Good Homes Need Not Apply

Please read this all the way through. Nathan Winograd shows us how arbitrary and unfair some shelter adoption guidelines can be to the potential adopters and the animals.

Good Homes Need Not Apply

September 10, 2009 by Nathan J. Winograd

"I’ve devoted the last 17 years of my life trying to reform animal shelters in the United States (far longer doing rescue work). I’ve worked at two shelters in the country that have the highest rates of lifesaving in the nation: one as its Director of Operations and the other as the Executive Director. I’ve also worked and consulted with dozens of shelters nationwide. Currently, I run the national No Kill Advocacy Center, which is dedicated to ending the systematic killing of animals in shelters.

"I often face traditional sheltering dogma that is a roadblock to lifesaving innovation. Too many shelters operate under regressive assumptions without analyzing them to see if they are true. Too often, the dogmas are false, and so I offer a No Kill alternative, one oriented toward preserving life. If shelters reevaluated, rather than hid behind conventional wisdom, they would more effectively perform a shelter’s most fundamental job: saving lives.

"One of the most enduring of these traditional dogmas is that animal shelters must kill because the public can’t be trusted with animals..." read more