Animal control & rescue

May 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

No-kills
The International Fund for
Animal Welfare in an April mailing asserted
that it needs “to raise over $10,000 each month
to continue providing vital support to local
shelters worldwide who cannot exist on their
own.” IFAW is well-known for many programs,
but assisting animal shelters isn’t even
mentioned as a program activity on the IFAW
filings of IRS Form 990. “During 1994 and
1995, IFAW contributed approximately
$190,000 to some 40 animal protection groups
with a no-kill policy,” IFAW director of field
activities Paul Seigal told ANIMAL PEOPLE
on April 12. “We are now selecting the
spring 1996 recipients, who will share
$200,000.” Among the 1994-1995 recipients
were shelters in Australia, Canada, France,
Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, the United
Kingdom, the U.S., and South Africa.

IT WORKS IN SAN FRANCISCO–– WHAT ABOUT MILWAUKEE?

May 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

MILWAUKEE––Wisconsin
Humane Society executive director Victoria
Wellens isn’t worried about the flak she’s
catching for giving up 19 animal control
contracts over the next year and a half. She’s
been shot at since she was hired in 1994.
Formerly executive director of the
Chistophe Memorial YMCA in Waukesha,
Wellens inherited a dilapidated shelter, a
building fund that wasn’t growing fast
enough to build much soon, a falling adoption
rate, plunging donations, a demoralized
staff, and perhaps the most militant cadre of
critics between New York and San
Francisco–– despite overall intake, adoption,
and euthanasia statistics that couldn’t
have been closer to the U.S. norms.

Heroic dogs, and sometimes cats––WHAT MAKES THEM BRAVE?

May 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y.––”A cat’s a better mother
than you are!” Rhett Butler exploded at Scarlet O’Hara in one of
the most memorable scenes of Gone With The Wind.
Cats are actually devoted mothers. On March 29 a
Brooklyn cat named Scarlet proved it, dashing five times into a
burning building despite severe burns to rescue each of her fourweek-old
kittens. Firefighter David Giannelli, a 17-year-veteran of
Ladder Company 175, saw Scarlet moving the kittens across the
street after getting them out of the fire and called the North Shore
Animal League. Now recovering at North Shore, they drew 700
adoption offers within hours of their plight becoming known.
The script-writers of the Lassie and Rin-Tin-Tin serials
would have had a hard time topping the heroic animal headlines
during the first quarter-plus of 1996. Sixteen times in 15 weeks,
mass media reported dogs and cats performing daring or unusual
altruistic deeds, on behalf of either humans or other animals.
The streak began on New Year’s Day, when a nameless
cat in Minneapolis alerted a sleeping child to smoke in time to save
her family from a house fire.

Animal health

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

Amid the mad cow disease panic, Britain barely
noticed the death of an 11-year-old Moslem girl from anthrax
after a two-day stay at the Poitier’s University Hospital in
London. Anthrax, a disease of known epidemic potential, hits
about 100,000 people a year. It can be treated with antibiotics, if
recognized early, but otherwise kills through the combination of
high fever, pneumonia, and internal hemorrages. Sixteen days
before falling ill, the girl helped her father kill an infected sheep
at an unlicensed slaughterhouse during the Ramadan religious
holiday. She then ate a lightly cooked piece of the liver. The rest
of her family, fasting according to the rules of Ramadan, waited
until the end of the holidays before boiling and eating the rest of
the meat. None of them became ill.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN TORONTO THE GOOD

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

TORONTO––A Divisional Court ruling by Justice
Edward Saunders is expected soon as to whether the Toronto
Humane Society must release to the public copies of the
pound contract it holds with the City of Toronto.
Claiming a need to protect the security of animals
and staff, THS has appealed a December 29, 1995 order
from Tom Mitchinson, assistant commissioner of the
Information and Privacy Commission of Ontario, to release
both the current contract, signed in 1995, and the contract
that preceded it, signed in 1985, with an automatic annual
renewal clause that will expire on July 31.
The Toronto City Council on March 5 authorized
the negotiation of another one-year renewal, over the objection
of Councillor Pamela McConnell, who held the THS
board seat reserved for the City Council from November 30,
1994 to February 7 of this year.

Vouching for it by Karen Johnson

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

San Jose, California, is on the
verge of proving either that the fastest, most
cost-effective means of reducing the homeless
cat population is through providing free
neutering vouchers––or that meddlers will
dismantle any program, no matter how well
it works, to advance bureaucracy.
As described in the April 1995 edition
of ANIMAL PEOPLE, San Jose enacted
the free voucher program in October 1994.
After a slow start, it took off in February,
1995, following favorable coverage by the
San Jose Mercury-News. For 16 months it
enabled hundreds of people who feed outdoor
cats, often people of limited means, to get
the cats “fixed.”

Hogwash

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

Pork barrel politics came into the American lexicon
through the political campaigns of North Carolina-born lawyer and
war hero Andrew Jackson, U.S. President 1829-1837, who helped
Tennessee break off from North Carolina and then built a political
empire by allegedly passing out salt pork at the polls.
Off the pig! popped up in the 1960s. In inner city slang,
it meant “kill the police,” but when ANIMAL PEOPLE asked
activists at the recent Midwest Animal Liberation Conference if
they recognized it, none under age 35 did. They guessed, instead,
that it had something to do with living downwind or downstream of
a hog farm.
In the old days, before antibiotics, almost every farm
kept a hog or two, who ate slops––a mixture of kitchen wastes and
barnyard offal––and wallowed at will in a mucky outdoor pen.
Hardly anyone imagined that hybrid corn, motor vehicles, and
penicillin might make possible the use of standardized methods in
rearing the creatures who inspired the expression, “Independent as
a hog on ice.”

Most recent data shows shelter euthanasias down to 5.1 million a year

March 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

In October 1993, ANIMAL PEOPLE projected from about half of the data below that the annual U.S. shelter euthanasia toll could be as low as 5.1 million dogs and
cats per year––approximately a third of the then-prevalent guesstimates by national organizations. Adding in additional shelter-by-shelter intake and euthanasia statistics, compiled
over the past five years by a variety of different groups and individuals, confirms the estimate; of states for which multiple counts are available, only Indiana shows a rising
euthanasia toll, and that trend may have been reversed since the most recent available data was collected. Because not all the surveyors asked the same questions, figures are missing
from some of the columns. Dog and cat intake add up to a slightly different figure than total intake in some cases because some shelters report rounded numbers for some categories
rather than exact figures, producing a minor cumulative distortion. The New York data represents all shelters serving 87% of the human population, projected to cover the whole population
of the state. The Ohio data represents animal control shelters covering 34% of the state, projected to cover the whole population of the state.

Animal control & rescue

March 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

Taking over the New York City
animal control contract from the American
SPCA on January 1, 1995, the Center for
Animal Care and Control provided pickup and
rescue service to 5,448 dogs and 4,753 cats
during the year, nearly double the ASPCA
norms, according to CACC director Marty
Kurtz. In consequence, dog intakes rose to
24,536, with a euthanasia rate of 73%, while
cat intakes rose to 26,266, with a euthanasia
rate of 78%. Returns-to-owner were achieved
at about the same rate the ASPCA managed,
but still at only half the rate managed by
Chicago and less than a third the rate of San
Diego, the apparent RTO leader among major
U.S. cities. To boost RTO, the CACC in
November began microchipping all animals
placed. Overall, the CACC adopted out 4,975
cats, 222 more than were picked up in distress,
along with 4,561 dogs. Combined adoptions,
all species, came to 9,616––slightly
less than the ASPCA norm, but the ASPCA is
still doing adoptions, dividing the traffic.

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