There are some things in this world you can take to the bank, and one of them is that I am reading a book about World War II. My father, to the day he died at the ripe old age of 104, read World War II books, and I am my father’s son. So it should surprise no one that the one place I have always wanted to visit was Hiroshima.

I came within 150 miles of doing so.

Last month, my wife, daughter, and I were on a highly-anticipated and long-desired trip to Japan. We were about halfway through the visit, in Kyoto, when disaster struck.

The phone rang at 4:30 a.m., the morning we were scheduled to take a bullet train to Hiroshima to visit ground zero, now known as the Peace Memorial. It was the pet sitter: Roki, my daughter’s semi-feral cat, had escaped.

Roki was rescued from the streets living alone in a car’s engine block, and now he was back outside. Because of his early feral start in life, he will not go near anyone except my daughter — but we were 5,350 miles away.

Making matters worse, the first 24 or so hours are crucial, as cats — especially timid or fearful cats — hide near the place they escaped before eventually wandering off. Rather than take the train to Hiroshima, we took it back to Tokyo, where we caught the next plane back to San Francisco.

We learned that on the night Roki got out, he tried to get back in but went to the wrong apartment. Neighbors heard scratching at their door at 3 a.m. and opened it to see him, but when he saw they were not my daughter, he bolted. By the time we got home — stressed, exhausted, jetlagged, and fearful — Roki was nowhere to be found.

The next few days were a flurry of activity: setting a trap for Roki, putting out food, hanging flyers throughout the neighborhood, registering his microchip as lost, filing a report with the local shelter, contacting rescue and community cat groups, posting on Nextdoor, hitting the pavement day and night, going door to door, even using a thermal drone and infrared night scope to try and find him. We followed every single lead, every sighting, and every Ring camera video — and there were a lot of them.

There were a lot of them because we weren’t searching alone; the community had rallied once again. I say “once again” because they were the key to rescuing Roki a year ago. Back in June of 2025, over a period of two days, 14 Good Samaritans responded to a clarion call on Nextdoor when Animal Services and other public agencies refused to help.

You can read about his rescue here.

And now they were helping again.

The one thing we heard over and over in response to our flyers, posts, and pleas was well wishes from people who had sighted a black cat. One family was on a cruise aboard the Queen Mary II in the Atlantic and sent me Ring Camera updates. Even my fellow softball players stopped a game in the middle of an at-bat during the 7th inning, in response to a sighting so I could take off in pursuit of the elusive Roki. Almost no one was dismissive; all of them were hoping for the best. “Pets are everything,” I heard over and over. People I had never met who spotted him once kept checking in: “Is Roki home yet?” People who had no connection to him would periodically call for updates, because they saw a flyer.

Text after text, call after call, Ring camera video after Ring camera video, we trailed Roki, always one step behind him, from block to block and backyard to backyard, until we tracked him to a cul-de-sac a few blocks from my daughter’s apartment building.

Most of the households on the cul-de-sac joined the Roki watch, checking the trap frequently, leaving food for him, and sending updates. By this time, however, over a month had passed, and my daughter could not get close enough to him before he ran off scared.

But at least he was staying put.

Unfortunately, trapping him failed. He refused to go in no matter what food was used, though other neighborhood critters did — including an opossum who played dead until we opened the trap door. So we ended up purchasing a drop trap.

And so along with my wife, I sat in a car on a stakeout, holding the string attached to a trap, reading a book about World War II, and waiting for Roki to take the bait.

And then he did!

Roki is now safe at home. After a very trying month, we are relieved and elated. As are all of the neighbors.

Thank heavens for kindhearted people.

In other news: A moral panic over cats. Severe pet discrimination in rental housing. Once again, a somber and tragic anniversary quietly came and went. Another somber and tragic anniversary also came and went without a word, and animals will continue to die. Voters reject a constitutional “right” to kill animals. Why did the alligator cross the road?

These are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:

A moral panic over cats

New and recent studies across the world, including in the U.S., demonstrate that human activities, not cats, are responsible for wildlife declines. They also demonstrate that while public debate has disproportionately emphasized cats as a “conservation threat,” that debate is misinformed. In addition to falsely blaming cats, it overlooks more common and preventable human causes of wildlife injury, including hazardous infrastructure, roads, entangling materials, and habitat fragmentation.

Thankfully, there is a growing scientific consensus across the globe that cats are not to blame for species decline and that the call to eliminate them is “wrong and fuels an unwarranted moral panic over cats.” In fact, that consensus is increasingly rejecting the claim that we should “judge species on their origins,” calling “the practical value of the native-versus-alien species dichotomy” unworkable and counterproductive.

The No Kill Advocacy Center is asking people to help educate policymakers and urge them to adopt win-win solutions like community cat sterilization.

Severe pet discrimination in rental housing

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In other news: Police Department does not prioritize preventing animal cruelty. Beagle bill signed into law. Raw pet food poisoning pets…. again. Another week, another pet product recall. A “humane” breeder? Do we have to feed animals to our companion animals?

These are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:

Police Department does not prioritize preventing animal cruelty

The former Suffolk County, NY, legislator who helped establish one of the first animal abuser registries in the nation is criticizing county officials for failing to keep the registry up to date. The registry requires offenders to provide their names, aliases, current addresses, and photographs so animal shelters, rescue organizations, and breeders can identify people with animal abuse convictions before placing animals in their care. However, a local news investigation found that the database had not been updated in over a year and those with recent convictions were not on the list.

According to the legislator, “Suffolk County Police Department needs to immediately review the registry, bring it fully up to date and most importantly put procedures in place to ensure that the registry is updated on a consistent and timely basis in the future.” Officials with the Suffolk County Police Department refused to comment, but updated the registry in response to the criticism.

The registry’s shortcomings raise concerns about its ability to protect animals and prevent convicted abusers from obtaining additional pets. Because shelters, breeders, and rescue organizations rely on accurate information when deciding where to place animals, missing records undermine the system’s intended purpose — to protect animals from abuse.

Beagle bill signed into law

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In other news: A somber anniversary. For dogs who have done nothing wrong, things have gone from bad to worse. New York City bans carriage horse rides. Do you have what it takes to save lives? First city outside of California bans glue traps. Legislation to ban public display of large marine mammals. Cruel bear baiting is set to become legal again. The federal government says it doesn’t have to protect dogs. Social service agencies are doing more for pets, but there is still a long way to go.

These are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:

Those who are supposed to protect animals from abuse continue it

Earlier this week, I wrote a follow-up article about California’s new law allowing defendants to lose custody of animals seized in cruelty and neglect cases prior to conviction. Such a law is important:

Historically, these animals were held until the case was resolved, which often took months and in some cases years. Regressive pounds in California, and other states, refused to socialize or exercise the animals, leading to behavior and health issues. By the time the cases were resolved, pound directors simply killed the animals by falsely labeling them as “unadoptable,” even as they were culpable in the animal’s mental and physical deterioration.

As noted, the law provides an opportunity to spare abused animals continued suffering by getting them out of the shelter more quickly so that they do not languish for months and in some cases years. I wrote that while welcome, AB 2344 is not a guarantee of a better outcome: “While AB 2344 allows animals to be adopted or transferred to rescuers, it also allows California pounds to simply kill them, and I fear that is what many of them will do.”

I also noted that there is another reason for concern: pound directors and prosecutors may not do the work necessary under the bill to protect the animals. Historically, many of them haven’t, despite channels for getting these animals out that have existed for decades.

In response to that article, a former Los Angeles prosecutor shared his experiences, which tracked mine:

I’m the cofounder of the [Los Angeles] Animal Cruelty Task Force in 2000 and was possibly the first full time animal cruelty prosecutor. As part of the Task Force’s accomplishment of which I am most proud, I also implemented protocols that you referred to which insured that for almost 9 years virtually every case animal was fostered or adopted within weeks of filing charges. We didn’t have to wait for a conviction. That was using existing laws as you also mentioned.

It’s been horribly frustrating seeing those protocols abandoned by the LA City Attorney, DA [District Attorney] and Animal Services. What was even more frustrating was that the former “interim” GM of Animal Services had been in the Task Force and knew about the protocols. Yet she told the LA times and media they couldn’t release animals until a conviction. Thus the shelter had case animals languishing for years.

I’m glad for the new legislation but thanks for letting people know these protocols existed beforehand and it’s only because of the DA and LA City Attorney abandoning these procedures that countless abused animals suffered even after being impounded.

I responded to the LA Times report on this when the former GM lied and said there wasn’t anyway to release these animals until a conviction. I also changed policy so that case animals had the highest priority in finding new loving homes. Since retirement and that of my DA colleague… the system fell apart. [Paragraph breaks added for readability.]

As I wrote in my earlier article,

Recovery for animals seized because they have been subjected to cruelty should not have to depend on whether a prosecutor feels like filing a petition or whether a pound director feels like working with a rescue. The new law could be a meaningful step toward protecting these animals. But unless California addresses the implementation problem and eliminates killing as an option, it risks repeating a familiar failure: a system that has the legal tools to save animals but does not use them.

Tragically, it increasingly looks like that is the case.

A somber anniversary

This week marked the anniversary of PETA’s theft and killing of Maya, a family’s dog.

On October 18, 2014, two PETA representatives backed their van up to a home in Parksley, VA, and threw biscuits to Maya, who was sitting on her porch. They hoped to coax her off her property and allow PETA to claim she was a stray dog “at large” whom they could legally impound.

Maya refused to stay off the property and, after grabbing the biscuit, ran back to the safety of her porch. One of the PETA representatives went onto the property and took Maya. Within hours, Maya was dead, illegally killed with a lethal dose of poison.

A PETA spokesperson claimed Maya was killed by “mistake,” and defying credulity, explained that the same PETA representative who had earlier sat on the porch with Maya’s family talking to them about her care and who was filmed taking Maya from that same porch mistook her for a different dog. The “apology” was not only a devastating admission of guilt but evidence that killing healthy animals was business as usual for PETA employees — so commonplace that the only excuse PETA could offer for Maya’s death was that in taking her life, PETA officials had mistaken her for another healthy animal they had decided to kill. Was it likewise a “mistake” that five other animals from the same trailer park were killed by PETA and on the same day, too?

Lest anyone think PETA’s killing is ancient history, last year, PETA reported killing 938 cats. Another 179 were transferred, primarily to pounds that also kill animals. Historically, many of the kittens and cats PETA has taken to those pounds have been killed, often within minutes, despite being young (as young as six weeks old) and healthy. And despite millions of “animal-loving” supporters, a staff of hundreds, and annual revenues of over $85 million, PETA also admitted that they found homes for only 14 — an adoption rate of less than 1%.

It is not just cats who face oblivion at PETA. They also killed 719 dogs, while adopting out only 21. They killed 90% (18 out of 20) of rabbits and other small pets. They killed roughly half of all “farmed” animals and 76% of all wild animals.

And though PETA tells the media and the public that all the dogs, cats, and other animal companions they kill are suffering when criticized, they do not report that to the state. Only wild animals are listed as “critically injured/dying.” The cats are not. The dogs are not. The rabbits and other small animals are not. The chickens are not. And they are not listed as “critically injured/dying” because, if history is any guide, they weren’t.

For dogs who have done nothing wrong, things have gone from bad to worse

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Last week, I wrote about California’s new law allowing defendants to lose custody of animals seized in cruelty and neglect cases prior to conviction. Specifically, I noted that:

Historically, these animals were held until the case was resolved, which often took months and in some cases years. Regressive pounds in California, and other states, refused to socialize or exercise the animals, leading to behavior and health issues. By the time the cases were resolved, pound directors simply killed the animals by falsely labeling them as “unadoptable,” even as they were culpable in the animal’s mental and physical deterioration.

The law provides an opportunity to spare animals unnecessary suffering, but it is not a guarantee of a better outcome. As I explained: “While AB 2344 allows animals to be adopted or transferred to rescuers, it also allows California pounds to simply kill them, and I fear that is what many of them will do.”

There is another reason for concern.

Even prior to passage of AB 2344, California, and other states, already had a mechanism for obtaining custody of animals before a criminal case concludes. California has had a pre-conviction forfeiture law for animal cruelty since 2012. And even before the law, pre-conviction forfeiture was possible within existing forfeiture frameworks.

As a former shelter director and criminal prosecutor, I utilized pre-conviction forfeiture proceedings to place animals in loving homes without having to hold them during the pendency of a trial and potential appeal. That not only freed up kennel space for other animals, but started animals on the road to recovery sooner rather than later.

The problem is that having the legal authority to act does not mean prosecutors and pound directors will use it.

Under California Penal Code § 597.1, agencies could seize animals in exigent need of care or suffering from neglect. Under subdivision (h), the owner was required to pay all impound and boarding costs within 14 days of notice. If the owner failed to pay, the animal was deemed statutorily abandoned as a matter of law, permitting the agency to adopt out the animal prior to any criminal verdict. This avenue was affirmed in a 1999 Court of Appeal decision. Most pound directors and prosecutors did not pursue these proceedings — not because the law prevented them from doing so, but because it required additional work.

Pre-conviction forfeiture can make an enormous difference in the lives of seized animals. But obtaining forfeiture requires someone to identify the cases, prepare and file any notices or petitions, establish the evidentiary basis, coordinate with a rescue, and litigate the matter when necessary. If prosecutors and pound directors choose not to do this, most animals will remain impounded even when a legal mechanism exists to secure their release to appropriate placements.

California’s new law does not eliminate that problem. It creates another avenue for earlier placement, but it does not require prosecutors and animal control agencies to pursue those avenues. Nor does it require them to choose adoption or rescue over killing.

In 2012, and now under AB 2344, California has created more opportunities to get animals out of prolonged impoundment and into appropriate homes sooner. That is a worthwhile development. But what will ensure that agencies actually use these opportunities?

Recovery for animals seized because they have been subjected to cruelty should not have to depend on whether a prosecutor feels like filing a petition or whether a pound director feels like working with a rescue. The new law could be a meaningful step toward protecting these animals. But unless California addresses the implementation problem and eliminates killing as an option, it risks repeating a familiar failure: a system that has the legal tools to save animals but does not use them.

In other news: It’s a wonderful life. Half-hearted animal protection bill passes. Every pet deserves a loving home and a warm house. At long last, will carriage horses be banned? Alarming levels of pesticides, plastic, and heavy metals in pet food. Do you have what it takes to save lives? Fifth whale dies at aquarium. Proposed ban on cruel glue traps. Legislation to ban funding of dog and cat vivisection. School bus driver fired for role in saving injured kitten. Big animals outlive smaller ones, except dogs. Another town criminalizes compassion.

These are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:

It’s a wonderful life

Richard Avanzino died on September 20, at the age of 84.

Long before No Kill became a national movement, before shelter medicine became a recognized field, before foster care, offsite adoptions, behavior programs, low-cost sterilization, and adoption guarantees became familiar parts of the animal sheltering landscape, there was a man in San Francisco who looked at an institution built around killing animals and asked a deceptively simple question: What if we stopped?

I was fortunate enough to work for Rich Avanzino at the San Francisco SPCA. Eventually, I would take the model he created there to an open-admission animal control facility in New York, where we would build upon it and create the first No Kill community. Hundreds of communities thereafter did the same, bringing national pound kill rates to all-time lows — a 97% decline in killing. But before any of that happened, there was San Francisco, and there was Rich.

Half-hearted animal protection bill passes

California’s Governor signed into law a bill that would allow defendants to lose custody of “evidence” animals seized pursuant to cruelty and neglect cases before final disposition of the case. Historically, these animals were held until the case was resolved, which often took months and in some cases years. Regressive pounds in California, and other states, refused to socialize or exercise the animals, leading to behavior and health issues. By the time the cases were resolved, pound directors simply killed the animals by falsely labeling them as “unadoptable,” even as they were culpable in the animal’s mental and physical deterioration.

Specifically, the law now provides that,

If any animal is properly seized under this section, pursuant to a search warrant, or pursuant to any other provision of California law, the animal may not be returned to the owner, keeper, or person from whom it was seized until all reasonable costs of caring for and treating the animal have been paid. If the owner or keeper fails to pay the costs, or if, within 14 days of the notice, the owner or keeper fails to request a hearing to determine if the animal should be returned, the animal shall be deemed abandoned and shall be forfeited to the seizing agency to be offered for adoption, humanely destroyed, or otherwise placed.

While AB 2344 allows animals to be adopted or transferred to rescuers, it also allows California pounds to simply kill them, and I fear that is what many of them will do.

As a former shelter director and criminal prosecutor, I utilized pre-conviction forfeiture proceedings to place animals in loving homes without having to hold them during the pendency of a trial and potential appeal. That not only freed up kennel space for other animals, but started animals on the road to recovery sooner rather than later.

The new law allows, but does not mandate that. That is a missed opportunity. Seizing animals being subjected to violence and then allowing pounds to commit the ultimate form of violence on them — killing — is a gross betrayal. And it should have been prohibited by the bill.

Every pet deserves a loving home and a warm house

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“What is unconscionable, abominable and outrageous, is that animals, healthy and well-behaved, are being killed because someone says there are too many. That is something we do not accept. That is something we find intolerable.” — Richard Avanzino, 1997.

There are people whose lives can be measured in years, achievements, awards, or even the lives they touched. And then there are the rare people whose lives are better measured by the fact that the world would be very different but for their having lived. Rich Avanzino was one of those people.

Long before No Kill became a national movement, before shelter medicine became a recognized field, before foster care, offsite adoptions, behavior programs, low-cost sterilization, and adoption guarantees became familiar parts of the animal sheltering landscape, there was a man in San Francisco who looked at an institution built around killing animals and asked a deceptively simple question: What if we stopped?

I was fortunate enough to work for Rich Avanzino at the San Francisco SPCA. Eventually, I would take the model he created there to an open-admission animal control facility in New York, where we would build upon it and create the first No Kill community. Hundreds of communities thereafter did the same, bringing national pound kill rates to all-time lows — a 97% decline in killing. But before any of that happened, there was San Francisco, and there was Rich.

Animals are worth fighting for

When Rich took over the San Francisco SPCA in 1976, humane societies and SPCAs across America had spent generations operating under a basic assumption: there were too many animals and not enough homes. The killing was treated as an unfortunate and immutable fact of life rather than a problem that could be solved.

The San Francisco SPCA itself had been caught in this deadly cycle for decades. An organization founded upon principles of justice, humanity, and mercy had become, like so many humane societies, an efficient mechanism for killing animals. By the time Rich was tapped to lead it, it was nearly bankrupt.

In 1979, however, a dog named Sido changed everything. This is how the San Francisco Chronicle described what happened next:

When Sido’s owner, San Francisco’s Mary Murphy, committed suicide in 1979, her will left strict instructions that Sido be taken to her veterinarian and “destroyed.” The will’s executor, Rebecca Wells Smith, said Murphy was afraid no one could take the right kind of care of her dog.

But Sido was in the care of the San Francisco SPCA, and its director, Richard Avanzino, saw things very differently. When Smith went to court to force the agency to have the dog killed, Avanzino refused, vowing that all the SPCA’s resources would be used to fight for her life.

“The law says a pet can be destroyed like a piece of furniture… We’re saying that’s wrong.”

Ultimately, Avanzino would succeed in court: the judge hearing the case ruled that “the right to dispose of property after death does not extend to killing a living creature.” He would also succeed in the state capital. At the 11th hour, the governor signed legislation prohibiting killing an animal in a will. He succeeded in helping establish the principle that allowing dogs to be killed just because a person with power over the dog demands it violated public policy. And he would succeed in marshaling public support for an overhaul of shelters. “I knew then the American people were ready for a transition,” he told the Chronicle. But if the American public was ready for a sea change in how shelters operated, the movement itself was not.

Rich presented his ideas at a national American Humane Association conference. He talked about increasing adoptions, using volunteers, expanding spay/neuter, and taking animals into the community. The audience was made up of pound directors, other shelter bureaucrats, and national animal welfare leaders. The prevailing attitude was that there was little anyone could do to change the fundamental fact of killing and little reason to try. As one critic described it, “Ownerless animals must be destroyed. It is as simple as that.”

They walked out.

Rich was undeterred.

Do good things for animals, tell people about it, ask for their help

It is difficult, all these years later, to appreciate just how radical he was. Today, many of the programs Rich pioneered seem obvious. Shelters should have foster programs. They should sterilize animals before adoption. They should provide behavioral assistance. They should make adoption convenient. They should partner with rescue groups. They should help people keep their animals when surrender can be prevented. They should make veterinary care accessible. They should be open when people actually have time to visit. They should sterilize, rather than kill, feral cats. But they weren’t then, anywhere — except in San Francisco.

These innovations combined to create the then-safest urban city for homeless dogs and cats in the United States, with a rate of killing that was a fraction of the national average and over 30 times less than communities with the highest death rates.

And at the heart of Avanzino’s new approach to sheltering was a revolutionary and unprecedented insight that stood in stark contrast to the status quo’s deadly misanthropy: that it was the people inside our shelters, not the animal-loving public, that held the welfare and status of animals in low regard. By creating shelters that reflected, rather than hindered, the American public’s humane values, Avanzino believed we could transform sheltering across the United States. While most “shelter” directors blamed the public for the killing, Avanzino saw people as the key to ending it.

It wasn’t so much that Avanzino changed hearts and minds. People already cared deeply about animals. He just made it easier for them to express that love. While most directors were intent on punishing people with public spectacles like killing dogs and cats on television or passing punitive legislation designed to wound, Avanzino stopped getting in people’s way. That became the central idea of his career: make it easy for people to do the right thing and they will.

He didn’t merely tell people to sterilize their pets; he lowered the price. He didn’t merely tell people to adopt; he took animals into their neighborhoods. He didn’t merely tell people to keep their animals; he built programs to help them overcome the problems that might lead to surrender. He didn’t merely ask volunteers to care; he gave them animals to foster. He didn’t merely demand that shelters become more humane; he built systems that made humane treatment the norm.

By the early 1990s, Rich had built the infrastructure. Next, he wanted a guarantee. The idea was audacious: a city law mandating that every healthy dog and cat entering San Francisco’s municipal shelter and thousands of sick and injured treatable animals who were not reclaimed or adopted would be transferred to the SPCA instead of being killed. The SPCA would take responsibility for finding each one a home. The city resisted. Neighboring shelters opposed the idea. National organizations argued against it. Rich took the fight public.

After months of pressure, negotiation, and the threat of a referendum, the Adoption Act became the Adoption Pact. Deaths of animals in San Francisco shelters dropped dramatically. Over the first five years of the pact, cat deaths declined by more than 70 percent, kitten deaths by more than 80 percent, and dog deaths by two-thirds. A city that had once killed the vast majority of the animals entering its shelters — what a local legislator described as a “blood bath” — became one of the safest major American cities for homeless dogs and cats.

Standing on the shoulders of a giant

As a young law student at Stanford, I would work for Rich Avanzino at the San Francisco SPCA, and the experience would ultimately become one of the defining chapters of my life. What I learned there was not simply how to operate a shelter. I learned that what we call “impossible” are sometimes things nobody has yet bothered to make happen.

When I eventually left San Francisco and took the approach Rich pioneered to an open-admission animal control facility in New York, the goal was no longer to move in the direction of No Kill using the model that Rich had pioneered, but to achieve it. We stopped asking whether a shelter could place all but irremediably suffering animals; we decided to do it. We stopped asking whether it was possible for an entire community to do so at an open-admission animal control shelter; we did it. Overnight.

The result was the first No Kill community, where animals were guaranteed a home regardless of whether they were young, old, sick, injured, unweaned, traumatized, or difficult to place. And it wasn’t limited to dogs and cats. Rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, and other sheltered animals were included as well.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Let there be light

There is a temptation, when somebody dies, to hide the warts in order to build a monument to their memory. That would be a grievous error. Rich came close but never achieved a No Kill community. His tenure is marked by other mishaps and missed opportunities. And when he left the San Francisco SPCA to run Maddie’s Fund, he left it in the care of someone decidedly not up to the task, and the former crown jewel of the No Kill movement predictably collapsed into mediocrity. Since then, it has betrayed its founding principles and become a danger to animals statewide.

At Maddie’s Fund, he forgot the primary principle that led to San Francisco’s success: fighting for animals and the public that loved them meant fighting those who run shelters and national organizations and are recklessly indifferent to the harm they cause. His desire for collaboration with them also predictably failed to achieve its stated goal of a No Kill nation. When Rich retired from Maddie’s Fund, and from the movement, he once again left the organization in the care of someone decidedly not up to the task. It, too, has become a danger to animals.

And so while his legacy was enormous, it was not a monument. Rich was all too human and, like the rest of us, subject to all the pedestrian flaws of human nature. But his legacy was about momentum: he began with the proposition that death was not a solution. He ended it by creating a world in which millions of animals left shelters alive. He did it by building programs that other people could use, creating ideas that other people could emulate, proving propositions that other people could test, and giving people permission to believe that their own communities were capable of better.

And while his successors and critics now question his focus on the “save rate,” as he called it, Rich knew numbers were a proxy for the thing that mattered most. Percentage points were living animals. It meant dogs and cats were not killed. Because once they are killed, these animals can no longer think and feel and run and play and eat and sleep and purr and bark. They are gone. Forever.

If we want to honor that legacy, we do it the way he did it in San Francisco: by fighting to give animals a right to live, a right to rescue, and a right to experience love. That is what I will continue to do, even if it means — as it unfortunately does — fighting the very organizations that Rich once helmed and those he partnered with.

For Rich was not just a man who changed my life. He was not just a man who changed the lives of millions of animals. Or a man who changed the course of American animal sheltering. He was a man who created a new world.

The penultimate line in Frank Capra’s masterwork “It’s a Wonderful Life” is when Clarence, the angel in search of wings, tells George Bailey: “You’ve been given a great gift, George: A chance to see what the world would be like without you.” A world without Rich having been in it would be, for animals, a very dark world indeed. That there is light is a testament to his having lived.

For that, we — and the animals — owe a tremendous debt of gratitude.

So, thank you, Rich. Thank you, very very much.

Last week, I recommended that everyone use objective standards and evaluate “shelters” for themselves to determine if they are truly humane.

To do that, I suggested several resources, including The No Kill Advocacy Center’s Animal Evaluation Matrix which provides a comprehensive list of conditions that are treatable.

The Matrix is available for free download here.

I also recommended the Autumn 2026 issue of No Kill Sheltering, The No Kill Advocacy Center’s digital magazine, which features the (updated) policies and practices every shelter should implement, based on the latest scientific studies.

Anyone can use the Matrix, those policies, and the resources provided in the article last week to evaluate organizations and shelters, and then continue to check their policies and outcomes over time. In particular, shelter placement rates should consistently exceed 95 percent and, in a truly successful shelter, can reach 99 percent without closing the door to animals in need.

As a courtesy to my subscribers, the Autumn 2026 issue of No Kill Sheltering can be downloaded below.

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As previously reported, a reader asked me why I do not promote the “good things” done by organizations that I have written critically about. He believed that highlighting when they occasionally use donations for their intended purpose would encourage them to do more of it; and, perhaps, harm fewer animals in the process. I disagreed.

I explained that the fundamental problem is not whether these organizations occassionaly do “good things,” but what their overall record and practices represent. More fundamentally, I believe we have to consider what these organizations actually do to animals.

Using the ASPCA as an example, I reported a record of negligence, corruption, and indifference, including its role in the killing of a dog named Nyla and the emotional torment of her rescuer; the deaths of 20 dogs transported in extreme heat; dogs being allowed to starve; abused animals being killed despite rescue groups willing to save them; its role in the killing of hundreds of thousands of animals; and the cover-up of abuse by an employee who kicked a dog to death.

When such an organization uses some of the money it raises for rescue or adoption, I do not believe publicly promoting that work necessarily incentivizes more of it or serves the animals. To the contrary, I believe it can give the organization additional legitimacy and credibility. When I promote an organization, I am not merely acknowledging one supposed good deed; I am lending my credibility to it. People who trust my judgment may then donate money or defer to that organization on animal-protection issues, with consequences far beyond the particular rescue being celebrated.

That is especially troubling when an organization uses that credibility to oppose policies intended to save animals or, worse, to engage in practices that harm them. I therefore cannot promote an organization simply because it occasionally does something I might consider good, whether it is Best Friends, which I have to come to learn was corrupt from the beginning, or the ASPCA, which became corrupted as it accumulated wealth and power.

I also explained that more donations would not help more animals. These groups already raise hundreds of millions of dollars per year, but hoard it. Despite this wealth, the ASPCA spends only about 2% on animals in shelters. Most donations go to fundraising and salaries. ASPCA’s CEO, for example, makes nearly $1 million annually, and 259 ASPCA employees make six figures. The amount HSUS spends to help these animals is even less than that, about 1%. Similarly, Best Friends spends an inordinate amount (over $55 million) on salaries, uses donor funds to purchase for-profit businesses such as a hotel and gym, and spends millions enriching the founders who own the logo and license it back to the organization. The proceeds from that Best Friends sweatshirt you bought? It mostly went to the founders, not the organization’s programs.

The final problem with the argument is that it turns animal protection into a kind of moral accounting system. If enough good is done, the bad can be seen as an acceptable price of doing business. This is not conjecture. Multiple people have responded to my criticism of these groups that “we all want the same things” (despite being objectively disprovable) and, besides, “they do so much good.” I don’t accept that premise.

I asked my readers to imagine that a slaughterhouse owner donated a percentage of his profits to a vegan advocacy organization, or that a dogfighter donated some of his winnings to a companion-animal rescue group. Would we then say that the cruelty and killing were rendered acceptable because they had been offset by something good? Though an obvious absurdity, time and again self-professed animal lovers postulate this exact scenario, but in the reverse to defend or excuse the abuse and killing of animals by groups like the ASPCA. Some animal suffering and some animal killing are not and never have been the price we must pay to end other animal suffering and killing.

So what organizations do I support?

Given my criticism of these and other organizations, that same reader — and numerous others over the years — wanted to know which shelters and national organizations I do support.

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The Autumn 2026 issue of No Kill Sheltering is available for subscribers of The No Kill Advocacy Center. As a thank you, it is also available to patron-level donors of my Substack page.

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In other news: Bruce has been turned to ash. A new animal-welfare enforcement initiative to protect companion animals. Endangered Species Act protections face yet another setback. Expanding pet custody protections. Shelter cats need olfactory enrichment, too. Communities are looking for someone to run or help run their animal shelters. Police chief executes “sweet” dogs.

These are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:

Bruce has been turned to ash

As reported previously, Ventura County Animal Services (VCAS) killed Bruce, just as his legal team filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. VCAS was sued to stop Bruce’s execution after he was declared “vicious.” The destruction order followed several serious bite incidents that occurred when Bruce began acting out after his family became homeless. The Santa Paula Animal Rescue Center (SPARC), which originally placed Bruce with the family, filed suit arguing it retained contractual rights to the dog under their 2023 adoption agreement.

While VCAS relied on those bites to classify him as dangerous, internal shelter records described Bruce as a “model citizen,” demonstrated he adapts well in a controlled environment, was hand-fed treats with no incidents, and SPARC offered to fully fund a transfer to a qualified sanctuary. Tragically, VCAS rejected all non-lethal alternatives.

You can read about his short life and tragic death here.

Instead of being allowed to live in a safe and secure environment, Bruce has been turned to ash. As Carl Jung, the father of analytical psychology, argued, if you want to understand why someone does something, look at the consequences, and you can infer the motivation. If that is true, killing animals is what drives pound leaders and county officials.

USDA announces new animal-welfare enforcement initiative to protect companion animals

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In other news: Another NFL dog abuser is going to prison. Lawsuit: Do dogs have a legal right to be free from cruelty? Hello! And welcome to a new cat (species). The first country free from dog-bite related human rabies. Why vegan restaurants are closing. A ban on whaling?

These are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:

Another NFL dog abuser is going to prison

In a case reminiscent of Michael Vick,

A former NFL running back was sentenced to five years in federal prison Thursday for operating a large-scale dogfighting ring in Oklahoma that “resulted in death and serious bodily injury” to hundreds of pit bulls, according to a Department of Justice release.

The Justice Department also noted that “His trafficking of fighting dogs [sic] to other dog fighters across the country contributed to the growth of the dog fighting industry.” Following the verdict, LeShon Johnson was forced to surrender 190 dogs from his “Mal Kant Kennels,” the largest number ever seized from a single person in a federal dogfighting case, officials said.

Johnson previously “pleaded guilty to state animal fighting charges in 2004.” He received no jail time and restarted a dog fighting operation. Despite the convictions, Johnson’s attorney called him “a good person who loves his dogs.” His attorney asked for no jail time yet again. Prosecutors had asked for 10 years.

It is my hope that when he gets out of prison, he won’t be rewarded the way Vick was. Despite drowning, shooting, hanging, electrocuting, and beating dogs to death, Vick was embraced by the Humane Society of the United States, allowed back into the NFL, given an endorsement deal by Nike and a job at Fox Sports, and is now a coach for the Norfolk State Spartans football team. Inexplicably, school administrators considered him a “role model” for students.

In addition, academic writers wrote that Vick should never have been prosecuted. Katja Guenther, a race and gender professor at the University of California at Riverside, wrote that Vick was the true victim and prosecuted because of his skin color. To make that case, she wrote that treating animals as family, showing them affection and providing them medical care are white values; in contrast to treating animals “as resources, whether protective (as in guarding) or financial (as in breeding or possibly fighting)” which she claimed is inherent to black culture. She further argued that rescuers who want dogs to live with “those who will treat their dog as a family member” and will “care for their dog at a high level for the duration of the dog’s life” are using dogs “as instruments for reproducing whiteness.”

Likewise, Professor Harlan Weaver at Kansas State University claimed that the homes the surviving dogs were placed in promoted “a white-supremacist ideal of family formations” and “effectively segregated them from Blackness.”

Johnson, like Vick, is a threat to dogs and to decency regardless of the views of HSUS, Nike, Fox Sports, Norfolk State University, the University of California or Kansas State. Like Vick, he should never be allowed around dogs ever again. Tragically, such a condition is not allowed under federal law.

Lawsuit: Do dogs have a legal right to be free from cruelty?

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In other news: ‘Tis the season of false narratives about animal shelters. Do you have what it takes to save lives? Communities are looking for someone to run or help run their animal shelters. Federal government wants to kill more wolves. Going all out for dogs. Another week, another pet food recall. Sterilization centers in every district.

These are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:

‘Tis the season

Every few weeks during the summer, a predictable, though demonstrably false, headline pops up at news outlets across the country: “Local Shelter Overcrowded and Forced to Euthanize [sic] Animals.” The accompanying article typically features the pound manager offering soundbites about too many animals, and the need for spay/neuter. To the average reader, the news story appears uncontroversial, obvious. And, of course, fewer animals and more sterilization would be better. But when it comes to shelters, it represents one of the most persistent failures of municipal journalism. And animals are paying the price.

The central problem is that local and national news outlets don’t treat press releases by animal shelter managers as claims to be investigated. Instead, they treat them as facts to be transcribed. When a municipal agency states that it has “run out of room,” reporters routinely accept the premise without asking how that room is managed, what programs are being implemented, or whether lives are being sacrificed to uncaring and convenience.

To find out what reporters should be asking, and how to counter these false narratives, click here.

Do you have what it takes to save lives?

The following communities are looking for someone to run or help run their animal shelters:

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In other news: Protecting animals from tainted products. FBI says ok to applicants who engaged in bestiality and other animal cruelty. State police arrest driver and rescue dozens of horses bound for slaughter. One court stops a wild horse round-up, another allows it to proceed. Killing of deer to proceed after Governor and court refuse to intervene. Do you have what it takes to save lives? Another week, more pet food recalls. America’s top dog. Three whales die at marine park. Police shoot family’s pet donkey.

These are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:

Protecting animals from tainted products

Recent recalls have impacted both feline and puppy milk replacers. These products were found to have significant nutritional deficiencies or inconsistent vitamin levels that pose severe health risks to neonatal animals. They are not the only ones, as pet food recalls have increased in recent years.

To learn why this keeps happening, how we can prevent it, and what you can do to protect your animals, click here.

FBI says ok to applicants who engaged in bestiality

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Summary: The California Animal Welfare Association’s (CalAnimals) proposal for a government agency within the Department of Agriculture to regulate rescue groups is a power grab that exploits the Miranda’s Rescue scandal while ignoring existing legislative solutions. State oversight elsewhere has proven ineffective, failing to stop criminal conduct, fraudulent animal seizures, or unwarranted killing. Establishing this bureaucracy also risks institutionalizing high-kill policies that undermine private rescue groups. Compounding the issue, judicial deference to state agencies would make challenging these harmful regulations in court difficult and may even prove impossible.

Core arguments:

• Exploiting Crisis: Uses the Miranda’s Rescue controversy to centralize power while bypassing existing legal remedies.

• Ineffective Track Record: Similar state bureaus elsewhere routinely fail to prevent abuse, deceptive practices, or illegal animal seizures.

• Systemic Threat to Rescues: Bureaucracies tend to entrench high-kill policies that strip private rescue groups of their rights to protect animals.

• Unattainable Judicial Relief: Because courts heavily defer to administrative agencies, challenging agency decisions or policies in court becomes difficult.

In the wake of the Miranda’s Rescue scandal, California kill “shelters” and their lobbying arm, the California Animal Welfare Association (CalAnimals), are proposing a new statewide oversight body. They claim it will prevent future tragedies. Some reformers are cautiously optimistic, provided the agency remains independent. I believe this is naive. The idea that expanding California’s government bureaucracy will prevent such crimes is not just wishful thinking — it is a dangerous pretext for consolidating power.

California’s core failure is not a lack of government, but an excess of it. We pay the highest taxes for the nation’s largest bureaucracies, yet we continue to lead in negative outcomes: from homelessness and crime to failing infrastructure and, most tragically, the number of animals killed in pounds. More bureaucracy will not lead to better outcomes. Here’s why.

CalAnimals is using the scandal at Miranda’s Rescue to make a power grab

According to multiple news reports, Miranda’s Rescue, a Northern California nonprofit, marketed itself as a sanctuary where animals would receive lifelong care or be adopted into new homes. Instead, hundreds of dogs entrusted to the rescue are alleged to have been systematically killed while shelters, donors, and families who surrendered animals to the sanctuary believed they had been saved.

Many of these paid Miranda’s Rescue to accept difficult-to-place animals. For example, Oakland Animal Services paid Miranda’s Rescue $376,000 to send 827 dogs since 2020. Yet investigators reported that after reviewing documents, they found only a single adoption record, raising immediate questions about what happened to the hundreds of other animals.

Those investigators believe that Shannon Miranda, the founder, orchestrated a scheme in which animals were accepted from shelters and owners in exchange for substantial fees, then those animals were killed rather than cared for or adopted out.

As investigators searched the property, they uncovered evidence that appeared to support those allegations, including blood spatter, spent .22-caliber shell casings, more than 600 dog collars, and burial sites containing large numbers of canine remains. Many of the recovered dogs were identified through implanted microchips that traced them back to shelters. In some cases, those shelters were told the dogs had been adopted.

Following these revelations, CalAnimals held a press conference at the State Capitol calling for the creation of a “Bureau of Companion Animal Welfare” within the California Department of Food and Agriculture that would license and inspect facilities, like Miranda’s Rescue. Ironically, CalAnimals is the lobbying arm of a system of corrupt and incompetent pounds across California responsible for killing roughly 100,000 animals annually, dwarfing the amount Shannon Miranda is alleged to have killed. In fact, they actively fight legislation that would reduce this number.

For example, Bowie’s Law (AB 595) — named after a shy 15-week-old puppy killed by the Los Angeles County pound, despite a rescue group willing to save him — would have required “shelters” to notify the public and qualified non-profit adoption organizations 72 hours before killing animals, unless those animals were irremediably suffering. Bowie’s Law was introduced to ensure that animals like him, who have a place to go, would be spared. And given that such notifications are possible through shelter software already used by these facilities or available for free, complying would have required nothing more than the proverbial two strokes of a keyboard: one or two clicks to notify the public and rescuers that a life needed saving. AB 595 was such a simple, common-sense law, it is astonishing that anyone opposed it. But it was opposed by CalAnimals, and because of that opposition, it died in the California Assembly — which means animals continue to die needlessly along with it.

A California Bureau of Animal Welfare would not have prevented the scandal at Miranda’s Rescue

Aside from questionable motives, a Bureau within the Department of Agriculture would not have prevented the Miranda tragedy. The director of Oakland Animal Services claimed they “did not realize how many animals he was taking in from all these other jurisdictions” and further stated that if they did, it would have given them pause. “If there were a statewide system, with a couple of clicks of the mouse, you could realize that.” This is disingenuous. The reality is that they did not want to know. They chose to look the other way rather than demand transparency. If they did want to know, they could have required that data from Miranda as a condition for sending animals there.

Make no mistake: the tragedy, in terms of the number of potential bodies, could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. Whistleblowers, including a former employee of Miranda’s Rescue and neighbors, contacted law enforcement about what was happening. The conduct was illegal before and it is illegal now and there are laws and agencies tasked with enforcing those laws. They didn’t. The whistleblowers and witnesses were ignored for years. And a state oversight body wouldn’t necessarily change that. In fact, it is less likely to be effective than the local Sheriff’s Office.

If someone is willing to illegally kill dogs, bury them, spread powdered limestone to suppress and mask the odor of decomposition, and send false photos to shelters claiming that the animals were adopted, why would they not doctor the data they send to a state bureaucracy? Especially one in California that will be overfunded, yet inexplicably understaffed, and wholly indifferent to its mission, as anyone who has ever dealt with the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Department of Agriculture, and other California state agencies knows firsthand.

The failure of state oversight agencies

Moreover, we have the example of other states. The Commonwealth of Virginia has an agency within its Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services (VDACS) that oversees and inspects animal shelters. In addition to suppressing innovation, including opposition to group housing of dogs, and questioning the legality of foster care, rescue transfers, and community cat sterilization, it also oversees — and historically ignored — illegal conduct on the part of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which is classified as a “private shelter” in that state.

Former PETA employee Heather Harper-Troje revealed that the organization routinely misleads the public to collect animals while killing animals off-the-books:

“I know from first hand experience that the PETA leadership has no problem lying. I was told regularly to not enter animals into the log, or to euthanize off site in order to prevent animals from even entering the building. I was told regularly to greatly overestimate the weight of animals whose euthanasia we recorded in order to account for what would have otherwise been missing ‘blue juice’ (the chemical used to euthanize), because that allowed us to euthanize animals off the books. I was told regularly to say whatever I had to say in order to get people to surrender animals to me, lying was not only acceptable, it was encouraged… Contrary to what PETA maintains, the majority of animals it takes in are not beyond hope, in my experience many would be considered highly adoptable by a shelter, the ‘better off dead’ line is one that is dragged out in order to excuse what they do — and it’s a lie.”

She is not alone.

A May 2005 criminal investigation also highlighted these practices when police discovered dozens of dead dogs and cats discarded in a supermarket dumpster. Law enforcement shadowed two PETA employees as they collected animals from local shelters and a veterinary clinic under promises of rehoming them, killed the pets inside a company van, and dumped the bodies. A search of the van uncovered euthanasia chemicals and syringes, garbage bags, and other dead animals, while a local veterinarian confirmed that healthy animals handed over to PETA for adoption, including a mother cat with kittens, were among those killed within minutes.

In 2014, moreover, two different PETA representatives were caught stealing and killing a family’s dog. After backing their van up to a home in Parksley, VA, they threw biscuits to Maya, who was sitting on her porch. They hoped to coax her off her property and allow PETA to claim she was a stray dog “at large” whom they could legally impound. Maya refused to stay off the property and, after grabbing the biscuit, ran back to the safety of her porch. One of the PETA representatives went onto the property and took Maya. Within hours, Maya was dead, illegally killed with a lethal dose of poison. PETA initially denied taking the dog but surveillance film proved otherwise and PETA was forced to admit their actions.

Despite violating numerous laws, a mortality rate exceeding 90% of the animals in its care, the killing of over 50,000 known animals plus an untold number of animals “off the books,” continuing to kill roughly 2,000 animals each and every year, and violating the very definition of a shelter, the agency that is supposed to regulate shelters allows PETA to continue operating with impunity. For stealing and killing a family’s dog, they paid a mere $500 fine to VDACS, a small fraction of the $66 million they raised that year.

How state agencies legitimize and even promote killing

Aside from failing in their oversight capacity, state agencies like the one proposed for California can make things worse. Indeed, this ongoing source of harm comes at great cost. According to Jill Tucker, the CEO of CalAnimals, and the lobbyist almost single-handedly responsible for the defeat of Bowie’s Law and similar reform efforts, the “idea for the bureau was inspired by Colorado’s 1994 Pet Animal Care and Facilities Act. Tucker said that PACFA is ‘largely self-sustaining’ through licensing fees, and that the goal is to set up a similar model in California.” That, too, is dishonest.

State agencies are costly

In FY 2025–2026, PACFA received $170,295 in General Fund appropriations. It also receives targeted supplemental funding that can add hundreds of thousands of dollars. Ignoring supplemental funding and the enormous cost to create and staff an entire new bureaucracy, an equivalent agency in California would cost $1,166,000 annually to match Colorado’s. But more to the point, PACFA, the agency that oversees “shelters” in that state, isn’t an agency geared to increase lifesaving; it is a tool for killing more animals at the behest of pounds in Colorado.

For example, PACFA was tasked with regulatory oversight of legislation that required Colorado shelters to “address the behavioral needs of each dog and cat held in its custody.” Even though the bill passed by the Colorado legislature and signed by the Governor states, in relevant part, that doing so shall not limit “live outcomes for dogs or cats in the custody of an animal shelter or pet animal rescue,” PACFA passed regulations giving pounds the authority to kill the animals instead.

State agencies promote killing

The regulations identified “defecation when engaged socially,” “stereotypic behavior” such as pacing, and other easily remedied behaviors, as indicators of an “Unacceptable quality of life.” The timing and frequency of defecation should not be a death sentence. Likewise, pacing should not be a death sentence. In Colorado, it now is. In California, a similar agency may soon be given the power to follow suit.

And that’s not all. If passed, expect the California Bureau to limit the numbers and kinds of animals transferred to rescuers, by giving “shelters” the power to determine whether they are “adoptable” so that they could kill more dogs, even though rescuers are ready, willing, and able to save them. That is the power they seek, after losing a lawsuit to gain it.

A state agency would threaten rescue rights

This month, a well-known shelter changed its protocol to define dogs as eligible for killing if they exhibit any two typical dog behaviors, including but not limited to shyness, barking (“alert barking” or “demand barking”), overexcitement, poor manners, or communicating discomfort by lip-licking or whale-eye. Right now, if a shelter in California had such an internal policy, a qualified rescue group could prevent them from killing such a dog by demanding custody under California’s rescue rights law. If a Bureau of Animal Welfare were to codify those “euthanasia policies” as state-mandated regulations, killing those dogs would have the force of law. Unless a rescue group were to file a lawsuit and prevail — overcoming the deference to agency regulations courts give by significantly limiting the scope of review — kiss rescue rights goodbye.1

A trojan horse filled with kill pound ideologues

In front of reporters and legislators, Jill Tucker pretends her job doesn’t include defeating legislation that would reduce killing. She also pretends that it doesn’t include legitimizing pounds that engage in killing and want to kill even more, but for courts and laws which prevent them from doing so. Likewise, Oakland Animal Services pretends that it is a responsible agency that doesn’t kill animals or turn them away, including orphaned neonatal kittens by telling residents to abandon the animals they have found. Its director also pretends that remaining willfully blind to where animals are sent wasn’t a choice. And yet, we are expected to follow their lead on what is best for animals in this state. We do so at our, and the animals’, peril.

Tragically, some criminal behavior cannot be prevented no matter what we do. But that doesn’t mean we cannot do anything. We can hold elected officials accountable to results. We can remove people from office who do not take animal abuse seriously, including sheriffs, mayors, state legislators, judges, and district attorneys. We can demand reform at our local kill pound. We can reject ideological fever dreams for practical solutions. In short, we can keep abuse in check.

But one thing that we won’t be able to control? Yet another ideologically-driven state bureaucracy beholden to no one but the very pounds that do the majority of the neglecting, abusing, and killing of animals.

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In other news: Public meeting following Bruce’s killing cancelled. The Lethal Consequences of Lazy Journalism. Red barns, White sheds, and Orange dots. New pound policy allows the killing of more dogs for treatable conditions. Another week, more pet product recalls. Federal government sues raw pet food company. A plant-based diet can reduce biological aging. Dogs and cats absorb key nutrients with plant-based diets. Federal government moves to hide abuse at factory farms. Whales rescued from abusive marine park. Do you have what it takes to save lives? Communities are looking for someone to run or help run their animal shelters. Smile and your dog smiles with you.

These are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:

Public meeting following Bruce’s killing cancelled

Ventura County Animal Services (VCAS) is facing fierce backlash after killing Bruce, just as his legal team filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite internal shelter records describing Bruce as a “model citizen” and the Santa Paula Animal Rescue Center (SPARC) offering to fully fund a transfer to a qualified sanctuary, VCAS rejected all non-lethal alternatives.

Compounding public outrage, the agency abruptly cancelled its subsequent Advisory Commission meeting over unverified “safety concerns,” leading advocates to accuse leadership of dodging public accountability. This was the first meeting after Bruce’s killing and Bruce’s killing was going to loom large with members of the public.

The Lethal Consequences of Lazy Journalism

At the Los Angeles City pound, cat killing is up 32% compared to last year, kitten killing has increased 43%, and even dog killing is up. Reporters at the Los Angeles Times blame a lack of spay/neuter. But it doesn’t matter if intakes go up or down at a mismanaged pound like Los Angeles Animal Services, killing will still go up.

• Dog intakes down? Killing goes up.

• Kitten intakes down? Killing goes up.

• Cat intakes up? Killing goes up.

Given that spay/neuter doesn’t account for why killing goes up even when intakes go down, what are the real reasons killing goes up even when intakes go down?

• Fewer adoption hours compared to years past.

• Neglectful staff, and managers who turn a blind eye.

• Elected officials and pound managers indifferent to what constituents want and animals need.

• Reporters who do not challenge official narratives.

Red barns, White sheds, and Orange dots

A San Francisco Chronicle investigation traces the rise and fall of Miranda’s Rescue, a Northern California nonprofit that for years marketed itself as a sanctuary where animals would receive lifelong care or be adopted into new homes. Instead, hundreds of dogs entrusted to the rescue are alleged to have been systematically killed while shelters, donors, and families who surrendered animals to the sanctuary believed — and, in some cases, were told — they had been saved.

The scandal is reminiscent of a similar one involving People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which is also alleged to have lied about “saving” animals and instead killing them. Unfortunately, Miranda’s Rescue and PETA are not the only organizations that have been accused of purposely misleading the public. The move by public shelters to claim they are No Kill, but doing so by turning animals away, some of whom have later been found dead, injured, or severely emaciated is another, even more common, example of how agencies entrusted with the care of animals and enriched in the process betray them.

New pound policy allows the killing of more dogs for treatable conditions

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As previously reported, on August 12, Ventura County Animal Services (VCAS) ended Bruce’s life — just as his rescuers and legal team were actively seeking emergency relief from the United States Supreme Court. Only a day earlier, VCAS informed counsel of its intent to proceed with Bruce’s execution.

Bruce’s attorneys immediately responded that they filed an emergency application with Justice Elena Kagan, the Circuit Justice for the Ninth Circuit, and expressly told VCAS that they expected the agency to refrain from killing Bruce until Justice Kagan had an opportunity to rule. VCAS killed him anyway.

VCAS was sued to stop Bruce’s execution after he was declared “vicious.” The destruction order followed several serious bite incidents that occurred when Bruce began acting out after his family became homeless. The Santa Paula Animal Rescue Center (SPARC), which originally placed Bruce with the family, filed suit arguing it retained contractual rights to the dog under their 2023 adoption agreement.

While VCAS relied on those bites to classify him as dangerous — arguing that “the physical and emotional impacts of those incidents” should not be “lost in the public discussion” — SPARC did not ask the government to ignore Bruce’s history. Instead, they offered a practical solution designed to address it: transferring Bruce to a sanctuary. VCAS, however, rejected it out of hand.

Adding insult to injury, a meeting of the VCAS Advisory Commission was abruptly cancelled with no reason given. Dan Bolton, Bruce’s lawyer, called the cancellation “unusual, given the importance of these meetings for accountability and transparency, and the June 17, 2025 Ventura County Grand Jury investigation recommendation of ‘re-engagement’ by Ventura County Animal Services with local rescue and foster groups.”

Moorpark Councilmember Renee Delgado later claimed “safety concerns” for the cancellation without offering any proof, further explanation, or why they could not switch to zoom or other protective measures short of cancellation. As such, it is not difficult to opine what might be the real reason it was called off.

This was the first meeting after Bruce’s killing and Bruce’s killing was going to loom large with members of the public. This included seeking answers to the following questions:

Why did VCAS director Esteban Rodriguez reject sending Bruce back to SPARC given that they have sent other dogs with troubled histories there, including dogs “exhibiting ‘severe aggression,’” who “could not be safely handled” and had “a poor prognosis” for successful rehabilitation?

Why did he reject sending Bruce to a qualified sanctuary which SPARC offered to pay for?

Why did he reject the other non-lethal options presented for Bruce that would have similarly protected public safety without needlessly ending his life?

Given that VCAS’s own records described Bruce as a “model citizen,” including bonding with kennel staff, adapting well to a stable environment, eating treats from handlers’ hands, and having “no documented bite, attempted bite, charge, lunge, snap, or aggressive handling incident,” why didn’t elected and appointed officials intercede on Bruce’s behalf?

In Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Major Major Major is promoted to Major even though he is not qualified. Not surprisingly, Major Major Major Major is out of his depth.

To avoid being held accountable, Major Major institutes an “open door” policy that no one is permitted to see him in his office while he is in it. If he leaves his office, people are allowed to enter — but since he isn’t there, they still can’t see him.

Major Major is the ultimate caricature of the unaccountable leader — someone who holds power and collects a public paycheck, engages in doublespeak and obfuscation, and then cannot be found the second real-world conflict arrives. Ventura County officials seem to have adopted his playbook.

Rather than face the public to account for their decisions, Rodriguez and his enablers appear to be hiding behind closed doors and cancelled agendas.

There’s a word for that: cowardice.

Bruce is dead.

On August 12, Ventura County Animal Services (VCAS) ended his life — just as his rescuers and legal team were actively seeking emergency relief from the United States Supreme Court. Only a day earlier, after a federal court lifted its protective order and the Ninth Circuit denied an appeal, VCAS informed counsel of its intent to proceed with Bruce’s execution.

Bruce’s attorneys immediately responded that they filed an emergency application with Justice Elena Kagan, the Circuit Justice for the Ninth Circuit, and expressly told VCAS that they expected the agency to refrain from killing Bruce until Justice Kagan had an opportunity to rule.

As previously reported, VCAS was sued to stop Bruce's execution after he was declared “vicious.” The destruction order followed several serious bite incidents that occurred when Bruce began acting out after his family became homeless. The Santa Paula Animal Rescue Center (SPARC), which originally placed Bruce with the family, filed suit arguing it retained contractual rights to the dog under their 2023 adoption agreement.

While VCAS relied on those bites to classify him as dangerous — arguing that “the physical and emotional impacts of those incidents” should not be “lost in the public discussion” — SPARC did not ask the government to ignore Bruce’s history. Instead, they offered a practical solution designed to address it: transferring Bruce to a sanctuary. VCAS, however, rejected it out of hand.

In doing so, government officials appeared to lose sight of the critical distinction between public safety as the objective and killing as the means. In other words, public safety is not an excuse to reject less destructive ways of achieving it. A dog can have a dangerous past and still live safely within a facility built to manage that past. Acknowledging this doesn't require pretending Bruce was harmless. But VCAS officials cannot pretend that a secure sanctuary option didn't fundamentally alter the equation.

What also appeared lost in the rush to kill Bruce — before all appeals were exhausted and non-lethal alternatives were considered at the highest levels of government — was his behavior during his six months in custody. VCAS’s own records described Bruce as a “model citizen.” He bonded with kennel staff, adapted well to a stable environment, ate treats from handlers’ hands, and recorded “no documented bite, attempted bite, charge, lunge, snap, or aggressive handling incident.”

That evidence did not erase what had happened before. It did, however, provide information about what was possible under controlled conditions. The issue, therefore, is not merely that a dog with a troubled history died; tragic and heartbreaking though that is. It is that the government was handed a viable alternative that protected human safety while preserving Bruce’s life, and chose to ignore it.

Even though the protective order was lifted, Ventura County officials should not have killed Bruce while the case continued to move through the federal appellate process and toward the Supreme Court. VCAS had a moral duty to wait until all remedies were exhausted — including the mere hours it would have taken for the Circuit Justice to review the emergency filing. Those hours never came.

VCAS chose to kill Bruce before Justice Kagan had an opportunity to rule. The County may have possessed legal authority to do so, but legal authority is not the same as necessity. Short of what I previously proposed — making it illegal for courts and government officials to kill dogs when viable, non-lethal alternatives exist — that is the question Bruce leaves behind:

When government possesses the power to end an animal’s life, and a credible alternative exists that can achieve the government’s legitimate purpose — public safety — without doing so, should the exercise of that power be judged solely by what the government is legally permitted to do? Or should it also be measured by what justice actually requires?

Bruce can no longer benefit from the answer. But other animals can.

Video courtesy of Facebook.com/ADogNamedBruce.

The Los Angeles Times did a report on the harrowing spike in killing of animals at Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS). And it is harrowing: cat killing is up a staggering 32% year-to-date compared to last year, kitten killing has increased even more, and even dog killing is up. Unfortunately, the piece was written by two young reporters, both fresh from being interns, and it shows. Even though one of those interns describes herself as “passionate about uncovering hidden narratives in data sets,” she and her colleague utterly failed to find that narrative. Maybe that’s because it wasn’t hidden: it was in plain sight for all to see.

Interviewing the usual list of suspects — including PETA, an organization that has a long sordid history of lying and stealing animals to kill and has killed over 50,000 dogs and cats, including healthy puppies and kittens — they settled on the usual culprits: too many animals, not enough spay/neuter.

Of course, more sterilization is always better when pounds like the one in Los Angeles are staffed by people only there for a paycheck and committed to doing as little as possible. The lower the intake rate, the fewer the number of potential victims. But as the numbers clearly show, even a decline in intakes doesn’t necessarily equate with less killing.

Dog intakes have declined by 13% compared to pre-pandemic levels (2025 vs. 2018), but dog killing is up roughly 30% in that same period. Comparing year-to-date dog intakes and killings with the same period last year, dog intake declined 6%, but pound staff killed 2% more dogs. And it isn’t just dogs. Kitten intake actually went down by 14% compared to pre-pandemic levels, but killing increased 40%.

In short, it doesn’t matter if intakes go up or down at a regressive pound like LAAS, killing will still go up. That’s not really a hidden narrative. It’s math.

And even though adult cat intakes did increase, the numbers still do not add up: intake increased 17% compared to pre-pandemic levels, but killing did not proportionally increase — it skyrocketed by 43%. And while kitten intake did increase by 8% year-to-date compared to last year, the pound killed a whopping 43% more kittens in the same time period.

Why the disproportionate increase in killing? Let’s uncover the “hidden” narratives in the dataset that the cub reporters failed to.

Reduced opportunities for adoption

First, I would look at the choices made by city officials. I’d start with the fact that adoption hours have been cut back from pre-pandemic levels. The “shelters” are no longer open for adoption until 7 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays to make it easier for working families to adopt and foster.

Neglect, abuse, and corruption

Second, I’d also consider that LAAS has long been, and continues to be, an agency rife with neglect, abuse, and corruption. In addition to an increase in killings, dogs spend weeks or months inside their filthy kennels without a walk, often without clean water and soft beds to lie on. As a result, they experience increased stress, giving LAAS an excuse to kill the dogs as “unadoptable” even though they are healthy and of good temperament outside their kennels.

In addition, cat rooms are mostly empty and, in some cases, entirely empty, while staff at the pound either kill them or turn cats away, leading to mass abandonment. Across the street from one of the “shelters,” volunteers are forced to care for many of those abandoned cats.

Prior reports also uncovered rabbits with gouged eyes, guinea pigs without food, and hamsters in cages soaked in urine and feces. And when an employee admitted to striking dogs, the volunteer who exposed him was punished, not the abuser.

Elected officials indifferent to constituent concerns

Third, I would look at the Governor, state legislature, the mayor, and city council. This isn’t a partisan attack. It is an attack on one-party rule (i.e., supermajorities), regardless of whether they are on the Left or the Right. As most Americans no longer live in contested districts, elections matter less and, in thoroughly single-party districts, almost not at all.

As such, there is no incentive for elected officials to solve problems occurring under their watch, and no ability for constituents to force them to do so. Instead, ideology and tribal affiliation rule the day, making it challenging to hold any agency — let alone one that deals with “lowly” animals — accountable. And given that the only threat comes from within the elected official’s own party — being primaried by someone on the Left if a Democrat or on the Right if a Republican — going along with the ideological program protects them.

A CalMatters Digital Democracy analysis of voting records found that, on average, legislators broke from their party position less than 1% of the time. In other words, 99% of the time, elected legislators voted in lock-step, doing what they were told by the party, even when a majority of constituents wanted otherwise. The only legislators willing to stray from the herd, buck their party, and do what their constituents wanted were those representing the few competitive swing districts left in California.

Before California became a supermajority state, bipartisan competition allowed passage of legislation making it illegal for pound staff to kill animals when rescue groups were willing to save them. Shelter reformers were able to significantly increase holding periods, add a holding period for owner-surrendered animals, and require prompt and necessary veterinary care despite the opposition of every “shelter” in the state, saving millions of animals in the process. Legislators were sensitive to constituent concerns and therefore focused on enacting good policy, regardless of ideology, to avoid being voted out.

With Democrats now holding veto-proof supermajorities in both the Senate and the Assembly, and controlling the governorship, every statewide executive office, both U.S. Senate seats, a large majority of the state’s U.S. House delegation, and in Los Angeles, the mayor’s office and every elected office of note, such reform would have no chance of passage today. This isn’t speculation. The No Kill Advocacy Center has tried repeatedly.

Every legislative effort to reform pounds ends up getting killed by the Democratic establishment at the behest of pound managers. Had California successfully passed Bowie’s Law in 2023 requiring LAAS and other pounds to give rescuers 72 hours notice before killing animals, for example, the numbers in Los Angeles would look a lot different.

On this last score, I don’t expect change anytime soon because partisanship appears more important to primary voters than electing officials who will solve problems and ensure responsive government — including reforming dysfunctional, abusive, kill-oriented “shelters.” That means continued incompetence, apathy, corruption, and killing at LAAS. And that is as plain to see as the math.

Superficial reporting

Finally, I would look to the Fourth Estate. Instead of obfuscation on behalf of special interests by regurgitating PETA’s apologia about the need to kill without more spay/neuter, the Times should have reported the truth in order to hold city (and state officials), including pound managers, to account. Unfortunately, they are not alone in their dereliction of duty.

A reporter at the New York Times wrote a similar superficial piece last year about the rise in killing despite declines in intakes at the pound in that city. Regrettably, what I wrote about New York then applies to Los Angeles now: Aside from an epic failure of journalism to accurately report on this topic,1 the Times piece allows leadership and staff at the regressive and abusive pound to continue avoiding accountability for their own mismanagement. And that comes with a body count.

A San Francisco Chronicle investigation traces the rise and fall of Miranda’s Rescue, a Northern California nonprofit that for years marketed itself as a sanctuary where animals would receive lifelong care or be adopted into new homes. Instead, hundreds of dogs entrusted to the rescue are alleged to have been systematically killed while shelters, donors, and families who surrendered animals to the sanctuary believed they had been saved.

Public agencies across California paid Miranda’s Rescue to accept difficult-to-place animals. For example, Oakland Animal Services paid Miranda’s Rescue $376,000 to send 827 dogs since 2020. Yet investigators reported that after reviewing documents, they found only a single adoption record, raising immediate questions about what happened to the hundreds of other animals.

According to investigators, Shannon Miranda, the founder, orchestrated a scheme in which animals were accepted from shelters and owners in exchange for substantial fees, then those animals were killed rather than cared for or adopted out. The article reports that authorities believe the motive was financial: collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars from public shelters and private owners while avoiding the expense and effort of housing the animals.

As investigators searched the property, they uncovered evidence that appeared to support those allegations, including blood spatter, spent .22-caliber shell casings, more than 600 dog collars, and burial sites containing large numbers of canine remains. Many of the recovered dogs were identified through implanted microchips that traced them back to shelters. In some cases, those shelters were told the dogs had been adopted.

The red barn

In interviews with law enforcement, Miranda acknowledged that he sometimes led dogs to a red barn on the property, placed wet canned food before them, and while they were eating, shot them between the eyes with a .22-caliber rifle. Investigators later described finding evidence consistent with those accounts inside the barn. Jesse Armstrong, a former employee, recalled disturbing experiences while working at the rescue as a teenager. He said Miranda instructed him and other boys to spread powdered limestone across a field behind the red barn, something Armstrong only later realized could help mask the odor of decomposing animals. Armstrong also described being shocked when he discovered decomposing dog bodies loaded into a tractor bucket, including a friendly dog he cared for only days earlier.

The investigation also examines Miranda’s background and the warning signs that, in hindsight, may have foreshadowed the alleged misconduct. Investigators cited a 1993 embezzlement conviction — later expunged — as part of what they described in a search warrant affidavit as a broader pattern in his business dealings. The investigation further questions Miranda’s repeated claims that many dogs were aggressive or gravely ill. Two women who had worked at a veterinary clinic where Miranda used to bring animals for “euthanasia” said many of the dogs were healthy, friendly and well behaved despite being labeled as dangerous or sick. One former kennel attendant recalled that dogs described as “aggressive” often showed no such behavior when handled by clinic staff, casting doubt on Miranda’s explanations for why they needed to be killed.

Complaints from neighbors, former employees and advocates accumulated over decades, but meaningful intervention came only after private citizens cut through the fence in the middle of the night, trespassed on the property, and dug up the bodies. To date, no criminal charges have been filed, while investigators continue sifting through financial records, digital evidence, and physical remains to uncover the full scope of the alleged scam.

In a statement released through his attorney, Miranda denied claims that he killed animals for profit or space, and called the Humboldt County Sheriff’s investigation politically motivated, accusing law enforcement of employing aggressive search tactics and selectively leaking information to distort the truth and fuel public hostility.

Miranda’s Rescue continues to operate.

The white shed

The scandal is reminiscent of a similar one involving People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which is also alleged to have lied about “saving” animals and instead killing them. Although in PETA’s case, no money was exchanged and therefore may not rise to the level of a criminal action, both cases exemplify deception where organizations leverage public trust and institutional legitimacy to mask practices that fundamentally contradict their stated missions.

According to Heather Harper-Troje, a former PETA employee,

“I know from first hand experience that the PETA leadership has no problem lying. I was told regularly to not enter animals into the log, or to euthanize off site in order to prevent animals from even entering the building. I was told regularly to greatly overestimate the weight of animals whose euthanasia we recorded in order to account for what would have otherwise been missing ‘blue juice’ (the chemical used to euthanize), because that allowed us to euthanize animals off the books. I was told regularly to say whatever I had to say in order to get people to surrender animals to me, lying was not only acceptable, it was encouraged… Contrary to what PETA maintains, the majority of animals it takes in are not beyond hope, in my experience many would be considered highly adoptable by a shelter, the ‘better off dead’ line is one that is dragged out in order to excuse what they do — and it’s a lie.”

She describes picking up a litter of healthy puppies from someone who thought that PETA was going to find them a home:

“What was referred to as the ‘shelter’ was a large, empty storage closet across from our office. The only other holding facility we had was in the warehouse, where the animals were euthanized. And when I did use the room across from my office as a holding area for animals, Ingrid would ask why I hadn’t already euthanized them: one time nailing me to the wall because the litter of puppies I’d placed in there for a night had pooped everywhere; I was told to euthanize the puppies immediately.”

But a May 2005 criminal investigation offers the most stark comparison, when the bodies of dead dogs and cats began turning up in the trash bin of a supermarket in North Carolina. Local police eventually arrested two PETA staff members.

According to a Roanoke News Herald investigation, Ahoskie Police Detective Sgt. Jeremy Roberts began investigating after a worker discovered a discarded trash bag containing a dead animal behind a local Piggly Wiggly supermarket. Arriving at the scene, Roberts noted a “strong odor coming from the dumpster” and recovered 21 dead dogs packed inside 20 heavy-duty trash bags. Similar dumping incidents recurred in the same dumpster over the following weeks, yielding 17 dead dogs and three cats on June 2, and an additional 18 bags containing 20 dead dogs on June 9.

The investigation led police to surveil PETA employees Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook as they traveled in a company van to collect animals from the Ahoskie Animal Hospital (AAH) and the Bertie County shelter. After Hinkle killed the collected animals inside the van, detectives shadowed the vehicle to the Piggly Wiggly dumpster. As Roberts and a fellow detective approached the parked van on foot, Roberts testified that he could hear the “‘thump, thump’ of heavy objects striking the bottom of the empty dumpster” before the van accelerated away. Officers executed a traffic stop in the parking lot and arrested both occupants.

A search of the dumpster yielded nine bags holding 16 dead dogs, while a subsequent inventory of the van revealed another 12 bags containing eight dead dogs and 14 dead cats. A search of the PETA van uncovered supplies including trash bags, animal food, leashes, PETA manuals, and a tackle box filled with syringes, needles, and liquid “euthanasia” drugs.

Testimony confirmed that several of the animals were healthy and adoptable, including a mother cat and two kittens handed over by AAH veterinarian Dr. Patrick Proctor. Dr. Proctor explained that PETA had explicitly promised to rehome the pets, stating, “They were just kittens we were trying to find homes for. PETA said they would do that…” After inspecting another dumped animal — a six-month-old lab mix with an injection mark in its leg — Dr. Proctor noted that “the animal that I found was a very healthy six-month puppy that had been killed that day,” concluding, “PETA will never pick up another animal from my practice.”

PETA has also been caught stealing and killing a family’s dog. On October 18, 2014, two PETA representatives backed their van up to a home in Parksley, VA, and threw biscuits to Maya, who was sitting on her porch. They hoped to coax her off her property and allow PETA to claim she was a stray dog “at large” whom they could legally impound.

Maya refused to stay off the property and, after grabbing the biscuit, ran back to the safety of her porch. One of the PETA representatives went onto the property and took Maya. Within hours, Maya was dead, illegally killed with a lethal dose of poison.

PETA initially denied taking the dog but surveillance film proved otherwise. After they were confronted with the film, a PETA spokesperson subsequently claimed Maya was killed by “mistake,” and, defying credulity, explained that the same PETA representative who had earlier sat on the porch with Maya’s family, talking to them about her care, and who was filmed taking Maya from that same porch, mistook her for a different dog.

The “apology” was not only a devastating admission of guilt but evidence that killing healthy animals was business as usual for PETA employees — so commonplace that the only excuse PETA could offer for Maya’s death was that in taking her life, a PETA representative had mistaken her for another healthy animal they had decided to kill.

Ultimately, PETA would pay a mere $500 fine to the Virginia Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services (VDACS) for the killing and settle the civil lawsuit from Maya’s family for $49,000, a small fraction of the $66 million they raised that year. Undeterred, PETA continues to kill animals to this day, over 90% of the animals they take in. In 2025, for example, they killed 1,718 animals — roughly five animals a day, every day — with hundreds more sent to local pounds. The total known death toll is now well over 50,000.

Orange dots

Unfortunately, Miranda’s Rescue and PETA are not the only organizations that have been accused of purposely misleading the public. The move by public shelters to claim they are No Kill, but doing so by turning animals away, some of whom have later been found dead, injured, or severely emaciated is another, even more common, example of how agencies entrusted with the care of animals and enriched in the process betray them.

The “orange dot” is the symbol used by Best Friends on its online dashboard to mark a community that they claim is “No Kill.” Aside from fudging the data to make the claim, as I have reported elsewhere, the orange dot ignores the fact that most at-risk animals are barred from entering the “shelter.”

These animals — often left on the street to fend for themselves — effectively become “ghosts.” They don’t simply disappear — indeed, they are still suffering, they are still dying, and they still matter. But because they are not counted in official shelter intakes, they vanish from the records, rendered invisible by bureaucratic indifference and obfuscation. Like Miranda’s claim they were adopted or PETA’s claim they were irremediably suffering, this allows organizations to maintain a facade of success, shielding the grim reality of their fates.

Collectively, three of the wealthiest U.S. organizations, including Best Friends, have $776 million in annual revenue and $1.2 billion in assets. The ASPCA takes in $390 million in revenue and has $575 million in assets, including $310 million in investments and $105 million in savings. The Humane Society of the United States receives $260 million in annual revenue and has $454 million in assets, including $370 million in investments and $31 million in savings. Best Friends Animal Society has $126 million in annual revenue and $153 million in assets. Given the sheer wealth at their disposal, why aren’t things better for animals than they are?

Because despite such wealth, the ASPCA spends only about 2% on animals in shelters. Most donations go to fundraising and salaries. The amount HSUS spends to help these animals is even less than that, about 1%. Similarly, Best Friends uses donor funds to purchase for-profit businesses such as a hotel and gym, and spends millions enriching the founders who own the logo and license it back to the organization.

But even the paltry amount they spend on shelter animal programs isn’t necessarily being used to help. These groups are lobbyists for “shelters” that kill animals, not the animals in those shelters. Among other things, for example, the ASPCA killed 20 dogs in transport, allowed dogs to starve, killed abused dogs despite rescue groups willing to save them, killed a young woman’s dog and tormented her, fought legislation to save lives, effectively putting hundreds of thousands of animals into an early grave, and covered up abuse by its employees.

Best Friends, the ASPCA, and HSUS remain rich and are getting richer.

* * *

In the final analysis, the tragedies at Miranda’s Rescue, PETA, Best Friends, the ASPCA, and others are not isolated failures. From public shelters that routinely kill animals or, conversely, claim success by refusing to admit the most vulnerable, to law enforcement agencies and oversight bodies that dismiss reports of cruelty as low-priority or ignore red flags until it is too late — Jesse Armstrong notified the police when he quit working at Miranda’s Rescue only to be ignored; VDACS levied a paltry fine against PETA for stealing and killing Maya — they are symptoms of a systemic devaluation of animal lives across the board. As I’ve previously written too many times to count, animals are being betrayed, neglected, abused, or killed by the very agencies tasked with protecting them. Without real accountability, it leaves the “ghosts” of their policies to suffer in the shadows, while allowing organizations to get away with (proverbial) murder.