Nathan J. Winograd

It's fair to say up front that Nathan Winograd is not a calm, easy-going kind of guy. He's a passionate advocate for shelter reform and animal welfare, and he does not mince words or give quarter to those who disagree with him.

This is a tough discussion of what's wrong in the American animal sheltering system, what can be done about it, and what, or rather, in his opinion, who the problems are.

The Winograds discuss, in sometimes painful detail, what's wrong in many American shelters: bad hours, bad hygiene, bad procedures, poor standards, high kill rates that have nothing to do with the animals that come in and everything to do with bad standards of care, inaccessibility, and obstacles to, rather than promotion of, adoption.

Nathan Winograd is a primary, and fiery, advocate of the No Kill Equation, a set of principles, policies, and programs that taken together, should bring any community to a status of killing no healthy or treatable animals. It sounds very pie-in-the-sky, but it is working in many communities in the US. Nor is Winograd an armchair expert. In the 1990s, he was part of the team that brought San Francisco nearly to No Kill, and in 2001, he became the director of the Tompkins County animal control shelter, and transformed it into a No Kill community, a status it retains to this day.

However, he's also harsh in his judgments of those who do not agree with him. Anyone who has paid close attention to sheltering in the US knows that there are bad "shelters" run by bad people who clearly do not care in the slightest about the animals--who are abusive, indifferent, and corrupt. What Winograd misses is that there are also good people who haven't garnered the support and the funding to make changes they know their shelters need, and people who are overwhelmed and don't see the path out that Winograd says is there--sometimes because of the harshness with which Winograd delivers his message.

I have other issues with this book, including the Winograds' denunciation of "biological nativism," which they flirt with identifying with Naziism, coming that close to committing a Godwin violation. The occasion for this is cats; the hostility to free-roaming cats by, especially, bird enthusiasts, is frequently well over the edge into fanaticism, tossing around entirely fanciful numbers on both the reproduction rate of cats, and the rate at which they kill birds.

What the Winograds fail to recognize is that while cats are not the dire threat they're made out to be, and mostly do the job they signed up for a few thousand years ago in Egypt--controlling the rodent population--some invasive species do in fact do major damage, not just change, but major damage, reducing biological diversity and the overall health of local ecosystems. And, frankly, there's no reason we should not seek to preserve unique local species, even if some newly introduced species can fill the same niche. I think we can defend cats without also defending purple loosestrife. We can judge individual invasive species (ourselves included!) on their individual merits and impacts.

Nevertheless, if you're interested in improving your local shelter, there's a lot of practical advice and inspirational material here.

Recommended with caveats as stated.

I received a free electronic copy of this book.
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This book argues that dogs and cats are ok to keep as pets (in contrast to what PETA and at least one animal rights lawyer suggest).

I agreed with most of what the authors had to say (though not quite everything). Although I knew some of what PETA does (and it’s not what most people think!!!), they provided specific examples, and it’s not good. I did find that part (part 2, that focused on PETA) most interesting. Have to admit, though, that much of it read a bit like an academic paper (but I guess that tells you that there are lots of bibliographic references for what they have to say!). And they include some photos – sad photos. :-(… (mehr)

The world needs more heroes. Winograd is one. His award-winning, game-changing REDEMPTION: THE MYTH OF PET OVERPOPULATION AND THE RISE OF THE NO-KILL REVOLUTION IN AMERICA is condensed here into accessible, tightly focused essays that outrage and inspire. Winograd has dedicated his life to exposing the culture of despair that has turned "rescue" into a relentless cycle of killing, as well as the astonishing defenders of that culture: the ASPCA, Humane Society and--most nefariously and cynically--PETA. (PETA, having successfully created an identity for itself as THE animal-rights organization and attracting high donorship because of it, quietly sports an appalling record of killing close to 100% of the dogs and cats it "rescues" and opposing animal-advocacy legislation. It should have come as no surprise recently when PETA came out in support of the legalization of horse slaughter in this country.)

Winograd exposes such absurd "humane" practices as, in the chapter titled "Sit, Fetch, Stay or Die," the widespread practice of sparing no effort, no expense, to bring a dog back to health, only to subject him/her to behavioral testing that will stop all efforts on his behalf. If a dog that well may have come from a starvation situation, shows "food aggression" when an artificial hand takes his bowl away while he's eating--that's it. Suddenly there are no more funds for this dog's rehabilitation, no time for retraining, no option but a fatal injection.

There's plenty of blame to go around in the perpetuation of the myth of pet overpopulation. In "Good Homes Need Not Apply," he describes his own experience attempting to adopt a 7-year-old black lab mix--a dog with everything going against it: older, large and black (far and away the most common color of dogs and cats considered unadoptable, for reasons people continue to speculate about). Asked if he had a doggie door at home, Winograd said no and explained that he works from home and lets his dogs in or out whenever they ask. Not good enough. No doggy door, no adoption. The absurd restrictions in "good" adoption practices (formulated by the Humane Society), slavishly followed, apparently dictated that this older black dog was better off dead than sentenced to life without a doggy door! Such restrictions abound: kittens can only be adopted in pairs, cats must be kept indoors 24/7, no children can be in the home, animals can't be left alone for the hours of a working person's working life, etc. All these things and more, apparently, are "fates worse than death" for shelter animals.

MILLIONS of cats and dogs are put to death (not "to sleep"!) each year in this most nightmarish of bureaucracies. Winograd doesn't just point fingers; he offers solutions and outlines strategies. Must reading for animal lovers.… (mehr)

Impressive, articulate case for the viability of the No Kill concept that accepts no excuses from traditional animal-control apologists. While those of the dogcatcher mentality (supported to this day by heavy-hitters like HSUS and the ASPCA--and even PETA) continue to kill up to 80% of the animals in their "care," mired in the defeatist attitude that there's no other way to "control" the "problem," Winograd successfully commandeered two No Kill "communities." His paradigm calls for rebuilding from the ground up--get rid of anybody employed at the shelter (including, especially, its manager) who does not believe it's possible to find every animal a home. Work with volunteers, foster care, publicity--reach out to the animal-loving community and prove to them that you mean what you say and practice what you preach, provide spay/neuter, catch-and-release for feral cats (entitled to their habitat like any other wild animal), and low and behold, the excess animal population turns out to be a myth.… (mehr)