A Painful Debate for Animal Lovers

Fred barreled down the animal shelter’s dog run, ears flying, eyes a little wild. Smashing into a pair of human legs, the pit bull mix stopped. Flung himself at the crouching form of behaviorist Ivan Balabanov. Clamped strong jaws on a tanned forearm.

One smooth flip later, Fred found himself cradled in the trainer’s arms, momentarily docile. Ready, through behavior modification sessions like this one, to try being good. Angling for a sausage treat and a home. For here in the land of legendary tolerance, where few things are believed to be beyond salvation, even some pit bulls get a second chance.

So do many feral cats, geriatric dogs and homeless newborn kittens lousy with ringworm. It is the rare stray that will not find respite at the nation’s best-known “no-kill” shelter in what some hope will become America’s first “no-kill” city.

But you needn’t go far from the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals--where a $15-million abandoned-pet palace is under construction, complete with skylights and kitty condos--for controversy to begin.

From the pages of the nation’s pet publications to the cages of the country’s shelters and sanctuaries, a battle is brewing over what to do with America’s abandoned cats and dogs, and it is bringing out the animal in the animal welfare movement.

The focus is the so-called no-kill philosophy, viewed by practitioners as the natural outcome of a love for animals. If a stray creature can be healed, heeled and adopted--no matter the cost and effort--that animal should not be killed, they say.

In fact, most no-kill shelters do kill animals: Creatures in such excruciating pain that life is a crueler option than death, and those so aggressive that they present a public safety hazard.

But a war of words is escalating over a third group--stray cats and dogs with treatable ailments and no place to go, animals that are killed in this country by the millions.

“No-kill is a goal, a hope, a dream,” Roger A. Caras, president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, wrote in his organization’s recent newsletter. “But alas, as things are today, it is more hoax than fact.”

Caras’ declaration is evidence of a particularly public skirmish between two of the nation’s leading shelter operators--Caras and Richard Avanzino, president of the San Francisco SPCA and the most vocal proponent of the no-kill philosophy.

Caras and his supporters scoff that no-kill shelters are smoke and mirrors. At best, such shelters are an impossibility, they say; at worst, a marketing ploy that casts no-kill operations as the good guys and everyone else in the wrenching animal control business as nothing short of assassins.

The dispute has become so heated that the Humane Society of the United States is poised to make a major policy statement questioning the no-kill concept and will devote the upcoming edition of its bimonthly magazine to the dilemma.

Shelters calling themselves no-kill “are only able to do this because someone else does the killing,” says John Snyder, director of animal services for Florida’s Alachua County. “This is a major issue for us. It’s unfortunate that we’re dividing into warring camps.”

No one knows how many animal welfare organizations operate in the United States, but most fall into two broad categories. There are government-run shelters like Snyder’s, which must take in every stray that comes their way, uphold laws and collect menacing or dead animals. These facilities also put animals up for adoption, but lack of resources and pet oversupply force them to euthanize thousands each year.

Then there are the private, nonprofit shelters run by groups like the SPCA and Humane Society. Some also have done the job of animal control through city contracts. Lately, though, many are saying no to such duties, arguing that they should be saving, not killing, their charges.

Most Laud Goal

Just what is a no-kill shelter?

In Avanzino’s words, it has meant “saving all the adoptable animals since 1994.” At that time, the city and SPCA entered into a unique adoption pact to guarantee homes for all San Francisco cats and dogs that it describes as “healthy and of reasonably good temperament.”

“Most of the world will call that no-kill,” says Avanzino, who is an impressive spin doctor. “It is done nowhere else. . . . Our higher goal is to save all the treatable animals, the sick, injured and poorly behaved.”

Linda Foro, who publishes a national directory of no-kill organizations, says: San Francisco is “the closest to being a no-kill city of that size. Other cities are trying to emulate that goal.”

But while most laud the goal--saving animals’ lives--few agree on the label. No-kill opponents would rather refer to such shelters as “limited-access” and their traditional counterparts as “open-door” shelters.

This naming is more than splitting hairs. No-kill opponents argue that shelters like Avanzino’s do euthanize animals. They also turn away animals, relegating them to city animal control agencies where they most certainly will die--by someone else’s hand.

That someone else, they argue, gets bad press and fewer donations. Volunteers stay away, and prospective owners slink from shelters that admit to euthanasia. After all, if they adopt Rocky in the cage on the right, what’s going to happen to Sylvester on the left?

“There are hurt feelings throughout the nation,” says Madeline Bernstein, president of SPCA L.A., whose shelter is the biggest in the county and euthanizes when there is no other option. “We should not be turning the consumer against organizations that do this ‘disgusting function,’ this heartache, by also calling them killers.”

Hurt feelings aside, dissension in the animal welfare ranks is actually a good sign, some say. It means the overpopulation problem is improving.

Although statistics are hard to come by, a 1994 shelter survey by the Washington-based newspaper Animal People shows pet overpopulation dropping dramatically.

In 1987, 17.8 million dogs and cats were euthanized, says Animal People editor Merritt Clifton. By 1996, that number dropped to about 4.5 million.

“As the problem gets smaller, we’ve injected a lot more hope than we had 20 years ago,” says Kathy Savesky, executive director of the Peninsula Humane Society in San Mateo. “So the expectations are becoming greater that we can do more.”

The nation is a patchwork of animal control operations, with laws and agencies differing from city to city. But one thing generally holds true. The closer a community gets to solving its surplus pet problem, the fewer puppies arrive at shelters and “we end up with animals we can’t find homes for,” Savesky says. “We have no solution but to put them out on the street or euthanize them.”

Avanzino would disagree. He can afford to.

The San Francisco SPCA is a marvel of pet passion. With a $10.6-million annual budget, largely from donations, it has 81,000 members, 2,115 volunteers, 152 paid staff members and is in the middle of an expansion plan.

Its corridors are sweeter-smelling than those of any shelter for homeless humans. Its charges receive better health care than many of the city’s working poor.

The veterinary staff performs an average of 36 spay and neuter operations every morning, seven days a week. Female cats are spayed for free. Anyone who brings in a male cat for neutering gets $5.

The SPCA provides medical care for the animals of San Francisco’s homeless community, runs a vocational program for prospective groomers and has launched a behavior division to analyze and train cats and dogs.

Shelter directors from across the country and other nations visit the facility at quarterly “Mission Possible” clinics to learn how to emulate the organization’s successes.

In fiscal year 1996-97, the SPCA placed more than 4,640 cats and dogs in new homes. That’s up from 4,442 in 1993, the year before the agency signed the adoption pact with the city.

“Most of the animals we get are the old and uglies,” Avanzino says. “We haven’t had puppies in seven years. We have the equivalent of the juvenile who’s in trouble with the authorities, who’s 17 and looking for someone to give him another chance. . . . A few weeks ago, we adopted out Mousie, a cat who was 20 years old and missing teeth and coat.”

Buster is another good example. One year and 4 months old, the black Labrador mix has behavior problems. He’s a bit hyperactive, sweet but excitable.

A recent arrival from the city’s Department of Animal Care and Control, he has been receiving in-depth training. Good manners are just around the corner. So, hopes the SPCA, is a good home.

“Buster has a number of adoption incentives,” says Gene Takagi, director of the SPCA’s division of medical and behavior rehabilitation. “Free training is included. We’re putting in six months of free medical, one year free food, a dog bed, a leash and collar. We’ve thrown in the whole kit and kaboodle.” Those who admire Avanzino and his programs describe him in terms of unabashed wonderment. “He’s an icon,” says animal activist Foro.

Even those who slam Avanzino for pushing a philosophy they deem indefensible look at his accomplishments with awe. Avanzino is “a terrific Pied Piper of a man,” acknowledges Caras.

It helps that San Francisco is only 47 square miles and has a population of less than 800,000. It helps that the city has water on three sides, making it harder for animals from surrounding areas to wander in. It helps that the SPCA here has nearly triple the resources of, for example, SPCA L.A., while handling about one-third the strays.

It helps that Avanzino can turn animals away and that Carl Friedman, director of the municipal Department of Animal Care and Control, must take them in and possibly euthanize them.

But the adoption pact and a concerted spay and neuter effort have meant fewer animals are euthanized here by anyone, for any reason. In the 1995-96 fiscal year, the city euthanized 4,732 cats and dogs. A year later, that number is 4,167--a decrease of 12%. The number of animals euthanized by the SPCA in the same period dropped from 96 to 62.

Avanzino says many animals he finds homes for otherwise would be put to death because there is no room at the city shelter. Without the adoption pact, these animals would die.

But there is still a ways to go. So-called treatable animals--a gray area of ill health and bad behavior--continue to die in the city-run shelter, more than 1,200 in the latest fiscal year. Some are animals Avanzino has turned away.

Still, he and Friedman--a nonprofit agency and the city--cooperate better than most of their counterparts. Avanzino could not run his kind of shelter without Friedman to euthanize the animals in the gray zone.

“When the day comes in this town that the only animals we kill are so severely injured or sick that they can’t be saved, or so severely aggressive that their behavior can’t be modified, I’ll be one of the first to stand up and say we’ve solved the problem,” Friedman says. “We’re working to get there. We’re not there yet.”

A Pit Bull Problem

Pit bulls are one reason. Until about a year ago, the city killed all pit bulls that came to Friedman’s shelter as strays, whether through raids or brought by their owners.

Then came a litter of puppies. They had not been trained to attack or fight. They had not been mistreated. But they were still pit bulls. “I said, No more,” Friedman recounted.

For just over a year, stray pit bulls deemed by city and SPCA behaviorists as no threat to other animals or humans were sent to Avanzino’s shelter for training and placed in carefully screened homes.

Ever the marketer, Avanzino renames all pit bulls that make it through his training program “St. Francis Terriers.” The SPCA sells T-shirts emblazoned: “Our image is the pits. That’s no bull.”

But earlier this summer, the SPCA changed its policy. Six pit bulls that made it through the screening process tried to attack trainers or volunteers and were killed by the SPCA.

As of six weeks ago, Avanzino only takes in pit bulls whose history is known. That means strays--even well-behaved ones--die unless Friedman can find homes.

“If we adopted out a pit bull and it attacked and harmed a child, there would be huge retribution, against the agency and the breed,” Avanzino says. “It’s a judgment call.”

To Friedman, that calls into question both the SPCA’s guarantee to find a home for every adoptable animal and its promise to be a no-kill shelter. The two passionate men have worked through differences before and hope to get through this one also.

“We are killing healthy, adoptable animals, as of a month and a half, two months ago,” Friedman says. “I understand where he’s coming from, but I’m disappointed. I’ll have to kill more of those animals.”

But not Fred. The 8-month-old puppy was given up for adoption by his former owners--a strike in his favor. When screened, however, the behaviorist noted that “this dog is very mouthy”--a strike against him.

While mouthiness--the tendency for an animal to grab things in his jaws--is annoying in most dogs, it can be disastrous in pit bulls, which are renowned for a strong jaw and a tenacious hold.

That’s why Balabanov and Fred have been working together for three months. Fred jumps and Balabanov calms him. Fred gets mouthy, and Balabanov restrains him. The process will continue until Fred is adoptable.

He’s not there yet. But no one is hurrying him.