Who are you going to call when an injured animal crosses your path?
In other news: For the love of dog. No Kill Sheltering Summer 2026. Denver Animal Services says the killing of a dog is “beautiful.” Communities are looking for someone to run or help run their animal shelters. Remains of hundreds of dogs uncovered. Are ducks another casualty of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation? All of the spectacle, none of the harm.
These are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:
Who are you going to call?
When you find an animal who needs help, such as a mangy, skin-and-bones squirrel like the one who showed up at our door this week, who are you going to call?
No one.
Certainly not the local animal shelter. Not the local wildlife rehabilitation clinic. Not the local veterinarian owned by private equity. All of these are money-grubbing, uncaring, and underperforming hacks, even in flush-with-cash Oakland and the larger San Francisco Bay Area where taxes remain the highest in the nation.
They get paid to do a job they don’t do well (i.e., choosing to kill), and often not at all (i.e., turning animals away). As for the private equity owned facilities, they don’t do the job unless you succumb to their demand for thousands of dollars in unnecessary diagnostics. It is truly an age of grifters.
So like the coyote before him, the prior mangy squirrel, or the many, many other animals who needed help, we’ll take care of him ourselves — which is probably what you’ll have to do, too.
For the love of dog
This week would have been the 27th birthday of Mr. Picklechips and Sir Topham Hat. Twenty-seven years ago, a litter of puppies was born unexpectedly at The San Francisco SPCA. Seven weeks later, I brought home two brothers — Pickles and Topham. Though they have been gone for many years now, I think of them often.
I wrote what living with and losing a dog means to me on Pickles’ 14th birthday, just a few months before we said goodbye. Reading it now reminds me that while grief changes with time, love does not.
No Kill Sheltering Summer 2026
The Summer 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.
The current issue covers:
The real state of animal sheltering in the U.S.;
Animals who are not counted still count;
Animal “shelters” are killing animals for “mental suffering” they are causing;
The toll of war on animals and rescuers;
When animal “shelters” say no to helping cats and kittens;
No Kill Companion 2026;
And more.
Denver Animal Services says the killing of a dog is “beautiful”
“Beautiful”’
That was the one-word answer Melanie Sobel, [director of Denver Animal Shelter], sent after getting a text from Officer Josh Rolfe that the judge had lifted the stay and Lightning could be killed. The text was revealed in Denver Post reporting today. They killed Lightning as quickly as possible. So quickly that an appeal filed within hours was already too late.
Lightning’s killing follows his mauling of a cat and his biting of a person after he, and Thunder, another dog, escaped from their yard. The death of the cat, the biting of a person, his betrayal by an irresponsible “owner,” his betrayal by Denver pound staff, and even Lightning’s death are many things — tragic and heartbreaking, chief among them. But none are “beautiful.”
Despite a behaviorist evaluation that recommended Thunder be spared because he exhibits “full bite inhibition” and a sanctuary offering to take him, ensuring he would neither be returned to the irresponsible “owner” nor ever put anyone else in harm’s way, Denver’s municipal pound is asking a court to allow them to kill Thunder, too. Why? Because killing dogs is what Denver’s pound does.
Do you have what it takes to save lives?
The following communities are looking for someone to run or help run their animal shelters: