This past Tuesday I attended a Commission meeting at the East Valley shelter where Brenda Barnette (L.A. City General Manager), the Los Angeles Board of Animal Services Commissioners and the ASPCA, as well as many members of the public, turned out to debate the issue of temperament testing. Click here to read the agenda and any of the accompanying documents.

For over a decade the L.A. City portion of the sheltering system has “officially” banned the using of so-called temperament tests. This was probably done to seem as if they were avoiding condemning adoptable pets to death, as well as to avoid focusing on specific breeds and so on. Well, as many of the public speakers pointed out, just because something is “officially” not in use doesn’t mean it isn’t already in use. To think that L.A. City wasn’t already temperament testing would be foolish. They were, and they are. Point taken. My thing about going to this meeting was to speak to how giving temperament tests in a shelter environment is already an unfair and unreliable idea, as well as to speak out against how these tests are then in many cases used to routinely put scary labels onto dogs that will then serve to justify their death just days (or hours) later. This is every kill shelters magic trick. For example, L.A. County disgracefully condemns hundreds, if not thousands of Pit Bulls to death every year with this very tactic. And sure, L.A. City does too. After all, they are all kill shelters no matter what kind of advertising campaigns they roll out to state otherwise.

So the question becomes, do you trust the as-is staff to implement these programs and then to use them the way that they are being promoted? Because, on its face, SAFER seems like something that would be helpful. At least the ASPCA wants people to believe so. Well, my answer to that question is no. I don’t trust the majority of staff at any current high-kill shelter to use (or be allowed to use) this program for any other reason than to kill dogs, or to justify the killing that they are already doing. It’s kind of simple for me: Actions count. Not words, not fudged numbers, not new theories being implemented by the same status quo.

Lastly, the most confusing thing about this entire meeting to me was this… SAFER is an ASPCA program. The ASPCA opposes genuine No Kill (ala Nathan Winograd, No Kill Advocacy Center). Yet, L.A. City has this campaign called NKLA which makes the public believe that they are eventually going to somehow get to No Kill (ala Nathan Winograd), albeit by using philosophically opposite actions in comparison to the many things which have already been proven to work elsewhere (ala Nathan Winograd). Following? Because it’s quite the enigma. And this isn’t about the rescues and organizations that make up the “coalition,” this is about Best Friends, as they ultimately have the power and have made the choices regarding what to do and what not to do. Another conundrum is that you can’t even begin to have any sort of a worthwhile discussion about No Kill with someone (this goes for anyone inside or outside of the coalition) who hasn’t even read “Redemption,” it’s that eye-opening of a book. Not simply read a “review,” not heard from a person who actually heard from another person. But actually read the book… I personally have no problem with NKLA’s goals, or striving to lower your kill numbers (duh), or making any genuine attempt to do anything to better the current system of death and destruction. I support you, I support those things, fully. But don’t be disingenuous, don’t mislead, don’t doublespeak. You can’t condemn Nathan Winograd privately and try to discredit what the No Kill Advocacy Center stands for, and without even genuinely having a desire to embrace any of their suggestions, while at the same time giving the public the impression that you are also striving to become No Kill. It’s basically nonsense. And people that are doing that are not to be trusted, in my opinion of course…

This last opinion is bound to get me in hot water with many local acquaintances but I simply need to go with my gut on this one. It’s a very important topic to discuss, and yet I’ve noticed that everyone seems to just want to ignore it for the “betterment of the cause.” Well does it really better the cause if this thing fails due to lack of effort, vision, courage, openness, transparency, honesty, ingenuity? Does it really better the cause if this then unfairly serves to further discredit the actual real No Kill communities that are out making it happen? I could be wrong, we’ll see, but there’s just something fundamentally foul about the complete shunning of actual results and the paths to those results.