This is an actual note left by Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens) to potential burglars. Click on the link below to be taken to the Letters of Note blog.
Besides being a brilliant writer, Twain was very fond of cats.
To the next Burglar
Friday, January 27, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
Yesterday's Animal Shelter Commission meeting
I'm kind of glad I wasn't able to go.
According to this Dallas Observer article, the proceedings were just as painful as ever.
Some highlights of the meeting:
The shelter is still short 30 employees, as it has been since October 2011. Joey Zapata's excuse: "they want to make sure they get the right people". So why did they shitcan some of the better employees last year?
Animals are still disappearing from cages. Joey Zapata blamed the public for this.
The shelter is still euthanizing around 75% of animals admitted for "shelter".
Dwaine Caraway is now contributing.
The Shelter Commission gave the Dallas Companion Animal Project "approval to move forward". Huh?
I see nothing in place that will improve things one bit, especially when you look at DCAP's faults. They're in bed with the HSUS, run by a professional committee-sitter, and have an Advisory Board full of folks with NO experience in transforming kill shelters into no-kill shelters.
According to this Dallas Observer article, the proceedings were just as painful as ever.
Some highlights of the meeting:
The shelter is still short 30 employees, as it has been since October 2011. Joey Zapata's excuse: "they want to make sure they get the right people". So why did they shitcan some of the better employees last year?
Animals are still disappearing from cages. Joey Zapata blamed the public for this.
The shelter is still euthanizing around 75% of animals admitted for "shelter".
Dwaine Caraway is now contributing.
The Shelter Commission gave the Dallas Companion Animal Project "approval to move forward". Huh?
I see nothing in place that will improve things one bit, especially when you look at DCAP's faults. They're in bed with the HSUS, run by a professional committee-sitter, and have an Advisory Board full of folks with NO experience in transforming kill shelters into no-kill shelters.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Dallas goes into overdrive to stop shelter killing. (Backwards.)
By the looks of the city of Dallas' Companion Animal Project (aka DCAP), I don't think they could be getting any further away from lowering the shelter kill rate.
Let's look at the DCAP Facebook page. Instead of announcing any changes to the current m.o. down at Dallas Animal Services, we've been treated to excerpts from Wayne Pacelle's worst-selling book The Bond. From the Dec 29 posting:
From "The Bond": "Right now, slightly less than 25% of all dogs in American households come from shelters or rescue groups. That means that roughly three out of every four dogs come from other sources - from pet stores, puppy mills, small-scale breeders, or friends adopting out litters. There's still a stigma associated with shelters, the vague, sometimes snobbish, and always uninformed view that something is wrong with shelter animals." Here is what each of us can do: tell our friends to adopt from shelters or rescue groups! The dogs in shelters are just as wonderful as those in pet stores!
That's right, DCAP! Just tell her our friends to adopt from shelters and everything will be hunky-dory.
Over at thte DCAP Web site, the Advisory Board just gets weirder and weirder. New members include:
An architect, whose usefulness totally evades me. He is also often photographed with his purebred bulldog - a breed that's been infamously overbred over the decades.
Someone who runs an SCPA in Virginia (like that'll do a lot of good).
Someone who's stinkin' rich and owns Six Flags - a place that relies on smaller local rescue groups to help them manage their feral cats.
Someone who's already professionally committee-sitting (ie., no dirty work please, it'll fuck up my manicure) on another local animal "advocate" group.
Let's see what goes down at the Animal Shelter Commission meeting this afternoon.
Let's look at the DCAP Facebook page. Instead of announcing any changes to the current m.o. down at Dallas Animal Services, we've been treated to excerpts from Wayne Pacelle's worst-selling book The Bond. From the Dec 29 posting:
From "The Bond": "Right now, slightly less than 25% of all dogs in American households come from shelters or rescue groups. That means that roughly three out of every four dogs come from other sources - from pet stores, puppy mills, small-scale breeders, or friends adopting out litters. There's still a stigma associated with shelters, the vague, sometimes snobbish, and always uninformed view that something is wrong with shelter animals." Here is what each of us can do: tell our friends to adopt from shelters or rescue groups! The dogs in shelters are just as wonderful as those in pet stores!
That's right, DCAP! Just tell her our friends to adopt from shelters and everything will be hunky-dory.
Over at thte DCAP Web site, the Advisory Board just gets weirder and weirder. New members include:
An architect, whose usefulness totally evades me. He is also often photographed with his purebred bulldog - a breed that's been infamously overbred over the decades.
Someone who runs an SCPA in Virginia (like that'll do a lot of good).
Someone who's stinkin' rich and owns Six Flags - a place that relies on smaller local rescue groups to help them manage their feral cats.
Someone who's already professionally committee-sitting (ie., no dirty work please, it'll fuck up my manicure) on another local animal "advocate" group.
Let's see what goes down at the Animal Shelter Commission meeting this afternoon.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
An apology to my readers
Readers of this blog have noticed that I don't publish a lot of updates any more. This is because things at Dallas City Hall took a nasty turn a few months ago with the formation of the Dallas Companion Animal Project, an exercise in Let's Preserve Our Positions By Promising No Kill, But Never Delivering.
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?
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?
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Why re-invent the no-kill wheel?
In addition to a ridiculous advisory board - two photogenic women with NO experience with no-kill - DCAP continues to make nice with the ignorant Dallas public via their Web site.
We are invited to make suggestions about how Dallas to become no-kill through an online suggestion box at the DCAP Web site. However, we are not allowed to discuss examples of shelters, groups and cities who have already become no-kill. Seems the DCAP task force thinks that Dallas is so fucked up that we can't learn from other cities. Why not? What's the difference?
This is from the DCAP Facebook page (not verbatim, I fixed their typos - repairs are in red font. No words were deleted where I inserted "are not welcome" but that's the jist):
This is from the DCAP Facebook page (not verbatim, I fixed their typos - repairs are in red font. No words were deleted where I inserted "are not welcome" but that's the jist):
Also, please note - months of research have been conducted up to this point, so while we appreciate the sentiment, general comments like "look at what Richmond did" are not welcome, Keep in mind that we've already researched Austin, Richmond, San Antonio, San Francisco, and many, many more.
Here's more DCAP Let's Re-Invent The Wheel While We Kill Hundreds More Animals humor:
The idea to move forward with a cooperative, “new breed” of no kill task force was conceived by Rebecca Poling and Mary Spencer back in May, and presented to the Animal Shelter Commission in June.
Clever way to buy some time, Rebecca and Mary!
And if you're wondering who Mary Spencer is, here's what the DCAP site says:
Mary Spencer is the former founder, co-owner and President of The Spencer Company, the seventh largest furniture dealership and the seventeenth largest woman-owned business in North Texas.
Maybe Mary's going to buy DAS staff Barcaloungers so they can be comfy when administering the phenobarbitol.
If DCAP had really researched other groups, they wouldn't need to ask the public what to do. These and other groups - like Seagoville - can tell DCAP all they need to know in half an hour. Network with other groups, work hard, publicize your adoption events, ask your community to help, be nice to your volunteers, and don't be snobs.
Some places have published comprehensive guides with details of how they achieved no-kill, too. Washoe County has published a PDF guide for how they went no-kill during a time when Nevada's economy was tanking. Here's a link their Web site. The link to the How We Did It PDF is small - look in the left-hand margin for it. I recommend it.
Some places have published comprehensive guides with details of how they achieved no-kill, too. Washoe County has published a PDF guide for how they went no-kill during a time when Nevada's economy was tanking. Here's a link their Web site. The link to the How We Did It PDF is small - look in the left-hand margin for it. I recommend it.
So why is DCAP taking this time-wasting, unnecessary approach, reinventing the wheel when we have plenty of wheels ready to help? Here are my guesses - readers are invited to add their own in Comments:
- Poling and Co. want to take credit for suggestions.
- If anyone posts an unworkable suggestion, the DCAP folks can feel superior.
- Poling and Co. are doing exactly what Nathan Winograd described: pretend to want to go no-kill when all they're doing is pacifying the public for as long as they can. In the meantime, they can carry on with their committee-sitting, keeping their hands clean while they pass the blame to the public and the killing continues. (Task force chairperson has already told us she doesn't do "hands-on" stuff any more.)
I considered posting a polite, sensible suggestion at the DCAP site. However, I will never know what happened to it. Neither will anyone else.
This is because it's swallowed up by a survey-taking app called Survey Monkey. You enter your suggestion, hit the Submit button and it's gone - so DCAP can take the credit or, more probably, trash it.
This is because it's swallowed up by a survey-taking app called Survey Monkey. You enter your suggestion, hit the Submit button and it's gone - so DCAP can take the credit or, more probably, trash it.
Whatever happened to good old-fashioned forums?
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
DCAP's Advisory Board: Is this a joke?
I decided to check out the Dallas Companion Animal Project's Web site today.
Can anyone tell me what either of these women have ever done to implement no-kill anywhere? The DCAP Web site doesn't. When you click on their photos, all you get is a larger version. So you can admire their dental work.
As expected, it's published absolutely nothing about successful no-kill shelters. Instead, they're collecting friends with the same juvenile enthusiasm as an SMU freshman pledging a sorority.
Take a look at their Advisory Board. I'm still scratching my head about this, trying to figure it out:
Can anyone tell me what either of these women have ever done to implement no-kill anywhere? The DCAP Web site doesn't. When you click on their photos, all you get is a larger version. So you can admire their dental work.
So far, all I can remember is that Elba Garcia supported the 2008 animal legislation. You know, the one with unenforceable pet limit laws and big fat registration fees for unaltered animals. The legislation that made Mark and Lynn Gideon spend thousands on attorney fees as they were over the six pet limit. You know - the stupid laws.
But Dr. Garcia did get a big fat lick on the butt from the Texas Animal Control Association. TACA gave Dr. Garcia a Presidential Citation in 2008. Who cares of TACA opposed the Companion Animal Protection Act? Who cares if TACA supports kill shelters?
Jocelyn White is equally mystifying. She's on the SPCA board but seems to concentrate on fundraising. But again, absolutely no experience with no-kill, although she can help you shop yourself into insurmountable credit card debt.
And Jocelyn has three pugs. She describes one as "rescued" at one site, but at another Web site she says all three are rescues. Why not shelter mutts, Jocelyn? Couldn't find any that matched your interior decor?
Thursday, November 10, 2011
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