You're listening to;
"It Ain't Necessarily So"
by George Gershwin
Chekia Pet Lovers Pages
Overpopulation Myth
REDEMPTION
by Nathan Winograd
An Overview by Diane Amble
co-founder, We The People For Pets
The Pet Overpopulation Myth and No-Kill Revolution in America is
the subtitle for this book by Nathan Winograd, a graduate of
Stanford Law School, former criminal prosecutor and corporate attorney turned animal advocate originally from the birthplace of
No-Kill success– San Francisco. Winograd was once the Director
of the San Francisco SPCA while Richard Avanzino, now CEO of Maddie’s Fund, was President. From this unique vantage point Winograd takes us on a history of our nation’s animal welfare programs from their birth to their place now as killing facilities.
Even in the earliest days when the founder of the animal welfare consciousness and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals (SPCA), Henry Bergh, a wealthy son of a ship builder in
the mid 1800s, began to round up the many stray dogs in the
streets of New York City, the result was nearly all being killed rather than saved. Yet, this protocol continued until by 1987 we, yes,
WE were killing 17.8 million animals a year here in America.
However, a turn for the better came about with the advent of spay/neuter procedures being offered and promoted and even mandated by many communities before animals could be adopted from the shelters. By 1996, the estimated amount of animals killed
in shelters were 4 million as a result from the pet owners who voluntarily embraced this solution without mandatory sterilization
laws for citizen’s personal pets. Winograd addresses these last millions of animals that we must save. In his career establishing
No-Kill programs, he found that only a small percentage of animals coming into the shelters were too vicious or gravely ill to be saved.
How can this be done? First, there is a three step process:
1) Stop the killing;
2) Stop the killing; and finally, yes, you have already learned
the key to success,
3) Stop the killing.
Then most animal control leadership must be fired. Why? Because the most important job a shelter has is to SAVE LIVES. Instead we have Directors and management spending OUR TAX DOLLARS to
kill these animals that they are supposed to be saving! I hope you
are at the very least livid and at the most so disturbed that your
blood pressure is rising and must go take a pill at this realization
that we are not getting our monies worth from these civil servants.
If you mail a letter with the post office, you expect it to be delivered just as you expect the trash collector to empty your garbage and recycle bins, correct? It is time we demand that the shelters deliver what citizens expect from the hundreds of millions appropriated for animal care. Winograd points out in one of many of the poignant
and inspiring sayings included in his chapter titles,
"Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great.
You can be that generation" ~~ Nelson Mandela (2005).
Every citizen in every community must counter the killing policies by demanding immediate subsidized free and low-cost spay/neuter programs, feral cat programs that ends killing of feral cats and in its stead provides free sterilization services and the return of these wild animals to their habitat, no more use of temperament testing of dogs that results in their death, foster care programs for animals that need special care, adoption programs that provide more accessible hours and locations, and the repeal of ALL unenforceable,
counter productive and draconian laws and animal ordinances such
as cat licensing, leash laws, pet limit laws, bans on feeding stray animals as well as breed specific legislation such as so called
"pit-bull bans" which ban a mythical animal that only results in the death of a hundreds even thousands of innocent dogs.
I can only implore you to get this book, read it from cover to cover. Understanding the history of the animal welfare movement will help you understand why the no-kill movement must be embraced.
As you read this book, you will cry tears of sorrow for the animals
and the people that love them that are victims of OUR animal welfare system put into place by OUR tax dollars and even our charitable donations to humane societies that have become nothing more than concentration camps. Sure, some are saved as were "some saved"
at Dachau, Auschwitz and others but to allow draconian laws to assign a yellow star to our fur family members with labels such as "pitbull" or "intact animal" or "breeder", only set the ground work for more fodder for the crematories and barrels that many animal rights groups like to expound upon and yet are creating a fertile ground for exactly that to not only continue but to become an industry within itself state to state as it has in California with 25 million dollar
shelters at every locale claiming overpopulation. Someone is making money killing the animals we pay to protect!
As you read into the final chapters your tears will begin to flow freely upon the realization that there is a solution! There is hope! There is redemption not only for the animals but for us as a society
responsible to save these animals lives as God intended. We must right our sin for being ignorant and complacent, for turning a
blind eye. Winograd’s book destined to be a best seller,
since I alone have bought several copies sharing with friends and family, as have likewise many others, is bringing us into the light,
into the revelation of what was and what can be.
On the first page, inconspicuously where Winograd addresses the reader, he provides the definition of redemption: 1:to get back;2: to free from what distresses or harms; 3:to change for the better; 4:to make good; 5: to atone for. Choose whichever meaning fits your interpretation of what redemption means then let’s get to work!
Again Winograd provides us with words of wisdom from the past,
this time from Victor-Marie Hugo~~ "No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come."
California Residents:
Support the California statewide initiative Pet Animal Protection Act
by asking your local government to put it in place immediately so the killing can stop sooner than later. Just as animal rights supporters try to take away our rights to decide the fate of our own animals town to town, county to county, so can we demand that this myth of animal overpopulation be "cured" by revealing the dismal failure of our
shelter system and demanding the implementation of P.A.P.A. Contact me for your personalized copy for your community and for
the sake of your pets and those that have yet to find their very own family.
Diane Amble
We the People for Pets
160 10th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103-2618
(650) 296-2169
Pet Animal Protection Act can also be found at the official
Printed with permission from Diane Amble
who further grants permission to all readers to publish & cross post
