Thank you.

Undisputed. My point is just that simply extending or shifting one day's open hours to evening hours WILL increase the number of animals that escape death at no to very low cost.

I was not aware that the shelter could not choose to whom they would adopt an animal in the way that many other shelters place regulations on to whom they adopt out animals. If that is shelter policy or even city code, we should work to get this changed. It doesn't make sense. Pit Bull Rescue Organizations often set higher hurdles for adoption in order to be sure to avoid negative outcomes.

This is in fact the second definition provided by dictionary.com. The first is "the act of putting to death painlessly or allowing to die, as by withholding extreme medical measures, a person or animal suffering from an incurable, esp. a painful, disease or condition". Enough battling of the dictionaries however. I was just pointing out how we choose and use words to justify our actions and assuage our guilt in this situation (as I suppose we do in many other ethically tenuous situations).

True enough. However, I can personally think of 4 pet owners who if prodded would willing adopt another pet. Heck, when my last dog passed away, we wanted to adopt another but waited over a year for fate to hit us on the head when we rescued Jack. We're blessed with Jack, but we should have adopted another pet earlier, or at least fostered in the meantime. We would have easily adopted earlier if our local shelter or rescue organization had reached out to us telling us of the need to save lives, helping us find that right animal. To my knowledge, and I may be mistaken, the OKC shelter doesn't have such an outreach program, and it is a shame. It would result in fewer killings.

Yes, I hear what you are saying about other people. I've heard even more tortured stories about animals left at the shelter. However, these are not excuses to kill animals in mass proportions (The OKC shelter alone killed over 18,000 cats and dogs in 2007). I understand that these other people are contributing to the problem. Unfortunately, changing people is a tough battle to fight. Instead we can dramatically reduce or eliminate the killing by changing our shelter and it's policies. Other shelters in large cities have succeeded in doing just this. So can ours.

The book is "Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America"
authored by Nathan J. Winograd, who established the nation's first no kill shelter.
http://www.nathanwinograd.com/

In this book, Winograd describes just how he cured the 'cyclical nature' of the problem and lays out a road map of programs and policies that shelters can implement to dramatically reduce the number of animals killed.

If you do not have a copy of this book, I'll gladly buy you, or any member of OKCTALK a copy if you (they) will promise to immediately read it and discuss it on this forum. Just send me an email - support@okccrime.com - include your name and mailing address and put Redemption in the subject line.

As pointed out in Redemption, many shelters have co-opted the no-kill movement by announcing no-kill 'trajectories' or announcing low-kill plans. In many cases this is just a ploy to get the public off their back with hopes that their feet won't be held to the fire down the line.

I know nothing about the plans put in place by the shelter to reach this goal by 2010. However I'm very skeptical we will reach it.

The OKC shelter just isn't doing so well on it's trajectory.
2006 kills - 19,365
(from http://www.projectanimallife.com/)
2007 kills - over 18,000 (from http://www.okhumane.org/articles_okl...ticle_0007.htm)

That puts us on course for 14,000 kills by 2010, i.e not no-kill.

They try, but no where near enough. Only 4000 adoptions last year and 18000 killings.

Money -> Mouth. I hope my offer to buy Redemption for any and all comers has some impact. Oh yeah and then there is Jack, our contribution to the OKC unadoptable stray problem.

Okccrime

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