Yesterday I stared into a yawning heart of darkness. I met a man who may very well have started out very much like any of us. A man of talent and vision, man who I, maybe any of us, could become in the right circumstances, with the right motivations. A man whose goals may be truly pure in his eyes and whose tactics, while loathsome and repugnant to me, are undeniably effective. Yesterday I met my Kurtz.

I don’t bear ill will toward him for his threat. Like Coppola’s Kurtz locking Willard in a bamboo cage to provide him with the proper perspective and time to truly appreciate the wonder of his jungle kingdom, I view his threat as a gift shared with me. He selected me for this gift. I must admit when it arrived, I felt a surge of giddiness, like the prom queen had said something to me. Granted, it’s like the prom queen said, “Get out of my way, loser,” but she said it to me.

I may seem almost enamored with my Kurtz. In fact, I am. I’ve always looked toward those who are effective, even those I find personally, professionally, and politically despicable. I want to know how they have managed to succeed, how they have managed to convince so many, how they became what they are.

It’s that last one that I really study because so many of these figures did not knowingly start out down a path to what they became. Many were talented, earnest and true, but along the way those attributes were bent to something different. I have seen how easily it happens. I have seen how it happens with the best intentions. I see how it could just as easily happen to me. Each time I travel upriver into a kingdom like Kurtz’s I wonder if I will prevail or if I will be one of the heads on a pike. Or worse, will I experience that diamond shot in the head that shows me the genius behind the seeming insanity I confront and join it?

So I truly accept this threat as a gift because it made me look at myself. I know my Kurtz has seen the piles of little arms that are the result of the floundering attempts resulting from my sides desire to nanny our way through this war. I judged him. He reminded me that I have no right to judge him and he reinforced it with a strength I couldn’t hope to match. His is a clarity and purity which my grey views and equivocations cannot stand against. It is not that I do not wish to stand against it but it is that I do not have the strength to stand against it.

Kurtz has seen what needs to be done to win his war and he will do what needs to be done. I will not. So I hacked off those inoculated arms which so offended as a sign to Kurtz that I know my place, and his. I bear myself to have the pound of flesh exacted. It is a small price to avoid the pike.  My soul may wish to be an outlaw, but my body cannot be one.

In this case of David and Goliath I choose not end up like the losing end of the case of John the Baptist and Salomé. Although I may demur, I do accede. Alas, I am not Coppola’s Willard after all. I am Coppola’s Lance.

But if I am not Coppola’s Willard, perhaps he is not Coppola’s Kurtz. That Kurtz faced a broken clock and attempted to restore the order of time in its absence. Where he could not do that he smashed the clock to banish its hold on him altogether, creating a pure disorder. But my Kurtz seems to recognize that this broken clock is still right twice a day. Rather than ask us all to agree on those two righteous, reoccurring minutes, he demands that we all agree that every minute of every day is that one frozen minute of that broken clock.

Kurtz would not do that. That is not purity, nor is it even insanity. It is calculation and domination. These are the tools of clerks and debt collectors. These are not the tools of great men. No, he is not my Kurtz, he is something else. He is the Ticktockman, he is my Ticktockman.

That may seem cold comfort since a Kurtz is a man who can be battled and bested. But if you lose to a man, you have truly lost as an individual. The Ticktockman stands for a system, he a cog. When you lose to the Ticktockman you have been ground beneath the feet of something huge and there is no shame in that loss. And when you fight something huge, the crack in the smallest cog can bring the entire works of the system to a halt. And while I have lost to the cog, a system remains. It will be there later, despite it and the Ticktockman’s domination today.

So, yes, Ticktockman, look at me. I’m a little dancing funny man. I say foolish, attention grabbing things that no one could possibly take seriously. Do not be angry at me, I am a mere jester. I desire only to amuse, I weep when I offend; do not whip me for I am your little squeaky toy. Your eighty-six have been eighty-sixed. From my soundproof room, your Harlequin repents, Ticktockman. It is good to be on time.

But watch out, Ticktockman, you are running three minutes late. Mrmee, mrmee, mrmee, mrmee.

OK, maybe you don’t. But you could.

That’s because none of these things are exactly- or at all- illegal in Pennsylvania. I’ll give you a minute to pick your jaw up off the floor. You read me right. It is legal to eat dogs and cats in Pennsylvania. It is legal to truck in pigeons from other states which ban pigeon trap shoots and shoot them here by the thousands. It might as well be legal to dump an alligator in the local reservoir since the law prohibiting the release of exotics is weak to the point of being meaningless. And while we recently won a ban on simulcasting of greyhound racing, races illegal in Pennsylvania, the violation falls under gaming regulations, not animal cruelty.

And these things may stay just as they are unless you contact your Representative and Senator right now- or as soon as you’re done reading this- and demand that they support the Maher Amendment to Senate Bill 71. Representative John Maher is seeking to put right the clear wrong with a single amendment and he and the animals of Pennsylvania need your help to succeed.

One would hope and wish that these straight forward, common sense changes in our state law, changes which would put us in line with most or all other states, would pass easily. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. We have to make our voices heard loud and clear before we’ll be able to saddle up.

Eating pets in the U.S. may be rare, but it's not unheard of.

Who could possibly oppose this amendment? For three portions I can’t even imagine. There’s no McDogle’s lobby demanding to serve up a Quarter Pounder McFluffy for the lunch rush. There can’t be much opposition to strengthening the milktoast rules that prohibit releasing tigers into our state forests. And since a greyhound simulcasting ban has already been passed, who would oppose moving the restriction to the most appropriate portion of the law, the animal cruelty statute?

Of course, live pigeon shoots have always had a champion in our lobbyist friends at the NRA headquartered in the Washington, DC, suburbs. They have been blocking the overwhelming support of the Pennsylvania electorate for a ban on the blood “sport” of pigeon trap shoots for years. But the shine is starting to fade from their apple as people increasingly realize that joining the rest of America in treating pigeon shoots like the animal cruelty they are is not an attack on our Second Amendment rights. Saying so is like saying that a drunk driving law is an attack on the automobile industry. They can say it all they want but it doesn’t make it true.

We need to make our voices heard and tell our elected officials that they answer to us, the people of Pennsylvania, and not to outside lobbyists.

We need to tell them we don’t want an environmental catastrophe such as other states have faced from exotic animals being released into the wild. We want releasing exotic animals into the wild made explicitly illegal.

We need to tell them that our cats and dogs already face enough challenges from over population and homelessness and we don’t want them to face the butchering block, too. We want the sale and breeding for and consumption of cats and dogs by humans made explicitly illegal.

We need to tell them that the cruel farce of pigeon trap shoots is one “tradition” in Pennsylvania which can go the way of other traditions like slavery and children working in coal mines. We want them to make pigeon trap shoots explicitly illegal.

And we need to tell them we think greyhound cruelty needs to be enforced under the animal cruelty statute, not under the statute that makes sure BINGO games aren’t rigged.

Fortunately, this week our Pennsylvania House of Representatives can do all these things with a single vote. They can vote for the Maher Amendment to SB 71.

This is not a partisan issue. There are Republicans and Democrats who support the Maher Amendment. It is an issue of whether our elected officials will answer to us or answer to people and corporations which want to damage our environment, damage our communities, and profit of the needless death and torture of domestic animals. There are no two ways about it: A vote against the Maher Amendment is a vote for animal cruelty.

Please take just five minutes right now to call and email your Representative and Senator. Then take two minutes more to email all your friends and ask them to do the same. When those in Harrisburg ask themselves, “Who cares?” about the Maher Amendment, they need to know you care. And while you may not have millions in the bank like some special interest groups, you have a long memory. And you vote.

And if they won’t vote for the Maher Amendment, maybe they can take a suggestion for a new political fundraiser for their lobbyist friends. They can get together to grill up some puppy burgers, shoot a few thousand pigeons, and release a few baboons and Komodo dragons into their neighbor’s yard for a laugh.

After all, it may be wrong, but it’s all pretty much legal.

Click here to find you Representative and Senator by address and ask them to support the Maher Amendment.

Have an extra minute to spare? Email or call Representative Maher and thank him for his leadership on these issues!

Are you a partisan voter? Then contact the leadership of your Party and demand they support candidates who support strong animal welfare laws. Click here for the Democratic State Committee and click here for the Republican State Committee.

Following the receipt of a request of a retraction and threatened legal action which our small, local charity would be unable to sustain, two sentences have been retracted from this blog.  We are in good company. Click here to see a similar demand sent to a Pulitzer Prize wnning author for merely reprinting what someone else said.  Click here for a summary of defamation defenses.

If you found out someone who attacked the credibility of research on the impact of mercury in the food supply was funded by the food processing industry, what would you think of their claims?

If you found out someone who attacked legislative efforts to curb underage drinking was funded by the alcohol industry, what would you think of their claims?

Now, what if you found out that the group attacking one of the largest and oldest animal welfare organizations in the world, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), often employing front groups and faux non-profits, was funded by a consortium of meat producers and food processors? What would you think of their claims then?

That is exactly what Rick Berman and his Center for Consumer Freedom are doing. This so-called non-profit group specializes in saving us from the tyranny and dastardly deeds of such groups as the HSUS- and the Centers for Disease Control, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine.

They do it with funding provided by such corporate good citizens as Philip Morris Tobacco (their “charity’s” founding donor), Cargill Processed Meats, and Monsanto. They do it by attacking the credibility of scientific studies, personally attacking those representing opposing views, and by turning the opposition against one another.

It is the last one which CCF is attempting to do right now. CCF is trying to turn local animal shelters against the HSUS. They are trying to pit one group of animal advocates against another group and are hoping that no one will notice who is paying them to do it.

But the saying that we are judged by the company we keep holds true and CCF should be judged guilty.

This sentence has been retracted at the request of Rick Berman.

They have every right to do so, just as we have every right to fight for any agenda we wish to promote.  This sentence has been retracted at the request of Rick Berman. We have the right to disagree. But it is the underhanded and surreptitious way they go about doing it, and the hidden money behind the efforts, which should be called into question with the CCF.

In their attack against HSUS, they play on the long standing- and very real- confusion many people have about HSUS’ relationship with local animal shelters. Primarily that there is one when there isn’t. I work at a private non-profit humane society so I regularly find myself explaining to people that we don’t get money from HSUS. But people are confused about a lot of things. I also regularly deal with people who tell me their Golden Retriever is a Yellow Lab. I don’t blame their confusion on the dog.

But CCF’s claim that I’d be getting all my animals adopted if I just got my share of the money raised by HSUS is plain stupid and plays on the ignorance of the public and even those in animal welfare. Even if the HSUS’s, let’s say, one hundred million dollars a year, was given locally as opposed to support their national efforts, that wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans. In fact, assuming a low ball number of just 5,000 animal shelters in the US, that comes out to a whopping $20,000 per shelter. Wow, stop the presses- that’ll really make a dent.

But the CCF knows this. This know that by making big scary claims and using big numbers they can make people think, even animal people, that HSUS is the problem and keep HSUS on their heels. That is the real reason behind it. When they create sweet little pro-shelter animal websites, using testimonials by HSUS ex-employees (beware testimonials by ex-employees- what did you think of your last boss?), they aren’t doing it to help the animals, they are doing it to muddy the waters.

They know what I know. No single animal shelter can really make much of a difference nationwide. But one huge organization like HSUS, which can improve legislation across the nation, can help make animal shelters more effective, and can respond in meaningful ways to natural disasters, can make a difference and that difference isn’t always in the best interests of the food processors and their stock holders. That’s why CCF attacks HSUS.

We- animal welfare organizations, animal advocates, little organizations and big, and anyone who cares about animals- have more in common with each other that we will ever have with CCF and the corporate funders they shill for. We may fight like siblings at times but we are fundamentally the same family. We can’t let some interloper come in and tell us we should hate one another. We can work out our differences on our own, thank you very much, CCF.

And speaking of who represents and misrepresents whom, who does support CCF and who does CCF support? Reportedly, and it’s only reportedly because their “donors” choose to remain largely anonymous, they have 100 corporate supporters and “thousands” of individual supporters. Of course, our little Berks Humane has nearly 10,000 supporters annually. HSUS has millions of supporters annually. Who really represents the will and beliefs of the American people, I wonder?

Who do they fund? Their 2009 IRS 990 tax return shows that they gave a six million dollar grant (of their eight million dollar income) to the Employment Policies Institute, a group which fights to oppose increases in the minimum wage. Again, whose freedom is that protecting? Another $1.5 million went to their director Rick Berman’s private consulting company for “management services”.

CCF has every right to promote their regressive, anti-worker, anti-animal, anti-science, pro-big business agenda all they like. But we have the right to ignore them or fight against them and we should.

I may not agree with HSUS or many others of my colleagues in animal welfare from time to time, or even most of the time in some cases. But if I had to pick a side, I know what side I’m picking.

We know what side the Center for Consumer Freedom has picked and it’s not our side or the animal’s at all, no matter what misleading, mudslinging claims they make. I would say that when the CCF chose to lie down with dogs we shouldn’t be surprised that they got fleas. Only that’s an insult to dogs. And to fleas.

Or a bear?  Or a chimp?

I know we are not supposed to bracket our freedoms in the United States based on proving our need or right to do something.  I have a big enough libertarian streak in me that I have always chaffed at being told what any of us can do with our own time, money and property, especially in our own homes, by the government or the majority.

It seems like this unwillingness to limit the owning exotics has fallen collectively into this area since lots of people apparently own menageries which rival small zoos.  But given the streak of cases involving killings and maimings by and of privately owned exotic animals, it is time for us to revisit this issue.

For years this argument has been framed in several ways, such as environmental impact and the general appropriateness or “rightness” of keeping exotics.  Environmental arguments have tended to carry some weight, especially in warmer regions because there are very real examples of damage done to native wildlife by escaped pythons, monitors, even snakeheads and lionfish. 

In these cases, the balance between the individual right to own them and the damage to our collective world tips in favor of the collective.  In the northern U.S. there has been less of a concern because of the extreme effectiveness of one factor: winter.  For the most part any snake, lizard, alligator or fish which escapes is ensured one final hurrah before freezing to death.

The more animal rightsy argument of “these animals just shouldn’t be subjected to captivity” has never held much sway politically.  The reality is people like zoos, as sad and creepy as they can be, and private ownership of these animals is arguably just a matter of degrees.  Lawmakers have also generally questioned how being kept in a cage for entertainment is worse than being kept in a cage for production and slaughter, a reality which impacts millions of times more animals in our culture.

The one argument which has been effective, since it can be so nebulously applied- just ask a peaceful student protestor right now- is that of “public safety”.  Based on public safety concerns, the average person in many places can’t own poisonous snakes, primates, gators, and a variety of other dangerous exotics.  But how do you go from being the “average person” to being authorized to own a tiger or a baboon?

It’s as easy as living in the right state or filling out the right form in the right state.  Some states, such as Alabama (I know, shocking, right?) have no restrictions at all.  You want a tiger?  Save up $13,400, go online- no, I am not kidding- to buytigers.com, and be the coolest redneck in the trailer park.  Or maybe you live in a really tiny state like Delaware, where you can fill out a permit application and compensate for your small “state” by driving your new chimp around in your new red Corvette (in case you are compensating for something else being small, too).  Proudly, he writes facetiously, Pennsylvania is also a “permit state”.

Unfortunately, even the “public safety” concern has been treated almost like a de facto Second Amendment issue.  If I want to keep a tiger at home for personal protection, that’s my right.  Besides, statistically I know it’s far more likely to kill me or my kid in my own home as opposed to an intruder, right?  Big government, don’t tread on me- or my lion!

But with the recent tragedy in Ohio, where dozens of large exotics were released by a suicidal owner and were killed to genuinely protect the public safety, the time has come to once again ask if libertarian leanings are enough to allow the continuation of ownership of exotics which place the caretakers, the public and even the animals at risk.

And the recent Ohio incident was not an isolated example.  In 2010, another Ohio man’s bear killed a man at a home menagerie (where he also kept a tiger).  The bear was later euthanized.  In Connecticut, a woman’s pet chimpanzee ripped the face off another woman before being shot by police.  Interestingly, that chimp’s mother was also shot after a rampage.  In the past ten years at least seven people have been killed and nearly twenty reported injured by privately owned exotics, exotics kept by accredited zoos, and kept by quasi-zoos.  The victims ranged from children to adults, members of the public to highly trained professional handlers and zoo keepers. 

Even Roy, of Siegfried and Roy, was not so expert that he was immune from being mauled.  In many of these cases the animal was subsequently killed.  If accredited zoos and handlers with decades of experience can’t keep these animals from killing professionals and the public, it is fair to assume that Joe-Bob Tiger Owner will probably have a wee bit of trouble, too.  

Sure, some may correctly point out that dogs kill far more people every year.  But dogs are domesticated animals, not wildlife, and as a percentage of the total population (there are, after all, scores of millions of dogs in the U.S.), exotics pose a greater threat.  And when a dog attacks, it is acting outside of the animal’s “nature”.  When a bear or tiger attacks, it’s doing what bears and tigers do.

And as an observational aside, all these people with large exotic animal keeping fetishes just seem a little (or a lot) creepy and weird.  No offense.

It is time to ban the private ownership of exotic or wild felines, primates, wolves, and their ilk.  Keeping these animals is dangerous.  It’s dangerous for us and it’s dangerous for them.  It’s also a sad and pathetic existence for very magnificent animals. 

While we may defend our right to do and own just about anything, I’ll ask again.  Does anyone really need to own a tiger?  The answer is quite simply, no.

They’re at it again… those same legislators who constantly support and campaign for those who breed dogs for profit in commercial kennels across Pennsylvania!   This time it comes by way of House Resolution 89 – a proposal to study the new Dog Law at tax payers’ expense.

For the last five years companion animal advocates across the state have worked hard – very hard – to ensure that dogs trapped in puppy mills have basic protections… things like water and food, vet care, exercise and a clean living environment.   These are the fundamental components of Act 119 of 2008 – the new Dog Law.

If you knew there was a possibility for the breeders to undo what the new Dog Law did would you take the time to pick up the phone and call your state representative?  We’re hoping you answered “YES!”

According to Act 119 of 2008 all commercial kennels in Pennsylvania are currently to have meters installed in their kennels that monitor temperature, humidity and ammonia levels. 

By way of information recently obtained via the state’s right-to-know act, these meters are not in place in a majority of the commercial kennels yet violations for their absence is not being recorded as an infraction on the state kennel inspection reports.

We may only speculate as to why this is happening however, we firmly believe that the newest attempt to thwart the required kennel improvements – let’s call it the Breeder’s Plan B – comes via House Resolution 89. 

The concept behind HR89 is to indebt the state monetarily for the purpose of conducting a study to show that the new Dog Law has been ineffective.

This study is ridiculous on two fronts:

If, however, HR89 passes and the study is performed, we believe it will enable the breeders the ability to reopen the Dog Law and scale back the majority of provisions currently protecting the dogs in the “C” class (or commercial) kennels.

We believe that the Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement is currently permitting commercial kennels to operate without the required meters because they are confident that HR89 will pass and make the installation of the meters unnecessary. 

Because calls to the Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement go unanswered, because the new regulations are NOT being enforced, because the majority of commercial kennels do NOT have the meters installed, because the Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement has met repeatedly with representatives for the breeders – but not canine advocates, because dogs in Pennsylvania’s commercial kennels are still suffering and because House Resolution 89 GOES TO THE HOUSE FLOOR FOR A VOTE ON MONDAY…

PLEASE PICK UP THE PHONE AND CALL YOUR STATE REPRESENTATIVE IMMEDIATELY AND ASK THEM TO VOTE “NO” ON HR89.

Let your state representative know that the study proposed by HR89 is meaningless since the new Dog Law has NEVER been fully implemented; let them know that because the new Dog law has NEVER been fully enforced that the study will be a waste of YOUR tax dollars; and let them know that because the majority of Pennsylvania constituents believe dogs in commercial kennels SHOULD BE protected that they must vote “NO” on House Resolution 89.

To read the history of HB89 click HERE   

Don’t know who your state representative is?  Click HERE and enter your zip code in the upper right hand corner.

Winter is upon us.  Without the new Dog Law the regulations that mandate temperature controls could fall by the wayside.  BE THEIR VOICE & PLEASE DON’T DELAY – MAKE THE CALL TODAY!

By: Jenny Stephens, North Penn Puppy Mill Watch

 I don’t think anyone’s going to be making little blue and white rubber bracelets with “WWJPD?” any time soon.  We know what Joe would do.  The absolute minimum required of him.

Paterno received an eyewitness account of a young boy being raped by his personal friend and former employee in the Penn State showers.  Yes, let’s use that word, not one of the euphemisms being thrown around in the news.  A child was witnessed being raped.  Paterno’s response?  Report it to the Penn State athletic director.  The Athletic Director who, by the way, effectively answers to Paterno as the God of the rain making football program for PSU.  That was nine years ago. 

Since then Joe has walked the halls with a child rapist and never said another word.  At least until the scandal broke.  Now he asks us to pray for the victims.  Would those be the victims who were raped before nine years ago or all the ones which occurred since?  Even if the mandated reporter rules don’t apply to him as they would any other educator in Pennsylvania, shouldn’t his humanity have required more of him?

Humanity is the quality of being humane; kindness; benevolence.  Humanity is what makes even those who don’t think animals have inherent rights to believe that human beings have an obligation to treat them humanely.  Paterno showed neither kindness, nor benevolence to that boy, let alone humanity, when he “did what was required of him”.

If you are a Lions supporter out there who feels the perhaps understandable knee-jerk reaction to defend an icon of PSU, take just a moment to recast this situation in a different light.  If he had been a school principal, would his response have been enough?  If it was your child, and he was anyone else, would it have been enough?  What if it had been a dog?

What if nine years ago Andy Reed had received an eyewitness report of one of his coaches fighting dogs, or raping one, and his response had been to tell the General Manager and then never mention it again?  Animal people would be calling for his head.  What if someone at the kennel your dog stayed in while you are on vacation saw your dog being molested, told their boss, and never told you, let alone the police?  Would you think they had done “enough”?  Of course you wouldn’t.

Every day animals are abused, people know about it, but don’t report it because they aren’t “required” to do so.  If we don’t expect people to take action when a child is raped, why should we expect anyone to do the same for a mere dog?

PSU needs to show that violence against anyone is not tolerated in their school and no one, no matter how iconic, revered, or wealthy, is immune.  Joe Paterno and every administrator who was aware of this rape must be fired immediately.

Nittany fans like to ask if God isn’t a PSU fan, why is the sky blue and white?  If the next time it rains Paterno still has a job, it will be God weeping.

 A Gas Chamber Euthanasia Ban, that is.  

You may know that some animal shelters and animal control facilities use gas chambers to kill animals.  The recent case of the beagle named Daniel who walked out of a gas chamber leaving behind eighteen of his asphyxiated doggie pals highlighted the use- and misuse- of these death chambers.  But that was in Alabama, not Pennsylvania, right? 

Unfortunately, Pennsylvania permits the use of carbon monoxide euthanasia chambers, too.  There are supposedly several in operation today but since there are no reporting requirements, no one knows how many might be pumping away as you read.  

These chambers are cruel.  They suffocate animals which are wide awake.  Imagine drowning in air.  They are dangerous for the operators.  There has been at least one human death and multiple injuries as a result of gas chamber malfunctions.  Daniel the survivor shows that it’s also not entirely reliable. 

Even the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), which seems to insist that the vets it represents have open access to any ol’ means of killin’ animals they so desire, has stated that lethal injection is the most “rapid”, “reliable” and “desirable” means of euthanasia and is the “preferred method of euthanasia for dogs, cats, other small animals and horses.” 

It is time to put an end to the use of these gas chambers.  It is time for the legislature in Harrisburg to act and pass Senate Bill 1329, which is known as Daniel’s Law.  

SB 1329 is a good, if not perfect, bill, which has the approval of virtually every special interest group it impacts (barring one perhaps).  First, it prohibits gas chambers and inhalant euthanasia.  Second, it provides for special licensing of animal control and animal shelters, along with training requirements, in order to allow them to obtain and use the preferred humane industry standard euthanasia technique: lethal injection with sodium pentobarbital or a derivative.  Third, it puts reasonable control of the licensing in place.  It’s that simple. 

Who would oppose such a simple bill which would bring Pennsylvania into the 21^st century?  To be honest, for years it was the sheltering community because previous proposed bans did not provide for direct licensing for euthanasia drugs.  This would have forced rural shelters to close their doors entirely.  Remember, not all animal shelters are as fortunate as HSBC to have great veterinarians on staff and some can’t even get a local veterinarian to allow them to use his or her DEA license to order drugs, which is what most do across Pennsylvania.  However, SB 1329 fixes that by allowing shelters be directly licensed. 

There are little things here and there which even I have a problem with.  For example, the approval of training programs for euthanasia technicians to be licensed under SB 1329 fall to three out of State groups (NACA, AHA, and HSUS).  While these are all organizations which have good positions on this issue and have offered excellent euthanasia by injection training programs for decades, I’d like to see a reputable in-State authorizing body added to that list such as the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical School or Federated Humane Societies of Pennsylvania (which currently has statutory approval of humane law officer training).  But if that’s the way it needs to pass, I’ll take the imperfect and no gas chambers over the perfect not being passed into law. 

Speaking of objections, a rumor has been circulating that the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Association, the professional veterinary affiliation group, opposes the strict ban on gas chambers provided by SB 1329.  Well, not entirely strict since SB 1329 already includes exemptions for medical schools, veterinary schools, research institutions, and “normal agricultural practices”.  I truly hope that these objections are not accurate reports because it would mean the PVMA is trying to make sure your family veterinarian has the option to offer you gas chamber services if she wants to.  Do you really think she wants to?  Why don’t you ask your vet the next time you visit what he or she thinks about the PVMA standing up for the “right” to gas pets in vet practices? 

But sometimes reality doesn’t allow the perfect (or perfectly humane) when the good is an option.  If the PVMA really feels so strongly that their professional membership need to have gas chamber euthanasia as an option in their back pocket, they should just say so and I’ll gladly support them in their call for that exemption, since I know HSBC vets won’t ever avail themselves of that “right”.  But I hope PVMA, if it is really opposing this ban, will show a little compassion and a little common sense about how tone deaf that would be and allow it to move forward as is. 

We have a chance to get SB 1329 passed and signed into law.  But you need to make it happen by contacting your State Representative and Senator right now.  Ask them to both support and co-sponsor SB 1329 and to ask their party leadership to bring the SB 1329 up for a vote swiftly.  Tell them that you don’t want Pennsylvania to be one of the states which allows antiquated and inhumane euthanasia practices like gas chambers any more. 

Today is Election Day in an off year election so you don’t get to vote for Senators or Representatives, but next year you will.  Remind your Senator and Representative that you will remember how they vote on SB 1329 this legislative session when you go to the polls and decide who you will vote for in 2012. 

Find your legislator by County, ZIP code or address by clicking here. 

Get more information about SB 1329, Daniel’s Law, at prime sponsor, Senator Andrew Dinniman’s website by clicking here. 

Contact Senator Dinniman and thank him for his leadership on this issue by clicking here.

Just kidding, I wanted to get your attention.  As a 501c3 non-profit corporation, Humane Society of Berks County is prohibited by law from making candidate endorsements.  We can lobby for legislation.  We can push for policy changes.  But we cannot say, “Vote for X!” or “Oppose Y!”  

We actually like it that way.  That’s because as soon as you stand beside one candidate, no matter how awesome that specific candidate is on our specific animal welfare issues, you alienate half the world.  The half in the party voting for the other candidate.  To be clear on endorsements: We can’t, we don’t, we won’t and we don’t want to.  So if you get something in the mail endorsing a candidate that seems like it’s from us, it isn’t from us. 

Every election cycle I get a couple irate calls and emails from people who get an endorsement mailer from an organization with a name similar to ours and they think we have endorsed a candidate.  I only get the calls when they don’t like the endorsement.  I always have to remind the caller of our 501c3 prohibition against endorsement.  I remind the caller that there are literally thousands of organizations with Humane Society in the name, that none are related to us in any way, and that some are State and Federal Political Action Committees (PACs) which are permitted to endorse specific candidates.  But they don’t represent us. 

Still suspicious, as so many tend to be in this era of poisonous and underhanded politics, I usually end up having to track down the origin of the endorsement mailer to confirm that it was someone else and that they weren’t using our name (since the mailer has inevitably long since been pitched).  That usually calms the person down and HSBC gets our friend back now that they realize we aren’t endorsing that dirty, stinking [insert name of your personally despised candidate here]. 

These mailers are going out and more will.  Again, if you get one, not us. 

Here is what we do promote:  If animals and animal welfare is important to you, whether you are Republican, Democrat, Green, Tea, Constitution, Socialist— actual socialist, not just a Democrat.  I’ll leave that joke be your personal Rorschach test, wink, wink — it is up to you to hold your political party responsible for the candidates it selects for general elections.  I’m not saying animal welfare needs to the single issue on which you decide your vote.  For most people it’s not since most people tend to vote along party lines. 

But your job as a partisan voter who cares about animal welfare is to make sure that you don’t have the nagging feeling that the candidate running against your candidate is better on animal welfare issues.  I know I’ve had that feeling all too often. 

The reality is that most elections are decided in the party primaries.  That is where you as a voter concerned about animal welfare have your chance to define who your candidate will be.  You need to let your party know that while you may be a sure vote for their candidate in the general election, in the primary you will select the candidate you think is best on animal welfare issues.  If enough people did this we would get to the point where all candidates for elected office all equally support good animal welfare policy.  Then we can vote for whoever we want to and know that on at least one issue, animal welfare, we can count on getting what we want.  Then we can leave the candidates to get back to accusing each other of wanting to destroy America without interruption (please pass the popcorn). 

Your job as an animal welfare voter is to make animal welfare a new third rail of politics, one which candidates in your primary scurry away from being on the wrong side of.  You need to make them feel that having bad positions on animal welfare, or ignoring or dismissing the issues, would be like coming out against God, babies, apple pie and the U.S. of A. Believe me, there are plenty of candidates who are agnostics, find babies disgusting, are allergic to apples, and are maybe even a Manchurian candidate — Rorschach again, wink, wink again — but none of them are stupid enough to admit it.  At least not if they want to win a primary or general election. 

If animal welfare is a single issue vote for you, you probably don’t mind those mailers.  Either way, there are resources out there which will rank and score the candidates for just about every office on just about every issue.  Just Google “animal welfare + candidate + endorsements” is you want to know where candidates stand on these issues.  You’ll get plenty. 

And you’ll be able to ask your candidate why that dirty, stinking [insert name here] got a higher animal welfare rating than he or she did.  And then ask them if they hate babies, grandmothers and veterans along with puppies.  You’ll have fun watching their eyeballs spin around in their heads. 

Oh, and one final thing.  Candidate endorsement mailing?  Not us.

It’s getting to be the time of year again when we begin all the year-end stuff non-profits organizations have to do these days.  Service, program and strategic plan reviews.  Audits, budgets, and annual reports.  As much as these things can seem like a distraction from our “real work”, the fact is it’s all of these activities that give us the guidance to move forward, the discipline to keep our plans, and the awareness of opportunities which might come our way.

They are also great reminders of just how many wonderful people and organizations we have had the honor to work and partner with in the past year.  Although we’ll have them all listed in our annual report early next year (fingers crossed we can manage our online version so we can save the cost of printing on dead trees), the list will be split up among the pages describing various and sundry programs and services.  So, I thought I’d list them all at once, or at least all the ones we’ve compiled in the last few weeks.  We’ve undoubtedly missed a few, with apologies.  Below are a good chunk of the non-profits and charitable organizations we’ve been lucky enough to work with in the last year or so. 

Emergency Response Partners: HSBC assists with national, state and local emergency response organizations in event of emergencies and disasters.

• ASPCA Disaster Response Team and Joplin Humane Society- Following the Joplin, Missouri, tornado devastation Scott Yoder, HSBC volunteer and former board member, assisted in directing the emergency animal sheltering effort.
• Berks County Animals Response Team (BCART), Berks County Red Cross, Berks County EMA, Chester County EMA- As lead agency of BCART, HSBC staff and volunteers established emergency shelters in both Berks and Chester Counties during this year’s historic flooding. 

Adoption Transfer Partnerships (Incoming and Outgoing):  HSBC works with any organization requesting our assistance in transferring animals for adoption at our shelters which might face an uncertain at their home shelter.  We also gratefully work with breed rescues to transfer harder to place pets out of our kennels or to open space for other animals.  Adoption transfers are truly a two way street! 

• Chester County SPCA (During CCSPCA’s kennel upgrades HSBC has worked closely with them to transfer pets while 2/3 of their kennels are closed for construction)
• Delaware County SPCA
• Lehigh County Humane Society
• Ruth Stienert Memorial SPCA
• The Humane League Lancaster County
• York County SPCA
• Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society
• Pennsylvania SPCA
• Dauphin County Dog Law & Montgomery County Dog Law (transfers of animals from closing or downsizing commercial kennels)
• Twin Tiers Rescue
• Karni Mata rat Rescue
• Open Arms ResQ and Refurral
• Siamese cat Rescue Center
• Best little cat House in PA
• One by One Animal Rescue and Protection Org.
• Dad’s my Angel Puppy Rescue
• Plain and Fancy Animal Rescue
• Brookline lab Rescue
• Dogs Den
• Save a Yorkie
• Cocker Spaniel Adoption Center, Inc.
• Echo Dogs White Shepherd Rescue
• Mid- Atlantic German Shepherd Rescue
• German Shepherd Rescue of SE PA
• Small Paw Rescue
• Tri State Weimaraner Rescue
• St Bernard Rescue Foundation
• Italian Greyhound Rescue network
• Mid-Atlantic Basset Hound Rescue
• German Shepherds to Love
• Animal Rescue League of Berks County (Reciprocal transfer of microchipped adopted animals originating from one another’s shelters)

 Service on Boards and Advisory Councils and Educational Presentations and Organizational support- HSBC staff are proud to be represented in a wide variety of organizations representing animal welfare, to present workshops on a variety of topics, and to assist other agencies through direct assistance and consulting.

• Pennsylvania Animal Response Team (HSBC represented as board chair)
• Federated Humane Societies of Pennsylvania (HSBC represented as board member)
• Humane Society of United States Companion Animal Advisory Council (HSBC represented with Council seat)
• University of Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical School Shelter Executive Summits
• Humane Society of the United States Animal Expo (invited workshop presenter)
• New York Humane Association Annual Conference (invited workshop presenter)
• PetsMart Charities (invited webinar presenter)
• The Humane League (Philadelphia, invited speaker)
• Philadelphia Corporation for the Aging Annual Meeting (invited workshop presenter)
• Family Services of Montgomery County (MontCo Ani-Meals On Wheels partner)
• Berks County Office of Aging (BerksCo Ani-Meals On Wheels partner)
• Operational consulting with agencies in Delaware, New York, Maine, Pennsylvania, Missouri, California, and Oregon.

Non-profits joining us as exhibitors at the 2011 Walk for the Animals.  Exhibit space is offered free to any non-profit who requests it.

• Concern: Professional Services for Children, Youth & Families
• LABMED
• South Mountain YMCA Camps
• Delaware Valley Golden Retriever Rescue
• KidsPeace Foster Care
• GSP Rescue of PA
• Mid Atlantic Great Dane Rescue
• Buddy Rescue Foundation
• Mentors for Berks Youth
• Berks County Office of Aging
• First State Greyhound Rescue
• Berks County Conservancy
• Girl Scouts of Eastern PA
• Reading Eagle
• Save A Yorkie Rescue
• New Spirit 4 Aussie Rescue, Inc
• Tri-State Weimaraner Rescue
• Fairview Counseling & The Play Therapy Center
• IM ABLE Foundation
• Russell Rescue
• Berks Women in Crisis
• No Nonsense Neutering
• Ryerss Farm for Aged Equines

And of course HSBC works with local and State law enforcement, and local animal control in our joint efforts to stop animal cruelty and provide resources.  Without a doubt, this is an incomplete list and I hope we will make it much more complete by the time we put all this in an annual report. 

It’s a great exercise to run through a list like this.  It’s a reminder that we are not in this alone and that for every hand we extend, two are extended back.  Our very survival in the extremely hard financial environment is a testament to both the support of our donors and volunteers and to the strength of our partnerships and friendships with others in the non-profit and charitable sectors.  In our line of work and our charitable missions, we definitely know that what goes around comes around. 

With friends like these, it’s hard to imagine you could even have enemies.

Buried in the posthumous accolades for all the cool stuff Steve Jobs was responsible for are interviews with friends, partners and competitors which all circle around the Jobs’ real gift and skill: vision.  Jobs was no mediocrat. 

Mediocrity has a negative connotation but, by definition, mediocrity just means being in the middle.  And the middle is where most of us, and most business and organizations, live.  For a corporation it is the ideal place to be since that is where most of your market will be.  For an organization, including non-profit charities like HSBC, it may seem the smart place to be because it puts you in the middle of your charitable “market”, the people who support your work. 

For us as individuals, being in the middle is just usually the easiest place to be and there are no demerits for being where everyone else is.  So when I say that Jobs had the gift and skill of not being a mediocrat, it is not a slight on those in the middle, it is merely a compliment for him.  No more than saying that Jimi Hendrix was a gifted and skilled guitarist is a slight to me- a person neither skilled nor gifted on the guitar.

President George H. W. Bush famously said he didn’t have the “vision thing” and most people don’t.  The “vision thing” is often a gift but depending on when and where you live and work it can be quite an unwelcome one.  In the Middle Ages being a “visionary” was as likely to get you burned at the stake as anything else.  It can still get you proverbially burned at the stake today, depending on how far out of the middle your vision draws you.  And a gift of vision alone is little more valuable than dreaming of a painting a masterpiece, if one lacks the skill to execute it. 

Even lacking the gift of vision, some can cultivate the skill of implementing vision.  The best CEO’s have this skill.  They can take what’s floating around out there and shift the bell curve of the middle, that medio-spot, right up to the line that separates the mediocre from the great.  But skill alone can’t break through that wall. 

What Jobs really seemed to master, and what I have heard again and again from those who knew him best, was the combination of the gift and the skill of seeing and working outside of the middle and of determining how to drag the entire bell curve with him so that he and his vision were no longer outliers, they were the new norm. 

He did not always succeed in this because there is a great tyranny of mediocrity.  It is the greatest tyranny of all because it is the norm and it works incessantly, actively and passively, to keep the middle from moving.  Mediocrity tends to explicitly avoiding, if not block, change and those in the middle often genuinely fear what is around the corner or over the curve.  Our natural tendency is to want to believe we are not actually in the middle, that we are somewhat more visionary than we actually are, and to suspect those who lead us to a place, a future, or a way of doing things we can’t easily see for ourselves. 

It doesn’t help that visionaries are often perceived to be- and sometimes genuinely are- a bit arrogant, as Jobs was reported to be, especially in his younger years.  This perceived arrogance is often the convenient excuse of those who do fight against a vision of change, even one laid out in excruciating detail before them, not because they do not see the correctness of the course but because they resent not having seen the path themselves.  They are the ones who blindly hold to dogma in the face of reality.  We’ve all experienced their blind, mediocre wrath at times when we’ve presented a “What if we did this…?” to them. 

There is no doubt that Jobs repeatedly saw not just where he could take something but he looked around to see what pieces were already there to build with.  He combined gift and skill.  The Apple (and Disney, where he was also the largest individual shareholder) he left behind on Wednesday were built on ideas, inventions and people relegated to the scrap heap.  Graphic User Interfaces, the mouse, desktop computers in the home, digital music, even Pixar Studios, were all considered unpractical novelties or even threats to the status quo in which the corporate world existed until Jobs and his vision thing came along and cobbled the parts and concepts together into something which would have been terrifying to the powers that be ten, twenty, thirty years ago but is now the new normal- and wildly profitable for them. 

He was booted from Apple because his vision wasn’t being realized quickly, and profitably, enough for even those who had invested in his vision.  But when highly capable mediocrats had failed in their efforts to do something with Pixar Studios, he came in and built a behemoth.  When the vastly skilled mediocrat Michael Eisner, former CEO of Disney, failed to see the real potential of Pixar and was prepared to scuttle the partnership it had with Disney, he was ousted by new CEO Bob Iger, a person who has at least cultivated the skill of visioneering. 

The end result was that Jobs, ousted from Apple and purchasing a floundering Pixar from George Lucas for five million dollars, received over seven billion dollars and became Disney’s largest shareholder.  It also meant that John Lassiter, the Walt Disney of our time and a gifted visionary in his own right, was returned to the management bosom of the company which had previously fired him.  Fired him for having the vision to do more with computer generated graphics.  The vision Disney later paid seven billion dollars to get back.

The way Jobs described finding the right thing to do and the happiness it brings one personally in a commencement speech he gave a few years ago is making the rounds but it seems to me to be widely misinterpreted due to the media’s selection of sound bites.  They focused their doe eyed sap on a sentence or two about doing what you love, without the context he placed that advice in.  He did not mean, as so many seem to think, that doing what you love is the same thing as doing what necessarily makes you the happiest.  Doing what you love is often extremely difficult and leads to the greatest heart break.  Jobs paid a price repeatedly for doing the visionary things he loved, the things which we now ultimately see where the right things but which often led to personal failure and rejection for Jobs.

In reality, it was doing the visionary thing which brought him happiness, success or not.  I liken that need to do the visionary thing, the thing that feels right, even when few if any have any idea what you are seeing or talking about, with the feeling of rightness someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder must feel from knowing the light switch is in the correct position.  It’s not just that feels wrong in the wrong position.  It’s that one feels compelled to put it right.  I imagine that is no more comfortable or “happy” for a visionary than it is for an OCD sufferer.  Jobs clearly had that compulsion to put his work and world right as he saw it.  Even when he found himself on the wrong end of a pink slip from the company he created, when he was hardly happy, he knew we was doing what he loved and was walking his true path. 

Despite suffering from failure and rejection he maintained a trust and love in the correctness of his vision and he would have been proven right eventually, even if given no credit and it was in obscurity.  What he saw was correct.  He didn’t always have the resources, the people, the timing, the luck, or probably the skill to realize his vision all the time, but when he had that correct combination he transformed the world he worked in and we live in.  And that gave him happiness and success.  That attempt to have the gift and skill of visioneering and bring together all the external components which will realize their full potential is what we should all strive to emulate. 

What does any of this have to do with animal welfare?  Well, animal welfare is largely a domain of staunch, even prideful, mediocrats and has been for decades.  Most of the professionals are not only happy to be in the middle, they savagely defend their position there.  They not only cannot see beyond their point on the bell curve, because of the life and death consequences of our work, they cannot even embrace the possibility that there may be a new way forward.  To do so would be to admit they had not seen that way and, as a result, animals had paid the price. 

Not only is this bad for animals, it opens the field to those who can come in claiming to be visionaries.  The success of the most strident of the No Kill movement is largely due to the mediocrats claiming the immutability of the status of animal welfare so devoutly that any prophet of change, whether gifted with true vision or not, can make any claim and it will be accepted as at least some other way.  But the mere gift of vision is not enough; the skill of doing something with that vision must be there, too. 

Animal welfare mediocrats have been engaged in a tyranny of mediocrity by denying that the torrential rains of animals entering shelter and facing euthanasia could be stopped.  Fringe visionaries have come along at times with little more of a vision than “pray for sun”.  Some have finally come along with enough skill to suggest building a roof but then ask us to deny that rain is continuing to fall elsewhere on others.  Until we can all see and accept and implement a vision in which all are equally under cover from the rain, we will be at best gifted mediocrats.  We will only move along the curve to a certain point and no farther.  We will never move it to a new normal in the way that Steve Jobs did in his industry. 

As long as those in the middle are terrified of change and those who offer a vision of change provide only the shallowest of alternatives and only thumbnail sketches rather than detailed blueprints of their visions, very little will change for animals. 

What would the lives of animals be like if we could create the Apple of animal welfare?  What if all the others working in animal welfare were striving to keep up with visionaries who have jumped the wall instead of shackling themselves to the middle in terror of change?  What would that mean for the animals we all claim to care about?  Hell, what would that mean for our own happiness and success in an “industry” wracked with misery, attrition and burn out? 

What if we all became the visioneers of animal welfare rather than its mediocrats?  We may not be able to be the Steve Jobs of animal welfare but we should all try a little harder to be like the Steve Jobs of animal welfare.