If someone were to ask you what it would take to stop euthanizing animals and find homes for every one of them, you would probably respond with more questions: “Which animals are we talking about? All animals? Healthy animals? Behaviorally sound animals?” Your inquiries wouldn’t stop there. “In which communities? What’s the timeframe? What’s the starting point? How many are being euthanized now? What are we doing to ensure the end of suffering as well?”

In 2002, Animal Sheltering will explore the issues behind these questions and bring you a diversity of voices from the field. And whether it is the voices of people who believe in the power of the term “no kill” or the voices of those who find it divisive, the chorus is one of animal care professionals who are trying to find the answers to pet homelessness in their communities.

The searches have led many to focus more public attention on the true cause of the crisis—not animal control agencies and shelters, which have long stood on the front lines to battle the problem, but on communities themselves, which continue to generate more animals than responsible homes. As one shelter director has so succinctly put it, no one would ever think to blame the American Cancer Society for cancer, yet some members of the public and the media continue to blame animal homelessness and euthanasia on animal shelters.

The assumption is damaging to everybody working towards the day there is a home for every cat and dog: Just as inhumane euthanasia methods and high euthanasia rates at one shelter can be twisted to cast a negative pall on all shelters, poor animal care standards, deceptive fundraising and PR practices, and hoarders masquerading as “no kills” have cast a poor light on compassionate and responsible “no kill” organizations.

Because of our ongoing and highly visible debates about the words we use to define ourselves, the relationships among many organizations have been in danger of coming to a standstill. It’s as though we all set out together towards the utopia we wanted to reach, only to stop halfway to argue about which route provided a faster way of getting there.

We’re getting no closer to our destination by arguing. While many continue to believe that the term “no kill” can be misleading to the public, most also believe that, at its heart, it reflects a goal of everyone in the sheltering field: to end the need for the euthanasia of healthy, behaviorally sound animals.

If we can reach a point where all organizations, regardless of their labels, are on the same page when it comes to professional standards of animal care, responsible adoption processes, financial and moral support from their communities and local governments, and proactive prevention programs that seek to keep pets in homes, we will not have to argue anymore about how to reach our utopia. We will have arrived.

Part 1: We're All in This Together

When Tammy Kirkpatrick stood before a packed room at the 2000 No Kill Conference in Tucson, she wasn’t prepared for the reaction her words were about to elicit. Thinking hers would be just another presentation among many, she proceeded to explain the name of her workshop, “No Kill Doesn’t Mean No Euthanasia.”

The talk proved to be even more provocative than the title, as Kirkpatrick went on to address those situations she considers to be abominable and contrary to everything she believes the “no kill” philosophy should represent. Attendees couldn’t wait to return home and relay the details to their coworkers. Two years later, people are still talking about it.

“A lot of people thought [it] was pretty controversial,” says Kirkpatrick. “And I’m like, ‘Hello?? Wake up!’ ... I had a lot of big hitters in this business sitting in my audience, and I’m sweating bullets going, ‘Oh my god, oh my god. I didn’t think this was going to be that big of a deal.’ But it turned out that it opened a lot of people’s eyes—both ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional.’ ”

As the new producer of the conference, renamed last year to CHAMP (short for Conference on Homeless Animal Management and Policy), Kirkpatrick is still challenging “no kill” organizations and others to examine their policies and missions, placing particular emphasis on the fact that, regardless of what a group calls itself, the animals are the number-one priority. Through her articles in No Kill News, she has continued to address the same problems she discussed in her workshop.

In one edition, she described an organization that had held two dangerous dogs for seven years, usurping resources and space that could have been devoted to “adoptable” dogs. In another edition, she told the story of another professed “no kill” group that had left its animals in the hands of caretakers who proceeded to destroy the animals’ living quarters, take their food, and run off without telling anyone. Until animal control alerted the group members, they were not even aware that the animals had been abandoned.

“Thank God for animal control!” says Kirkpatrick, who is also the associate director of the Pet Savers Foundation. “Somebody was doing their job. It certainly wasn’t this organization. You have to understand, they are not a true ‘no kill.’ ... I would consider them collectors or hoarders. ...

“Bottom line is that a true ‘no kill’ organization will euthanize an animal that has a disease which cannot be treated or [that] has lost the quality of life. ‘No kill’ organizations will euthanize a dangerous dog that presents major potential for injury to the public or to another animal. A true ‘no kill’ would do that.”

“And that’s what’s the driving force behind my particular articles,” says Kirkpatrick, “ ... is that there are ‘no kill’ organizations or supposed ‘no kill’ organizations that ... are not following the real meaning behind what they are doing.”

Spinning Our Wheels

© Cris M. Kelly

To Kirkpatrick, the assertions are nothing more than common sense. To some in the field, however, they represent a sea change, a re-opening of a dialogue that had been slammed shut for years by anger, insensitivity, resentment, and fear.

It was about a decade ago that Richard Avanzino, whose name has become synonymous with the “no kill” movement, stood before a workshop audience at The HSUS’s Animal Care Expo to explain his interpretation of the phrase “no kill”: that it was a concept, a description of the mission he believed every humane organization should have. It was just one piece of the larger puzzle, however, and it was not meant to condone “warehousing” of animals or advocate an exclusive focus on “the cutes and cuddlies.”

Nor should the term be used to cast aspersions on other agencies, Avanzino advised. “When I first came into the cause, there was a round condemnation by a lot of humane organizations about animal control programs,” he told attendees. “And now I think everybody realizes that we’re all part of the same family, all trying to do the best thing as professionally as we can. And I don’t think that we should be making good guys and bad guys out of the entire movement. I think we should all be working together, trying to learn from each other, taking efforts and trying to see what we can do to make the best good.”

If those words had been taken to heart movement-wide, the concept would have been easier for many to embrace; “no kill” could have become a barometer for measuring change, not an epithet. But instead, the dialogue often regressed from its original incarnations, manifesting itself in public spats over the definitions of “euthanasia,” “kill,” “no kill,” and “adoptable.” As the debate turned almost exclusively toward euthanasia, the battle lines were drawn. Many shelters have endured so many slings and arrows over their operational policies that developing relationships with external groups can seem like not just a difficult proposition but a burden—and one that takes precious time away from pursuing the mission itself.

But since Avanzino’s speech during the “Kill/No Kill Controversy” workshop in Las Vegas in 1992, the world has continued to change. The public is, in many cases, more aware. “Twenty-five years of intensive spay/neuter campaigns and educational efforts have finally paid off—the numbers of puppies and kittens ending up at animal shelters has dropped dramatically in many communities,” says HSUS Senior Vice President Martha Armstrong, who started at the Memphis Humane Society in 1977. “For many organizations, the focus has changed: Behavior-related relinquishments have taken the place of the endless litters of baby animals, and shelters are responding accordingly—with proactive programs designed to keep animals from ever coming into their facilities in the first place.”

The animal protection field has arrived at an exciting crossroads, yet the field continues to spin its wheels on a semantics debate that, at this point, is only wasting fuel. There is validity to both sides of the argument: many who have adopted the “no kill” language echo Avanzino’s words in that long-ago workshop, saying they are just trying to define a goal that all shelters should be headed towards. And many veterans of the field still counter that ending the need for euthanasia has always been a goal, but that that fact is often lost on a public that doesn’t see past the false dichotomy the words “no kill” create.

But there are flashes of light at the end of the tunnel. In compiling a series on what it would really take to stop euthanizing healthy, adoptable animals, the editors of Animal Sheltering discovered something unexpected: people on the “no kill” side saying they have begun to curb their use of the term, and, on the other hand, people in open-admission shelters saying they have started communicating with “no kill” groups—even if it sometimes means enduring language they perceive to be hurtful or misleading.

Almost universally, shelter directors who bristle at the words “no kill” also credit its proponents with igniting more discussion and creativity. Perhaps for the first time, many leaders of the animal care and control field are according legitimacy to some “no kill” groups, giving a seat at the table to those organizations that have listened to shelters’ concerns and have started emphasizing more training, more cooperation, and greater understanding of the real issues of pet homelessness. And from the other side, acknowledgement of the essential role of animal care and control agencies has evolved in some communities from a mere nod in those agencies’ direction to a public embrace. Both sides have grown tired of the bickering, and the framework of the argument is becoming stale. And no matter who it is and what their background, if someone is truly in this field for the right reasons, his take on the debate will always revert back to the question: “What’s best for the animals?”

Swinging on a Verbal Trapeze

© Meri Boyles

Unfortunately, the question that’s most important to so many in the field is also the one that has caused the most rifts among them, says Jim Bonner, executive director of the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society. “Our approach, as it has been for many humane societies, is how can we do [things for] the greater good?” says Bonner, whose background in math, computer science, and avian care has helped shape his perspective on the argument since he first joined the field last August. “And then you have another core or camp that say, ‘Well, we’re going to do the best we can for each individual. We’re going to limit the number of individuals, but we are going to do the best we can for them.’ For some reason, those two sides don’t seem to be able to communicate very well with each other.

“And that’s a shame. There is certainly enough work to do. Both sides can be quite valid. They are both doing good. They should not be combating with each other because they have a different principle.”

The arguments have dragged on ad nauseam, sometimes behind closed doors, sometimes in the public eye, often bitterly, and almost always to the detriment of the animals. And in the past the debate has been riddled with redundancy: a rehashing of the same old questions leading to the same old impasses. Ask a hundred people for their definitions of “no kill,” and you’ll get a hundred answers—and even more questions: What’s the definition of “no”? What’s the definition of “kill”? How do you define “euthanasia,” and what makes one animal more “adoptable” than another?

Further muddying the waters is the fact that the quest to define who is “adoptable” and who is “unadoptable” is often as much of a struggle internally as it is in the community at large, says Kate Pullen, director of Animal Sheltering Issues at The HSUS. “If the animals are constantly flipping back and forth between categories,” says Pullen, “and if you don’t have all your staff and volunteers on board so that you’ve diminished all those behind-the-scenes arguments, then you really confuse the public and confuse the other animal organizations.”

In some communities, the words require verbal contortions to justify their existence—one of the reasons Bonner’s on the hunt for a new way to describe his shelter’s role in Pittsburgh’s “No Kill by 2005” campaign. “The phrase is bad because it’s a misnomer,” he says. “We have to qualify, I think, the word ‘killing.’ So we say, ‘We’ll be no-kill for all really adoptable animals,’ or ‘We’re no-kill for this,’ or ‘We’re no-kill for that.’ So instead of rallying around a term that you have to then defend, why do that? This just positions you poorly in the future in the eyes of your constituents.”

The Western Pennsylvania Humane Society adopted the language the year before Bonner took over—with only a vague outline as to how it was going to achieve the goal within five years. “It was something that San Francisco took the lead on, and we had to do it in self-defense,” says Charlotte Grimme, the organization’s development director. “To build this new shelter, it was just so easy to use those words ‘no kill,’ especially since the other two shelters were using them. It’s almost like, ‘How can I raise this money—we need $3.2 million—without using those words when San Francisco, which has such a high national profile, and the other two shelters in Pittsburgh are using the words just constantly?’ ”

The fact that organizations feeling backed into a corner can simply relabel themselves as a reactive measure renders the labels themselves almost meaningless. And as Julie Morris has discovered in her work as an ASPCA vice president, the interpretations, qualifications, and nuances churning around the words “no kill” vary so much from one community to the next that it’s impossible to judge the quality of an organization by its label. In her travels to shelters around the country, her own preconceived notions have been turned upside down, she says.

“I kind of almost assumed that in each community the full-service shelter would be the best ... in terms of people care, animal care, and facility,” says Morris, “and [that] animal control would be less so, and the no kill would be even less so. And that’s totally untrue. It totally depends on the community. I’ve been to communities where the best facility is the ‘no kill’ by far. And I’ve gone to communities where the animal control by far is the best. ... Reading whether they’re ‘municipally run,’ ‘no kill,’ or ‘full service’ tells me nothing about the quality of the facility.”

If seasoned veterans like Morris are confused by the labels, it’s little wonder that the public is, for the most part, utterly baffled. The media has found the term “no kill” hard to resist and even harder to explain; drafting one definition of “no kill” while remaining fair to all involved would result in footnotes and qualifications longer than the definition itself—and too detailed for the brief time or word limits media directors often place on what they consider to be “fluffy” or “feel-good” animal stories. As a result, explanations of the phrase—from both its defenders and detractors—are usually reduced to one or two boilerplate sentences in the newspaper or on the TV screen.

“You Kill Them in Here, Dontcha?”

What the public has picked up from reductive news reports is something far too simplistic, a mental framework that creates a completely inaccurate impression: a good shelter is a “no kill” shelter; a bad one “kills” animals. Because of the human tendency to segregate the world into categories of good versus bad and right versus wrong, movements for change—whether political, cultural, or social—are usually perceived in terms of their extremes. And when splintered factions engage in a struggle to claim the higher ground, they forsake the chance to address common goals and further aggravate the media’s penchant for dividing people up into neatly symbolic—and supposedly opposing—sides.

© Meri Boyles

The dichotomy has become so ingrained in the public mindset that directors of full-service agencies report a kind of inverse effect: callers or visitors who are convinced that any shelter of high quality is inherently “no kill.” At the Potter League for Animals in Newport, Rhode Island, people think the organization is “no kill” simply because it’s “clean” or it’s “not the pound,” says Executive Director Christie Smith. In the suburbs of Philadelphia, the Bucks County SPCA shares a similar “dubious distinction,” says Executive Director Anne Irwin. “Sometimes we have to explain to people who call—because they have heard good things about us—that we are not a ‘no kill’ shelter, but that animals do have a reasonably good chance of finding a home here,” she says.

One shelter director in the western part of the country reports the opposite phenomenon: Visitors to her full-service facility compliment its friendliness and cleanliness while in the same breath criticizing the “no kill” organization in the neighboring town as a “dump” that harbors “mean” and “sick” animals. The compliments are welcome but somewhat backhanded when visitors follow up by asking, usually innocently and with no inkling as to how hurtful their words are, “But you kill them in here, dontcha?”

The public confusion—and the fact that someone in the community must perform the job of euthanasia to minimize suffering—is the reason Matt Wahrhaftig stays away from “no kill” terminology at his organization in Kettering, Ohio. With its extensive foster network and training and placement programs, the Society for the Improvement of Conditions for Stray Animals (SICSA) finds homes for about 1,500 animals a year and rarely euthanizes. But Wahrhaftig, the director of operations, freely admits that in limiting the group’s intake of animals, SICSA has a “luxury” that other facilities do not; many of the animals his group is unequipped to care for—aggressive strays, for instance—end up at the Montgomery County Animal Shelter. “I don’t feel comfortable campaigning above the other two organizations because we are a ‘no-kill’ shelter [and saying], ‘We should get all your money,’ ” says Wahrhaftig. “I think [people] definitely need to view each organization as to what they can contribute to the community ... and more on who they are than on what their name is.”

Nor does Wahrhaftig want to disappoint those who take the term “no kill” at face value, thinking it means no euthanasia whatsoever. “No kill” is so appealing to the public often for the very reason that people take it literally and assume that all animals can and should live regardless of their circumstances—when in truth, as Kirkpatrick points out, responsible “no kill” facilities do euthanize animals who are suffering or aggressive.

“I don’t like the deception,” says Wahrhaftig. “People come to us and they don’t realize that we euthanize, and then we end up with a lot of people getting a lot of heartbreak when they find out that yes, we do have to put animals down. ... So we’ve kind of gone on to tell people, ‘Look, we do everything possible to make sure that the animal is going to get a home and have a good quality of life, but there are times when we have to make a decision when the quality of life of an animal is not what it needs to be. Then we are going to have to put an animal down.’ I think that’s important for people to know up front.”

We All Want to Be "No Kill"

© Cris M. Kelly

Understandably, people tend to believe first what is easiest to digest and absorb; those relinquishers who have any sort of attachments to their animals will of course be comforted by the idea that it’s possible to find every cat and dog a home. Even if the phrase “no kill” had never entered the collective conscience, the fantasy notion that euthanasia can end just because one wills it to would persist.

In Theresa Bruner’s West Virginia community, for example, the all-volunteer Taylor County Humane Society has increased the county facility’s adoption rate from zero to 35 percent in nine months; by helping the part-time dog warden clean, feed, socialize, and place the animals, the group has completely changed the plight of homeless animals in its community. It is not a “no kill” organization, however, and has never promoted the phrase. Yet the perception of the humane society as “the good guys” is often equated with the idea of “no euthanasia” by people in the community. “They call me, they think that by giving up the dog, it’s a sure bet that the dog is going to be saved,” says Bruner. “I’m saying, ‘You know, that’s not right. What you guys need to realize is that we may be at 35 percent, but there’s still 65 percent of the dogs going down.’ ”

It would be tempting for someone in Bruner’s situation to tell people what they want to hear, abdicating responsibility by saying her group has a 100-percent adoption rate; after all, all the animals technically “belong” to the county, and the humane society has no legal accountability for them. But that would give the false perception that animal homelessness has everything to do with the organization in charge and little to do with societal ills, perpetuating the culture of blame that runs counter to the community spirit Bruner’s group has been trying to engender.

Besides, animal advocates in Taylor County have more immediate concerns: Before the new all-volunteer humane society arrived on the scene last year, the county facility didn’t even have running water; the dog warden had to carry buckets into the building from a tank outside. “I think ‘no kill’ is wonderful, and I think everyone would aspire to that. ... But we can’t all be that way,” says Bruner. “Let’s don’t get into little pockets of pointing fingers at this person because they are, or this group because they aren’t—because everyone can’t be.”

Ganay Johnson thought her shelter could be when its board decided to go “no kill” in 1995; after all, the Humane Society of Gallatin Valley in Bozeman, Montana, already had a high adoption rate, she says. As the only shelter in town, the humane society had always been open-admission—and Johnson believed it needed to stay that way in order to protect the animals in her community. But she soon realized she couldn’t have it both ways. Tremendous pressure to meet the goal of “no euthanasia”—combined with the need to provide refuge for all homeless cats and dogs—resulted in suffering: animals who came in “adoptable” quickly became unadoptable in a crowded environment that wore on their temperaments and made them sick.

“We were ‘no kill’ and ‘open-admissions,’ and for a while we were able to keep that up,” says Johnson, now the executive director of the Humane Society of Park County in nearby Livingston. “But, as was bound to happen, the flow of incoming animals started exceeding the flow of outgoing animals. So it became incredibly crowded. And I began to not feel very good about what I was doing. I began to question how humane it was to keep marginally adoptable animals in a not-so-great kennel situation for a long period of time. ... And the animals were getting sick because they were crowded, spreading disease like crazy.”

When Johnson took over her new position two years ago, she had a difficult time adjusting to euthanasia again. “But I feel that we are doing realistic, positive work here,” she says. “I don’t have any moral quandaries or ethical quandaries about what I’m doing here. I couldn’t say that before.”

Perhaps ironically, the evolution of the “no kill” movement as a whole mimics, on a grander scale, the very personal revelations every person experiences when she enters the field—often privately, often devastatingly. Mary Metzner, shelter supervisor at the St. Louis County Animal Control Services south shelter in Ladue, Missouri, says what she felt after witnessing euthanasia during her first days in the field has never left her. “I didn’t get sick. I didn’t get sad. Just kind of an empty feeling, and I still have that feeling,” says Metzner, who also serves as the current president of the National Animal Control Association. “It has never changed. It has never gotten easy. I tell people—staff and even the public—if it doesn’t bother you, get out of the business.”

In confronting the euthanasia issue for the first time, the first question people ask themselves and their colleagues is usually, “How can this be happening?” And then: “What can I do to change this?” And later: “What can I do to change this while also making all these animals as comfortable and happy as I can in the meantime?”

After spending years, sometimes decades, trying to dissuade people from old notions about “pounds” and cajoling them to even care about homeless animals in the first place, some longtime shelter professionals are understandably offended by the implication that the goal to stop euthanizing physically and mentally healthy animals is somehow “new.”

“I would love to have been ‘no kill’ the first day I got in the business,” says Jim Tedford, executive director of the Humane Society at Lollypop Farm in Rochester, New York. “I remember walking into my first shelter and saying, ‘Well, you guys just don’t get used to all this killing stuff because we’re going to stop this.’ ... I was going to fix it all overnight. I realized quickly that you couldn’t.”

But that doesn’t mean that Tedford hasn’t devoted his career to trying to figure out how. Nearly 20 years after he started that first job at the Humane Society of the Tennessee Valley (formerly the Knox County Humane Society), he is heading up an ambitious initiative he inherited when he moved to Rochester in 1998. Called “Shelter of Hope,” the plan is to reach a 100-percent adoption rate for all “adoptable” animals. “Will we then be ‘no kill’?” Tedford asked rhetorically in a recent newsletter to supporters. “Not really—not if we continue sheltering any animal brought through our doors. Some will still be incurably ill, horribly injured, vicious, or too old to re-home, and we will be forced to give them the final gift of euthanasia. But, it is our sincere hope that we will one day be able to find good, loving, responsible, permanent homes for all adoptable animals.”

Of the “no kill” initiatives, Tedford says, “My real gut belief is that it’s not a separate movement. ... The bottom line here is that [everyone] wants the same thing. The fundamental difference is that we are not willing to declare victory until we’ve actually won.”

Increasingly, neither are many of those who have aligned themselves with traditionally “no kill” organizations. To many, “no kill” describes not the means to an end but rather the end itself. As Debra Griggs, the introductory speaker at the No More Homeless Pets conference in Norfolk last May, puts it: “ ‘No kill’ is not who you are; ‘no kill’ is what you become.”

As the president and founder of Animal Rescue of Tidewater in Virginia, Griggs is responsible for organizing a coalition of 50 people representing animal care and control agencies, private shelters, rescue groups, and the veterinary community. While she herself doesn’t have a problem with the phrase “no kill,” she believes it’s not worth it to upset or offend anyone. “We are trying really hard not to use those words because it can stop conversation,” she says. “And ... if we believe those words stop the conversation, then for heaven’s sake, let’s just find some new words. The words are not that important.”

In Search of a New Lexicon

© Laura Kipp

As each side gives a little ground and the lines continue to blur, the terminology will lose its significance. Recognition of successful partnerships among groups with varying philosophies has led No More Homeless Pets in Utah to deliberately downplay its use of “no kill,” words that “don’t necessarily help,” says President Greg Castle. As a program of Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, a leader in the “no kill” movement, No More Homeless Pets (NMHP) travels around the country to encourage in other communities the same kind of coalition it has nutured among private shelters, animal care and control agencies, and adoption groups in its home state. While its ultimate goal is the elimination of euthanasia of “healthy, adoptable dogs and cats,” the expression of that goal in the promotional materials of NMHP’s Utah efforts steers clear of words like “kill” and “no kill.”

“It’s just, from many points of view, kind of an inflammatory term. That’s the sort of thing that you have to be aware of,” Castle says. “I think that what has characterized some—maybe many—elements of the ‘no kill’ movement ... are some pretty strong feelings which aren’t really—on their side—very well-informed or really sympathetic to what euthanizing shelters are trying to do. And [which] just don’t cut them any slack, if you follow me. And that is just a recipe for an entrenched argument.”

Castle cautions that his organization isn’t necessarily advocating widespread abandonment of the phrase; he believes it may still serve a purpose in places where groups with varying viewpoints are not working together yet. But keeping it out of the dialogue in Utah is a kind of recognition of the “high level of cooperation” that’s already been obtained from both sides of the fence in that state, says Castle: “Our acknowledgement of that cooperation ... speaking from the ‘no kill’ side, is embodied, in one way, in not using that term.”

Many have noticed the diminished importance the San Francisco SPCA has placed on the term—a move that is in part intended to illuminate the importance of the role of animal control. When Ed Sayres arrived at the SPCA as its new president about three years ago, it didn’t take him long to discover that San Francisco Department of Animal Care and Control Director Carl Friedman was uncomfortable with the notion that most people thought San Francisco as a whole no longer euthanized animals—when, in fact, a quarter of the cats and dogs entering the shelter system never left. As a result, Sayres and Friedman collaborated on a statistical report called “Partnerships for Life,” which explained to the public exactly how the animals were being categorized and what their ultimate dispositions were. The directors have also adopted the terms “save rate” and “live release rate” in reference to their overall statistics on how many animals have been reunited with their owners or placed in new homes.

One of the ideas behind the report, says Sayres, was to “recognize that we couldn’t really achieve what we are achieving without someone taking care of the 24/7 open-door status of Animal Care and Control, and ... that there are issues in the community that need to be regulated.” Even if there were no other common interests among “no-kill” and “open-admission” organizations, the two sides share a collective purpose in doing what they believe to be in the best interest of the animals. A community would not be able to fulfill that mission if it weren’t for animal control; as Sayres explains, there will always be people who are cruel to animals, and there will always be neglect. “And someone has to respond to that,” he says. “So it is truly a partnership.”

For his part, Friedman says the partnership has grown over many years of slow give-and-take, and eventually the initial guarded approaches from both sides have dissolved and been replaced by a growing trust. “Certainly I have differences with my local nonprofit SPCA,” he says. “So I can go two ways: We can either go to war and we can just elaborate on our differences and do nothing and badmouth each other, which unfortunately you see in a lot of jurisdictions. Or we can say, ‘Hey, let’s agree to disagree on a lot of issues. Let’s find out where we need to work together and do it.’ The key is to stop making your place look good at the expense of mine, and vice versa.”

The growing focus on cooperation and partnerships should come as somewhat of a relief to those working in shelters that take in all animals—from the dangerous pit bulls to the wired adolescent Labrador to the old-lady poodle to the scaredycat sprayer. From their perspective, a “no kill” organization that touts its “no kill” status appears as an island paradise in a sea of inequity for animals, placing itself on a pedestal above other organizations. And that’s not helping the animals who are rejected at the door because there is no space left for them—or worse, those who never make it to a shelter in the first place but instead spend their miserable lives with chains around their necks, unprotected and unloved in somebody’s backyard. No organization or shelter is an island, and to pretend that it is by slapping an appealing label onto it and operating in isolation is simply setting the bar too low, ignoring the suffering and neediness that hide in the corners of nearly every community.

An organization that uses the phrase as a “smoke and mirrors” term is not contributing to the overall solution, says Ed Boks, director of Maricopa County Animal Care and Control Services in Arizona. “That’s fundamentally where the issue is: are we looking at ‘no kill’ shelters, or are we looking at ‘no kill’ communities?” he asks. “ ... There are organizations that do all kinds of fundraising and all kinds of wonderful things, I guess, based on the fact that they can declare themselves ‘no kill.’ My question is, ‘Well, what have you done for me as animal control—to make us ‘no kill’? Because as you are out there, not working with us, not working with the organization where the killing is occurring, I’m sorry, I just don’t see the value of your organization.”

“I think that where I differ from a lot of the [other] ‘no kill’ folks is that they are satisfied with creating a ‘no-kill’ shelter, and they create a 10,000-foot or 5,000-square-foot no-kill oasis,” says Boks, who has been a speaker at No More Homeless Pets gatherings. “ ... If all of the ‘no kill’ organizations in any community would focus on helping their animal control organization, I think ‘no kill’ would become very, very, very achievable in any community.”

Let the Healing Begin

© Mark Shostrom

Where the phrase “no kill” has already been embraced by the public, it may not be worth fighting, says Morris. “I think it doesn’t behoove full-service places to keep fighting the name,” she says, “but to make sure that it’s not used against them—and that the ‘no kills’ in their community work cooperatively with them and understand that they have the luxury of being a ‘no kill’ because there is a full-service or animal control agency in their community.”

For the most part, the public grasps the realities of euthanasia and the dynamics behind the “no kill” philosophy when shelters take the time to present the issues in an honest, straightforward manner, says Pullen. “It really is more than words,” she says. “It’s how you run the operations, it’s how you communicate your programs and services to the community, and how trustworthy you are in that presentation. ... I think it becomes a problem in the communities where the open-admission shelters have been afraid to talk about it, they’ve been afraid to address the issue, they’ve skirted around the issue, or they’ve manipulated the numbers. And in those situations where the public is so confused and hasn’t gotten a straight answer, they are more swayed when someone comes in on a big white horse and asks, ‘Why can’t we be doing more?’ ”

Some believe “no kill” terminology has been a necessary, if unwelcome, part of the public discourse, engaging those who wouldn’t otherwise pay attention to the animal homelessness problem. Though Sayres and Friedman have gradually infused new, more inclusive language into the San Francisco dialogue, Sayres believes the phrase “no kill” did have its place in that city; he says San Francisco may not have achieved as much without it. “I think a paradigm shift has to have a label,” Sayres says. “Our new label, Partnerships for Life, is more polite and more true and more a bunch of things, but it doesn’t stick.”

Each community is different, however, and a few have been able to achieve numbers comparable to those of San Francisco without using the “no kill” label. In those places where the verbal battles have not yet begun, it makes more sense to adopt more inclusive, less divisive language as Sayres and Friedman have—for the sake of both private inter-agency relationships and public understanding. Lots of organizations are doing it, and there’s no better illustration of the new peace offerings than the move to change the name of the “No Kill Conference” to “Conference on Homeless Animal Management & Policy”; the new title is intended “to capture the common goal of every person dealing with dog and cat overpopulation—placing the adoptables in quality homes and limiting the numbers of unwanted births,” wrote Lynda Foro in last fall’s edition of No Kill News.

“I think everything has a lifespan, and it was important to get ‘no kill’ to be a comfortable word known to the public,” says Foro, who started the No Kill Conference in 1995 as the director and founder of Doing Things for Animals and who is now also the director of the Pet Savers Foundation. “ ... I think now we’re into talking about ‘no kill,’ and most people are comfortable with it. So we served our purpose in bringing that word and terminology forward, but ... we failed to reach a few people who never got the message that everybody was invited. And so I wanted to come up with an acronym that was positive and easy to remember, but also to have words that meant something that actually everyone could relate to.”

In addition to the name change, the composition of presenters at the event continues to diversify. Of the 50-plus seminars on the roster for this summer’s conference, a large portion are being led by people from animal care and control agencies and other shelters that take in all animals but have not signed on to the “no kill” lingo.

“They have pieces that we can all learn from,” says Foro. “But we continue to have the red carpet out for anybody that’s doing a good job at something, and it doesn’t have to have ‘no kill’ in the title or even be representative of the ‘no kill’ movement. [If] it’s something that saves lives—and we’re finding that there’s more progress being made across the board—we want to include that.”

On the local level, the centrist shift has manifested itself in tentative baby steps toward a middle ground. At the Bucks County SPCA, for example, Irwin has shared resources with a “no kill” fostering organization, offering to house some of its cats in the cages that go empty in the winter. After 30 years in the field, Irwin knows that in the end, her organization and its animals will be helped more than hurt by these arrangements. “I think if we hadn’t been willing to work with some of these groups,” she says, “it would be too easy for us to be just this nameless, scary organization that people don’t even want to call.

“The ‘no kill’ organizations and the other organizations have got to learn to work side by side,” says Irwin. “It kind of means you have to be thick-skinned. I know that the members of the ‘no kill’ group that works with us and has placed some animals with our help still refer to us as a ‘kill’ shelter. But I’ve just got to let that roll past me and figure that if we can work together on something, then we will make more progress than fighting it out—because I don’t think the general public understands animal welfare groups fighting.”

Let’s stop focusing so much on labels, says Kirkpatrick, and capitalize on all the good that’s been achieved and is yet to come. The bond that ties most people together in this field—a mutual desire to do what is right for all creatures—is much stronger than the rifts that divide. Kirkpatrick is practicing what she preaches, too; when she receives calls from people wanting to start “no kill” groups, she encourages them to find out how they can help their local shelters instead.

“Other humane organizations are not our competition. They are our allies,” she says. “The puppy mills, the backyard breeders, and the pet stores—there’s my competition. That’s the people I want shut down. The only way to do that is to make sure animals shelters all over the country are the number-one resources for communities to get their next beloved pet.”

Her words are reminiscent of those of Martha Armstrong, a strong advocate of open-admission shelters for her entire career. Not long before Kirkpatrick presented that groundbreaking workshop, “No Kill Doesn’t Mean No Euthanasia,” Armstrong used her column in this magazine to call a truce: “We all know that no one in his or her right mind enjoys taking the life of a healthy animal,” she wrote to readers. “And every one of us wants to see the day that every companion animal lives a long, healthy, and happy life. ... Only by sharing our insights and acknowledging other’s contributions can we shift our focus away from making sure other organizations lose and toward working together to help animals win.”

From the volunteers who have just helped implement humane euthanasia methods in their town to the urban coalitions forming in response to the establishment of the $200 million Maddie’s Fund, sheltering professionals and other animal advocates across the country are searching every day for answers to the question, “What Would It Take?” In Part 2 of our six-part series, we’ll talk to some of these folks about the importance of examining animal and human demographics, assessing available resources, and developing a plan and mission that caters to the needs of the individual community.