The impediment to forward progress is Chairman of the Agriculture Committee Assemblyman William Magee (Madison and Ostego Counties), who has opposed passing the bill out of his committee in the past. We need a show of strength and for the animal advocates of New York State (and only NYS!) to email all of the members of the committee to show their support for CAARA.

There are three alerts to reach ALL of the members of the legislative committee – you must use ALL of them to reach every member! Please be polite, be firm, and express your support for this legislation. Text has been provided for you but adding your own thoughts is always beneficial.

Alert 1
Alert 2
Alert 3

I encourage you all to read the actual text of the Companion Animal Access and Rescue Act, sponsored by one of the New York Assembly’s true heroes for animals, Assemblyman Micah Kellner. In this day and age it’s common for opponents of a bill to simply lie about what’s in it and although it can be dense at times, a reading is very worthwhile. It is a bill that will give the strongest possible protections to the sheltered animals of New York State, one that will set standards for their care and make sure they are required to be made available to qualified rescue groups. It would require medical treatment of the sick and require that shelters make a genuine effort to locate the owners of lost animals. It gives sheltered animals every possible opportunity at life and I am proud to support it.

This past week I had the opportunity to participate in a rescue that saved 64 cats, mostly kittens, from New York City’s Animal Care and Control. Inspired by a tragedy, Pets Alive pulled every single available kitten they could get their hands on. With CAARA in place, that tragedy never would have happened – and the kittens pulled would have been required to have had their medical needs met instead of suffering as they waited for a rescue.

It’s not just New York City. All of New York would benefit from a legal mandate to clean up their act and follow some common sense ethical standards, from the horrifically abusive Niagra Humane Society to the arrogant and cruel Hempstead Animal Shelter to the Hi Tor Animal Care Center, where a board member recently claimed in a newspaper article that every feral cat entering the facility is killed due to “Rockland County Public Health regulations” which do not exist.

The ASPCA supports organizations like these, and they are the major force opposing CAARA. They can’t support cruelty and killing in New York State forever. The tide is turning, and we are the ones who will end this madness. Please help. We can do this.

For extra impact, you may also wish to contact members of the committee directly. This can be especially effective if you live in their districts. They are:
William Magee (Madison, Otsego Counties) 315-361-4125 Committee Chair
Clifford Crouch (Binghamton Area) 607-648-6080
Marc Butler (Herkimer, Fulton, Otsego Counties) 518-762-6486
Ken Blankenbush (Lewis, Oswego, Saint Lawrence and Jefferson Counties) 315-493-3909
Harry Bronson (Rochester Area) 585-244-5255
Michael Benedetto (Bronx) 718-320-2220
George Amedore (Montgomery, Schenectatdy Counties) 518-843-0227
Alan Maisel (Brooklyn) 718-968-2770
Peter Lopez (Greene, Columbia, Schoharie, Otsego, Delaware Counties) 518-943-1371
Aileen Gunther (Sullivan, Orange Counties) 845-794-5807
Margaret Markey (Queens) 718-651-3185
Stephen Hawley (Orleans, Niagra, Genesee, Monroe Counties) 585-589-5780
Gary Finch (Tioga, Broome, Chenango, Cortland, Cayuga Counties) 315-255-3045
Barbara Lifton (Ithaca area) 607-277-8030
Michael Simanowitz (Queens) 718-969-1508
John McEneny (Albany Area) 518-455-4178
Bob Reilly (Saratoga, Albany Counties) 518-371-0568
Francisco Moya (Queens) 718-458-5367
Jose Rivera (Bronx) 718-933-2204
Addie Russell (St. Lawrence, Jefferson Counties) 315-786-0284
Linda Rosenthal (Manhattan) 212-873-6368
Peter Rivera (Bronx) 718-931-2620

Why is this important?

I’ve always been serious about dog food, but I got really serious about it after 2009 when the big recall hit: hundreds of dogs dead, all due to a large contract manufacturer (more on that later) using an adulterated ingredient. Melamine was intentionally added by Chinese suppliers of wheat gluten – this inexpensive but deadly additive fools tests for protein content and makes cheap ingredients look to be of higher quality. It also kills pets. Thousands of pets were sickened, hundreds are believed to have died.

Now we’re here all over again, with a pet food recall that started small and has grown rapidly, and we’re seeing some of the same problems play out as they did before. The food manufacturers quietly dump their press releases on Friday night, when they’ll attract less notice, after denying that their products are involved.

As with before, this recall involves a contract manufacturer: Diamond Foods. Contract manufacturers are another dirty little secret of the pet food industry; many of the brands that we all think of as major are not produced by the companies that sell them, rather they are contracted out to another manufacturer. This of course is hidden from the consumer. Contract manufacturers frequently use ingredients and equipment that are common to many different product lines, so a simple problem can become very widespread very quickly, to many different brands – such as the adulteration of their product with, frankly, raw shit. That’s how one spreads salmonella, the subject of the current recall.

For the last four days or so I’ve been feeling terrible. I won’t go into detail, but let’s just say that I’ve needed to be close to a restroom. I considered a few options including the flu based on what I’ve been exposed to, but then this morning I got the ever-expanding list of brands of the current recall of dry dog foods. I stock three different brands of dry dog food for my 5 dogs, brands chosen carefully based on their ingredients, their reputation, and their honesty. I really got serious about research after the 2009 disaster and tried my best to find foods that are a good value by honest companies. 2 of the three types I feed are on the recall list, one is not but dry foods by the same manufacturer are – and each company has not behaved ethically in the slightest despite knowing for nearly a month now that their food was potentially affected. In doing so, they have risked both my health and the health of my pets.

I’m done with dog food.

Dog food companies have spent a fortune, much of it on “vet education”, convincing the public that feeding a dog is rocket science, that only they can be trusted to deliver the precise formulation that will keep your dog in perfect health. Hogwash. Kibble was invented in the mid-1800s and popularized in the convenience-mad consumer culture of post WWII America; prior to that domestic dogs ate human food (and mostly human scraps) for tens of thousands of years. The modern incarnation of kibble is mostly a profit system for food megabrands: large food conglomerates like Nestle and Mars use dog food as a profitable disposal system for food scraps they cannot sell, frequently for legal reasons, to human beings.

When my last hospice dog, Macho, was dying I turned to homemade food out of desperation. He would no longer eat any wet or dry food I could find, so I cooked for him, and discovered to my surprise that it wasn’t that difficult or that expensive. I would make my meat mix once per week – a trip to the grocery store and I’d cook up a week’s worth of protein. Daily I would set my rice cooker as I left the house to walk dogs with rice and vegetables and when I got back I would let the hot rice warm the meat mix from the refrigerator and throw in some supplements and a vitamin tablet. He never once refused it and I had the comfort of knowing where each and every ingredient came from.

Sure, I’d love to feed my dogs raw – but where I live, that’s highly impractical. I’m in the South Bronx, it’s not like there’s a farm on the corner and a local butcher serving up organic pasture-raised local meat at any sort of reasonable price. I can guarantee you, however, that anything I source from the local grocery store will be a damn sight better than what is legally allowed to go into your average bag of kibble and be described as, say, “chicken”. It will be prepared in my own kitchen to my own standards (and by cooking everything I can make sure that pathogens are killed) with the same tools and utensils I use for my own food. I will be able to vary the diets quickly and easily with what’s available, what’s fresh, what they like, what they’re allergic to, and what’s good. I don’t think it will be all that much more expensive, either – and I won’t have to load it up with preservatives.

And you know, I’d have a very hard time being any worse at it than the companies that claim to specialize in it. My cooking hasn’t killed anyone yet. I plan to keep it that way.

The kits consist of a custom “Assemblywoman Amy ‘Quick Kill’ Paulin” novelty syringe pen, an informational flyer, and a sticker or postcard, all neatly stapled together.

I’m happy to send these kits out – free – in batches of 25, first come first serve. For the moment I would like to give them to people who live in or near Amy Paulin’s Assembly district in Westchester County and will commit to distributing them there. Leave some with your vet, groomer or pet shop. Give ‘em out on the street. Be creative and spread the word! Email me to request your batch of 25 and give me the address to send them to. And while you’re at it, why not send one to Amy, too? She can never have enough pens.

Want to roll your own kit to give away? Use the flyer! You can download the one pictured above here. Your local Kinko’s/FedEx will print that up for you on heavy, semi-gloss laser paper and cut them in half for about .10 per flyer.

6 weeks ago I found a dog on the streets of the South Bronx whom I named Brooke, a fantastic and friendly dog who needed to heal and decompress – and thanks to Pets Alive, that’s what she got. I went up to see her a little over a week ago and she was wonderful – affectionate and active and now, completely healthy, with her injuries healed and the lump on her head gone.

Later that day, Brooke had a very special appointment with a couple who decided to adopt her, and this formerly battered pit bull from the South Bronx now has a family of her very own.

She has reportedly settled into her new home very well, is perfectly behaved, and likes to snuggle on the couch.

Congratulations, Brooke!

This bill’s always been a Yugo. A non-starter, a non-runner. With every revision she’s made some cosmetic improvements. A new paint job, some rims – but underneath it’s the same old clunker.

The new version, which you can view here, does clean up a few things from the last attempt. The bill now requires cats to be fed, watered, and sheltered when in shelter custody, just like dogs. It now seems to require shelters to offer animals to the list of recues that they must maintain, although the language describing that requirement is a bit confusing and unclear. It changes some of the loopholes for listing animals but they still remain loopholes – now, for instance, shelters are required to make a list of impounded animals available somehow if they find the use of the internet “impracticable” (in 2012!) – which they can easily fulfill by putting them on a bulletin board and sticking it in a shelter back room somewhere. Many of the useful improvements still have the heart cut out of them by providing generous exemption for “impracticable” requirements, like the ability to take a picture and post it on-line, and the grossly inadequate and unspecific provision requiring “necessary (medical) treatment” without defining what exactly is necessary remains.

But the engine of this Yugo, the rotting core of the disfunction remains, and this was always the primary goal of the Mayor’s Alliance and the ASPCA who wrote this bill, convinced Asw. Paulin to take it on, and have shepherded it since: every shelter still gets exclusive control over who can rescue from them. The shelter alone interprets the standards subjectively and decides who meets them – and has the broad power to bar rescues that speak out against them or that do not play by their rules. It also, still, puts shelters in the very odd position of inspecting rescues for standards that the shelters themselves do not have to (and frequently don’t) meet. To take New York City’s Animal Care and Control as an example, they’d be able to inspect rescues and bar their access if the rescue did not provide “sanitary and adequate shelter”, “appropriate exercise”, “necessary veterinary care and treatment”, and a “safe environment” – none of which they themselves provide. This is grossly unacceptable.

I am all for guaranteeing rescue access to shelters and having a standard that those rescues must meet – but those standards must be objective, and be subject to completely independent evaluation and appeal. Giving shelters the power to bar whomever they wish for whatever they wish is thoroughly counterproductive if your goal is to save lives.

I frequently use New York City as an example mostly because it is the system I am most familiar with in the city in which I live, but there is ample evidence throughout the state of shelters abusing their power and killing in the face of available rescue options – two that leap immediately to mind are Rockland County’s Hi-Tor, where every cat judged to be “feral” is executed and the shelter claims it is by county regulation – even though no such regulation exists, and the infamous Hempstead Town Shelter, where a video surfaced in 2011 of a kitten being killed by the director and her staff for fun and rescuers and volunteers were barred from entering the building. I – and most sane people – do not want these people to be the gatekeepers of who and who does not get to rescue. It is grossly unacceptable to the point of being offensive – but Ms. Paulin continues to maintain that even shelters like these are best qualified to “decide subjectively which rescues can take animals“.

Assemblywoman Paulin is pulling out all the stops to move this bill forward – and indeed, she has always stated that her intention was to wait us out and “get her bill” once the furor died down. Unable to move the bill forward in the Codes Committee, where New York’s own animal hero Asm. Joseph Lentol has committed to stopping it, she is seeking to short-cut the democratic process and now that the furor has died down to ask Speaker Sheldon Silver to bring the bill directly to a floor vote.

We must fight on and stop this latest attempt to move the bill forward. If you are a New York resident – and ONLY if you are a New York resident, please follow the link to contact Speaker Silver and/or call his office at 212-312-1420 and ask him not to allow the latest revision legislation to bypass the democratic process and go to a floor vote. Remember that Speaker Silver is not the enemy, he just needs to hear the will of the people.

Again, if you live in New York, please also follow the link to contact the sponsors of her bill and let them know that the latest revisions remain unacceptable to the animal lovers of New York State. You may also contact the offices of the sponsors by phone, which can be especially effective if you live in their district.

You can reach the offices of the sponsors at:
Robert Sweeney (Suffolk Cty) 631-957-2087
Matthew Titone (Staten Island) 718-442-9932
Peter Rivera (Bronx) 718-931-2620
Richard Gottifried (Manhattan) 212-807-7900
Michelle Schimel (Nassau Cty) 516-482-6966
Dan Losquadro (Suffolk Cty) 631-727-0204
Michael Fitzpatrick (Suffolk Cty) 631-724-2929

Finally – no matter where you live – stop by Amy Paulin’s Facebook page and let her know how you feel – you will have to leave a comment on an existing topic as starting a new topic is forbidden. Ms. Paulin’s disdain for democracy doesn’t stop at the process – she has also barred dissenters from commenting on her official Facebook page and has deleted comments critical of her bill. This is problematic as it is a public forum maintained by a taxpayer-paid elected official and her staff, where attempts to delete legitimate commentary – that is, anything not obscene or threatening – likely constitute an act of illegal restriction of free speech. Don’t stand for it. Let her know – the rules apply even to Amy Paulin. You may also wish to contact her district office at 914-723-1115. Please be as patient as you can be with the office of a politician who is allowing herself to be used by special interests to create laws that enable them to continue killing without consequence.

“We are the triage center. We find appropriate homes for every animal—whether that is through an adopter or a temporary shelter or rescue.”

She followed that knee slapper up with…

“Every animal that comes in our doors receives medical attention.”

Except, I guess, Robert and Gloria (to name just two of the recent ones I know well), both of whom nearly died from lack of treatment. They’re not by any means alone. Animals die from lack of treatment on a shockingly regular basis.

So not only do we have a shelter whose routine treatment of animals is very problematic, who torture animals to death, who get them sick, who leave medical conditions untreated, and who waste money by the bucketful – we’re now watching the Executive Director lie about exactly what it is NYCACC does?

Those quotes appeared here. Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m glad Hill’s is donating food to NYCACC. Sure, I’d prefer them to give it to someone less likely to waste so much of it and lose it to employee theft, but donations to feed animals are always good. This is about the ACC response, of elevating their usual tactic of publicly claiming “everything’s fine” to “everything’s perfect” – when the rescuers of NYC continue to battle on a daily basis to save the animals they want to kill.

While we must fight New York City Animal Care and Control to get every possible animal to safety, it is also so very important that we support rescues that commit to do the right thing: Pibbles & More was the first group to step up to save Treasure and they followed through on their commitment and did not give up on her. Support them. Support them with your voice, follow their activities and please drop by their website and consider making a donation to them to continue their lifesaving work and continue to pull animals that New York City Animal Care and Control is fighting to be able to kill.

This is Treasure.

Although you can’t see it very well in this photo, Treasure is pregnant – very pregnant, with at least 9 puppies. Treasure is so swollen she’s in discomfort and she’s about to give birth at any moment.

Unfortunately, Treasure finds herself at New York City Animal Care and Control.

Yesterday, the rescue coordinators at NYCACC sent out a plea for Treasure hoping that a rescue would step up and save her and her puppies – and the rescue community responded, with several organizations stepping up to take her in. Today NYCACC announced a change – they would still release Treasure to rescue, but only after what is sometimes euphemistically called a “late spay” – a spay and an abortion, an abortion of puppies that would be viable if they were born right now, today. A spay this late in pregnancy is a risky operation – the pups will definitely die, but there is also significant risk to the life of the mother. NYCACC doesn’t have the best track record of surgery at any rate; botched spays and neuters are relatively commonplace.

More than that, these puppies have a place to go. Puppies are in high demand; a rescue willing to care for them until they are old enough for adoption should have no problem at all adopting them. There is no question in my mind that an abortion at this point in Treasure’s pregnancy is wrong; killing puppies that are quite literally about to be born is indefensible.

We need you. We need your help. We need to let NYCACC know that the world is watching them and there will be consequences if they kill animals who have rescues committed to their care.

Please sign this change.org petition – with every signature an email is sent to NYCACC management. There are, unfortunately, no phones to call, and they do not answer them anyway. This is our only hope.

It is Monday, April 16. Treasure’s spay/abort is scheduled for Tuesday, April 17. Please help her and her innocent puppies live.

I ran across an image the other day on Facebook which used George Clooney to promote rescue and I thought it was interesting enough to post. Here’s what it looked like:

Now before I get started here, let me say that I don’t think Mr. Clooney had anything to do with this graphic. I know he has a rescued dog and talks about him in the press and talks about how great shelter dogs are and I’m not saying anything bad about that. I think someone grabbed a bit of photography they found and, knowing he was a rescue advocate, decided to make a graphic out of it to put on Facebook.

But here’s the thing: it’s terrible marketing. It’s straight up guilt. It’s saying, fairly blatantly, that if you don’t have a rescue dog, you’re not a good person like George Clooney is. You’re not Clooney-worthy. That’s just bad advertising and bad marketing – you don’t sell a product or an idea by telling people that they’re inadequate. It’s like Milwaukee’s Best trying to sell beer with the tag line “It’s All You Deserve”.

I posted the image on Facebook with a little blurb about what a missed opportunity it was and one person vehemently disagreed with me – so much so that she immediately unfriended me. She, like so many in rescue, believe that negative marketing works and that people can be guilted or shamed into adopting. So I made a quick little test.

I found a photo of the same subject, Mr. Clooney and added a tag line to it that was positive and warm. Here’s what I came up with – please excuse the crude execution as I was working quickly in order to make my point. I know that it’s not a terribly scientific test, but the results were quite dramatic.

More warm, more fuzzy. Kinda makes you want to be that famous movie actor with his dog on his lap and a drink in his hand, just chilling with his best friend.

The first image which used guilt and shame to motivate got 11 “likes” and was shared by 5 people (and had an hour head start).

The second image which used positive language, warm fuzzies, and general cuteness to motivate got 645 “likes” and 281 shares as of this writing.

Still think negative messaging works?