Customer Reviews

Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America

5 star:		(55)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

A no-kill shelter was recently built on 13 wooded acres outside a city near me. The facility has space for 250 animals. A huge budget. Slick marketing. A partnership with a major pet food manufacturer. A variety of innovative programs. 1300 volunteers, 130 foster families and thousands of extremely generous supporters. Last year, 2100 of their animals found new homes. It's the kind of operation Nathan Winograd would call a no-kill success story. And yet the organization admits they cannot accommodate the more than 300 requests they receive weekly from people trying to relinquish their pets to them.
Within 15 miles of this beautiful facility are 2 open admission shelters that have to euthanize for space. They have implemented most if not all of the programs Mr. Winograd claims is necessary to achieve no-kill status. But, unlike their no-kill neighbor up the road, these shelters do not turn any animals away. Last year, they took in 21,000 animals! Anyone out there willing to build, staff, operate and fund a no-kill shelter for 21,000 animals?
Which brings me to what I found most irritating about Redemption. Nathan Winograd never discusses what I believe is the biggest issue separating the two kinds of shelters- what to do with the staggering number of animals no-kill shelters turn away. He only briefly mentions the necessity of no-kill shelters to "occasionally" limit incoming animals. Where I live, however, no-kill shelters only occasionally accept animals! In fact, I don't know anyone who has been successful getting a stray or their own animal into a no-kill shelter. My point is this: EVERY NO-KILL SHELTER IN THE COUNTRY HAS TO FIRST ACCEPT EVERY ANIMAL BROUGHT TO ITS FACILITY BEFORE WE CAN HAVE ANY HOPE OF ACHIEVING A TRUE NO-KILL NATION.
They shouldn't be setting standards for open admission shelters when their very way of operating directly contributes to these shelters having to euthanize for space.
The author crows about his success leading an open admission no-kill in a sparsely populated rural part of New York. Note that, last year, Tompkins County SPCA took in less than 3000 animals. His urban success story - the San Francisco SPCA- did not even take animals from the public if I correctly understand their relationship with the SF Animal Care and Control. Last year, the San Francisco SPCA took in less than 4000 animals. When Nathan Winograd can take over an open admission shelter accepting 21,000 animals annually and still make it no-kill, then and only then will I be impressed enough to jump on the Redemption bandwagon.
I also did not like that Redemption is full of inflammatory, anonymous and dated remarks that cannot be verified easily because the author does not include footnotes and references you usually see in a piece of nonfiction. Fact checking is limited to a 12 page bibliography.
It is a myth that we can somehow save every homeless or unwanted animal without having to first address the disparity between no-kill and 'kill' shelter admission policies and intake numbers. Redemption only gives one side of the story and, unfortunately, the author is promoting it as the whole & balanced picture it isn't. I'm just a little surprised that readers are swallowing his half-truths with such gusto. Dig a little deeper, animal lovers! You can start by asking you favorite no-kill shelter how many animals they turned away this week.

Winograd is passionate, articulate and astute as he describes the total failure of our country's humane agencies to protect animals. However, "Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America" is so much more than a tell-all critique from someone who has worked inside the "humane" industry. It is also a road map to a new, more humane world.

At once gripping and infuriating, "Redemption" takes the reader on a real life roller coaster ride as it traces the history of the animal welfare movement in America - a movement that was born of compassion, and then lost its way.

Why do our country's wealthiest animal shelters continue to amass millions of dollars in reserves, while -at the same time - failing to implement programs that are proven to end the unnecessary killing of pets in their very own shelters? You will need to read this book to find out.

Warning: you will not be able to put it down once you start reading.
Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America

Redemption tells the compelling true story of a social movement born of kindness and love that went astray, and provides a beacon to lead it back home to its roots, to a true lifesaving ethic.

The book will surprise you, revealing the deeply held beliefs and inner workings of animal sheltering today.

But it's more than a lively story about a social movement; it provides a roadmap for creating truly compassionate communities and a rallying cry to the finest sentiments within each of us to fully reconnect animal sheltering in our own communities to our own values.

Winograd reminds us that compassion knows no limits and that when we, as a community, decide that we want change, we can truly achieve it.

The innocence of animals and the trust they put in us is part of what endears us to our own pets. Redemption is a story of hope and promise that we can live up to that trust.

Don't miss this book! It's a must read for anyone who cares about animals or about creating a more compassionate society.

What do I say about a book that completely changed my entire way of thinking about animal sheltering? So many things that we have all been taught for decades is completely wrong and it is shocking to discover this. We have been allowing the deaths of millions of animals every year, not knowing that there are alternatives that would save them.

I read this book on a flight to and from Minnesota. I spent most of the flight with my mouth hanging open in utter amazement.... amazement that someone figured out how to stop killing all healthy and treatable pets in animal shelters 15 YEARS ago yet US shelters are still killing millions every year; amazement that I, as an animal lover and rescuer, didn't know anything about it; amazement that all the programs and services that save lives are SO common sense that it is absurd that every shelter isn't doing them; and amazement that the largest, wealthiest animal "welfare" organizations have been fighting against these life saving methods and fighting against everything I believe in. I had been donating monthly to 2 of these organizations but immediately stopped as soon as I got off the plane.

I encourage everyone to read this book. I've read it several times now and everytime I do, I see again that everything Winograd writes is absolutely true. Now that I'm trying to bring these life saving methods to Houston's 5 kill shelters, unfortunately I see everything he talks about over and over and over... I see shelter directors that fight these life saving methods. I see bureaucrats who say they are working towards No Kill but refuse to follow the model that actually works, so they keep trying the same failed catch and kill methods.

It is disgusting and disturbing to find out what is really going on in America's shelters and at the largest animal welfare organizations. But, now that we know, it is equally as inspiring to know that many compassionate people are working hard to change the landscape.

After reading this book, I am no longer satisified to be just the "foster mom" and weekend volunteer, who saves as many as I can and cries about those that I can't bring home. I am now determined to spread this life saving message to everyone in Houston. No Kill is inevitable. Everyone needs to read this book and get on the bus.

Yes he's angry...and so am I. You're talking about organizations that euthanized over 10,000 animals in Virginia alone over a time frame of two years. These killings had no vet reports,unbiased behaviorist reports and NO permission forms from owners. Organizations that refused the breed rescues to help with rehoming the Katrina dogs. Organizations that caused millions of donated dollars to disappear and cancelled the Louisiana investigation by building a huge shelter for New Orleans. (the only shelter they've built). An organization who had an intern place a two year old beagle with id and license in a plastic bag because he was a "hunting dog".
It's interesting that these two reviews are the first ones in the list. I hope readers read thru them to the reviews that followed.

Winograd presents a compelling history of the animal-sheltering movement along with an argument for the move toward what he terms the No Kill Equation. It is a quick, interesting read, and his passion is evident. Overall I would recommend it to others interested in the subject, but with a few reservations.

On the positive side, the history of the ASPCA was very informative. I never knew about the origins of the organization, nor was I aware of how far from its roots it has strayed. It seems that things went wrong once the ASPCA took animal-control contracts from cities; at that point, it became all about the money rather than the animals. And that is why today we see depressing shelters run by bureaucrats, who often shun offers of help from idealistic volunteers.

Winograd's central thesis seems to be that the high kill rate of most shelters is indicative of massive system-wide failure. He backs this up with details of shelters' success stories. When radical changes were made, positive results were achieved. Such changes included a focus on adoption to compete with commercial breeders, with more convenient hours of operation, better customer service, and clever PR; a focus on preventative measures, with low- or no-cost spay/neuter operations made available, counseling made available for behavioral problems, and funding made available for TNR; and a paradigm shift in which employees who clung to the old model of sheltering were fired.

As a law-school grad, Winograd deftly dismantles some of the logical fallacies clung to by those mired in institutional inertia. Unfortunately, he engages in some of this sloppy rhetoric himself, most notably when he makes statements without citations and expects the reader to accept them as factual. There is also a rather embarrassing use of my favorite logical fallacy, reductio ad Hitlerum.

There are scads of quotations and passages that are not attributed to their authors, and there are studies that are mentioned but not cited. For me, the biggest disappointment was the chapter on TNR (the trap/neuter/return method for the humane management of feral cats). In addressing the concern that feral cats have negative ecological impacts, Winograd mentioned a few studies with flawed methodology and attacked them on scientific grounds. There was usually enough information for me to be able to find these studies if I did the research -- however, negative evidence is not evidence. I wanted references to the scientifically valid studies that have apparently shown a benign effect that feral-cat colonies have on local ecosystems. Winograd, however, does not reference them. I can only assume that they're included in the 12-page bibliography, but I'm not going to locate and wade through every single one of those manuscripts to find the confirmation that I want. If this were a work of true scholarly merit, the author would have included citations, footnotes, and references to peer-reviewed scientific studies.

At my old residence I trapped all of the feral and stray cats, took them in for sterilization, and released them back onto my property. I enjoyed watching them from a distance and observing their behavior, and knowing that I had made a difference was incredibly rewarding. Ferals and strays came to occupy a special place in my heart, and when I moved away I even took one of the friendlier ones with me -- he is a spoiled house cat now. Despite my love for feral cats, however, I'm not in denial about the potential impact they have on native wildlife. Maybe where I live, in an urban center, the impact is not so great, but even at the outskirts of my town feral cats have been connected with the deaths of some endangered bird species. I was delighted when Winograd pointed out that humans are the original invasive species, and I agree with his outlook. Feral cats exist only alongside humans, and we are responsible for far more habitat loss and species decimation. As long as there are human settlements, there will be feral cats, and extermination will not solve any wildlife-management quandaries.

Still, in discussing this matter Winograd actually sunk so low as to play the Nazi card. In a common association fallacy, he connects a concern with maintaining native species to racism, claiming that native-plant gardens gained popularity in Nazi Germany. I don't know whether or not that's true (there was no citation), but even if it is, that is hardly relevant. The Nazis championed lots of things, vegetarianism included, but that doesn't automatically imbue an idea with evil. Nazis' gardens are not relevant; the scientific consensus is. And the current consensus is that invasive species are a threat to biodiversity, pure and simple. This means that feral cats, depending on where they live, are indeed a potential threat to biodiversity. Of course, humans are the original threat, and the cause of the feral threat.

Another problem is the obvious lack of any editing. (If this book did have an editor, s/he should be fired.) I'm not just talking about the frequent descent into repetitive wordiness that could have been tightened up, or the irrelevant paragraph about Nazis that should have been removed altogether. I'm not just talking about the occasional sloppy and confusing wording that should have been rewritten and clarified. I'm talking about the abysmal copy errors. Misspellings; subject-verb disagreements (to his credit, this only happened with tricky words such as "criteria" and "data"); split infinitives (OK, no one cares about those anymore); and the biggest offender by far, the myriad punctuation errors. Sometimes there would be entire stretches of text in which errors appeared on every page. Maybe Winograd's ideas are valid, but the bad editing makes it seem like the work of an amateur.

These flaws combine to detract from the perceived credibility of the material. I cannot, for example, use this text to argue with a TNR opponent, because Winograd gives no citations and I wouldn't want to use such an amateurish work as a primary source. I hope to see a second edition in which the repetitive screeds are tightened up or eliminated, footnotes and references are attached to quotations and statements of fact, and the text is expanded to include references to solid scientific studies.

One criticism of this book is that No Kill shelters only push more responsibility for killing onto traditional shelters. This misses the point, because as Winograd shows, there are positive steps we can take to make things better than they are now. Even if 100 percent No Kill will never be achieved, it doesn't mean we can't abandon old models and move forward. The status quo is an obvious failure and a paradigm shift is greatly needed in order to reduce unnecessary suffering. The author gives us hope that we really can make things better.

Don't be mislead by the subtitle. This book does nothing to the debunk the "myth" of pet overpopulation. It also doesn't talk about the "no kill revolution."

The author's entire argument that overpopulation is a myth is based on his absurdly simplistic calculation that the number of owned animals that die or run off each year far outnumbers those that enter shelters each year, so the real problem is simply proper marketing of shelter animals as replacements for those who die or run away (ignoring that the bulk of potential adopters, and the bulk of shelter dogs, tend not to be geographically anywhere near one another). There's enough food produced to feed everyone on the planet, but people are still starving, aren't they?

I'm not saying shelters aren't horrible at marketing their animals - most are. There is huge room for reform in animal sheltering. Humane Societies in particular have an obligation to focus on reducing intake numbers and increasing adoption numbers.

So, what about this "no kill revolution?" How do we make this work?

The author doesn't say. For nearly 200 pages, I clung to the hope that somewhere, at some point, he would stop attacking the "old school" shelters and national humane organizations long enough to outline the No Kill Equation, detail HOW it was implemented in San Franciso and, later, in Tompkins County, and present a replicable plan for implementation around the country. Never happened. Apparently, he waltzed into Tompkins County (which houses Cornell University and is hardly the rural backwater he'd have you believe), declared they would never kill another animal, and instantly there were enough volunteers, donations, and participating vets to implement all the programs (TNR, fostering, remote adoptions, rescue outreach, low-cost spay/neuter) that make up the No Kill Equation.

Yeah. I don't think so.

Sadly, I feel at this point that the author did not intend in this book to promote "no kill"; rather, he wanted a very public outlet to vent his frustrations with animal shelters, humane societies, and most especially the HSUS. Anyone who truly wants to work toward no-kill will need to look elsewhere for guidance (the Model Programs at Best Friends Animal Society's No More Homeless Pets page are more helpful, inclusive, and uplifting).

I did not realize until I read this book how much of my perception about shelters and shelter animals was shaped by hearsay and oft repeated opinions that were stated as facts. Though I did reject the pet overpopulation explanation prior to reading this book and question some temperament tests condemning some dogs as unadoptable, I'm ashamed to say that I had bought into the blame game on the public (ie. 'irresponsible owners', 'pet retention problem'), and did believe that feral cats should be euthanized - no, correction - killed instead of going through TNR.

I was previously confused about what the No Kill philosophy really was because I have seen private shelters who claim to be no-kill (SPCA, HS) pick the 'best' animals from public shelters or relabel some intakes as unadoptable and kill them. What those shelters do is not the No Kill that Winogard champions.

It is a hard emotional read. It is worth any animal lover or animal worker who wants to know the history of how one person can make a very profound difference in saving lives of healthy animals. Be sure to read the entire book. The first half will make you want to put it down. I am an avid reader and usually can read a book in one or two settings. I was only able to read about 20 pages at any one time. You can make a differnce in the needless and sensless killing of companion animals by using the process outlined in the book.

I might single handedly keep Nathan financed as I keep giving my copies of this book to others to read and buyng it again and again. No matter, the book is worth it, what Nathan has to offer is worth it. The lives saved are worth it. I'd give more stars if they were availabel to give.