A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2013: (Actually published on November 20, 2013.)
DENVER––Jeff Young, DVM, one of the star speakers at ICAWC 2013, wants to sell the veterinary and humane communities on the concept he calls Spay-It-Forward. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2013: (Actually published on November 20, 2013.)
BARCELONA–– Among the more unusual and useful offerings at the 2013 International Companion Animal Welfare Conference was a session entitled “Ethical decision making,” presented by Dorothy E.F. McKeegan, British Veterinary Association Animal Welfare Foundation senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2013: (Actually published on November 20, 2013.)
BARCELONA, BUCHAREST–– “Stray Dog Ecology: Back to the Basics” is for Dutch humane volunteer Nathalie Klinge not just the title of a talk, but a summary of her way of life. Addressing the 2013 International Companion Animal Welfare Conference, the ninth Klinge has attended but the first at which she has spoken, Klinge brought to her presentation the experience of 13 years on the road in Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey, observing the lives and sometimes the deaths of street dogs from an actuarial perspective. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2000, at age 30, Klinge resolved to spend the rest of whatever time she had left to live working for animals. Klinge left her career in the life insurance industry to become a driver for eastern European animal charities, helping to relay dogs to western Europe for adoption. At first Klinge just drove, looked, and listened. But eventually Klinge realized she was recognizing realities that seemed to elude the credentialed experts, government officials, and directors of animal charities who kept failing to resolve street dog issues. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2013: (Actually published on November 20, 2013.)
By Merritt Clifton
Two days after Dutch animal advocate and rescuer Nathalie Klinge addressed the ICAWC conference in Barcelona about her observations of dog population control in Romania, I tested her findings by doing 1,500 kilometers of dog-censusing in Romania myself. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2013: (Actually published on November 20, 2013.)
Nathalie Klinge offered the 2013 International Companion Animal Welfare Conference a model of street dog population management based on real-life experience in Romania that paralleled a model I have used for about 15 years to project the probable outcomes of neuter/return programs for either street dogs or feral cats in many different communities and parts of the world. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2013: (Actually published on November 20, 2013.)
GEORGETOWN––A nationally heralded attempt to make Delaware a no-kill state ended ignominiously on November 14, 2013 with the closure of the Safe Haven no-kill shelter in Georgetown, the euthanasia of 19 pit bulls who flunked behavioral screening, and the evacuation of 22 more dogs, mostly pit bulls and pit mixes, by the American SPCA. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2013: (Actually published on November 20, 2013.)
TEL AVIV––The Israeli Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development has committed 4.5 million New Israel Shekels, equivalent to $1.27 million U.S., to an effort to sterilize 45,000 feral cats before the end of May 2014––the anticipated peak of the next “kitten season.” Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2013: (Actually published on October 8, 2013)
PORTSMOUTH––The Virginia Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services has fined the Portsmouth Humane Society $1,250 for releasing sterilized feral cats, who were recorded in the PHS shelter tracking records as having been adopted by executive director Jenn Austin and four other staff members. “I felt that these cats were not legitimately adopted and remained in the custody of the facility,” VDACS veterinarian Dan Kovich told Tim Eberly of the Virginian-Pilot. “State investigators, tipped off by a former employee, issued three violations last month to the Portsmouth shelter, which has the contract to serve as the city’s animal pound,” Eberly wrote. “Austin acknowledged that she and her staff have been personally adopting feral cats and releasing them for about a year and a half.” Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2013: (Actually published on October 8, 2013)
CLAYTON, Georgia––A Rabun County grand jury on September 6, 2013 returned a 60-count felony indictment against Lowanda “Peanut” Kilby, former director of the Boggs Mountain Humane Shelter. Read more