KC DOG BLOG

69

That's the number of additional dogs and cats that found homes this past weekend through Animal Haven's off-site adoption center at our local mall that they've set up over the holidays. I mentioned this program last week.

That's 69 more dogs and cats that found forever homes that may or may not have found homes otherwise, or who's owners may have purchased instead of adopted.

That's just in the first week of operation in a high-traffic retail location. That's 10 animals a day.

It's a great program. And it's finding dozens of animals homes that may not otherwise have found one.

Congrats to Animal Haven and their sponsors for a great program. And while keeping a retail location is great -- and great for the animals - it still takes volunteer time to keep it open. So if you have some time off for the holidays and want to help out, contact the fine folks at Animal Haven and they can put you to work and continue putting pets in good homes.

Want to increase holiday adoptions? Think like a retailer

Every retail business knows that one key to generating sales is to generate store traffic. And one way to generate store traffic is to be in a high-traffic location.

Unfortunately, a large percentage of the animal shelters in this country don't have the luxury of being in high traffic locations.  Many are stuck in warehouse districts and on the outskirts of town where people seldom travel.

One thing many good shelters do to increase adoptions is to do off-site adoptions in high-traffic areas. And for the next six weeks, one of our local shelters -- one that is doing it right -- Animal Haven, is upping the anty. For the next six weeks they are going to be opening a pet adoption center in a store front in Oak Park Mall -- one of the premier mall locations in Kansas City.

With some help from a local corporation and from the down economy, they were able to rent out an empty store fronts in the mall and will be able to adopt animals in one of the higher-trafficked areas in the city around the holidays.  This is a great deal for them, and something many shelters can do -- particularly in this tough economy.

With the tough economy, most malls -- even great malls -- have empty store fronts. Many would be willing to allow adoption centers for a fairly minimal cost in order to avoid having the empty store front (and a smart mall operator will see tax write-off possibilities). And the high volume of traffic offered at most mall locations can't help but bring in more potential adopters.

In the end, everyone wins -- more animals are adopted. Fewer animals are killed. And more people get the joy of pet ownership. 

Pink Toenail Polish

Last week, in the wake of the reality that Lucas County Dog Warden Tom Skeldon is a dog killer, The Toledo Blade has begun reporting a listing of all dogs adopted, and all dogs killed, at the Lucas County shelter at least until changes are made in the shelter. From the 11/14 report, which features 17 dogs killed, and 4 adopted, it seems that little is being done in the short term to bring an end to shelter killing.

But it is a dog on the 11/13 report that caught the eye of one of my readers in the comment section, that is th inspiration for the blog posting.  Here's the part of the report:

Dogs Killed

"Pit bull," tan/white young female "with pink toe nail polish," North University, Toledo, running at large, no muzzle

Reading this can't help but break your heart. Obviously, this dog was someone's dog. Clearly behind the scenes here was an owner that cared dearly about their dog....they loved the dog so much they POLISHED HER TOENAILS.  This isn't some inner city dog fighter like Tom Skeldon would have you believe is the "typical" pit bull owner and why he needs a ban. It was a caring person, who clearly had a connection with their dog.

Somehow, the dog got free (which anyone who owns a dog can tell you, can happen, even to a responsible owner), ended up in the animal shelter, and killed.

Now, most shelters would have workers and volunteers who are compassionate about animals. They would see this dog, realize the dog had an owner, and work their butts off to find that owner. They would post flyers in the North University area. They would talk to neighbors (I mean, come on, someone HAS to know the owner of the pit bull that polishes their toenails) and would work to find the owner who loved this dog.  But this was in Toledo, where only 13% of the dogs make it out alive, and thus, the dog is dead.

But then that got me thinking, what about the dogs in shelters across the U.S. that have owners, but aren't wearing pink toenail polish?

Dogs can get loose for a variety of reasons. Just a few weeks ago, my wife and I were out hiking and at the trail head, this dog came up to us. We pet the dog and checked out his collar -- his name was Huck. We have Huck some of our peanut butter sandwhich, a couple of carrots and a little drink of water. Huck was a little dirty and we couldn't find an owner, anywhere. We called the phone number on his tag and no one answered. We decided that most likely someone was looking for the dog and that we would leave him there. If Huck was there when we finished the hike, then we'd start searching for his owners.

We later met a woman on the trail, who was a little frantic that her dog had somehow wandered off while they were out hiking together and she didn't know where he went. I assume Huck and his owner were reunited.

But the moral of the story is, this was a caring owner, who was taking their dog out hiking, and the dog got loose.  It happens. And the dog, gone from his owner for no more than a couple of hours had found water and mud and had gotten dirty. He looked a little disheveled.

But what would have happened if Huck had made it to a shelter and somehow lost his tags? Would the shelter have assumed that he was abandoned out in the woods?  Would they have assumed that he was homeless because he was so dirty?  Would they have assumed that the owner was not caring and irresponsible for letting their dog run free?  Or ould they have busted their butts to try to find Huck's human hiking companion?

I guess my point is that a lot of dogs that find their way into the shelter are owned dogs. They have owners who love them, care about them, and sometimes paint their toenails pink. But what if their toenails aren't pink? What if the signs of ownership are not as obvious and the dog is a little dirty. Do we assume the dog is a stray?  Or assume the dog is lost?  And what resources do we put into finding the dog's home vs finding the dog a new home?

Do we think lost, not stray, even when the dog does not wear pink toenail polish or have other obvious signs of being owned?  We should.

Assistance for Pets and a story about Oreo

Last week, the New York Times ran a great article on various animal groups around the country that are helping people in low-income areas to provide food for their pets.

Pets make wonderful companions for people of all income levels, but sometimes it can be very difficult for people to financially afford the best for their pets. While some can judge the folks as not properly caring for their pets, to them, it's the best they can do.

Ollie Davidson, of the Tree House Humane Society in Chicago realizes he's helping both parties when they help pets: "We're helping people," he said.  "In times of stress, it's always good to keep people with their pets."

And the help also allows dogs and cats that might otherwise end up in a crowded shelter from ending up there --- and any opportunity to keep a pet in a home is a great opportunity.

The Times article features several groups around the country, including Spay/Neuter Kansas City and Northland Pet Food Pantry in my city, that are helping people with low incomes to have adequate food, dog houses, dog bedding, etc.  It really is a great program and I'm thrilled to have them in our city. Other groups featured were Tree House Humane Society and PAWS in Chicago,  the Petco Foundation and their "We are Familie Too" program, Young at Heart Pet Rescue's Nina's Pet Food Pantry of Palentine, IL, and Northeast Community Lutheran Church in Minneapolis -- which is also providing pet food for needy families.

There's also a great photo album associated with the story here (go for no other reason than to check out the picture of the beautiful red bully). Most of the pics are from Kansas City.

The article ran in a special "giving" section of the newspaper last week.

If you have organizations like these in your home town, I strongly recommend a simple food donation, or time donation to help deliver the food, to help these organziations out. And if your city doesn't have one, how many human and animal lives can be improved if you started one?  Don't hesitate.  Start one in your home town.

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Meanwhile, there is a second story that I think is a must read.  The story involves a dog named Oreo (get it, he's black and white).  Oreo's owner was apparently a piece of crap of an individual and decided to throw Oreo off the side of a 6 story building. Oreo sustained major injuries including two broken legs, and a broken rib.

The ASPCA in New York raised money for Oreo and helped him to recover from his physical injuries -- unfortunately, Oreo wasn't able to overcome his emotional ones -- at least not in the time that the ASPCA alloted. The ASPCA determined that Oreo was too aggressive to go into a home*.  Another organization, Pets Alive, that apparently specializes in dealing with rehabilitating dogs like Oreo, offered to take Oreo from the ASPCA and work on his rehabilitation -- and even if he was never able to be completely rehabbed, would be allowed to live out his life in their Sanctuary where dogs get walks and attention every day from volunteers.

* I should note that Oreo seems very calm in this photo taken by the ASPCA and far from "overly" aggressive"

The ASPCA opted to kill Oreo instead.

First off, I must say, that I support rescue groups' decisions to euthanize dogs that really are too aggressive to adopt into homes. There are too many great dogs in the world to not take that risk.

But I also believe that the vast majority of dogs with behavioral issues can be rehabilitated with tons of love and training by a dedicated person or group of people.  And I believe that euthanasia is the "solution" only when there are absolutely no other options. It is the very last option, the end of the line. It's the end of the line for the dog, and thus, should be our very last resort.

It sounds as if the ASPCA euthanized Oreo, even though other options were available for Oreo. And I do have a problem with that.

I'm not going to go into a lot of details on this -- instead, I'll provide some links -- but I just want to emphasize that euthanasia is the VERY LAST RESORT, the end of the line, for pets. It should only be used when every single other safe option has been exhausted. And we need to hold our national organizations like the ASPCA to that standard.

Meanwhile, it sounds like Oreo's owner, Fabian Henderson,is scheduled for sentencing on December 1st after pleading guilty to aggravated animal cruelty.

Pets Alive Blog -- Failing Oreo.

ASPCA to Euthanize Oreo - from the New York Animal Welfare Examiner.

Deluge of pleas to spare Oreo thrown off roof -- the NY Times Blog

Oreo the abused pit bull is euthanized -- The New York Times

Oreo is dead, the blame game is not -- The Gothamist

ASPCA Statemen on the Euthanasia of Oreo - the ASPCA

ASPCA Euthanizes Oreo -- YesBiscuit!

The meaning of Oreo - Winograd

"Unsaved": When the shelter that "rescues" a dog turns around and kills her -- Pet Connection

Horrific Abuse in Memphis Animal Shelter

The idea behind animal shelters is simple. Sometimes people are jerks, or careless, or victims of bad luck -- and the dog they committed to "for life" ends up homeless. The animal shelter the last resort for animals that have nowhere else to go.

I could use this column to go on about how shelter kill more healthy dogs and cats than any other cause of death. They call it euthanasia, but the end result is still death for the animal.

But today I won't. Today I want to ask, what happens when the dogs end up in a shelter where the people who run the shelter who don't really care about animals?  Where the abuse they suffer is worse than it would be if the dog was just left out on the street?

Sadly, it happens.  And it apparently did in amazing fashion recently in Memphis. On August 18, the dog pictured to the left entered the Memphis Animal Shelter as a seemingly healthy, vibrant puppy.

On September 4th -- only 3 weeks later -- the dog was found starved to death in the shelter. And this puppy wasn't the only case -- but was actually one of three dogs in the shelter that was found starved to death.  Veterinarian reports note that the dog had not eaten anything in at least 72 hours prior to his death.

What -- the- hell?

The city animal control department is responsible for actually enforcing the city's animal cruelty laws -- not violating them on their own.  And apparently, problems have been going on for awhile --- as the death rates in the city shelter have risen sharply over the past few years -- from 75 animals dying in the shelter in 2006, to 119 in 2007 to 193 in 2008.

The Memphis Mayor, AC Wharton, seems legitimately concerned about the issue -- and has halted all shelter euthanasia (which is at 250 animals per week -- 13,000 animals a year) until the criminal investigation is complete.

We can, and must, demand better from our animal control departments. These departments are tasked with not only providing public safety from animals -- but providing safety for animals from the public, both in terms of cruelty and abuse, and in terms of minimizing and eliminating shelter euthanasia.  Memphis is major need of a dramatic overhaul of the entire department -- and I hope someone sees jailtime over this one.

Hat tip to YesBiscuit! on this, who has been following the story from the start:

Here's her original coverage on the raid.

A follow up.

And her understandably emotional response to the story about the puppy above (including the "after" image)

And For the Love of Dogs has some very thorough coverage of the events there as well.

The Shelter Pet Project Released

The national Advertising Council, in a partnership with HSUS and Maddie's Fund, just launched the first ever national public service advertising (PSA) campaign to encourage pet lovers throughout the country to make shelters their first choice for aquiring a new pet.

The Ad Council is responsible for dozens of campaigns over the year to drive public awareness to different issues, including littering, drinking and driving, childhood obesity and dozens of others. And now, the Shelter Pet project.

Each year, about 4.5 million pets are killed in US Shelters - -and this PSA is designed to encourage more people to adopt first -- and is focusing on the reality that a lot of the pets in the shelter are there not because they're bad, or damaged pets, but because they have negligent owners.

The spots are humorous and fun -- and I think a positive way to promote pet adoptions. 

Here's the press release.

The Shelter Pet Project Website.

And a link to one of the TV commercials -- the other one is embedded below.

Nice work by the Ad Council, HSUS and Maddie's Fund for bringing public light to the plight of shelter animals in the U.S.

Friday's Assorted Links

Some good reads out there that I want to pass along to you in case you have down time on a Friday or over the weekend.

It looks like Malcolm Gladwell has a new book coming out - you can pre-buy it here-- a collection of many of his articles that he has written for the New Yorker over the years. I'm thrilled that Troublemakers has made the list of articles they've decided to include.  Troublemakers is a great article from 2006 in which Gladwell takes an analytical view of 'pit bulls'.  The book is named after an article that he did on Ceasar Milan entitled "What the dog saw" which I remember liking as well.  Gladwell is a brilliant writer and it will be great to have Troublemakers included in a book that is likely to become a national best-seller.   If you've never read Troublemakers, click the link and spend the time with the article.

Winograd has a great blog posting from yesterday about shelters denying potential adopters with Good Homes Need Not Apply.  The post starts with a touching tale of a couple who came to the shelter to get a cat a year after their cat of 15 years passed away -- and why they were declined by the shelter 15 years later.  Here's a clip:

 Unfortunately, too many shelters go too far with fixed, arbitrary rules—dictated by national organizations—that turn away good homes under the theory that people aren’t trustworthy, that few people are good enough, and that animals are better off dead.

I've often joked that I would have a difficult time actually adopting a dog from the rescue organization I regularly foster for....and this post hits the nail on the  head of a lot of reasons why.

The final article is one that Winograd posted a couple of weeks ago on Forcing Transparency. The article was written by Kate Neiswender, an attorney who presented at Winograd's No Kill Conference in Washington DC in May. I've been meaning to post a recap for 3 months now -- so I at least get to take that off my to-do list.  The article is a great look at State Public Records Laws (Freedom of Information Laws, Sunshine Laws) and how to use them in order to get information on shelter killing, dog bites, spending, etc to hold cities accountable for their animal control/sheltering services and for laws that are designed to "increase public safety" that often don't.  For too long, these groups have gone relatively unchecked by the public and it is time we begin to hold them accountable.  Our country has a beautiful system of open records laws that make this information open information for the general public...and knowing how to use the information is extremely important. So go check out that as well.

Have a great weekend.

Communities support successful organizations, but we need city support

Over the past 8 months, Kansas City, KS has ceased being a death trap for animals. In 2008, the KCK shelter killed roughly 4300 animals, but new leadership within animal control in KCK has at least led them to the decision to begin working with the Humane Society of Greater Kansas City to begin adopting out animals from the shelter -- instead of allowing the shelter to remain a death trap.  And adopt out animals they have done.

Since the first part of the year, the HSGKC has taken an abysmal kill rate of 56% to where only less than 4% of the adoptable dogs and cats in the shelter are being killed.  The success has been amazing -- and a true testimate that it IS possible to adopt your way to no kill.

However, two weeks ago, the Humane Society of Greater Kansas City sent out  a plea for money.  The costs of running the off-site adoptions, and for the staffing, and for the care of all the animals they were adopting out were starting to mount.

And the citizens in Kansas City responded in a big way -- as of Friday, the HSGKC had received nearly $100,000 in donations.

If you do things the right way, and work your butt off to save the lives of animals, the communities you serve will recognize it and step up to help you do it.  In Kansas City, they just did.

This is all great for the animals in KCK and for HSGKC.  But my fear is that unless the city government gets involved, their success will not be sustainable. The city animal control is still confiscating too many animals from home good homes because of laws that are on the books. They are still pulling every dog out of homes that even remotely looks like a 'pit bull' -- dogs like Brutus, Roscoe and Nikko  -- because of the city's breed ban. They are still confiscating animals from homes because they are unalterd due to the city's ordinance mandating spay/neuter -- instead of just encouraging them to use HSGKC's low-cost spay/neuter options and leaving the animals in the home.  They're still confiscating too many animals because of the city's overly restrictive pet limit law.

The city could really ease the burden on HSGKC by repealing some of the laws that are a) taking well-cared for, well behaved animals out of people's homes unnecessarily and b) removing some of the restrictions that make adopting animals into homes more difficult.

If the city government could get on board, the work they and HSGKC are doing will not only continue success -- but will be completely sustainable.

The citizens and taxpayers are clearly supportive. 

And the citizens throughout the

Misusing data to support personal agendas

Merritt Clifton is at it again -- and once again fudging numbers to promote his own personal agendas. 

In this month's issue of Animal People, Clifton's own newspaper where he is the sole writer and editor, Clifton releases his updated information on the state of shelter euthanasias in the U.S.

Not all of Clifton's information is garbage -- although enough of it is to even make me question the parts that seem accurate. He has certainly pulled ou this own conclusions in order to support his own personal agendsa

The article starts with a misleading headline "Decade of adoption focus fails to reduce shelter killing" -- even though in spite of pushes by proponents of the No Kill Movement, most city run shelters have not instituted much emphasis on adoptions. 

But this isn't the biggest problem with Clifton's data analysis.

Clifton is an advocate of breed bans. For reasons I don't know or understand he has continued to be maybe the loan torch bearer in the animal welfare community in support of breed bans.  And this document appears to be no exception.

In a little sidebar on the third page of the document he pulls out 11 cities (seemingly at random) and compares the euthanasia rates for 'pit bulls' in these shelters (3 of the cities have breed specific legislation, the other 8 do not).  The data also shows San Francisco's numbers before and after the city's ruling to mandate the spay/neuter all pit bulls.  Here is Clifton's analysis of the numbers:

"Philadelphia appears to kill relatively few pit bulls as a share of shelter killing chiefly because it has the highest total shelter killing on the chart: 19.9 per 1,000 people. Note that pit bulls are a much smaller part of the total killing in Cincinnati (which has a breed ban) than in either Milwaukee or Indianapolis, two cities with a very similar demographic profile."

The premise here appears to be if a city passes breed specific policies, then the number of pit bulls killed goes down, and that's a good thing. But once again, Clifton has manipulated data to support his point...not developed a point based on the actual data.

San Francisco

Let's start with San Francisco. According to Clifton's numbers, before instituting their MSN policy for pit bulls, San Francisco killed 452 pit bulls -- making up 43% of the total dogs killed in the shelter. Meanwhile, post the MSN, they killed 304 pit bulls, making up 29% of the dogs killed.

It looks like it's working great.

However, if you extrapolate from his data the total number of dogs killed, it tells a slightly different story. If the 304 pit bulls makes up 29% of the total kills, then San Francisco killed a total of 1,048 dogs post MSN.  If the 462 is 43% of the killed dogs, then a total of 1,051 dogs were killed a year prior to the MSN.

Essentially, the only thing that has changed is not a decrease in killing (as Clifton infers from the data), but a change in what type of dogs are killed. Whether this is a reflection of how dogs are classified at the shelter (were a lot more dogs classified as 'boxer mixes' vs 'pit bull' mixes in order to show "effectiveness at the shelter level) or did many of the irresponsible owners just change the type of dog they owned to avoid being harrassed by the law?  It seems Clifton doesn't seek to pursue this question - or even question it at all.  But it sure seems highly relevant.

Cincinnati, Milwaukee and Indianapolis

Meanwhile, Clifton uses a comparison of Cincinnati (a city with a breed ban) and both Milwaukee and Indianapolis as another example of how a city with a breed ban will kill fewer pit bulls than other cities.  But is this true?  From the chart, Clifton's assertion seems true as pit bulls make up a lower percentage of dogs killed than in the other two cities.

But wait.

Until as recently as this past March, Indianapolis' city shelter had a policy that kept them from adopting any pit bulls out of the city shelter. While this has changed in the past year under new shelter management, it certainly was in place with Clifton's current numbers. So an increase in percentage of pit bulls being killed at the shelter would be expected as an incredibly high percentage of the dogs would get killed in the shelter because POLICY prevented them from getting out alive. Clifton isn't a dumb man, and I'd be stunned if he didn't know this information. But he conveniently leaves this out of his analysis.

Meanwhile, when you look at Cincinnati compared to Milwuakee, you may notice something else significant. Even looking at the number Clifton posts, you see that even though pit bulls make up 18% of Milwaukee's euthanized dogs, the city is still killing 37% fewer pit bulls per thousand residents than the city of Cincinnati.  So what gives?

Well, again, if you extrapolate total numbers of dogs killed, you'll see that Milwaukee killed 7,988 total dogs during the timeframe available -- at a pace of 4.7 dogs per 1,000 people. Cincinnati on the other hand killed 11,210 dogs in that same time period -- a pace of 13.5 per 1,000 people*. So it appears that Cincinnati's "success" comes not from killing fewer 'pit bulls', but from the massive killing of dogs regardless of breed. This is also not something that would be a foreign concept to Clifton, who stated this exact scenerio as why the percentage of pit bulls killed in Philadelphia are so low - -and yet not only leaves this out of his "analysis" of the Cincinnati/Milwaukee comparison, he also somewhat conveniently leaves both cities out of the his overall shelter killing analysis that would make easy comparisons impossible.

* It should be noted here that I have no idea what Clifton is using for his population totals for these two cities.  While I can get there mathmatically by dividing the number of dogs killed by the # killed per 1,000 people, I don't know where he got these figures. Cincinnati's population of 836,000 appears to be the population of Hamilton County.  Milwaukee's population of 1.48 million is close to that of the entire Milwuakee MSA -- which they may provide service for.  For the sake of this whole post, I'm just using Clifton's own data.

Meanwhile, Denver -- who has had a breed ban since 1987 -- seems to have INCREDIBLE numbers based on Clifton's report -- killing only 275 pit bulls at a rate of .14 per 1,000 people and making up only 3% of the kill rate.  However, again, Denver's total numbers 9,167 killd dogs and a 4.6 kill rate are very similar to that of Milwaukee -- a city that doesn't have breed specific regulations.  It would only make sense that a city that has had a breed ban on the books for 20 years would not kill all that many dogs of that breed -- but it still hasn't seemed to improve the shelter's overall kill rate.   Meanwhile, it should be noted that Clifton's pit bull kill estimates seem extremely low compared to what most media reports give for the city and their pit bull kill numbers. These numbers for Denver are also conveniently left off of Clifton's overall report.

Why This matters

If we are really ever going to achieve a status of No Kill in our cities, we have to be HONEST with our numbers. We need to avoid the trickery and deceipt by people with agenda bias. We must be honest with the stats, and really look at what WORKS to create No Kill communities. No hidden agendas. No slight of hand statistics.  Just open, honest, dialogue.

This is why I think it's so incredible when cities provide open access to their information.  Go to cities provide open access to their information online for everyone to see -- like in Charlottesville, Va and Reno, NV. (Interestingly, Clifton doesn't include the numbers for Charlottesville even though the info is easily available).

When people like Clifton use the information to mislead the public, it hurts the animals. It hurts them by encouraging policy that is not helpful to the cause...and in fact, makes the situation worse. 

It's time for everyone to put their agendas aside and to push forward with policies that WORK to make communities more livable for both people and the animals. 

Understanding prejudice

Last week, a local Kansas City Blogger wrote an excellent post on the incident involving Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr, an African American man who was arrested when he "broke into" his own home because he had been locked out.

While the post is well done in its own right, the incident and article wouldn't normally apply to a blog about dogs.

But it does.

The article has a nice little segment on prejudice.  Not racism (I think all too often people wrongly interchange these words.  But prejudice. The actual prejudging of a person or situation without any real knowledge of the facts.

We all do it. In many ways, it's what keeps us alive. It's what keeps us from walking down a dark allyway late at night when strangers lurk there. We don't know the strangers, but we prejudge the situation based on past experiences or on the stories we've heard from others.

Often our past experiences cause us to prejudge. We've seen a situation over and over, and thus, we perceive all future situations will similar.  They're not, but we will enter the situation with the negative outcome we've experienced in the past in mind. 

Here's an example from the blog entry:

I used to work in a credit office for a high end (heh heh) retailer at Crown Center. I started in collections and later graduated to processing credit apps.

Not an optimal career path.

Because the only customers I encountered in the beginning were the deadbeats, I came to view all customers as deadbeats. I never had any contact with good customers. So when I started processing credit apps, I was predisposed to view them all as evil doers trying to rip us off. I routinely turned down potential customers who had better credit scores than me!

Luckily, I didn't have the final say and my credit manager vetoed many of my recommendations. She reminded me that our job wasn't to turn away villains, but to find ways to open accounts for people so they could buy our overpriced Russian Lacquer Boxes because that's what paid our salaries!

Cops are the same way. The only people they come into contact with are criminals or people suspected of being criminals. After a while, they start assuming that everyone is a criminal. The only delineation they acknowledge is between criminals who are getting away with it and criminals brought to justice.

So despite the antiseptic spin presented in the official police report, I have no doubt that Officer Crowley walked into the incident with certain preconceptions and assumptions. It's inevitable.

He was responding to a report of black men attempting to break into a house only to find black men inside the house. What was he supposed to think?

And I think this plays itself out every day, countless times, in a variety of industries -- including animal welfare.

It's why it seems police officers shoot dogs for little to no reason -- because so many of the dogs they come in contact with are dogs owned by criminals (otherwise the police would not be there) and thus, often protective.

It's why many people cross the road when they see me walking my 'pit bulls' -- because they have seen images portrayed by the media of the dogs being aggressive, and too few images of the dogs just being dogs (this is changing some, as images of the rehabilitated dogs from Mike Vick's kennels have become so prevelent in the past year).

And this happens in animal shelters too.  Imagine someone (this shouldn't be hard for most of you) who has worked in an animal shelter for years -- doing intake, dealing with dogs that were neglected by their owners, left at the shelter, or were returned for some BS reason. The person does this for several years and before long, every dog owner they seem to come in contact with is irresponsible in some way. 

Eventually, this person moves their way into adoptions and processing adoption applications. Like the blog-writer who began denying all credit applications because he had decided that all people were too irresponsible to have credit, the shelter worker begins denying good potentially -adoptable homes because she has determined that most people are not responsible dog owners, and should be declined.

Every day, in many shelters, this plays out as shelter workers look for reasons why the person is too irresponsible to own a pet, vs looking for ways to get pets into homes.  It's probably a pretty natural reaction for anyone who is working in a shelter or rescue, but it's one that we need to be careful to fall prey to. 

Experiences shape our prejudices. And understanding how your prejudices are shaped is an important key to setting the prejudices aside and doing what is best for the animals.