Adopt a Jack Russell

Adopt a Jack Russell. And yes, with only a little training, they will even do your taxes. Operators are standing by.
.

Lita Ford and Pet Adoptions?

This is a public service announcement.

Christie Keith has a rocking little post on how to rock pet adoptions.

And yes, Lita Ford of The Runnaways (pictured at top), makes a cameo. Read the whole thing. That is all.
.

Buy This Book and You Will Go Straight to Heaven

No, it's not a Bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita, or even an episode guide to Star Trek.

It's a book entitled Cold Noses, Warm Hearts; the Animals That Love Us! and every dime you pay goes to Russell Rescue.

Every dime?

Every dime!

How's that work?

Simple: two folks paid for publishing the book, so that the ENTIRE price of the book goes to Russell Rescue, NOT JUST THE PROFITS!

You can do good and do well, and get a nice feel-good book to boot.

How cool is that?

But for this to work, you need to click here and do your part in this equation: shell out $11.95, which includes free shipping for a limited period of time.

This is pretty small potatoes in terms of money and every dime goes to Russell Rescue, so the book is really FREE!

Free? FREE! Terrierman approved! Order made.

For the record, the forward to this book is by Catherine Romaine Brown, and three different Jack Russell Terrier lists-serve contributed contents.

Nice!
__________________________________________

Legal disclaimer: Most people go to heaven after buying this book. Your results may vary. Terrierman received no financial remuneration for this naked product endorsement. He bought his own book, and he hopes you will too. That is all.
.

How Stupid Can a Shelter Worker Be?

This one takes the case, if for no other reason that a "wildlife expert" was consulted.

An American Kennel Club-registered dog has been turned loose in the wild after the Frankfort Humane Society mistook her for a coyote. Copper is a female Shiba Inu.

Lori Goodlett told The State-Journal her pet of 11 years disappeared from her fenced back yard on July 3. It was after she put up posters that a police officer recognized Copper as the dog he had taken to the shelter. A shelter worker later called police and said it had to be picked up because coyotes weren't allowed there.

The department turned the animal loose behind a home improvement store after consulting with a wildlife expert who said coyotes were nuisance animals and should be returned to the wild or killed.

Humane Society board chairman John Forbes said he backs the shelter's decision.

"If our manager assessed the animal to be a coyote, then it is against the law for it to be at the shelter. We rely on the people who work there," Forbes said.

Of course the dog had no collar, and you can bet it had no chip. Nor (apparently) had the owners taken a picture of the dog to all the local shelters and pounds. Nor does the dog look very much like a Shiba Inu. That said, the fact that the animal quietly followed the officer when put on a leash might suggest it was a family owned dog and not a coyote! Here's a hint for shelter workers and self-proclaimed "wildlife experts": If a police officer or a suburbanite can catch the animal and load it into a crate with their bare hands, it's NOT a coyote!
.

Street Dogs, the Movie

Hat tip to Anton W. for sending this!

Street Dogs of South Central is a movie about what it says. Narrated by the always-great Queen Latifah.

Back when I was writing about street drug markets, a foundation paid me to look into what was going on in a part of East Los Angeles, then the most violent place on earth (not hyperbole, but a documented fact).

In the early evening, after viewing things and interviewing people in East L.A. all day, and before the night shift in the same neighbourhood, my partner and I drove to South Central to see the smoldering ruins from the 1992 riots.

What struck me at the time was the story that the press seemed to have missed: the L.A. Riots were not random lootings and burnings. This was a kind of American retail Kristallnacht in which specific business were targeted to burn. A did not see a single Track Auto that was not gutted. There would be two stores, right next to each other, and one would be burned to the ground and the other unscathed. Very clearly, retail resentment, of one form or another, was being unleashed.

I do not remember seeing stray dogs in South Central (an area now trying to be rename itself "South Los Angeles"), but I do remember how many young men there were in wheelchairs.

If you sold colostomy bags, South Central would have been a good sales area to have. I am pretty sure they never shoot the colostomy bag salesman.... or the guy from the Public Defenders Service.
.

Who Rescued the Beagles and Why?

A beagle rescue story has slowly unfolded in my email box over the last week, but since there seems to be some confusion as to who rescued these beagles, and why, let me see if I can summarize the story in a few simple bullets:

• One hundred and twenty beagles and 40 monkeys were rescued from a bankrupt lab in New York state. Beagles and monkeys are stock animal-research subjects, and they are generally bred specifically for research purposes. Their welfare is supposed to be protected under license and inspection, but when Azopharma, the parent company of research lab AniClin, went bankrupt in April, the 120 dogs and 40 monkeys were put in legal and economic limbo.
  
  
• With bankruptcy of Azopharma, the dogs and monkeys were now owned by Bank of America, along with all other Azopharma assets. Bank of America hired Morris Anderson and Associates to deal with Azopharma in receivership. Morris Anderson tried to sell the animals to another research lab, but could find no buyers. The dogs and monkeys were safe in a locked lab facility with food and water, but they had only a skeleton crew of caretakers to take care of them, and they were moving nowhere and had no real stimulation for over a month.
  
  
• An Animal Rights group called Win Animal Rights (WAR) took the fate of the dogs and the monkeys to court, and on June 30 a judge issued an order putting the animals into the care of two animal rescues that had already been lined up by WAR -- one for the monkeys, and Pet's Alive in Middletown, New York for the beagles.
  
  
• The beagles appear to be healthy and not too poorly socialized, and a lot of adoption applications for them have come in very quickly. All good, and hat's off to Pet's Alive for their good work.
  
  
• Best Friend's Animal Society in Utah has helped raising money for the rescue effort. Their web site initially said they needed $250 per dog per day, but that appears to have been a mistake on the part of their web-tech; it was supposed to be $250 per dog per rehoming. Best Friend's Animal Society is raising the money and passing it on to Pet's Alive -- a sharing of effort, resources, and expertise. The money is being used to spay/neuter the dogs, worm, microchip, vet, house, feed, and handle the adoption paper work and transportation.
  
  
• Some folks are pointing out that Best Friends started out as an offshoot of a bizarre cult, which apparently is true. The founders were Scientologists who broke away from that group in the mid-1960s, and then drifted to California where they dressed in purple capes and called themselves "The Process Church of the Final Judgment." The founders of Best Friends (to their credit) tell the story themselves. They put it all down to confusion, youth, and the kind of spiritual-questing that was going on 30 years ago, but I assure you that not too many people were this confused for this long or in this way. That said, it should also be said that ALL religions start out as bizarre cults, and all have pretty much stayed that way. In a world in which the Pope wears a bizarre hat, winks at pedophilia, and stokes the fires of contempt for women and hate for gays, you will pardon me if I do not heap invective on folks who once wore purple-robes and who now help dogs, but otherwise do not seem to be doing anything quite as strange as eating the blood and body of Christ every Sunday (as so many traditional Christians do).

These are the facts as I understand them, and I do not think they ad up to scandal or concern, though I certainly understand the confusion as it relates to the internet fundraising pitch which appears to have simply been a fumble on the copy-editing end.

Of course, Best Friends and I are on slightly different wave lengths on a few things, but that's OK. These folks seem to be dedicated to "saving every life," but I long ago made my peace with some death, even if I find it regrettable.

Do I salute their "dependency model" of animal rescue? Nope, I do not. Rehousing a bunch of deeply aggressive dogs that cannot be released, while raising money through direct mail and the internet for the upkeep of those dogs, is nuts if you ask me.

But I am just one person, and there's more than one person, one opinion, or one solution in this world. If Best Friends can find people to donate, without lying to folks about what they are actually donating for, more power to them.

And, for the record, they seem to be doing that. I have no evidence they have misrepresented their work. In fact, most of what they seem to be doing is noble, even if some of it is impossibly idealistic.

As for the beagles, they are the real winners here. I suppose someone, somewhere will try to manufacture some contrived outrage that Bank of America lost the "value" of used dogs which no one actually seemed eager to buy.

But since Bank of America is stealing from Americans every day, and these same people do not seem very concerned about that, you will pardon me if I do not send flowers or a note of concern about the Bank's putative economic losses here. I am sure the bank will get over the situation. Without help from a lot of people, however, the beagles probably would not.


..

Single White Female

SINGLE WHITE FEMALE seeks male companionship, ethnicity unimportant. I'm a very good girl who LOVES to play. I love long walks in the woods, riding in your pickup truck, hunting, camping and fishing trips, cozy winter nights lying by the fire. Candlelight dinners will have me eating out of your hand. I'll be at the front door when you get home from work, wearing only what nature gave me. >> Click here if you want a committed relationship

Beyond the Blue Solution of Dog Shelter Death

(We're kidding, of course.)

A recycled post from October 2007

Have you ever noticed that PETA is always there to throw blood on people wearing fur coats, but that they never protest in front of kill shelters?

A friend of mine who used to be a shelter worker explained it to me. "PETA would never show up at a kill shelter," she explained, "because if they did, the workers there would bring out all the dogs and and cats, turn over the leashes and say, 'Here, they're all yours now.'"

It's an amusing picture, but it's not quite true. You see, PETA does not protest at kill shelters because it supports the killing of dogs and cats in shelters, and it does almost nothing to try to get dogs and cats adopted out.

In fact, in 2005, PETA killed 90 percent of the animals turned over to it despite an organizational budget of $25 million a year.

If that shocks you, then consider this: most "Humane Society" shelters kill 50-80 percent of all the dogs and cats turned over to them. So too do most SPCA shelters contracted by local municipalities. And they kill even when they have empty cages and kennels, and even when they have lots of money in the bank.

In fact, shelter killing is the leading cause of death for healthy dogs and cats in the United States.

All in all, some five million dogs and cats are killed in our nation’s shelters every year by the "humane" industry.

To put it another way, the "humane" industry, which vociferously opposes hunting of deer for meat, actually kills more dogs and cats than hunters shoot deer.

How could this be occurring, even as Americans are buying large numbers of cats and dogs?

How could this be occurring at a time when more dogs and cats than ever are being spayed and neutered?

And how is it that the "humane" industry is doing all the killing?

These are the questions asked -- and answered -- in Nathan J. Winograd's new book, entitled Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America.

This is an important book. In fact, this book is so important --- and so few people are likely to read it -- that I am going to provide a long summary.  Suffice it so say that I think this book is very deserving of your dollars and reading time.

Buy the book!




The Lost Cause Meets the Blue Solution

The American "humane" movement began with the gadfly Henry Bergh, who was radicalized on a trip to Russia when he successfully stepped into the street to stop a man from beating his horse.

Emboldened and amazed at the power of moral suasion (backed up, it should be said by his 6'2" frame), Bergh decided he liked this feeling very much, and on a trip to London, he got an instruction sheet on how to do more of it from the newly-minted Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Upon arriving back in New York City, Bergh created an SPCA to parallel the work of the organization in London, and he personally patrolled the streets of New York and lit in to every horse-beating hack and street hawker he could find.

Bergh was a force of nature; he got New York to pass anti animal-cruelty laws, and he closed down the rat pits to be found at Kit Burns' Sportsman's Hall. He got horse drinking troughs installed all over the city, and he berated the New York City practice of paying people to round up (and even steal) dogs and cats in order to drown them in a huge old iron cage dunked off the end of the wharf. What harm were the cats and dogs doing, Bergh asked? Not much, but never mind; they were an inconvenience, and smacked of disorder in a city trying to enter the modern era. Stray dogs and cats had to go.

Bergh generally made such a nuisance of himself that exasperated New York City officials offered to turn over the keys of the City Pound if he would run it. In fact, they said they would pay him to do the business of rounding up and drowning all the stray dogs and cats.

Bergh would have none of it. He did not seek a job killing animals; he wanted to end needless animal suffering, and that included ending the needless destruction (as he saw it) of stray dogs and cats.

Bergh was a gadfly, but he was a principled and effective one. Without a doubt, he made life better for horses and other beasts of burden in New York City.

Soon other cities were copying the Bergh model, and setting up their own SPCAs. As a direct consequence, life got a little better for urban horses and mules all across the United States.

When Henry Bergh died, the folks that sought to fill his shoes were less principled and more oriented towards financial stability. And so, when New York City officials once again offered to turn the keys of the City Dog Pound over to the SPCA -- and even pay the SPCA to run it -- these new leaders leaped at the chance for a steady income. And what harm did it do, they argued. If the SPCA did not do the killing, then it would simply fall on someone else's shoulders.

And so, with the passing of a key and a check, the humane movement was in the mass killing business. With Henry Bergh dead, no one saw the slightest moral problem.

The SPCA was to remain in the killing business for the next 100 years, doing little more than replacing iron drowning cages with gas chambers, and gas chambers with injections of sodium pentobarbital.

For thirty years, pentobarbital has been the humane movement's "Blue Solution" to the "pet overpopulation" problem.





To this day, most SPCAs are little more than government-hired killing machines for dogs and cats. Though they never mention it on the Animal Planet television show, the New York City ASPCA, according to Winograd, kills nearly 70 percent of the dogs and cats turned over to it

Across the U.S., the typical "Humane Society" or SPCA building remains an ugly wreck located in a depressing and trash-strewn part of town. The employees there are so over-worked and underfunded, that it's all they can do to keep the killing machine going full-bore.

But they manage.

Poor infrastructure and poverty-level funding are a commonality to animal shelters across the country. This is what you get when you make a pact with City Government to become a municipality's dog-and cat-killing machine.

Municipalities know that after years of dependency on government funds, most SPCA and Humane Society shelters are in no position to turn down low-ball contract offers.

And since the shelters are located in out-of-the-way locations and have no constituency (because most do very little outreach to the community), they are in no position to bargain or raise a stink.

This is the death business, not the adoption or pet-placement business.

Out of sight is out of mind. The goal of these shelters is simple cost-effective efficiency.

And nothing is as cost-effective or as efficient as disposing of an animal in a gas chamber or with a killing overdose of drugs.

Absolutely nothing.


.
Dog catcher, Seattle,1921


Followship Rather than Leadership

When push comes to shove, nothing much has changed in the humane movement for the last 100 years. For over 100 years, the metric has been a simple one: How many dogs and cats can the local shelter "handle" for the race-to-the-basement sums being offered up by the city contracting for this "service."

A "good" shelter is not one that adopts out most of its cats and dogs; it's one that keeps a large number of cages empty and clean, and that consistently makes its annual budget numbers while doing so with as little negative publicity as possible.

And, oddly enough, this is still the metric being used by most of the "humane" organizations, even when those organization have millions of dollars in their bank account as PETA and some of the larger Humane Societies around the United States do.

What is going on?

The short answer, according to Nathan Winograd, is followship.

Followship is the opposite of leadership. Leadership is what happens when you break away from the herd and proceed in a new direction. Followship is what happens when organizations tell us each other that they must all pack up together and do the exact same thing.

Why do these organizations want to pack up? Simple. There is safety in numbers.

And why do these shelters crave safety? What do they fear? Simple: They fear anyone questioning their "killing for convenience" paradigm -- a paradigm that began more than 100 years ago when the SPCA abandoned the principles of Henry Bergh and took over the first municipal City Pound contract.

If everyone does the same thing, the killing for convenience solution will be easier for the public to swallow. Everyone else is doing it, so there must be no other way.

Winograd notes that followship in the humane movement has been routinely solidified by a series of conferences in which all of "the principles" in the dog-catching and dog-killing business have gotten together under the mantra of forming a "consensus" about what to do about "pet overpopulation."

And who is in the room when that consensus is sought? Not only representatives of individual SPCAs and Humane Society shelters, but also the leaders of the ASPCA and the Humane Society of the United States (neither of which financially support local shelters), along with the national trade association of dog catchers (the National Animal Control Association), folks from the American Veterinary Medical Association, and people from the American Kennel Club.

In order to get consensus, all parties have to give up ground, which is a nice way of saying the "solutions" that are embraced at these consensus conferences have been as tepid as old bathwater.

Never mind if good ideas that could reduce the number of dogs and cats going into shelters are rejected; the organizational business interests of each group are more important than the dogs. After all, where would these dogs and cats be without the "humane" movement?

And so, there has been a general agreement among consensus conference participants to oppose subsidized low-fee high-volume pet sterilization clinics since veterinarians feared that would take away a portion of their business. Subsidize pet sterilizations? My God man, that's socialized medicine!

And, of course, there should be no criticism of the American Kennel Club's requirement that only intact dogs be eligible for showing. Nor should their be any criticism of the Kennel Club's long-standing promotion that pure-bred dogs are the "best dogs," never mind the huge number of genetic defects to be found in AKC dogs.

Instead, the parties have repeatedly agreed on a plan based on "Legislation, Education and Sterilization," or LES.

By "Legislation," the parties meant imposing more punishments on the dog-owning public.

Dog and cat licenses will be required, or the animals will be rounded up and killed.

Vaccines will be required, or the animals will be rounded up and killed.

Of course everyone should voluntarily spay and neuter their pet, but if they don't, there should be mandatory spay and neuter laws, with big fines and licensing fees. And if that does not work, then we will push to have unlicensed and unspayed dogs and cats seized and summarily killed.

By "Education" the humane movement means taking a few pound puppies to schools and lecturing kids about how horrible it is to be cruel to animals.

What will not be mentioned at these sessions is the fact that 75 percent of the healthy dogs and cats given to the pounds are killed, and that a state or city contract to kills dogs is what funds the shelter to begin with.

There will be no mention that most dogs and cats are killed after only just a few days wait, and that this killing goes on even when cages are empty.

There will be no discussion of how the humane movement has consistently opposed city- and state-subsidized spay-neuter initiatives.

There will be no mention of how most shelters discourage fostering of their overflow and consider volunteers "too much work." Nor will there be a discussion of how little community outreach is done to place or showcase dogs placed at the shelter.

Instead, the message told to the kids -- and the public in general -- will be a simple one: People are irresponsible and they are to blame for so many cats and dogs going to the gas chamber.

And as for "Sterilization," the humane movement means only "free market" sterilization at the local for-profit veterinary clinic. Whatever price they set is fine. Can't afford it? Then you are really too poor to own a cat or dog at all. Never mind that you are old and on a fixed income. Never mind that you earn only $7 an hour at WalMart. Only people with credit cards and significant home equity should own cats and dogs.

Of course, the LES paradigm has been a complete and utter failure. As Nathan Winograd notes,

“Whenever a shelter kills a homeless animal entrusted to its care, it has profoundly failed. And animal shelters fail, as general rule, 50 to 80 percent of the time. Put it another way, animal sheltering is an industry whose leadership mostly fails.”

The "humane" movement has made peace with its history of failure. In fact, the web sites of most of these organizations actually argue that killing dogs and cats is the "best outcome" for shelter dogs and cats and is much preferred to having animals held for a few weeks in a kennel situation.

This message is repeated so often that through sheer repetition it starts to sound like truth.

But what does this mean? Does this mean that the dogs in your kennel runs are better dead than being owned by you? Yes, according to most humane organizations. Does this mean that animals at the zoo are better dead than kept in cages? Yes, according to most humane organizations.

The Blue Solution is the only solution they know. Never mind if the animals they want to administer this solution to seem quite fine and happy. The humane movement knows best. Just ask them, and they will tell you.

Part of the Legislate-Educate-Sterilize paradigm is unity. Unity is important because it is only by "singing out of the same hymnal" that mass absolution for killing 5 million cats and dogs a year can be achieved.

And so, if one small group or another breaks rank, that group is denounced, ignored, marginalized, or pushed back into into the fold.

The result has been a nearly complete suppression of innovation. If a City like Los Angeles or San Francisco shows that subsidized high-volume spay-neuter clinics can work to reduce the number of unwanted pets, then those results are ignored, and efforts are made to get the program killed or repealed as quickly as possible.

If a no-kill shelter pops up, the humane organizations move to demonize it by saying that such programs "only push the killing on to the backs of other shelters."

If the No-Kill shelter actually takes ALL admissions, as does the Tomkins County shelter in New York, then that fact is simply ignored. The consensus mantra is simply repeated: "There are no such things as No-Kill shelters in this country. Shelters that claim they are 'No-Kill' are simply selecting out the easy to adopt dogs, and deflecting all the others to shelters that have to do the dirty work."

Never mind if that's not true.

Ignore the experience of San Francisco and Charlotesville, Virginia which have shown that it's possible to have open admissions and still adopt out 90 percent of all the dogs, cats, kittens and puppies.

The bizarre thing here is that the humane organizations seem completely dense. Even as they threaten to kill even more dogs and cats, they seem confused as to why the public is not eager to rush down to "the killing rooms" in order to pick out one lucky survivor from the pile.

Surely the average American is eager to drag his or kids down to the bad part of town in order to enter a kill shelter reeking of urine and feces?

Doesn't everyone want to answer their children's questions about what happens to all the other dogs and cats that are not picked?

And who could not be charmed by the indifferent (and often quite rude) staff and the short hours that the shelter is actually open?

Why would anyone prefer to simply get a dog out of the paper, or from a professional breeder, or from a puppy store?

A complete mystery.

The Needle and the Damage Done


A Better Way of Doing Business
It is possible to run a No-kill shelter? The short answer is a definitive YES.

It's been done in urban San Francisco, where for many years the SPCA took all the dogs and cats the city would relinquish to it.

It's been done in rural Tompkins County, New York where the local SPCA shelter is a pure open-admission no kill shelter.

It's been done in Charlottesville, Virginia where 92 percent of the dogs are now adopted out.

It been done in Richmond, Virginia where the SPCA says it is "proud to report that no healthy, homeless animal died in the City of Richmond in 2006."

It's getting done by the Philadelphia Animal Care and Control Association which has gone from an 80 percent kill rate to a 50 percent placement rate in just 7 months time, with the numbers continuing to fall.

So what has been the response of the Old Guard in the "humane" movement? Surely they are thrilled that someone has found a way to keep more dogs and cats alive?

Nope.

Instead of celebrating, the quick-to-kill folks have denied that open-admission No-Kill shelters even exist. They have failed to report about the success of No-Kill shelters in their publications and on their web sites, and they have tried to explain away every success as being a unique situation that could never be replicated anywhere else.

San Francisco? Yes, it worked there, but only because that city has a lot of rich gays (according to ASPCA president Roger Caras). Plus, it's an urban area; it would never work in a rural area.

Tomkins County, New York? Yes, it worked there, but that's only because its a rural area. And it's a Northern part of the country too. A No-Kill shelter would never work in an urban area, or in the South where the rednecks don't give a damn about dogs.

Charlottesville, Virginia? Well, yes it worked there, but that's only because it's a moderate-sized city with a University. That's different.

Richmond, Virginia? Ugh ... Well, yes. I'm not sure what's unique there, but give us an hour or two and we'll figure out some way to marginalize that success too.

So how are all these No-Kill Shelters doing it?

It's not rocket science, but it does take dedicated management and a commitment to new way of doing business.

The new paradigm is not always easy for folks to get used to. If you have spent years rationalizing "killing for convenience," you are not likely to embrace a new way of doing business that involves more work.

It is a simple truth that empty cages are easier to manage than full ones. Visitors to a shelter means more paperwork and more accountability.

Not surprisingly, some shelter workers buck. Nathan Winograd says that when he first came to Tomkins County to transform their 80-percent kill shelter into a No-Kill model, he had to confront the staff and explain the world of budgets as he saw it.

The issue came to a point over a basket of puppies that were dropped off at the shelter on his first day. As he told the staff:

"Volunteers who work with animals do so out of sheer love. They don’t bring home a paycheck. So if a volunteer says 'I can’t do it,' I can accept that from her. But staff members are paid to save lives. If a paid member of staff throws up her hands and says, 'There’s nothing that can be done,' I may as well eliminate her position and use the money that goes for her salary in a more constructive manner. So what are we going to do with the puppies that doesn’t involve killing?"

One can only imagine the reaction!

In fact, Winograd found about half of his existing shelter staff could not make the transition. Most were simply too lazy. Trained that killing was the only way, they could not assimilate a new order that involved actually using all of the shelter's kennel capacity, fostering out puppies and sick dogs to volunteers, and actively partnering with the community to increase the adoption rate.

Yet, these techniques worked. Today the Tomkins County shelter is a No-Kill Open-Admissions SPCA shelter with a better than 93 percent adoption-placement rate.

None of Winograd's techniques or ideas were entirely new, but no one had tried to use them all at once.

And using them all at once is what made the difference.

In the end, Winograd and others in the No-Kill movement have come up with a 10-point plan for success.

By definition, a 10-point plan is more complicated than a one-point plan. The one point plan -- the Blue Solution -- promises only death. The 10-point plan, however, results not only in a dramatic increase in adoptions of dogs and cats, but also results in more income to the shelter as the relationship between the shelter and the community begins to change.

It turns out that people who will not give money or support to a shelter that kills 80 percent of the dogs and cats that pass through its doors, are more than willing to give money and time to a shelter that actually saves lives.

Who knew?

OK, enough wind-up. What are the 10 elements of success as outlined by Nathan Winograd?

1. Hire a compassionate director who is dedicated to measuring success by lives saved. Winograd make a convincing argument that municipalities need to look for new shelter managers outside of the current humane movement. What is needed for success, he says, is not a 10-year track record ofkilling animals, but a demonstrated ability in basic management, coupled with good people skills, enthusiasm, creativity, and a commitment to the cause of quickly and sharply reducing the needless killing of healthy dogs and cats in a shelter.



2. A high-volume, low-cost spay-neuter program designed to get more people to voluntarily spay and neuter their pets. The biggest obstacle to spay-neuter at the individual level is not lack of willingness on the part of pet owners, but lack of money to get the surgery done. Even though research has shown that most intact animals are owned by the poor, and that spay-neuter subsidies are cost-effective ($1 invested is a $10 savings in animal control costs), the humane movement has repeatedly testified against them in order to maintain their "consesus compact" with the veterinary community.
   
3. A feral cat program focused on trapping, neutering and returning wildcats to the wild. Wingograd argues that cats do fine as feral animals (they are little more than African Wildcats to begin with) and that there is no need to kill them. Simply trap, spay, innoculate, and release them. As to the notion that they might harm bird populations, Winograd dismisses these claims, correctly noting that most birds experts point to other causes of bird decline, including forest fragmentation and chemicals in the environment as more important causal agents.
   
4. Use breed rescue groups. This not only frees up needed space in a shelter, but it also reduces food and upkeep costs, and improves the chance that a dog will be adopted by someone specifically looking for that type of dog. Despite the fact that pure breed rescue groups exist across the country, local shelters have often rejected overtures from these groups, claiming that making contact and setting up appointments is "too much work."
   
5. Use foster care volunteers. While traditional shelters generally reject volunteers as "too much work," Winograd argues that not only are foster care volunteers the perfect answer for what to do with puppies and kittens too young to adopt out, but they are also good for sick animals that need several weeks in order to recover and look presentable. Foster volunteers not only adopt many of their charges themselves, they also serve as ready and willing outreach ambassadors to the community.
   
6. Change the sales presentation. Studies show that people get their dogs from the local pound only 15 percent of the time, and that cats are even less likely to be acquired at a shelter. The trick to changing these numbers, says Winograd, is to present dogs and cats in better surroundings, to extend shelter hours, to hire friendly and committed staff, and to take animals out to where people can see them and consider them for adoption. A shelter should not be a gloomy place with the air of inevitable death about it, but a place where a father or mother will feel fine taking their kids to pick out a dog or cat that simply needs a home and a chance. People want pets. They pay large sums of money for them, and they travel to get them. A lot of people can be convinced to get an older dog or a dog that is not purebred ("It's the only one of its kind"). What people object to is not the animals in the shelter, but the shelter's look and smell and the business of killing itself.
   
7. A pet retention program to work with owners who need a little bit of help in order to keep the pets they already have. Often this is simply a matter of a little problem-solving as it relates to "accidents" (don't leave a water bowl down 24-hours a day), barking, or finding a landlord that will accept a tenant with a dog or cat.
   
8. Focus on medical and behavior rehabilitation. This means finding volunteers, veterinarians, and even local businesses willing to work with problem animals. Winograd suggests partnering with a veterinary college, but other good ideas include working with businesses and others who might be willing to support a fund to deal with certain conditions, such as respiratory infections or behavior problems.
   
9. Public Relations means reaching out to the public and treating them as a potential solution rather than as the source of the problem. It means advertising, creating attractive web sites, networking with rescue groups, meeting with editorial boards and small business owners, and going out to places where people can get the message, see the product, and hear the pitch.
   
10. Recruit and work with volunteeers. Volunteers can take pictures of dogs and cats for the web site, write up web descriptions, feed and water animals, walk animals, clean cages, put up flyers, and take animals out into the community for basic socialization. The more volunteers, the more hands, and the more hands the more positive energy will flow into the shelter -- and the more dogs and cats will flow out.

So why aren't more local SPCAs and humane societies around the country doing all of this?

The answer is that many of them are starting to. A movement is growing, and it is moving in the right direction.

That said, change is a proceess not an event. Moving from a 75% kill shelter to a 93% placement shelter requires careful staging. Do it wrong, and you will have full cages, but you will not yet have developed the capacity to cut down on admissions (thanks to cheap spay-neuter, and successful pet-retention programs) or foster out dogs, or move dogs to breed rescues, or find homes in the community thanks to a well-oiled up-and-running community outreach effort.

So the good news is that good things are happening in some locations.

Numbers That CountNathan Winograd argues that the terms "adoptable" and "unadoptable" are too easy to manipulate and subject to wide interpretation. He notes, for example, that a lot of the "temperament testing" that goes on at shelters is complete bunk practiced by ignorants and amateurs, while some shelters simply strike off as "unadoptable" all very young puppies and kittens, any older dogs or cats. Animals with even mild illnesses (such as sinus infection or kennel cough) are similarly tossed into the weste busket for killing. So what defines success? Winograd suggests that success is achieved when a shelter achieved an adoption rate 90 percent or better for total open admissions of ALL dogs and cats (including the sick, the injured, the young, the old, and those with serious behavior problems). By putting the big number in the denominator, shelters are not able to lie with statistics and "select the best and dump the rest." Is the better-than-ninety-percent goal achievable? Yes -- it's already being achieved in shelters around the country.

But not everyone is on the bandwagon. To tell the truth, some current shelter managers could not be bothered to initiate a complicated high-energy pet-placement program. This was not what they signed up for. They signed up for a death-factory job; fill out some forms, place a pet or two, administer the Blue Solution to all the others, and wash out the cages at the end of the shift. Who wants more work than that?

Another contributing factor is that municipal officials and some animal control board members are often risk-averse.

The city knows they can kill 80 percent of the dogs and cats entering their shelter without so much as a ripple in the local news media, but suppose they start doing "something different" down there at the Pound? Suppose everything is not 100-percent smooth sailing right from Day One? Or worse, suppose the folks that run the shelter want more money to do No-Kill work?

As for the board of the local shelter, they often feel captive to city and county contracts. How are they going to rationalize turning down guaranteed money? Without municipal money, how will the shelter pay for salaries, dog food, gasoline, water and electricty?

And so lack of inertia and plain-old financial fear keep the old killing-for-convenience paradigm going.

In the background, cheering on the old, failed LES strategy are folks like Ed Sayres, President of the ASPCA, who was quoted in the August 13, 2007 issue of USA Today as saying “There is no room for No-Kill as morally superior” to kill shelters.

There isn't? Not even even as a goal?

The ASPCA, it seems still prefers the Blue Solution.

So too does the Humane Society of the United States which refuses to even acknowledge that open admissions No-Kill shelters even exit.

The good news is that at the local level these national organizations do not really control too much.

The ASPCA does not actually run shelters at all -- all the local SPCAs are separate free-standing organizations. What this means is that if you have been giving money to the ASPCA for years, you have not been giving money to your local shelter. There is no pass-through money. The big boys in the ASPCA have simply pocketed your money, and used it to produce more direct mail to send to more suckers like you. Sorry.

Ditto for the Humane Socety of the United States, which also does not give a dime to support local Humane Society shelters. If you are giving money to the Humane Society of the United States, you are simply funding more direct mail asking little old ladies to give their "most generous contribution at this critical time." Silly you.

True leadership in the world of animal sheltering is not coming from the ASPCA, the Humane Society of the United States or PETA. It's coming from folks like Nathan Winograd and Richard Avanzino, who first turned the San Francisco SPCA into an open admission No Kill shelter back in 1976, and who ran it that way until 1998.

Avazino is now head of the $250 million Maddie's Fund (funded by PeopleSoft Founder Dave Duffield and his wife Cheryl) which gives out money, funds projects, creates shelter medicine programs, and acts as an information clearinghouse for what works in the No-Kill movement.

No-Kill is gaining traction.

And that's a problem for the ASPCA, PETA and the Humane Society of the U.S. After all, who wants to fund failure when success is an option?

And so the ASPCA, HSUS and PETA have embarked on a two-pronged strategy of: 1) denying that No-Kill works, even as they; 2) Claim they are leading the movement themselves.

The results of this communication stratgy are truely bizarre.

Consider this: Even as ASPCA President Ed Sayres holds a press conference in New York City with Mayor Bloomberg in order to "welcome" a $15.5 million Maddie's Fund grant to help that city transition to No-Kill (see ASPCA press release) Sayres and others are attacking No-Kill as being a complete fraud, denying its existence, and accusing it of actually doing nothing more than warehousing animals for months or even years. Truly this is Through the Looking Glass!

In fact, No-Kill shelters are as open (or more so) than other shelters, and Maddie's Fund has pioneered this type of openness. Have a few shelters transitioned too rapidly? Yes, but Richard Avanzino of Maddie's Fund and Nathan Winograd are convinced that every shelter can be No-Kill, and more and more cities are proving their thesis every day.

In fact, it is the success of the No-Kill movement that is causing paroxisms at the ASPCA, the Humane Society of the U.S., and PETA.

The success of No-Kill movement means that these organizations have been killing for years, not because the job of saving the lives of dogs and cats could not be done, but because they did not even realize that that was the job!

Here's a hint: It's called a SHELTER.

That just might mean saving lives, not snuffing them out.

It might even mean coming up with a better idea than the infamous "Blue Solution."

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


Order a copy of Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America. I guarantee this is a book that will open your eyes.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

• To link to this post: >> http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2007/10/beyond-blue-solution.html

Do you really want to explain this sign to your six-year-old daughter on the day she gets her first dog? Me either.
.

Guam Snake Dogs

A USDA inspector leads a Jack Russell terrier
through a snake search of a B-52 Stratofortress.

A repost from August 24, 2004 of this blog.

Brown tree snakes are native to eastern Indonesia, the northern part of Australia, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands and probably arrived on the U.S.-owned island of Guam as stowaways in cargo from Papua New Guinea in the late 1940's or early 1950's.

The snakes multiplied rapidly on Guam, where they had no natural predators, and they have decimated the once-vibrant native bird population on that island. Ten of the 13 native forest birds of Guam are now extinct due to the brown tree snake, and the three species that still exist are barely hanging on. Several species of lizard have also been wiped out, and bat populations are now being predated on as well.

Guam's brown tree snake population is now estimated at about 40 per acre of tree habitat, or more than 26,000 snakes per square mile.

There are several different methods used to prevent the spread of brown tree snakes. Trapping and nighttime spotlight searches reduce the number of snakes in areas where cargo is packed or stored. The goal here is not to eliminate brown trees snakes (a hopeless task using current methods), but to exclude them from docks and airports in order to prevent them from being transported by airplane or boat to another island (such as Hawaii) where they might wipe out even more birds and small animals.

Experience has shown that specially trained Jack Russell Terriers are the best method of finding snakes in cargo-loading areas before they manage to make it on to airplanes. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services (APHIS) branch currently employs 14 terriers on Guam to detect the brown tree snake. These are rescue dogs that originate from either California or Texas. Wildlife Services pays for the dogs to be shipped to the island.

When the terriers arrive in Guam, they are trained by a US Dept. of Agriculture-certified trainer. Training takes about 4 months, depending on the dog and the handler. Once a terrier is trained, the dog is used to inspect outgoing cargo, and transport vessels, such as aircraft or service ships. The brown tree snake is not poisonous, so there is no danger to the dog. >> For more information

.

Hump and Dump Dog Breeders

For the pure destruction of the dog, puppy mills cannot begin to compete with "hump and dump" hobby breeders who crank out two, three or four litters a year, perhaps keeping one dog out of every 10 or 12 produced, and never working any of them.

Of course the "hump and dump" crowd never recognize themselves in the description. According to them, it's the "puppy mill" and "backyard breeders" that are wrecking working dogs.

In fact, in most cases, dog breeds have been wrecked by show ring aficionados who pay for their show ring hobby by engaging in "hump and dump" dog breeding to defray the expense of traveling around the country to show their dogs and collect rosettes.

Are you a "hump and dump" dog breeder? Maybe. Or as Jeff Foxworthy so memorably puts it, You might be a redneck if ....

1. If you think breeding is a "sport," you might be a "hump and dump" dog breeder;
   
   
2. If you bred more puppies last year than the number of days you actually worked your dogs in the field, you might be a "hump and dump dog breeder";
   
   
3. If you have an "available" dog on your web site or posted to a list, and you are breeding another litter, you might be a "hump and dump" dog breeder;
   
   
4. If you have been in your breed of dogs for less than five years and are breeding a litter, you might be a "hump and dump" dog breeder;
   
   
5. If you seem to have a permanent "puppy for sale" posting on any of the boards, you might be a "hump and dump" dog breeder;
   
   
6. If your web site gives instructions on how to air-freight a dog across the country, you might be a "hump and dump" dog breeder;
   
   
7. If you have regularly advertised puppies for sale in a magazine, in the newspaper, or on a "pets for sale" web site, you might be a "hump and dump" dog breeder.
   
   
8. If you have a PayPal link on your web site so people can buy puppies quickly, you might be a "hump and dump" dog breeder;
   
   
9. If you have a web sit that sells dogs, but do not have a prominent link to a rescue organization you might be a hump and dump dog breeder.
   
   
10. If you have "kennel reduction" sales in which your goal is to dump all the older dogs that are no longer in the running for ribbons or are no longer of use to you as studs dogs and breeding bitches, you might be a hump and dump breeder.

Scored more than one on the above test? To quote comedian Bill Engvall, Here's your sign.

.

Click to Help Some Dogs That Need Help

The folks at Bissel are running a Most Valuable Pet photo contest.

These things are generally a yawn, but in this case there's $10,000 in the swing, and if we can get Heather Houlahan’s Moe tapped as "top dog" all the money will go to help the Montana English Shepherds which need all the help they can get.

Spread the word to any list-serv you are on!

Just go straight to Moe’s voting page and VOTE NOW. And NO, your email address will not be turned into spam. Promise!

Autumnbriar Abandons Dogs To Die ... Again

Video

Lauren Wolfe, aka Autumnbriar, aka Laura Antretter, is a person that has routinely popped up on the working terrier boards.

She is also certifiably insane.

I have said so before, and I have repeatedly warned people off of her, telling them they should never buy a dog from her, give a dog to her, or even communicate with her.

This was not speculation on my part -- I knew she had already been cited for abandoning her dogs, and she had confessed to being on medication for some type of mental illness. And, for the record, I do not believe she has ever dug on a dog in her life.

This morning came this article out of Pennsylvania:

Dead Dogs Found at Abandoned Kennel

Thirty animals were found dead at Autumn Briar Kennel in Sullivan County, PA, last week. State Police at Laporte are investigating, with numerous animal cruelty charges and dog law violations pending. Corporal William Brown, State Police at Laporte, said charges should be filed this week.

PA Humane Society Police Officer Marlene Metzger, who works for the Dessin Animal Shelter near Bethany, was asked to respond to the Colley Township address, located below Tunkhannock, by Regional Dog Law Supervisor Ellen Howarth, Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement.

Metzger said conditions at the kennel were “just horrendous, gross.” She says there were approximately 50 dogs living in the kennel area in “horrendous living conditions: feces everywhere and urine.”

“You’d really consider her a hoarder,” said PA Dog Warden Jim Rickert, referring to the kennel owner (name withheld pending filing of charges.) “She was a licensed kennel in 2008 and (the Department of Agriculture) was in the process of revoking the license,” he said, based on numerous animal cruelty and sanitation violations.

Metzger says the owner surrendered approximately 30 dogs on Thursday, of which 21 were transported to Dessin Animal Shelter in Bethany, to be placed for adoption. The remaining dogs were accepted by shelters in Susquehanna, Lackawanna and Luzerne counties, said Dessin Animal Shelter Manager Sue Frisch.

Frisch says the Dessin took in one Lurcher (resembling a greyhound); six adult, Jack Russell Terrier types; and 14 Jack Russell puppies. Five of the puppies are already spoken for, and Pregnant Dog Rescue in Newfoundland accepted three adult Jack Russells to be placed for adoption.

Animals dead on property

Rickert says they found seven dead animals when they searched the Autumn Briar Kennel property Thursday: six dead dogs and one cat. When they returned Friday with a second search warrant, they found an additional 23 dead animals, including a pig, goat, hamsters, gerbils, and more dogs. “In her bedroom was the mama dog and puppies. There was a pile of cat food bags. Under the pile of cat food bags was the dead mother dog and six puppies,” he said. “The hamsters were in a closet on the top shelf, in their cages,” Rickert said — all dead.

“Everything just died and stayed wherever it died,” Metzger said. She says it’s unclear if the owner lived at the house. “There was no place for her to sleep. There was dog sh** on every piece of furniture in that house—the bed, the couch, the loveseat—everything,” she said.

Rickert said animal cruelty charges were also filed against the owner 12 years ago.

Want to see the Kennel report from last year? Here it is (PDF). She failed food, water, bedding, sanitation, eccreta (shit), drainage, and water resistance, and has received numerous citations.

I will set aside the question of how someone cited for animal cruelty 12 years ago could get a Dept. of Agriculture kennel license to house nearly 100 dogs.

Instead, I will focus on the dogs that need homes. These dogs include a very nice lurcher and some small Jack Russells and Jack Russell crosses (which Autumnbriar tried to market as "rare Atlas Terriers").

There is nothing wrong with these dogs. What was broken was their owner, not the dogs. Contact the Dessin Animal Shelter to adopt or help and please cross-post to list-servs and boards where appropriate.

These dogs started out life in a bad place; they now need to bounce into good loving homes.


These puppies need a home!


Johnny, the lurcher, needs a home.
.

Dogs on the Road (Again)

Willie Nelson - On the road again


Willie Nelson is 75 years old today, which seems to me to be a good enough reason to load up a Willie clip. This one, however, was selected because I think it's the kind of song you might want to have playing in your vehicle if you were doing a bit of driving for a rescue train.

A rescue train? What's that? I will let John Sibley explain:

"Here's an easy way to help dogs in danger that not too many people know about - I didn't until pretty recently!

On any given weekend, there are rescue caravans taking place all across the United States where drivers are transporting dogs from immediate danger (usually kill shelters) to long term shelters, adoptive homes, or foster homes until they can be adopted. Organized by a transport coordinator, each driver takes dog(s) a fairly short distance - somewhere around 40 to 60 miles, usually - and then hands them off at a meeting place to the next driver until the dogs reach their destination.

.... Rescue transport is easy to get involved in and all you need is a working vehicle and some dog savvy!

I've found Yahoo Groups to be a great place to start! Here's where I've been looking at transport schedules:

• Dog Rescue Railroad
  
• Rescue TransportDog Transport
  
• Truck-N-PawsPet Travel

.

Best Reality-TV Show Not Yet on the Air

Lesly W-S. writes with a terrific idea. She notes that the folks trying to place feral Bureau of Land Management mustangs "have really found a fascinating marketing tool!"

They are doing Mustang Makeovers and Mustang Challenges ("55 Wild Mustangs! 55 Trainers! $12,000+ in prize money!") with the idea of getting horse trainers to "show their stuff" by training wild horses to be rehomed.

The 3-4 yr old mustangs are assigned to trainers randomly, and each trainer has 100 days to train them.

This is, quite obviously, a competition, but one in which whatever the outcome for the humans, THE HORSES ALWAYS WIN.

At the end of the competition, in which the trainers compete for prize money (and bragging rights), the horses are auctioned off with the proceeds going to a local charity.

Lesly says the Midwest Mustang Challenge brought in DROVES of on lookers, and raised a lot of interest in the horses, as well as the trainers and their styles, while also raising awareness of the horse situation on BLM lands (BLM reps were on hand to answer questions, etc.)

OK, now imagine a reality show series based on the same thing, but with dogs.

Would you watch this? Would I watch this? In a red-hot minute!

This is a GREAT idea -- a terrific way to showcase both dogs that need homes AND the wide variety of dog training methods that are out there.

The point here is obvious: and the power, potential, and advertising base is just as obvious.

Animal Planet, what the hell are you waiting for?

.

John Sibley, American Hero

I've recently added some new blogs to the right, one of which is John Sibley's entitled "For Your Entertainment, which has some amusing finds and observations, such as: "And he hasn't sat down since."

John gets my nod for American hero for his rather unexpected entry into the world of rescue caravaning. Hats off, John. Read the whole thing and then consider the suggestion at the end.

.

Bear Bounces to Fame

The singing dog in the above commercial is "Bear".

Bear is an all-white Jack Russell Terrier pup so "amped up" on life, that if he had ever been allowed to hunt, he probably would have come to harm. Some terriers are like that; they know no bounds.

The good news for Bear is that my friend Scott Kauffman in California managed to place Bear with animal trainer Steve Berens.

Bear has since gone on to appear in several movies and many commercials.

It seems Bear's latest commercial (featured at top) has created a small stir in England, where the low-esteemed mumbling dog that is featured in the bank segment appears to be frightened and shaking. Never mind that the dog is trained to do this on command; appearance is everything. And, of course, in commericials it really is everything.

To tell you the truth, I found this ad incredibly confused, and I could not tell what the take-away message was supposed to be.

Apparently, we are supposed to think the two dogs are the same animal -- the shaking dog has no confidence because he lacks a really cool car, but he joyfully sings out loud (and sounds amazingly like Steve Winwood) when he's riding around in that nifty Volkswagen Polo.

Is that it?

If so, it's an incredibly stupid ad. The singing dog part is brilliant, of course, but the other segment just crashes and burns and wrecks it all. Free advice: Cut the ad down, keep the singing dog, lose the mumbling dog that looks scared (what were you thinking?), and add a beautiful girl as a romantic element. What you will have left is a perfect bit of advertising: dog, car, girl, good music. Simple.

For the record, the singing dog and the scared dog are not the same animal. The more timid dog is a rescue that was also placed by Scott with animal trainer Steve Berens; he is sometimes used as a double for Bear when the situation is called for. But he's not Bear. Bear's issue is not lack of confidence; it the opposite of that.

Scott and Margie Kauffman, by the way, have placed thousands of rescue Jack Russell Terriers in good homes over the years.

For an excellent article by Gina Spadafori mentioning Margie's good work, see The Saints Of Rescue.

To see an example of what Scott can do with a Nikon camera, see this still-picture composite I put up a few year back: Long May It Run.

• Related Links:
  ** A 15-Year Mistake
  ** The Saints of Rescue
  ** The Continuing Need for Rescue
  ** Hump and Dump Dog Breeders
  ** A Challenge to All Breeders
  

Bear, airborne in the kitchen.
.

American Working Terriers Golf Shirt

I ordered two more of these great golf shirts for myself. The original has worn like iron over the last two years, so I can vouch for the high quality.



The picture on the front and back is of the late great Sailor, who was a terrific working dog who always did me proud in the field. If you want to order your own copy and declare yourself a proud American Working Terrier enthusiast, just click here .



All proceeds go to terrier rescue, as always. And yes, we have other stuff. Lots of other stuff.

.

Virginia Puppy Mills

In Virginia you have to have to go to school and have a license to cut hair or run a manicure studio, but not to own and operate a puppy mill. For all the bashing I do of the Humane Society, this is one place where I give them a tip of the hat.

As for the AKC, what has been their response to puppy mills? Believe it or not, it's to give them discounts! As the AKCs 2006 letter to puppy mill operator's notes: "We value your business and the work you do as a breeder. In appreciation of the dogs and litters you have registered with us, we want you to be the recipient of a new special breeder service. If you have any older dogs or litters that were not registered within the required time frame, AKC would like to waive the late fees for registering these individual dogs or litters."

The article below, is from Fox Channel 8 here in Virginia earlier this year.

Puppy Mill Owner Charged With Animal Cruelty Jan 31, 2008,
By ANGELA RODRIGUEZ FOX-8 News

HILLSVILLE, Va. (WGHP) – Local authorities believe they have busted one of the largest puppy mills in U.S. history. More than one thousand dogs were found when animal control raided a kennel in Hillsville, Va.

At the time, kennel owner, Lanzie Horton, Jr. surrendered most of his animals, but was allowed to stay in business.

Thursday, Carroll County, Va. investigators charged Horton with 14 counts of animal cruelty and 25 counts of neglect. Horton turned himself over to authorities and has been released on a $5,000 bond.

Horton's business had been under a five-month undercover investigation conducted by the Humane Society and the Virginia Partnership for Animal Welfare and support conducted an undercover investigation.

Authorities raided Horton's business on November 1.

"To see over a hundred mother dogs and litters of puppies lying in feces, it was just awful," said veterinarian Kathy Davieds, who was part of the raid.
"There were, I don't know how many hundreds of outside wire cages containing (a) various number of dogs all barking and screaming frantically," said Davieds.

Many of the more than 700 dogs Horton surrendered were taken to shelters across the U.S.

Horton did not return our calls. If convicted, he could face up to 14 years in jail and/or a $35,000 fine.

.