When you can kill dogs and cats live on television, show the barrels of still warm dead bodies on the six o'clock news, and have it all forgotten in six months, nobody is listening and nobody cares. The needle is in the vein. It's drawn back. And the blood of Animal Welfare is in the hub.

While the people's pets were being killed on television, there was a morbid and measurable blip in the ratings. When it was over, it was just about that, over. The animals died just the same. The county in California that aired the killings passed a somewhat confusing moratorium on breeding. It was not a ban on breeding or a promise to eliminate breeding in any manner or another. It was an apologetic call to those of the public who do or might breed in the next six months to voluntarily postpone that breeding until after the moratorium.

Like many, I also did not follow the progress of that town's breeding moratorium. Whatever improvement it may have prompted certainly did not also prompt media attention similar to the public killing. The moratorium appears to have been no more than a request for a pause in the treadmill, if one so voluntarily chose, for a six-month period in which the public could forget what they saw on TV.

The shock of the demonstration did at least prompt a paltry few other localized attempts elsewhere in the country to bring the tragedy of breeding within the arm length of the law via breeding bans and breeding by paid permits, a tax. There was at least a showing within a few communities across the country that there was possibly an understanding of the tragedy behind every litter of puppies or kittens, an understanding of the death of them. Finally, a finger was pointed at those who breed too many for pet shop window-shopping. An allegation was finally made against those innocent families delighted over the new puppies birthed in their kitchen for the education of their children. On the other hand, those whose dogs just popped out six more pups this year, just like last year, never even saw the blessed news event.

But few animal owners were willing to point a finger at themselves and most locales managed to escape any threat of change by dubbing the killing as no more than a drastic and explicit public relation stunt pulled off by animal rights extremists. A simple plea, although admittedly depicted through a grotesque public display, to quit the practice of breeding more puppies and kittens while so many thousands already die in Humane Animal Shelters became embroiled in a barrage of rebuttals based on society's increasing concepts and awareness of the human connection with animal and environmental concerns and ethics.

New and old suggestions of simple and utilitarian pet care digressed into ravings of enviro-militant, eco-defense terrorism. The mere mention of the leash law somehow crumpled under flocks of spotted owl and the economic devastation of the Northwest corridor. And while one made an effort to point out obvious benefits of the spay or neuter surgery, the conversation collapsed into accusations of turning the world into an anemic herd of vegetarians feeding on rabbit food and raw seaweed.
Beyond that, the six months was up pretty quick. The six-month period of forgetting had proceeded in a controlled and orderly fashion. Such an explosive and grizzly exposure of truth, dead puppies on television, destined to be the leading edge of vast, sweeping social change, fizzled. Soon to be seen as no more than "the sick exhibitionism of extremists," the dead bodies were used as weapons against themselves. The effect was used as rebuttal against the cause.

It made one recall that 'Animalines' publication that infuriated the Animal Welfare community by even begging the question--Might we be better off just shutting the doors altogether? Were there none to take them in, there would be none to kill. Of course, with that also, none to question and none to speak out. No, the effect still has not become the cause and it is not time to close the doors, yet. But it may be time to put away the needle.

When did this awful dead puppy sale begin, anyway? Just when did it emerge from behind the dungeon wall? It was once so neatly shrouded behind closed doors, so closely guarded in county kennels. It was dreadful and largely ignored beyond a hushed, however largely accepted expression, "Three days and you're dead."

The dogcatcher was characterized with a net and a sinister, waxed and curled mustache. His barred-door panel truck emerged and returned to disappear behind a great stone dungeon wall. He carried away the troublemakers, the dangerous and homeless dogs feeding on garbage in the alley. It was an idyllic dismissal framing the snapshot of Mom and Dad in plaid shorts beaming over the three spindly kids who were hugging the shaggy dog a little too tightly around the neck. The SPCA rode in shining armor, grasping terrified puppies out of the hands of drunkards and mean men who would beat and starve helpless creatures. All harm was addressed and all the hungry, hurt and ill found care. Except, maybe somebody should be watching that guy with the net. Maybe someone should keep an eye on that guy in the truck. Maybe the protectors, the SPCA, the Humane Society, should be checking out "the pound".

Who better to keep a "watch dog" eye on those behind the dungeon walls? Better yet. Who better to take the job altogether? It was the simplest of struggles, hardly a skirmish; the conclusion set long ago in caricature. There could be no more villainous portrait than even one puppy dragged off to the pound.

The White Knight sounded the call of what it would later come to know itself as the voice of the novice stepping into the public kennel. "The killing must at least be done by those who love them, their last hour directed by those who care. The dungeon wall should rather be one last home away from home. The SPCA, the great Humane Society will lift their little dead bodies in their arms. It's only right." Who better indeed? An indistinct image vacillates. It was an easy exchange. The needle is unclear. City Hall already knew there was no defense. They gladly gave up the ghastly pit. You cannot polish any pride on it.

There was a flourish of cooperation for the new guy in town. Cruelty, containment, and care regulations were sped through City Hall. The facilities were brightened. There was a great boom in building and new paint. The employees tossed in the handle bar mustache for medical assistant smocks and there was much talk of improving the conditions, more modern methods, and humane drugs. Needles replaced the too obvious carbon monoxide and decompression chambers. Of course they were the best known for their time, just as the best drug is today.

The new expertise, the Humane Shelters prospered, expanded and promised an end to the dungeon walls. By law now, at the request of the SPCA and the great Humane Society, no animal again would be brought under the whip of a stick, every pet dog would be safely leashed and tethered to home, and the White Knight would adopt even more of those cute little puppies to "great Moms and Dads and their kids" in every single neighborhood across the nation. "This will bring the killing to its knees."
Private animal shelters studied the operations of the public kennel and devised and implemented new policy and procedure standards by which an animal shelter should correctly operate. They instituted systems that allowed for the humane operations of a kennel committed to the welfare of those animals entrusted to their care and rules by which these same animals would reenter adoptive homes in the community.

The doors were opened.
The puppy sale began.
This was their second chance,
their last stand.
Give the dog a break.
"We'll send them off
with a shot,
a collar and a leash.
You won't find a better deal."

The veil descended, unnoticed
over the carnival
of the great give-away.
The great protector
could not stop the waste.
The great give away
could not give away enough.
The killing line
was longer than the leash.

"Let us in your schools.
Let us teach your kids.
We'll teach the future."
The path became convoluted.
"Let's spay and neuter.
Let's make it a law."
But still the death line grew.
It went beyond the love,
the leash and the family.

There was a need to really understand.
Every one of the public
had to start to comprehend.
It was not the organization
that brought the puppies to their end.

But who could have known."
It was not even suspected.
They all came from exactly
where they were protected.
They came from home, from family.
But it was not home
that gave them death.
And therein lies the crook.

The pointing finger moved.
It singled out and rested on
the White Knight
The White Knight with the needle.
The public took its distance.
The City Council balked.
The image is clear.
The job itself
is the dungeon wall.
The job itself
is the needle in the vein.
It's pulled back.
The job itself
is the enemy.

The White Knight knew now
from where the killing line grew.
That's when it all started to tumble,
when the humane shelter started to crumble.
Each person saw only their own single one.
They saw one dog who wouldn't listen.
They saw only one little litter,
so cute, so very bright.
They thought their one cat
had "disappeared".
No one ever saw them all.
But you would know,
every one would see
the whole, long killing line
and everyone would see.
When the killing wouldn't stop
each single deed,
it was so much easier
to blame the killing than the need.

"What's this about my house,
my doors, my self-control
and a disappearing cat?
You've got to be out of your mind.
And what do you mean
"neuter" my dog?
It's a "he" for heaven's sake.
Don't you think these new ideas
are getting a little "pricey"?
It's a dog you know.
You ought to do it for free.
After all,
it was a "free puppy" to me.
I think you're getting a little "uppity."
You can't blame all this killing on me.
I think you're in cahoots
with Green Peace and their ilk.
If it costs one red cent
or points a finger at 'me,'
you're a party to the enemy,
an extremist.
You are the dreaded lunatic fringe."

And when those who regulate the law
agree and join hands with these,
and even those
who make a breeding buck
and wish for more,
it is time to quit the killing line.
There is no doubt.
You have lost your clout.

The six-month period proved its point. The blood of Animal Welfare is in the hub. The six-month period passed as planned.

There was not a single and simple solution. Not the leash, the law, nor even the sterilization by itself. The death line grew behind the single one. The one that dug a hole, ran loose and then remained in that kennel unclaimed by one unthinking owner began the line. The one that chewed the rug, the nightstand and was forever toppling the toddlers was right behind. The very little one of six cute pups that no one took to be their own was gently laid atop the pile of the dead. There was not one mindless, basic rule that might fix it all. Every single one had to have every single need met, the spaying and the neutering, the training and the teaching, all the bells and the whistles, every one. And then still sometimes, someone to come looking for them when it was all for naught and they lay in a cold stray shelter kennel, at least safe for now.
City Hall did not forget who brought those first answers to them, who brought their public kennels structure, plausible standards and humane policies of operations. They just knew that now the real answers were too many, misunderstood, and unpopular among the very vocal, however ill mannered and ill informed. So, rather than begin what might be a complicated set of unpopular regulations, the new political trend has become denial, using the guise of "public hearing" to parade the worst of the lot under the nose of the media's insatiable appetite for the absurd sound bite.

The boisterous breeders of greed, the seasoned lousy dog owner with a grudge against animal control, and the offended pet owning novice are invited to voice their most incredible machinations of association between the inalienable right to breed more dogs and cats than there are homes for them and the latest environmental worry over cattle, methane gas, and global warming. However serious such a topic might be for our living planet, such association digressions only belittle the immediate offense of needlessly killing even one puppy today. Thus, City Hall is able to create a night of widely publicized public forum and complaint expertly directed to demean and debunk the rationale of the real expertise, the humane workers in bulging animal shelters, as no more than the ravings of an extremist coalition, the lunatic fringe.

The trend evolves grotesquely because it costs City Hall nothing. And as long as private contributions to Humane Shelters continue to fund the brunt of too many, to subsidize real community Animal Control, the trend will endure. While humane shelters continue to subsidize the true cost of the waste, there is no impetus for any change. There is no reason for City Hall to rule out of public favor, while private contributions fund euthanasia. There is no reason for City Hall to curb the violence while the White Knight yells "foul" to the wind, yet injects the death itself, the utilitarian tolerance. The humane shelter itself is helping City Hall to say "no." Private contributions were never meant to do this. They were never meant to stand in the way of change. However, don't mistake this as a sign or a vision of a closing door. There is a greater need than ever before. The need of the living is greater than the dead.

It is critical that the White Knight now be the one who is first to make a drastic move. It is a matter of survival. It is not time to shut the door. It is merely time to give up the needle, give up the act of tolerance and the dungeon wall. No Kill is not a goal. It is not a promise and a wish. No Kill is a policy. It is said and it is done. No Kill aggressively sets and displays the price of life in the living. The price of death should be once more a dismal and dastardly deed paid in full by those who would deny the need, scoff at each and every remedy and obstruct the justice of a law. Life is too precious for the killing to be cheap.

Only therein does real Animal Welfare survive, no longer lending death at discount. Only therein does Animal Welfare regain the dignity and regard with which it can defend the substance and significance of all life, however meek. This cannot be achieved from behind that absolute stone dungeon wall. Only in the job and in the price of it, will there be a break with popularity and politic. It is a job that must necessarily be returned to City Hall. And that will still only be the half of it, because the answer never was in the open doors and the race to see how many might be brought through them today and today and again today.
The Animal Welfare answer is in the services that keep the loved ones homes, in reducing how many need those open doors at all. And that must now be the task of priority for private Animal Welfare causes and endeavors. Their every cent only spent on keeping the living and the living home.

How many go without being spayed or neutered for lack of costly low-cost and no-cost public surgery programs? Worse, how many lack for the cost of advertising where those programs do exist, because so much is spent to receive them through the door? Does City Hall do this for them while others foot the bill for death? How many could we help today teach their dog to listen if were we not so busy taking in a dog that "just will not sit and stay?" Does City Hall do this for them? Sometimes the faces of so many become so maddening that someone from the public snarls, "There ought to be a law." Does City Hall even do this for them? The six months passed without a hitch.

It will not be as easy to deliver that job back from whence it came. It will even take a while to admit that it is time. After all, who first extended that foreboding, pointing finger? Who was it that so self-righteously proclaimed "they must at least be given death with kindness and affection?"

The first task was to break down the wall. That marked the greatest service to them all. Animal Control was an extension of law enforcement. Its direction, policy, and animal kenneling was structured to those parameters. The personnel grudgingly struggled though Animal Control with an eye on a career in the Police force. And those first private Humane Shelters contracting those duties did little more than camouflage that behind a yard sale and a dog walk-a-thon fundraiser. Most also did not want to admit their growing reliance upon a regular contract income cash flow.

The widely acclaimed animal division of the American Humane Association lead the field in operations of animal cruelty investigations and thus the new Humane Shelter Animal Control seminars and training programs. Though their programs were intended to specialize in Animal Control, their proposed systems remained largely geared toward law enforcement dictums of the investigation and prosecution process. The nuts and bolts of cruelty investigation were easily tailored to leash law enforcement. The American Humane Association preached the need to diminish the caricature of the dreaded dogcatcher, but beyond the scope of physical brutality, it continued to define Animal Control in terms of public health and nuisance. Although the responsibilities of Animal Control were switching into the realm of Public Humane Shelters, it was not transforming into a program of Animal Welfare. There began to develop a philosophical rift within that eventually resulted in a split and organizational spin-off creating another national Animal Welfare institution, the Humane Society of the United States. It was the platform of the new order that to fully organize the issues of Animal Control there was a need to speak to the full range of ethics imbedded in the business of Animal Welfare and the personal and individual responsibilities defining animal stewardship in every home.

The new Humane Society of the United States began the serious business of collecting hard data from local Humane Shelters nationwide. In addition to collecting sheer numbers, it collected personal information of those releasing their own animals to those shelters. Local shelters began documenting the big question - Why?. The Humane Society of the United States knew that the numbers were only a symptom. It was making answers for the "Whys" that held the ultimate solution. The Humane Society of the United States began to decipher the data and develop remedial animal service, shelter program, and/or operational procedure that would work to reduce each need and each "reason" behind each animal left homeless. Normal day-to-day operations of local Humane Animal Shelters began to change dramatically and, by that, new awareness crept into the homes of the people. It was a successful fruition of the "trickle down" theory.

The philosophical and procedural recommendations of the Humane Society of the United States were so effective as to produce significant, quantifiable reduction of animals entering shelters committed to these new doctrines and guidelines of shelter operations. So obvious was the benefit to the animal and community, even the more conservative American Humane Association was eventually convinced to incorporate those very same shelter standards within their own programs directed toward local Animal Shelter operations. The originally dissenting faction became the guiding figure behind the American Humane Association's own programs for Humane Shelter operating procedures.

Educated adoption policies replaced the rampant puppy sale. Humane Societies learned how to say "No" to lousy dog owners and Animal Control law offenders. Every new animal adopter "got an ear full", infuriating more than a few. Fenced yards were a must. Cats running amuck were a big, red flag and the adoption discouraged. Steel chains were replaced with "fenced yards only" and some basic knowledge of basic training. The sterilization of all those being adopted curtailed the return of many for the adoption of one. Spaying and neutering all household animals became a priority and, although many of those in the Veterinary community deemed it an affront to their profession, low-cost programs and veritable Spay/Neuter clinics run by the Shelters themselves became a norm. The commitment of a Shelter to the importance of Animal Welfare began to be judged by its success in this arena alone.

That first separation of Animal Control and Animal Welfare did press Animal Control forward, though perhaps kicking and screaming. It did greatly improve the conditions offered those then and now still in need of care at local Humane Animal Shelters. That original separation from the status quo Animal Control did raise the awareness of the public about their own responsibilities. It was a time when available information at all fronts was burgeoning. The age of information was at hand and those leading the animal and environmental movements seized its power.

For the single animal still in the confines of a Humane Shelter, this new phenomenon carried a bright and a dark side. The age of information so shrunk the world that we as an intelligent, human community have been overwhelmed with catastrophe at every turn. Awareness has progressed to a level where the death of a vibrant, little puppy dog is but a whisper amid the clamor of worldwide stages of devastation rivaling Biblical Revelations itself. Animal Welfare must recognize that behind every rain forest rests one tired and tiny calico kitten. It must recognize that the very life blood of Animal Welfare itself rests in its own ability to hold up that one kitten in the face of that devastation and convince the world that the first step to our own rescue is in the acceptance of the magnitude of that insignificant calico's deafening heart beat. And that will not be done so long as Animal Welfare holds up the kitten in one hand and kills it with the other.
For its own sake, Animal Welfare must now consider the road taken by that first dissenting faction within who split off in order to progress the ethical precepts of Animal Welfare beyond hauling off the remains of "road kill." As the national separation of Animal Welfare from Animal Control once turned Animal control full round, so should and must each local private Humane Animal Shelter now separate itself from Animal Control and City Hall.

Although there were some ghastly sights and still a shocking horror story is uncovered, a sad but merciful "Shelter Standard of Excellence" is now the norm, or within reach of being pressed to this norm for the greater share. That was the first job in the larger puzzle. There did need to be a scrutinizing look at the operations of the public kennel. There did need to be a time to scrutinize that hopelessly utilitarian task. However, now it's time to make it clear. That is the job of the public stray and drop-off kennel, the job of public funds; the full cost of the kennel, the equipment, and the public personnel. It is no longer the job of private funds to be squandered on misguided public discretion and indiscretion that enables and perpetuates the current and collective disgrace of killing animals at an indecent twenty first century pace. Private funds are far too dear.

Private funds are exactly that, private. 501-C is private first and foremost. The funds are better spent to "watchdog" City Hall, the people, and the pound, continually guiding the community and their leaders toward a viable and humane public Animal Control system of regulation, enforcement and kenneling, than in the job that is itself found right behind the needle and the dead. The voice of reason is necessarily rising to another level, more complex than a license and a leash. Claiming inspiration about the right or wrong of breeding them only to kill others of them was destined to collapse so long as the inspired remained tethered to the public death of them. The vacillating target flipped only from foul to foul. Private funds must give that duty back or forever inadvertently fund their own opposition down at City Hall. Private funds are far too dear for that and the mission far too important for the organization to roll over, pander to only those issues that speak more to the human condition than those paramount to the animal, and become no more than an elite social fundraising arm with no bite. To silence the only voice they ever knew by silencing it from within in favor of funds escalates the killing from the animals to the institution, to the very philosophical root and foundation of human ethics and morality.

No Kill does not mean that there are no more animals being killed, that the public at large is not still freely and casually disposing of their own "wanted now/now unwanted" household animals for the killing. No Kill means animals are dying at a desperate rate and when the legislative powers that be refuse to regulate the loss, they must bear the financial burden of that decision. It means that a private organization will no longer subsidize that killing with private funds that are better spent on the continuing operation of programs and the ratification of legislation now shunted by City Hall that are the resolute solutions of exactly that abomination, the rampant killing. No Kill means no longer depleting gracious gifts and contributions to death. It means no longer acting the "poor relation" and paying for the effects of politics by popularity. No Kill is the next strategic move wherein there is an explicit and graphic portrayal of the public shame, and the contamination pervading the public service arena now disgracing even mere perception of personal principals for pandering to incipit popularity.

And because, beside all that--my grandmother said so...