[lisarea]

Winograd can be strident, but it might be partly defensive. He's been attacked pretty consistently by people who have an investment in old style trap and kill sheltering policies; and he's had his (really impressive) record for achieving no kill impugned from all kinds of different angles. PETA originated this factoid that no kill = hoarding, which gets echoed a lot. People call him a liar and an abuser and stuff like that all the time, and I can't say I entirely blame him for a little kneejerk hostility to those involved in the institutions where that's coming from.

So while I agree he's a little harsh on the low level employees by default (the ones who parrot the lies about no kill deserve it, but they don't all do that), his perception of a lot of the animal control and sheltering community is accurate.

Just to illustrate, once on an animal welfare forum, this woman who was an adoption counselor I think at a municipal shelter (could have been a rescue, but I don't think so) posted to brag about how she'd busted a potential cat adopter. They had a questionnaire where they asked a bunch of questions about what you intended to do with your pet. It included questions about whether you would get them vaccinations, take them for physicals at the vet, spay or neuter, and declaw them. The woman, who hadn't had a cat before, answered yes to all of them. So the poster rejected her and lectured her on declawing. The lady said that she answered that way because she thought that was what they wanted, and the counselor treated this as her being deceptive and just trying to say what they wanted to hear. I took it as someone who hadn't had a cat before and probably didn't understand about declawing, and who probably would have been very receptive to a non-hostile, non-judgmental education on what declawing is and why the shelter does not recommend it.

The poster wasn't having that, though, and neither were any of the old-school sheltering advocates there, either. They'd rather judge someone for not knowing everything they know, reject that adopter, and then kill the animals that don't get adopted.

In fact, I have seen adoption forms that asked if you had a declawed cat, where a yes triggered an automatic rejection. I have had a declawed cat. I adopted her that way. She was also old and swaybacked and kind of fractious and crazy and almost toothless, and I gave her a good home, as I do for every animal I adopt. I'll bet there are places that'd reject me, though, because they're so hostile to adopters that they wouldn't even think to ask or to educate. Because hell, even if I HAD had her declawed myself, why not ask about it and discuss, rather than just outright rejecting? If someone makes a mistake one time, not only do you never give them another chance, but you don't give the animals one either? Unless someone is actually abusing or seriously neglecting animals, maybe their non-ideal way of life is still preferable for the animals than the gas chamber or a heartstick.

It seems to me that a lot of people are very attached to some weird myths and dogma surrounding about sheltering and animal welfare, and they're almost always hostile to people and potentially fatal to animals.

Like the whole 'Christmas puppy' thing, where there's this notion that you can NEVER EVER adopt pets out near the holidays because they just all end up back in the shelter in February, after the giftees get tired of them. And maybe it is true that it's a bad idea for a teenaged boy to give his high school girlfriend a puppy for Christmas or something, but parents giving their kids the dog they've been asking for for Christmas? That's actually really cool, and I'll bet most of those puppies live long, happy lives. And the shelters that shut down adoptions near the holidays to avoid the gifting thing just end up losing potential adopters and sending their business to puppy mills and backyard breeders.

But even if it were true that some goodly portion of those Christmas puppies ended up back in the shelter, what of it? So they got fostered over the holidays, and now they're back, alive, probably not kennel crazy, potentially better socialized, and ready for adoption again.

So yeah. I agree that Winograd could temper his criticisms a little better, and that it ironically ends up being as hostile as some of the things that he criticizes. The idea of no kill being possible is threatening to a lot of people, and not even necessarily because they want to kill animals, but because, if they have been, they would have to admit that it wasn't necessary.

Oh hey, look. I went off an poasted War and Peace again, so The End.