Ever since the Dallas Companion Animal Project (DCAP) was launched, the hopeful kept hoping that things would change at Dallas Animal Services (DAS). But look who's chairing DCAP:
Rebecca Poling, the Chair of the Task Force OPPOSED lifesaving legislation in Texas which would have banned the cruel gas chamber, mandated collaboration between Texas pounds and rescue organizations by making it illegal to kill animals when qualified rescues were willing to save them, required transparency in how taxpayer monies were spent by requiring shelters to make their statistics public, and would have made it illegal for shelters to kill animals based on arbitrary criteria.
In addition, Poling’s tenure on the Dallas Animal Shelter Commission has been marked by staggering neglect and abuse at Dallas Animal Services, which is not only underscored by the fact that the agency routinely and needlessly puts to death tens of thousands of animals every year (24,793 of the 34,399 animals it took in), but allowed a cat to starve to death within its walls, while every single employee looked the other way at his cries for help. In short, you cannot create a true and authentic blueprint for No Kill success by empanelling a Task Force chaired by a person who has no track record of success and who opposes the very approach necessary to end the killing of savable animals.
You can keep hoping this will change. But they won't. I am willing to bet any sum of money on this.
Since DCAP came into existence, Poling and Co. have done nothing of value. Instead, they recycle old stories online at Facebook and the Net while kissing each other's bottoms until they're soda-cracker white. And since she has no real news to publish, Poling has recently begun to resort to publishing pretty photos of her friends, complete with their arms around their pets. The photo ops are getting downright nauseating.
Perhaps Poling should show us what's really going on at DAS. This is what is going on every day as DCAP pursues nothing of value:
(Note: This photo is from several years ago. The photo my ex took some 15 years ago was considerably worse. Animals were stacked in wire containers and some smaller bodies were falling out of the sides. She took it while visiting the now-closed DAS Forney Road shelter.)
But none of this is changing anything down at DAS. The killing goes on, day in and day out. Or, as Bruce Campbell would say,
"You ain't leading nothing but Jack and shit. And Jack left town."
At least the public is no longer banned from pointing out how the No-Kill Equation has worked in other cities and counties. Or are we?
From the DCAP Facebook page:
Also, please note - months of research has been conducting up to this point, so while we appreciate the sentiment, general comments like "look at what Richmond did", keep in mind that we've already researched Austin, Richmond, San Antonio, San Francisco, and many, many more.
From the DCAP Web site:
If you’ve got a suggestion, please let us know. We’re looking for specific programs and initiatives that have been used successfully in other areas, lessons learned from personal experiences, and unique, “outside the box” ideas that we may not have seen before. We want your input.
So...what are we waiting for?
Nathan Winograd described DCAP's real agenda - that of preserving the status quo, while only giving lip service to no-kill - accurately in his book Redemption. Specifically, the chapter Co-option.
Winograd also wrote a letter to the mayor of Dallas everything we need to know to stop the killing here in his blog - several months ago.
Does anyone know if our mayor ever responded to the letter?
