Advisory Boards

Community leaders will create advisory boards to oversee governmental operations to show their openness to community input.  The one thing that many of these boards have is attracting people with special interests.  Those same community leaders aren’t smart enough to know what they have done.

It is difficult to direct a governmental operation when your advisory board does not share your vision.  The no-kill movement exasperated the problem for animal shelters when their advisory boards were led by animal rights nuts demanding that the shelter meet its 90% live release rate to satisfy the board’s directive to become no-kill.

It is very easy to get onto an advisory board.  In most cases, you just express your desire.  Since most hard-working people aren’t interested in nightly meetings, special-interest folks will pack the board.  Usually, each county commissioner or city council member appoints a person for each board.  I witnessed incidents in which members of an animal rights interest would send letters and emails to specific council members to direct their appointee.

Keep in mind, the only purpose for creating advisory boards is to make the commission or council feel better about themselves.  They have no idea as to what they have unleashed upon the departments.  I have not witnessed many effective boards because most of those boards fail to represent the citizens at large.

School Boards and Animal Shelter Advisory Boards seem to draw the moths of the liberal hivemind to them as an automobile speeding down the highway with its highbeams on.

Imagine being given the task of solving the deer overpopulation in your community and recommending a kill solution.  That is going to make your life with the animal rights members of your advisory board difficult.  I remember hunting with my father as a child in Utah.  That seemed like a good place to move to.

There are no bad dogs.

Recently, I was contacted by a blogger who wanted facetime on my website.  I am always curious about people who approach me and want to write on my website when they have a website of their own.  In checking out his website, he had a tagline that claimed, “There are no bad dogs.”

This is the greatest lie that we can tell people.  In the same vein is when we tell people that all dogs are alike.  People usually make that claim when talking about pitbulls.  That too, is another lie.

Anyone who has worked in an animal shelter knows that pets have phenotypical and behavioral differences.  We chalk that up to genetics.  It is foolish to think that genetics does not impact behavior.  Let us face it, poodles and chihuahuas are the meanest dogs.  We chalk that up to their genetically small brains.  They don’t make the newspapers because they are too small to cause any real damage to a person.  Pitbulls are the breed most likely to cause a fatality due to their size, aggression, and numbers.  There is something about a pitbull owner that seems to think that they need to breed more pitbull mixes.  I think they are having a contest to see just how many other breeds will breed with a pitbull.

For many years, dog fighters would breed their line of pitbulls to be mean.   They would come upon a specific genetic marker for aggression and milk it. Many of the offspring of those animals find their way into animal shelters.  One of the biggest problems that we face is that most pet owners do not know how to respond to the aggression they see in their pets.  Like having a misbehaving child, they blame themselves and attempt to adapt to these new behaviours.

It is tragic the number of pitbull owners who give up their pet after witnessing numerous incidents of aggression and wait for the “the big one.”  The one action that is so severe that they are forced to surrender their dog.  That action is usually a bite so severe that it cannot be overlooked.  The victim is usually a child.

Pitbulls are not alone in being potentially dangerous.  It is the responsibility of shelter staff to see aggressive behaviour before you place the dog on the adoption row.  Too often, animal shelters are trying so hard to reach a 90% save rate that they will intentionally overlook a dog’s behaviour in hope of being able to announce they’ve become no-kill.  For that reason, maybe people should avoid a no-kill shelter fearing that their no-kill rating is more important than an adopter’s safety.

Animal shelters that adopt potentially dangerous dogs and pet owners who choose to keep a potentially dangerous dog should be charged with reckless endangerment if someone is ever injured due to their complacency.  An animal shelter is negligent when keeping a dog that has shown aggression towards their own staff.  If more shelters were held responsible for their animals that they adopt, they might reconsider the importance of being called no-kill.

Don’t get me wrong, no-kill is a good thing, if it is done in a responsible way.

Funny Times

In case you missed it, we are living in funny times.  Our last President issued pardons for his entire family when he left the Whitehouse.  Half of us think a man playing in women’s sports should have more rights than women.   The FBI is actively attempting to hide evidence from the new administration.

Following Brandon’s efforts, our State legislators are writing a bill to protect the identities of government workers when they are believed to have violated the law.

Our society seems to want to protect law-breakers more than they wish to protect their citizens.

Many animal shelters have gotten so caught up in the No-Kill movement that they are more eager to adopt out aggressive dogs than risk their no-kill status by putting the dogs down.  We seem to have lost our ability to understand consequences.  Are your no-kill statistics so important that you would risk a child’s life?  If your answer is yes, then please get out of the business before some poor child loses his or her life.

Being a Good Steward

One of the most glaring things about President Trump’s efforts to weed out wasteful spending is the fact that our government went well beyond being wasteful and appeared to spend for the sake of just spending (our tax dollars). Government was not a good steward; in fact, government departments acted like they were competing to be the worst spenders. Government knew of their waste and did nothing to stop it. The feds are not an example that we can afford to follow.

It is one thing to root out the bad apples in government; but, we have people in Congress demanding that efforts to end wasteful spending be stopped and look the other way. The worst part of all of this is that Americans voted these people into office. Either we are blind to the people we vote for or we are just plain stupid. If you still believe what the legacy media is telling you, then you really don’t know what is going on in the world. Anyone who encourages government employees to waste money are idiots.

Sometimes, in order to be a good steward, we need to stop listening to the people around us who are trying to direct our paths. It is easy to take up the cause to help homeless animals if we put on blinders that prevent us from seeing homeless people. I have always advocated for helping animals. But do animals hold a higher priority than that of people?

Animal rights groups are made up of one dimensional people. They only see the animals that exist in our world. That’s great, animals need our help. We can make catchy phrases to “speak for those who have no voice.” Animal rights groups are free to live in that world.

But those of us in animal welfare have to live in the real world. When we are fighting for our budgets, we realize that we are competing against other needs. We are not like the federal government that has been given such large budgets that they are free to spend it on nonsensical things. We have to fight for money just to feed our animals.

You are right, I am still steamed about the animal rights group going to the media to complain that one of our local cities turned down a TNR grant because they could not commit to keeping the grant going after the “free” money ran out. The city had the foresight to recognize that they didn’t have the money to care for feral cats now, so they didn’t want to default on the grant later. We call that integrity.

You see, if you show integrity in your stewardship of your budget, your city/county commission is more likely to fund you. I worked in one county in which our County Administer desperately tried to cut our budget. For a while, I worked full time in creating budget scenarios in which I outlined various levels of budget cuts. But, I had an excellent relationship with our County Commission. We were always funded at the same level. Why? Because we showed that we were serious about being a good steward.

I draw this comparison because there will be people trying to tear down your budgetary decisions for being frugal with your government funds. These people only see things from their own perspective. Given how tight money is, I would gladly forgo funding for a TNR program, if that money could be used to help homeless children. Being a grownup is knowing that you don’t always get what you want; you usually get what you need. Sometimes keeping a feral cat population going only encourages coyote populations to move into our cities. Fortunately, the statistics for coyotes eating cats are not part of the no-kill equation. In case you missed that: the more coyotes that eat cats, the faster that we can become a no-kill community.

Say What?

In looking at my last post, no one can accuse me of smooth-talking. So? What do I do with it? Do I throw it out or do I try to sift through it? Let’s try again.

Animal Welfare is looking at each individual animal and attempts to do what is best for it given current resources. Animal Rights is looking at the plight of groups of animals and shifting the mindset of society to raise the animal’s plight to higher importance.

From an Animal Welfare approach you look at the condition of an animal and determine if you can improve the animal’s condition given the resources at hand. It becomes most noticeable when determining whether an organization should treat a medically compromised animal. What factors do you consider? Probably the most important factor is if there is any home where the animal’s owner will show up and assume financial responsibility for the animal. Organizations with limited budgets will be more likely to treat an injured animal if the animal is wearing some form of identification, hinting that an owner might be out looking for their pet. The difficulty is trying to get inside the mind of that owner as to what they would accept as a reasonable amount that they would pay out for their pet.

When treating an injured animal, the organization has to decide if care for the one animal outweighs the care for the other animals in your care. The one notion that people cannot get their heads around is that animal shelters do not have unlimited resources. I have witnessed many incidents in which an animal’s owner would surrender their pet, as a stray, to the animal shelter because they didn’t want to pay the cost for the medical treatment that their pet needed. These folks seem to be the least understanding when the shelter decides that the cost of treatment is beyond them as well. People think that the shelter should throw any amount of funds so that the owner can come return later to adopt back their own pet. So, seeing an ID on the animal is not always an indication that someone is out there in the world to accept financial responsibility of the pet. It does, however, give shelter staff hope and I am more likely to hold the animal longer at the shelter and offer up more money to help the animal with ID.

From an animal rights perspective, the decision to treat the animal is easy. All animals deserve the right to live. The only exception is the animal is demonstrating that it is in such pain and the animal would be better off being put to sleep. Animal rights folks would browbeat anyone standing in the way to prevent treatment. The animal rights folks would just as likely treat a potentially dangerous animal as it would any other.

From an animal welfare perspective, a shelter might hold off on treatment of an animal that doesn’t offer any return on investment. In other words, is the animal adoptable, or after a long stay you are going to have to euthanize the animal anyway? And then you are out the funds that you could have used to save other animals. From an animal rights perspective, you see that one animal representing every other animal and that if you don’t save the one, then that is your attitude towards all the rest. In the case of potentially dangerous animals, the animal rights folks have me pegged. I would rather keep a dangerous dog comfortable during its stray holding period than throw a bunch of money towards it when I have no notion of returning the animal back into the community.

From an outside perspective, one group makes the decision and moves on to help the animals that they are capable of helping. From the other perspective, the groups sees that failure to help that one animal is evidence that other animals won’t be helped either. As such, animal rights groups will attempt to teach you a lesson and go public to try to turn your community against you. The best beating, in their minds, is from the people who fund your organization.

Animal Rights groups cannot wrap their heads around the fact that animal shelters have limited resources. They are not smart enough to understand that communities that fund the animal shelter also have limited resources. Time after time, when I was fighting for funding for my shelter, I heard other voices crying out that funding that was allocated to me would take away from allocations to children in the community. Animal Rights folks can’t understand the competition that animal shelters face for funding.

An Animal Rights group might offer limited funding to push their efforts, but they expect the animal shelter to continue funding the project after it gets off to a good start. The problem is that communities are more sensitive to the economy than are the animal right folks. If the economy is hard now, it is likely to be worse when the pilot program ends. You can’t make a promise to fund a project two or three years down the road when you can’t afford it now.

Notwithstanding the economic climate; the animal rights folks will feel slighted because they feel their cause is higher than any other that communities might face in the future. As such, they will make a public spectacle to bloody the community leaders and the animal shelter staff. I have had to fight this battle many times in my career and for that reason, I don’t think much of animal rights groups. If there is any message to send them; despite what they feel are their priorities, in budget deliberations, children trumps animals every time. Animal Rights folks believe that their cause is the only one that matters; that is their world. Communities have to deal with a much larger world.

A public animal shelter rarely gains financially when they become No-Kill. Animal Rights groups, on the other hand, can access private funding for punishing animal shelters into submission. In the end, public animal shelters have to go through great financial hardship when pushing the No-Kill agenda, but the taskmasters are financially rewarded. There is example after example of governmental organizations spending tons of money to gain and hang on to their No-Kill status. Read about the City of Austin going through it. Just ask Google: Mainly, no-kill created shelter overcrowding, forced shelter staff to reduce the quality of care for their animals, and came at a great expense. Was it worth it? Depends on who you ask. It mostly depends on the amount of available cash that a city has to spend on such efforts. Most cities could not have pulled off what Austin did… none that I ever worked in. That doesn’t mean that we didn’t have our own success stories. I found that the most successful programs that we pulled off were ones in which we made it financially feasible for animal rescue groups to join our cause.

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Why do I bother with this now? As a governmental employee, I had to wear a muzzle throughout my career. When I retired, I was able to throw off my muzzle and speak my truth, even if it first appeared as gibberish on paper. At least, it is unfiltered gibberish. And, I hate bullies. When I see bullies, in any form, I’ll lash out. Animal Rights groups are eager to bully an animal shelter into compliance. Sometimes it is justified but usually, it isn’t

Animal Welfare vs. Animal Rights

I have a tremendous appreciation for animal welfare organizations and little appreciation for animal rights organizations. It recently dawned on me as to how I can distinguish between the two. I am quite surprised as to how it took me so long. Much of it has to do with the evolution of an organization.

Most of us start out wanting to help animals; it is a noble task. We become so effective at helping animals that we are motivated to want to change society to help animals. When we take on this task, we have to assure ourselves that the task is noble and the cause is righteous.

Today, we frequently see folks taking on causes that are not accepted as righteous. All of the bullying in the world will not make a cause righteous; if anything, it makes it worse.

We frequently see this in the animal welfare movement when other organizations or people want to force their ideology upon us. Oddly, if forced upon us long enough the cause actually might shift to righteousness. No-Kill was shoved down our throats long enough that we began to see the benefits of drinking that in. It still becomes problematic when the goal of becoming No-Kill is just a statistical issue and not a moral issue.

I can remember back when the board of a major humane society would call me at night telling me that I was doing a disservice to my community by not killing 90% of the animals that came into my care. Now, we are assaulted if we are forced to kill over 10% of our animals. The humane society lost its contract with the county due to its large euthanasia numbers and it felt that its cause was righteous because the board members were convinced that 90% of the animals were too dangerous to put on the streets of the community. Well, looking back at that, we see that they caved to stupidity.

But, is the 10% that we deal with today also an effort in stupidity? It’s just a number! It is just a statistic! Well, it is not. That number represents everything to animal rights organizations. It is the difference between calling shelter staff saviors or killers. It has become a number that keeps the bad guys bad and the good guys good.

How important is that number? Are we willing to adopt out dangerous animals just to meet our statistical goal, so that we can look like the good guys on paper? Are we willing to turn domestic cats out into a cold winter, so that we can call ourselves no-kill? What is it worth to us? Are we willing to be inhumane so as to meet a statistical number? If the answer is yes, then you might want to look again at your mission statement.

It is possible to reduce euthanasia to zero.  Is that helping or hurting your community?  What about the animals?

I recently watched one of my favorite organizations move from animal welfare to animal rights. I grieve for them and for the rest of us.

Trap, Neuter, and Release (TNR) Programs

One of our local cities forfeited a million-dollar grant to reduce the city’s feral cat program through a program of trapping, neutering, and releasing (TNR) the sterile cats back into the community. There are two sides to this issue and from my perspective, I’ve never seen a positive long-term outcome with TNR programs. Unless feeling good is your desired outcome. Sure, a number of years ago, organizations touted success stories, but many of those proved unfounded over time.

Communities began seeing surplus cats in communities because many people saw cats as too independent to be considered pets; so they didn’t invest in spaying or neutering their cats that seem to come and go from their households. When things are going well for cats, they like to breed. Most species are the same way. The offspring of these “domestic” cats started becoming feral. A feral population is dependent on the carrying capacity of the community. As food became scarce, the cats would stop breeding.

“Little Old Ladies” upset the carrying capacity of the community by setting out food for the cats to eat. The cats would start to breed again until they exceeded the carrying capacity again. Like raccoon populations, disease would wipe out the population when the population is stressed with too many animals. Raccoons are usually on a seven-year cycle.

The problem with TNR programs is that in addition to spaying and neutering the cats, the cats are offered vaccinations, thus reducing the possibility of death through disease. Another problem with managing feral cat problems is that an excess removal of cats allows vermin to increase. I recall that in one neighborhood that was aggressively against cats discovered that rats grew in population corresponding to the removal of the cats. Anytime you are messing with animal populations, you are messing with Mother Nature.

Cats became a growing concern in animal shelters wanting to become no-kill. It seemed at the rate that cat’s breed, that having a 90% release rate was looking like a passing dream. Some shelters, to meet their no-kill goal, started taking the cats surrendered at the shelter and treating them as part of a TNR solution. They were taking the cats surrendered by their owners and sterilizing them and then releasing them back into the community. The trick was to release them into an area where the owners would not know what they had done. Some believed that throwing a domestic cat in the wild to starve to death was inhumane. No one reported on the impact of these starving cats. So they may or may not have survived. The point was that by doing this, the shelter could boast that they have reached no-kill. Many began to say that TNR stood for Trap, Neuter, and Re-abandon.

The notion, if people continued to feed feral cats, it was better to feed a sterile cat than a fertile cat. Or so we thought. It seems that over time, populations adjust. Even in a population of sterile cats, if the carry capacity increases, the population will adjust for that increase. Cats from other areas will move in. Thus the reason that TNR programs fail. They are good for a while, but if left unattended the fertile cats take over again and they do so quickly.

No-kill is a constant goal for animal shelters and even a short time win looks good for statistics and that is what no-kill is all about is finding other solutions for the animals in our shelters because killing an animal just doesn’t seem like a good solution. I have always advocated that the best solution to killing animals is to prevent their births. Not enough is being done to sterilize every pet. Shelters continue to adopt intact animals…. stupid….. very stupid. Pet owners cannot be trusted to take care of sterilizing their newly adopted pet. Trust me, I have years and years of experience in this area.  It is shocking the number of men who tie their testicles to that of their dog’s.

So? Is TNR worthwhile? It is a short-term solution to a bigger program. It makes us feel good by helping with our statistics and staff doesn’t have to perform euthanasia. It provides additional business for our local veterinarians. While you are doing it, it’ll feel good. A few years down the road, you’ll look back and wonder if you had made any impact at all.

Mother Nature maintains everything in a balance. The best way to upset that balance is to introduce humans into the equation (something that I picked up in college and later realized in life). For TNR to be successful over a long period of time, you’ll have to continue your efforts. As we have discovered that TNR usually has an immediate impact that you can feel good about; but, when you stop TNR, the feral population will rebound.

Unfunded Mandates

Our Governor announced his desire for our State to become a “No-Kill State” and maintain that status. On the surface, that sounds swell; but, anytime I hear about a governing body wanting to pass down mandates to lower communities, I think of the Haden Bill in California that passed down such severe mandates that many animal shelters had to close shop. State governing bodies tend to know little to nothing about the dynamics of running local animal shelters. California proved that.

At a time when my State passed laws outlawing DEI in schools and businesses, they enacted their own version of DEI onto insurance companies where they demanded that all animals be treated the same. So insurance companies were forced to raise their rates so that poodles and pit bulls could be treated the same. Since legislators know so little about dog breeds, I worry that our Governor knows little about the dynamics of running an animal shelter.

Thanks to Bidenomics, people are facing harsh inflation. Many of us have to find ways to cut back to just survive. During these troubling times, people are choosing to cut back on their pets so as not to be forced to cut back on the beer. The number of animals being surrendered to animal shelters is high. So, our Governor picks this time to demand animal shelters become no-kill.

The only true solution to no-kill is to bring an end to breeding. If we sterilized every pit bull and pit bull mix in the country, we could solve 70% of the pet overpopulation in animal shelters within a few years. If the Governor wants to help with the situation, instead of making it worse, he could fund low-cost spay/neuter centers around the State.

The good news is that our State has 2 billion dollars left over from last year’s budget. He has the money to help shelters. Is any of that money going to be available to animal shelters? Of course not. That is why we call these things unfunded mandates. But let’s face it, we have a homeless problem and increased crime due to our illegal immigrant invasion. Is any of those funds going to provide more police? Probably not. So where do we decide to put this money in time of our current crisis? A baseball stadium.

Will a baseball stadium help animals? Nope! Will a baseball stadium help the homeless? Nope! Will the baseball stadium decrease crime? Nope! The only thing that a baseball stadium can bring to our community is the entertainment district that will surround the stadium. We just might finally get a nice new restaurant that will serve a good hotdog.

State bodies have to stop making life harder for those who run animal shelters. Their job is to see the big picture. The older that I become, I see our governing bodies becoming more nearsighted.

Deep in the Trenches

In previous posts, I mentioned the risks involved in working in the field of animal welfare. Those risks included getting fired. I have been fired. Multiple times. I hold them as trophies for doing the right thing or for just being pigheaded. You decide.

I was the animal control officer for a neighboring town while completing my degree. With a diploma in hand, I began my job hunt.

Lane County, Oregon: I was hired as the Field Supervisor. The job required that I work 11 or 12-hour days and then handle all of the emergency calls at night. It is amazing how quickly a new job can wear you down. Animal Control fell under the Finance Director. You can imagine that the only interest he had was numbers. And so it was. He placed a citation quota on all of the animal control officers and only those who met his quota of 40 citations a month would see promotions or offered the new trucks or equipment. I was opposed to this. I think we should use more than one tool in dealing with pet owners. My boss disagreed. I lasted three months. I remember the sense of joy that overwhelmed me when I realized that I didn’t have to go back to working there.

Lesson learned: sometimes it is better to be fired when you are not smart enough to leave.

In my next job, I was hired as the Chief Field Supervisor serving Portland Oregon and the gal who hired me claimed that having been fired from Lane County was a very big mark in my favor in getting the job.

Jacksonville Florida: Jacksonville Florida was in the middle of major layoffs. Animal Control was under the Environmental Services Department. We shared that Department with Sanitation Services. The Sanitation folks were undergoing the greatest number of layoffs, so our boss decided to lay off the entire administrative staff of Animal Services to make room for his buddies in Sanitation. If it is any consolation, the Sanitation folks discovered they were unprepared for working in Animal Control and I got to watch my old organization tank in the media. Working in the South forces you to face the dynamics of the “Good-Ole-Boy” system. Although located in Florida, Jacksonville is the southern end of the old South. Coming from the North, sometimes the old South is a hard pill to swallow when you believe that the laws should be distributed evenly for everyone.

Lesson learned: You’re either a good old boy or you are not. Stay away from working in the South. And as I once was told, “maintain a firm grip on your Northern ethics.”

Milwaukee Wisconsin: At some point in my career I wanted to take on a challenge. I had spent years enjoying our adoption successes in Gainesville Florida and wanted to turn a high-kill shelter around. Milwaukee claimed that they wanted to experience an evolution in their policies and wanted to become more progressive. I started bringing in rescues and volunteers into the shelter only to have been met with resistance by a couple of employees. One of the employees had worked there for 30 years and he fought every effort to improve the place. Clearly, I could not get around this obstacle and found myself unemployed. Again!

Lesson learned: Sometimes your ego prevents you from seeing a bad situation. Don’t be fooled by organizations that claim to want to evolve when they are impaired by immovable forces within their organization.

Roanoke Virginia: I call this “out of the pan and into the fire”. One of the local private animal shelters in Roanoke was trying to get me fired before I set foot in the county. I remember an early meeting that this group called to discuss the animal shelter; when I arrived they would not let me attend the meeting. I think the only time I was ever invited to their shelter was when they wanted to lynch me. In the previous post, I talked about turning this shelter around from having a 10% live release rate to over 90%. We were adopting out all of our adoptable animals, but that wasn’t enough for our volunteers. They were demanding that we release dangerous dogs out for adoption. Not on my watch! The people that I worked for were all peacemakers; I had to go. Let them deal with damage control. I came to meet some of the nastiest people working in the animal rescue field here. But, despite their behavior towards humans, they made up for it, in their efforts towards animals. Even dangerous animals.

Lesson learned: I am old-school animal control; where I believe my primary obligation is to protect the community that I serve. There is no place for us old guys because the profession is evolving in which the animals come before the community. I’d rather be fired than have to work in a place that considers placing potentially dangerous animals out for adoption. Didn’t I warn myself about working in the South?

So there you have it. The whole purpose of my blog is to prepare people who want to get into the animal welfare profession. It isn’t all about playing with kittens all day. But, those kittens come in handy on a stressful day.

I enjoyed my career and I count my terminations as trophies. I have to live with myself and I feel like I did my part in keeping each community that I worked for safe. And to think that I studied Wildlife Resources in College so that I could man a fire watch tower and enjoy the beautiful scenery. Either way, in both professions I would have had to deal with ticks.

The Evolution of the Animal Shelter Profession

I was once called “old school.” I guess they meant that I am stuck to the old ways of the profession when the responsibility of being an Animal Control Officer was to serve and protect the public. Our profession has evolved, and to be honest, I am glad that I am now retired because I can’t stop being old school..

The No Kill Movement started the evolution. Our professional focus turned to the plight of the animals in our care. I have to admit, it was very fulfilling to see euthanasia rates decline. Shelters with a live release rate of 10% started seeing more animals getting adopted and eventually many shelters saw live release rates over 90%.

The problem was that many claimed that a 90% live release rate was still too low and that decisions had to be made to place animals that were not considered adoptable. Pit bulls became the poster breed for this cause. Organizations were attempting to convince the public that pit bulls were the breed to own. Even ones that had a history of aggression.

Recently, in my community, a woman was killed by a pair of pit bulls. The Newspaper, along with the local Animal Control organization wrote an article assuring the public that pit bulls are a maligned breed and that you should ignore the deaths caused by the breed. After all, “all breeds are the same.” Don’t let another pit bull related death interfere with the adoption of these animals from the animal shelter.

The problem with this evolution is that it is making people stupid. Animal Shelters are so focused on adopting every animal that they fail to warn people about the genetic characteristics that control an animal’s behavior. Let’s face it, when shelters have a population of 70% pit bulls, they have quite a sales job to make. After all, their mission is no longer to protect people, but to have the highest possible adoption rate…. no matter what the cost.

Since this evolution has sucked so many animal shelters in, it might become necessary to outlaw the adoption of potentially dangerous animals. The Commonwealth of Virginia outlaws the holding back of information about a dog’s previous behavior problems to potential adopters. I used to think that keeping adopters in the dark was a Southern thing, but it appears that it has spilled over into the rest of the Country. Maybe communities should reenact some old school philosophies.

I’m not suggesting that some breeds should be banned; I just think that animal shelters should get back to the days of full disclosure when adopting animals. An era of integrity and respecting the mission that people must come first.