The Chicago Shift
Controversy endures over who should do the killing
Although the Anti-Cruelty Society is not announcing a switch to no-kill, Mueller does expect that the society's euthanasia of adoptable animals will effectively end with this policy change.
Sobel fears that putting the entire burden of euthanasia onto animal control will make the caring people who work there look like the bad guys. She says this burden is difficult for people to understand if they don't work in shelters that perform euthanasia - and spend every day looking into the eyes of the animals they have to put down.
"We will be viewed as the place animals go to die, and it will be hard to get compassionate people to work here. So how is animal welfare going to progress here with that environment?" she says.
"We want people to support us, to know who we are and what we are, and that we have the largest number of adoptable animals in the city. We are never going to get good people to come down here and work and volunteer if this place is viewed as a concentration camp. I think everyone should play a role and share that burden," she says.
But Avanzino points out that there are huge advantages to taking private organizations out of the killing function - including an increase in volunteers, donations, and other resources.
"The San Francisco SPCA lost out on a lot of opportunities when it was engaging in killing, because volunteers couldn't deal with it," he says. "Once we stopped killing, we attracted more volunteers, more media attention, and a lot more animal lovers supported us and became involved. That synergy compounded the resources we already had, and enabled us to guarantee all animals in San Francisco a loving home."
Avanzino says he just doesn't understand the argument that if somebody in the city has to kill, then all the organizations have to kill, or they are viewed as ducking out of their responsibilities.
"If you save one life, one dog, one cat, you've helped solve the problem. Everyone here has something to offer, and how they offer it is a matter of personal choice," he says. "We all want to stop the killing in animal control, not just the people in animal control."
Cooperation is key to success
Avanzino emphasizes that the key to making things work is cooperation between the agencies, and a commitment that nobody is going to be portrayed to the public as the bad guy.
"Animal control serves an important function, and rescue groups have to acknowledge that, so that they all can work together to create a no-kill community," he says.
An important element of that cooperation in San Francisco was an agreement that the SPCA wouldn't just cherry pick what Avanzino calls the "cute and cuddlies" from the animal control shelter, leaving the city facility with only the "old and uglies." Instead, the SPCA tried to take animals the city facility was unable to adopt, as well as those who needed some form of rehabilitation.
"If rescues only take the cute and cuddlies, and leave the old and uglies behind, then we are just giving up on them, and that isn't acceptable," he says. "You have to sit down at the negotiating table and figure out the best strategy to find the most homes for the most animals."
Although they disagree on the wisdom of the Anti-Cruelty Society's latest move, it is clear that the leaders of the society and animal control share a lot of common ground. Both emphasize the importance of spay/neuter and education as the only way to solve the problem of homeless animals, often using the same language to describe their views.
"Adopting more animals is not the answer. Dealing with the flow from the shelter is not the answer. You have to stop the flow from coming in in the first place," says Sobel.
Mueller makes use of a similar analogy.
"Someone said it was like seeing animals float past you in the river toward a waterfall," he says. "You can sit alongside the river and keep trying to pull them out, or you can go to the top and figure out where they are all coming from and try to stop the flow."
He says he expects the new strategy to produce a radical decrease in the citywide euthanasia rate in the next two to three years, moving toward a time when all of Chicago's pets will be in loving homes. He is hopeful that when the city adjusts to the new approach, everyone will realize that it helps to save more animals, and that they will be able to increase their cooperative efforts to bring more resources into the community.
"Before we can run, we have to walk, and I think we are all walking together now. We all want the same thing - reducing euthanasia rates and saving more lives, so that all adoptable animals will be in loving homes," Mueller says.
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