Yes, ANIMALS 24-7 is an essential service to the humane community!

(Beth Clifton collage)

You saw why just yesterday

Two ANIMALS 24-7 headline articles posted just yesterday, We need to open up spay/neuter – now!, by Bryan Kortis, and Pit bull attack deaths only slightly slowed by COVID-19 stay-home orders, underscore why ANIMALS 24-7 remains on the job, as active as ever, through weeks of global shutdowns of all but the most essential businesses and public services.

ANIMALS 24-7 is, at least unofficially, an essential service to the humane community, both in the U.S. and around the world.

This not only for our role as an independent source of news and perspective.

Occasional ANIMALS 24-7 guest columnist Jeff Young, DVM. (Facebook photo)

We amplify otherwise unheard voices

Even more, ANIMALS 24-7 is an essential service to the humane community because we amplify the otherwise unheard voices of conscientious, caring critics of the all too often misguided and self-serving choices and tactics of alleged humane leadership.

Some of these leaders, despite “leading” the humane cause blindly in the wrong direction time and again, nonetheless take home more money per year than the total annual budget of your local humane society, and remain quite unabashed about asking for even more money through pop-up ads that obstruct just about every online search for anything pertaining to dogs, cats, or the words “humane” and “SPCA.”

(See Why did the ASPCA pres get $852,231, while we got $9.70 an hour?)

Bryan Kortis & friend.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Comforting the afflicted & afflicting the comfortable

Bryan Kortis was only the latest of at least half a dozen of the most dedicated long-time providers of spay/neuter and neuter/return services in the U.S. to join ANIMALS 24-7 in denouncing and exposing the probable consequences of the advice of the American SPCA that animal shelters should sidestep or seek suspension of requirements that dogs and cats be spayed or neutered before adoption.

This short-sighted and downright dimwitted advice was soon echoed by other national organizations whose executives should know better. If every U.S. humane organization followed the ASPCA lead, and fortunately many are not following it, about four million additional puppy and kitten litters would result nationwide during the next six months.

That would be about 16 million extra puppies and kittens: enough extra puppy and kitten births to set the long struggle against pet overpopulation back 35 years.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Holding the bad advice-givers accountable

Kortis will scarcely be the last to raise his or her voice in objection. Already many others have written to add their words of concern to his.

Unfortunately, many of the frustrated shelter and rescue workers and neuter/return providers who will complain about the consequences of not sterilizing adopted animals do not read ANIMALS 24-7 (yet, anyhow) and therefore may never realize what has happened when the extra puppies and kittens arrive, or who gave the advice to not spay and neuter, or do anything to hold the bad advice-givers accountable.

The ASPCA will continue to raise astronomical sums from gullible donors, based mainly on their 154-year-old name. The ASPCA president will continue to be paid for his success at fundraising. The ANIMALS 24-7 staff will continue to make minimum wage, when we get paid at all.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Challenging the party lines

ANIMALS 24-7 does have many rivals for the attention of people who care about animals: several dozen online periodicals total, mostly backed by multi-million-dollar foundations, from the aptly named Dodo to the daily fundraising appeal from a national organization that we call “Hairball’s blog.”

Among all several dozen of them, though, not one of the others often (or ever) challenges the party lines (and sometimes lies) of the biggest organizations, sharing the insights and perspectives of people who have literally spent their lives helping animals, and know from first-hand experience when what those biggest organizations prescribe is just plain wrong.

Pit bull attack deaths only slightly slowed by COVID-19 stay-home orders was only our most recent of many exposés documenting, case by case, why the dogmatic cant that “It’s all in how you raise them” is dead wrong. (See The Pit Stop Archive.)

(Beth Clifton collage)

Misguided “leadership” multiplies animal suffering

For more than 20 years now, instead of pursuing breed-specific spay/neuter legislation that would protect the public, pets and other animals, and pit bulls themselves from frequent gruesome injury and death, the ASPCA, Humane Society of the U.S., Best Friends Animal Society, and Maddie’s Fund have poured millions of dollars per year into trying to promote the adoption of all the pit bulls now overcrowding practically every animal shelter, not only in the U.S. but abroad.

The net result: U.S. shelters are still euthanizing as many pit bulls as 20 years ago, but there are now more pit bulls in shelters and rescues than in homes. More pit bulls rehomed from shelters and rescues are killing people each year now than the average number of fatal attacks per year by all dogs combined back then.

Pit bulls are also now killing more animals per year than all dogs combined did then.

Yet only ANIMALS 24-7 dares to point out to the humane community that the pit bull-pushing policies of the ASPCA, Humane Society of the U.S., Best Friends Animal Society, and Maddie’s Fund have abysmally failed, multiplying rather than reducing animal suffering.

Merritt, Teddy, & Beth Clifton

ANIMALS 24-7 needs your generous help!

ANIMALS 24-7 takes a lot of flak for our independent positions. We don’t take in a lot of money. Now that precautions taken again COVID-19 have slowed the U.S. economy to a near-standstill, we are receiving even less.

ANIMALS 24-7 depends, as ever, on your donations, as compassionate, conscientious, thinking people who care about animals. We survive, much like a street dog or a feral cat, on what you can spare for us: $10, $25, $50, $100, $500, $1,000 or (dare we dream?) even more.

With your generous help, ANIMALS 24-7 will continue to provide our essential service, through the COVID-19 crisis and whatever further crises misguided “leadership” can manufacture.