need to work smarter, not harder. We need to start integrating our spay-neuter efforts with the current state of the market for shelter cats and dogs. Ideally we can adjust spay-neuter efforts so that we have enough supply to meet the demand from people who want to adopt, but not so much supply that shelters have to scramble to find homes for them all. As for the future, any systemic shortages of dogs in the United States could be addressed by importing homeless dogs from overseas. There is a lot of fear-mongering by commercial breeders about dog importations, though, so it remains to be seen whether a significant number of imported homeless dogs will be allowed. There is also some “friendly fire” from No Kill advocates who oppose transportation and importing of dogs because they would like to see shelters go out of business entirely. This is a viewpoint I don’t understand. If shelters close down due to a lack of pets available for adoption, commercial breeders will bounce back and we will be stuck with all the horrors of commercial dog breeding forever. We have the puppy millers on the ropes — let’s keep them there. * American Pet Products Association National Pet Owners Survey 2013-2014 (Greenwich, CT: American Pet Products Association, 2014), 16.

Getting to and sustaining No Kill is more difficult in some places than others. If I were looking for the easiest place for a No Kill transition, I would pick a small town with a lot of educated or wealthy people – maybe a ski resort or a college town. The town should be in the northern part of the country, the colder the better, and preferably in a mountainous area. The shelter should be owned and managed by a humane society, preferably one with an endowment or income stream that can help fund the transition to No Kill. And it would be a great bonus if the town had a veterinary college nearby with a shelter medicine program. No Kill in those circumstances would probably be easy to achieve and sustain. On the other hand, think about a job as director of a municipal-owned shelter in a big southern city, in a place that has warm weather for most of the year and a long kitten season, with a population that has average or less-than-average levels of wealth and education, and with no subsidized access to advanced veterinary care. That would be tough. There are people who have succeeded in creating No Kill in such circumstances, but it’s hard work. Until the last few years the great majority of No Kill communities have more closely resembled the scenario described in the first paragraph than in the second. But recently we have seen an explosion of cities with live release rates over 80%, in places where it would have seemed impossible just five to ten years ago. We have seen shelter directors taking on No Kill projects in big cities in the south and the midwest, including in states like South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Missouri. Even Mississippi has a No Kill shelter now. That’s great news, but unfortunately some No Kill advocates are not making the distinction between the little resort town in Colorado and the giant metropolis in the south. There have been several reports of shelter directors saving 98%, 99%, or 100% of animals in little county shelters in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, or in wealthy small towns in mountainous areas of Colorado, or in college towns in the northeast, and some advocates seem to have gotten a skewed idea of what is possible in places that look more like average America. Actually, the 98% to 100% save rates seem to be pretty rare even in the small northern towns. Even in those places 90% to 97% yearly save rates are probably more common. The result of the high expectations has been that some shelter directors who are revolutionizing shelters in the south and saving tens of thousands of lives every year are nevertheless being criticized because so far they are “only” at 80% or 85% or 89% instead of 98% to 100%. And the criticisms are not gentle. I was talking to one such shelter director recently who said she and her staff have been called “SOBs” and “murderers.” And those are the printable epithets. This director and her organization stepped in to save a dysfunctional shelter system in a large southern city, and they are raising the live release rate very rapidly. They are working under extremely difficult conditions, with virtually no establishment support, and they are practically killing themselves doing it. The director told me that she had just recently taken her first vacation in five years, and that all she did was sleep. I would defy any of her critics to give up what she has given up to do this work, and I would defy any of them to do a better job. And yet there is a segment of our own No Kill movement that thinks that she and her team are not good enough! Similarly, in another large southern city that has seen many failed past attempts to raise live release rates, the current director of the municipal shelter is slowly and steadily raising live release rates. It’s looking good for his shelter to have a live release rate in the 80% range for 2015. Will he ever get to 90%? I don’t know, but the year before he took over the shelter didn’t even get to 50%. Yet he was the subject of relentless criticism from some local advocates before he even had a chance to get started. In another southern city some local No Kill advocates have been criticizing the shelter even as it has reached and exceeded the 90% standard. They disapproved of the program that shelter management chose to use, because there is a different program that they like better. And in a northwestern city a group of No Kill advocates have been pillorying a No Kill shelter that reports live release rates of over 90%. None of the shelters in the cities and towns I mentioned above are perfect, and criticism can be a good thing when it points out real flaws and urges even better performance. But undeserved criticism can be draining for shelter directors. And calling out shelter directors who are rapidly improving their live releases but are not up to 80% or 90% yet can actually cause harm and slow their momentum by undermining the support and engagement of the community. Unreasonable critics are only part of a larger problem, though, which is that good shelter directors working in the tougher cities are often not seeing enough rewards for a job that can be incredibly difficult and draining. When we fail to appreciate good directors we risk losing some of our best leaders to burnout. Burnout may not be a big problem in the case of directors of small shelters in wealthy northern towns, but it is potentially a problem for the new generation of shelter directors who are taking on tougher challenges. Just offhand, I can think of several No Kill stars who have left positions as municipal shelter directors in recent years. Most of these people have gone on to other important work on the national stage in No Kill, which is a good thing, but we have lost them from the front lines. So what can be done to combat burnout and keep great directors on the job? First, we need to make sure that directors have the help they need. No Kill advocates, instead of standing on the sidelines and demanding that the director work miracles, can get involved themselves. They can approach the city or county government (in a reasonable, respectful way, after doing their homework and keeping in mind that governments have many important priorities) and seek more resources for the shelter, including higher pay for good performers. They can work on revising ordinances, an important task that is often overlooked. Perhaps most of all, No Kill advocates can either start their own organizations to assist shelters, or work on reforming local legacy humane societies that are not doing their part. It is hard to overestimate the importance of supporting organizations in getting to and sustaining high live release rates. For example, two large cities in the south that have live release rates around 95% have been able to reach that level in part because in each of the two cities there are three large organizations that help each other in the No Kill effort. But in some cities there are unhelpful legacy humane societies that are sucking up the lion’s share of local donations and mostly using them to put on a happy face and keep their payroll up. I’m speaking here about some local organizations, not the national organizations. In the last few years the traditional national organizations, with one notable exception, have become very supportive of No Kill and they are now doing some innovative stuff. Both the HSUS and the ASPCA, for example (along with other national organizations that have always supported No Kill), were early supporters of the new cat paradigms, and have used their enormous national influence to gain increasing acceptance for what otherwise could have been a hard sell. Legacy humane societies that haven’t really changed the way they operate in the last 20, 30, or 40 years are a problem. Imagine the difference it would make for the municipal shelter director, on the morning of a puppy mill bust when 40 dogs in poor condition are being impounded, to get a call from the local humane society with an offer to take in the 25 sickest dogs. That type of help from local organizations goes a long way to preventing burnout, and it is really what every municipal shelter director has a right to expect. It might behoove local No Kill advocates to ask what the local humane societies are doing before they go after the municipal shelter director. The work of a No Kill municipal shelter director has a lot of intrinsic rewards. It is important work. It is life-saving. No Kill shelter directors know they are making the world a better place. But a person who has the managerial and people skills and the work ethic needed to succeed as a shelter director in a typical American city is someone who has talents that would be rewarded with a lot more pay and status and a lot less stress in another profession. If we are going to retain our stars and attract other stars to the profession, we need to appreciate them and try to support them rather than make their jobs harder.

During the 12 years that she worked with J.P. Morgan she was also volunteering for animal welfare issues. For many years she was president of the board of a large private humane society and helped shepherd it through a rapid growth phase and the building of a new shelter. In 2009, when the Great Recession hit and the financial world was thrown into chaos, Teresa’s position with J.P. Morgan was one of the casualties. Rather than look around for another job in finance, Teresa decided to use the opportunity to do what she really wanted to do, which was help animals. She took a job as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at a local organization called Animal Haven. She was there for two years, during which time Animal Haven merged with a spay-neuter clinic and became the Great Plains SPCA. Then in 2011 Teresa’s career took yet another turn. The public shelter in Kansas City, which was run by the city through a contractor, was high-kill. Local animal welfare activists had worked for years to change that, and with their help the city shelter had increased its live release rate from 34% in 2006 to 68% in 2011. In early 2011, a scandal involving allegations of poor animal care by the contractor running the shelter led the city to terminate the contract. The city put out a request for bids for a new contractor, but it got no responses. This was a crisis for the future of Kansas City pets because it threatened the momentum for change at the shelter. A small group of No Kill advocates reacted by deciding to take matters into their own hands. With little lead time, the group filed incorporation papers for a new non-profit, the Kansas City Pet Project (KCPP), planning to bid on the contract to run the shelter themselves. Two of the four incorporators were Brent Toellner and Michelle Davis, who had been active in animal welfare issues in Kansas City for years. Today Brent is president of the corporation and Michelle is vice-president. The Articles of Incorporation of KCPP stated: “We are an open admission shelter focused on optimal lifesaving and creating a No Kill Community in the Kansas City Metro.” Early in November of 2011, after negotiations over financing, the city council approved KCPP’s bid on the shelter contract. The start date was January 1, 2012. The small group of people who had taken this audacious step had less than two months to prepare to run an open admission city shelter that at that time was taking in about 6,000 animals per year. KCPP hired Kim Staton as Executive Director and Teresa as COO. Teresa spent the month of December 2011 hiring people to work at the shelter. The city had run the shelter using a combination of animal control officers, employees of the previous contractor, and a handful of permanent employees. Animal control was moving to another building and the previous contract agreement with the city was expiring, so Teresa was able to hire a team of new people. She went for a non-traditional work force. In fact, the new hires were so non-traditional that Teresa was the only one who had ever actually worked in an animal shelter. Although the first day of the new contract was the New Years Day holiday, KCPP decided to have their grand opening that day as a symbol that it would not be business as usual with them. It was a huge success, with crowds of people visiting. Opening for most holidays is now a tradition for the shelter, which is open every day of the year except for Christmas and Thanksgiving. Then, to complicate things, Kim Staton left KCPP after four months on the job. Teresa became interim director and eventually was selected as the new Executive Director. It was a challenging transition period with an organization that was still getting its feet on the ground. As Teresa says: “I don’t think we really realized what we were in for.” They were spectacularly successful, though, reaching a 90% live release rate within six months of their start date. One of Teresa’s first priorities was to establish an offsite adoption venue. The city shelter was housed in a 40-year-old building near the landfill, behind two sports stadiums, in an area with no visibility to potential adopters. Teresa went big, finding a large, central space  in Zona Rosa, a high-end retail center that is across town from the shelter’s location. She found a donor who paid the first year’s lease. She negotiated with a local supplier to get the center outfitted. When all was said and done, she had a premier retail space to feature the shelter’s pets at a minimal cost. The Zona Rosa site recently had its 3-year anniversary, with over 5,000 adoptions to its credit. KCPP has also opened a second large offsite adoption venue in a Petco store. Teresa improved the main shelter building by making it less institutional and more welcoming. They got rid of the bulletproof glass in the lobby, and volunteers landscaped the property. Once inside the shelter, prospective adopters experience an open, dialogue-based approach to matching them with a compatible pet. Teresa wants to give people lots of reasons to come to the shelter, so they have adoption specials and fee-waived events. There has been discussion with the city about replacing the old shelter but nothing definitive has been done yet. KCPP’s contract is administered by Animal Control. There is no ordinance preventing cats from being free-roaming, but Animal Control will pick up stray or feral cats when they get a complaint. These nuisance complaints have caused some problems between the city and feral cat colony caregivers. KCPP is trying to work with Animal Control and the city to get them to embrace TNR, but in the meantime all the feral cats that Animal Control brings to the shelter have to be relocated. They never euthanize a cat for being feral. One of the most amazing things in the amazing story of KCPP is that they have been able to maintain a high live release rate even as their intake has climbed each year. Last year their intake was almost 9500 dogs and cats. In spite of having to place so many more animals, they have continued to have a 92-93% live release rate each year. The high intake means that Teresa and her team must concentrate on keeping animals moving. In addition to their adoption efforts they have two full-time foster coordinators and a rescue transport placement coordinator. Their total payroll is about 90 people, up from 20 on the day they started. When KCPP took over the city shelter they inherited a tiny veterinary clinic that, at about 400 square feet, did not have anywhere near the capacity needed for a large No Kill shelter. With financial assistance from Petco Foundation and the community, they opened a modern veterinary clinic on the shelter property a few weeks ago. This allows KCPP to treat the injured and ill animals brought in by Animal Control in-house rather than having to outsource veterinary care. The situation in Kansas City is similar to the situation in Atlanta in some respects. In each case a non-profit formed by No Kill advocates took over the city shelter and dramatically increased shelter lifesaving, without the benefit of the type of local coalition we have seen in cities like Austin, Jacksonville, and Richmond. In both Kansas City and Atlanta shelter managers are also dealing with badly outdated buildings in out-of-the-way locations. In Kansas City the shelter has had to deal with the additional problem of intake that has grown rapidly. Teresa enjoys the challenges and the fast pace of the work. The KCPP team’s motto is “solutions not excuses.” An example of this motto in action was their approach to saving parvo puppies before the new veterinary clinic was opened. They converted a narrow old locker room into a parvo ward and saved 90% of puppies with parvo. KCPP is now winding up its fourth full year of running the city shelter. Congratulations to Teresa and the entire KCPP team for taking a big risk and making an outstanding success of it.

If a person walked up to a dog on the street and intentionally hit it with a tire iron in the face, breaking its nose and causing permanent damage, that person could be charged with animal cruelty in any state in the union. Depending on the circumstances of the case, it could easily be a felony charge. Yet dog breeders – including “hobby” breeders – do equivalent acts of cruelty every day, to millions of dogs every year, with no consequences. I’m talking about dog breeders who deliberately and intentionally breed to produce severe genetic deformities, with full knowledge that the animals they are creating will live pain-filled, compromised, and often short lives. One very common example of the type of deformity I’m talking about is brachycephalia. The word brachycephalia means “short head.” Brachycephalic dogs have a shortened skull and a short, often almost non-existent muzzle. This produces a look that many people think is cute. Some of the popular brachycephalic breeds are the Pug, Pekingese, French Bulldog, English Bulldog, Shih Tzu, Lhasa Apso, and Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Brachycephalia is also a problem in the breeding of cats, although mercifully less so than in the breeding of dogs. There are so many serious health problems created by brachycephalia that I hardly know where to start. The short skull means that the eyes don’t have enough room to sit normally in their sockets. This produces the protruding look that is considered cute, but it also makes the eyes more prone to pop out of their sockets, and it makes the eyes in general more likely to be injured because they have less bone around them. It gets worse. The changes to the brachycephalic dog’s nose and airway are what really makes their lives miserable. We all know that one of the main ways a dog experiences the world is through scent. The brachycephalic dog is much less able to enjoy this sensory experience because he hardly has any muzzle. The short muzzle also gravely affects the dog’s ability to control its body temperature. Dogs control their body temperature by panting to circulate air through their mouths. In the distorted mouth of the brachycephalic dog this air circulation is greatly reduced, with the consequence that the dog easily overheats. A mutt can run after a tennis ball on a summer day, jump up and catch it, and run back to his person. It is hard to imagine a fully brachycephalic dog being able to do this simple thing. Even if he could, he would quickly get overheated and have to stop. The deformities of the skull in the brachycephalic dog mean that the airway is narrowed and compromised, with all the structures that a normal dog has in its throat squished together in a smaller space. This narrowed airway means that brachycephalic dogs often struggle to breathe, sometimes resembling people with COPD. The brachycephalic dog has to work at breathing, which is supposed to be a natural function that the dog doesn’t even have to think about. The labored breathing of the brachycephalic dog can, over time, cause the larynx to collapse, obstructing the airway and causing severe respiratory distress or death. Laryngeal collapse can happen as early as 4 months of age in brachycephalic breeds. The deformed airway causes many secondary problems beyond the primary problem of breathing. Brachycephalic dogs are prone to sleep apnea. Their attempts to get enough oxygen by gulping air may lead to vomiting and regurgitation. Brachycephalic dogs are at risk every time they have anesthesia because the narrowed and compromised airway makes it more difficult to ensure a good oxygen supply both during and after surgery. The unavoidable manipulation of the airway during intubation, as well as the stress associated with surgery, can cause serious complications. Because the muzzles of brachycephalic dogs are so short, their teeth do not have room to grow normally. That means that these dogs often have severe dental problems. But because of the dangers of anesthesia it is difficult to treat their dental problems or even to do routine dental cleaning. Brachycephalic dogs differ in the extent of their symptoms. But even dogs that have fewer symptoms such as wheezing, gasping, and heat intolerance will still experience a greatly diminished quality of life, as they by definition do not experience life the way a normal dog does. In my opinion, deliberately breeding dogs with deformities this severe constitutes animal cruelty. Today we pride ourselves on thinking of our cats and dogs as family members. Pets are like children to many people. Imagine if there was a genetics-engineering company that offered parents an opportunity to make “cuter” children at the cost of compromising their health and their lives. Everyone would be horrified, and if anyone ever actually tried to do that they would be arrested and put in jail. The idea is so absurd that it is hard to even imagine. Yet dog breeders do the equivalent thing every time they breed one brachycephalic dog to another, and no one says a word. In fact, dog breeders have been working hard to make the problem even worse. In just the last 50 years the skull of the British bulldog, for example, has been radically shortened by selective breeding. One particularly gruesome result of the continued breeding for shortened heads is the greatly increased incidence of syringomyelia in brachycephalic dogs, particularly in the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. In these dogs the back of the skull has been so shortened by deliberate breeding that there is not enough room for the brain. The brain in affected dogs is squeezed and affects the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. The syndrome is perhaps best known for the intense pain that it causes its victims. It may progress to paralysis. By some estimates the problem is present in up to half of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. It is scary to think of the pain these dogs may be suffering even when they do not have overt symptoms of the disease.  What is wrong with people who deliberately breed these dogs? Brachycephalia may be the most obvious example of deliberate animal cruelty in dog breeding, but there are many other examples. The giant dog breeds have their own problems, including a greatly reduced life span. The dog’s circulatory system did not evolve to be able to support the height and weight of the giant breeds, and so their expected life span is barely half that of a normal dog. An Irish Wolfhound’s life expectancy is about 7 years, compared to 14 years or so for small mutts. The German Shepherd Dog of today looks bizarre to most people because of the extreme angulation in its rear legs, which makes the dogs unable to stand normally. Many breeds have such extreme hair growth that they require constant grooming to be able to live a normal life. Ironically, the breeding of deformed dogs is more due to hobby “show” breeders than it is to commercial breeders. Show breeders will tell you how different they are from commercial breeders, arguing that commercial breeders just care about making money whereas they care about “improving the breed.” What really happens is this. Hobby breeders are in the dog show “sport” for the purpose of winning trophies and recognition. They breed dogs that they think will appeal to dog show judges. Most dog show judges seem to pay little attention to health, and instead they reward extremes of what they call “type,” which is what most of us would call “deviation from what a normal dog looks like.” These deviations are encouraged by the written standards for breeds. This leads to a vicious circle where, in order to win the coveted trophies, dog breeders produce dogs that deviate further and further from the norm in an effort to catch the eye of the judge. For example, the breed standard for the Akita calls for “much substance and heavy bone.” The result of this standard is that at any dog show you can see Akitas who have so much “substance” that they don’t trot, they trundle. We need to start prosecuting the deliberate breeding of deformed dogs for the crime that it is, particularly in the case of clear-cut and obvious genetic deformities like brachycephalia. Brachycephalic dogs are not “cute.” They are handicapped by their deformity and they suffer — sometimes unimaginably so in the case of those who have syringomyelia. We cannot prevent all deformities and birth defects, but we can certainly stop people from deliberately creating deformities. I don’t know whether hobby breeders really believe that they are “improving” breeds or whether they are so blinded by the gleam from their trophies that they can’t see what’s in front of their face. But whatever their motives, they need to be forced to stop. We need to take the decision out of their hands. The kind of animal cruelty they practice should not be allowed in a civilized country.