Ed, @ 2009, LAAS's flourishing, ever improving S/N programs were laid low by Audubon Society's hatred of taxpayer $$ used to help feral cats and subsequent lawsuits. And Nathan Winograd produced a flood of "we can save them all" literature fluff. You've never name checked either. Were they not important in the Big Picture ?
Thank you, Lisa. Yes, both were important parts of the larger story, and both had real influence on how the conversation and policy landscape evolved. In a short piece, I can’t name every factor, but your point is well taken: those years were shaped by both legal setbacks and powerful messaging that redirected the field.
I like how this is easily broken down for people who try to over complicate the issue. People who fully get what you write is who needs to be in charge of shelters, not BF and the likes who do everything but prevention.
Thank you, Kelly! I really appreciate that. Too often we make these issues more complicated than they need to be, when the real answer starts with prevention. I’m grateful this resonated with you.
Thank you for this insightful piece Ed. Your work is deeply appreciated.
As you know PACC has been working for 4 years to establish a CA Spay Neuter Fund that would flow $64M a year, for 15 years, through our public shelters and non-profit spay neuter clinics earmarked for community based spay neuter.
Our so called leaders @cagovernor Newsom and the CA legislature have all turned deaf ears, content to ask Californians to shoulder the hefty burden of well over $460M PER YEAR to pay for a broken sheltering system that does not invest in spay neuter until the animal is ALREADY in the shelter. Wayyyy too late!!! We are being asked to endlessly pay for a problem (read tragedy) that is readily solvable through the much less expensive investment of ongoing, adequate, PREVENTATIVE and far more humane SPAY NEUTER.
We are hopeful that a new governor and a new slate of legislators will have more courage and compassion than their predecessors and will sponsor, support and/or fight for this bill.
We are likewise hopeful that every CA shelter, rescue, animal advocate will strongly encourage their local legislator to either sponsor or support this effort. We are gearing up for our next go at this long overdue legislation.
Thank you, Kit, I deeply appreciate your leadership and persistence on this. You’re absolutely right: prevention is far more humane, effective, and fiscally responsible than waiting until animals are already in the shelter system. I’m grateful for the work PACC is doing to keep this issue in front of lawmakers and the public.
When we make the story about shelter euthanasia, the mission becomes rescue. When we make the story about shelter intake, the mission becomes prevention.
Beautifully said, Julie. That captures the distinction perfectly: when we focus on intake, we finally start addressing the cause instead of just reacting to the consequence. Thank you for putting it so clearly.
As someone we all know now residing in high public office says and/or believes, that if one says/articulates the same thing/idea over and over again, eventually most people will come to believe it. It certainly worked for him for some period of time.. Now, perhaps, as REALITY intrudes ,that is fading. Though I understand our concerns as advocates is not the same thing . Since many iterations in this vital Series are essentially saying the same thing - strongly advising Prevention over Managed Care etc.,-- perhaps, this will indeed seep into the consciousness of all of those sincerely invested in finding THE solution to the over-capacity problem. But we do know from the historical record that PREVENTION DOES WORK. Such a statement or philosophy deserves constantly repeating its message.
Thank you, Elaine. I think you’re exactly right: repetition matters, especially when it is grounded in reality and supported by evidence. Prevention works, and sometimes the most important thing we can do is keep saying so until people are finally ready to act on it.
Recent reforms under the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 (in force from May 2026) give tenants in England a statutory right to request permission to keep a pet in their rental home.
Key points:
• Landlords must consider pet requests and cannot simply rely on blanket “no pets” clauses anymore.
• They are expected to respond within fixed timeframes and can only refuse on “reasonable” grounds (e.g., building rules, property unsuitability), not just preference.
• Guidance and commentary from landlord groups and letting agents frame the law as creating a default presumption in favor of allowing pets, with many standard tenancy templates now designed to be pet‑friendly or at least pet‑neutral.
So while landlords aren’t forced to accept every dog or cat in all circumstances, the legal starting point in England is now that tenants may have pets, and the burden is on the landlord to justify refusal.
Thank you for sharing this, Bernard. That's a significant policy change and an encouraging example of how housing policy can support keeping people and pets together. Reducing barriers to pet ownership is an important complement to prevention and can help reduce the number of animals entering shelters in the first place.
Another great one! Thanks Ed 🙏 I like that you’re treating this as an infrastructure problem, not a PR problem. I feel like that’s the only way any of this changes!
Most of my work has been in that decision layer you’re talking about trying to:
- Keep an animal’s history intact across systems so cycling and bite risk don’t disappear every time they get re‑intaked somewhere new.
- Define success as placements that actually hold and surrenders we safely prevent, not just bodies leaving cages.
- Make returns, deaths, and bad placements show up as part of the record instead of something the system can quietly wipe.
I’m working to test these ideas in a small LA County network to see whether they actually change intake pressure and repeat entries in a real crisis environment.
I’m curious, what in your view would count as convincing evidence that a system is truly turning down the faucet, versus just getting better at managing overflow?
Thank you, Shannon. I appreciate your thoughtful perspective and the work you're doing. I think you've put your finger on an important distinction: better data should help us measure lasting outcomes, not just throughput. For me, the clearest evidence that we're truly turning down the faucet would be sustained per capita reductions in shelter intake and shelter dependency over time, specifically in high intake zip codes, and not simply more efficient movement of animals through the system. I look forward to seeing what your pilot project reveals. Please keep me posted.
I actually responded to the LA announcement today: When does charity stop supporting government and start shaping it? Los Angeles just approved a $14 million partnership for its animal shelters. The money isn't the real story. The structure is. Read why.
I hope everyone reads this--"when charity becomes public policy." And w all the data collected they will get far more back ($$) than their drop in the bucket 14M.
Thank you, Kathy, I appreciate that. You’re right to highlight both the policy implications and the value of the data being gathered. I’m grateful for your support and for helping draw attention to what’s really at stake.
Thank you, Bob. I appreciate your thoughtful feedback and your many years of experience in animal welfare. My hope is that we can keep shifting the conversation toward prevention, because lasting progress will only come from reducing the need for sheltering in the first place, not simply managing its consequences. Thanks for adding your voice to the discussion.
As excellent as the faucet metaphor is, another that might work with a lot of guys, especially gearheads, comes from the history of modifying engines to produce maximum speed. For decades the emphasis was on building bigger & bigger engine blocks & fuel injection systems, to pour ever more gasoline or nitromethane (depending on whether it was oval track racing or drag racing) through the engines, faster. That meant carrying more fuel aboard the car, which translated into more flaming crashes & casualties. Then the various racing regulatory bodies began limiting fuel carrying capacity, & in oval track racing, limiting the number of fuel stops. Suddenly the issue became efficiency. Relatively rapidly, engineers figured out how to go farther, faster, on less fuel, & auto racing casualties declined to the point where as of 2024, when we last looked at the comparative data, racing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was markedly safer than owning a pit bull in Indianapolis (1 human death in 14 years vs. seven.) Think of an animal shelter as a sort of community carburetor: you can pour ever more animals into it, ever more inefficiently no matter how big you build it, or reduce the flow through spay/neuter (better design) to get ever better outcomes.
Thank you, Merritt and Beth. That's a fascinating analogy, and I especially like the emphasis on efficiency over simply increasing capacity. That reinforces the central idea of the article: lasting progress comes not from handling ever-greater volume, but from reducing the flow that creates the demand in the first place. Thanks for adding another memorable way to think about it.
If breeders paid the public back for all the food and vet bills we pay every year for every abandoned cat and dog who ends up on the street, breeders would not make a profit. Sometimes, the public also pays for pounds that kill those animals. The public, the animals should not be slaves to the pet breeding industry.
Thank you, Deidra. I appreciate your passion for the animals affected by overpopulation. Whatever our views on breeding, I think we can agree that reducing the number of unwanted litters through effective prevention is one of the most compassionate ways to reduce suffering for both animals and the communities that care for them.
Many shelters in Iowa are BF affiliated. And we see exactly the same problems: TNR shut down, overcapacity, staff shortages, and everything else on your list.
Thank you for sharing, TFC. Hearing that you're seeing the same pattern in Iowa suggests this may be a broader systemic issue rather than one unique to a single community. It's exactly why distinguishing between expanding shelter capacity and reducing shelter dependency through prevention is such an important conversation. I appreciate you adding your firsthand experience.
What is so great about this one is that it is all-encompassing, it is the solution made clear. Cannot imagine someone not "getting it" when it is this concise and compelling. Shelters need to read this and find the way back to reducing intake by reducing numbers born. It worked between 1990 and 2010 and it will work again.
To add to the clarity, a new group, United Spay Alliance, has produced a handy booklet people can use to demonstrate the advantage fiscally to spaying/neuter:
This Animal Politics article is so valuable we all need to share it with five people and ask them to share with five as well. Public awareness needs to be raised. Numbers of cats and dogs need to go down. This is the only road to success. A bit of work now will lead to far less stress in the future.
Thank you, Elaine. I truly appreciate your thoughtful comments and for sharing the United Spay Alliance resource. I agree that lasting progress comes from reducing intake, not simply expanding capacity. Prevention requires patience, but history has shown it can change the trajectory for both animals and shelters. Thank you, too, for encouraging others to share the article, that kind of conversation is how better ideas spread.
In terms of conceptual clarity, Ed, this is one of your best columns. It helps clarify the very significant difference between shelter capacity and community animal population.
A related point may be that the number of animals needing to be sheltered can be affected by as support programs such as food pantries as well as targeted spay and neuter. Absent the latter, the population of animals should be expected to rise and not decline (all else being equal). But spay and neuter and support programs can work together to reduce the number of animal intakes and the population itself.
It seems that we need to begin to distinguish between between different types of managed admission. Some types may delay admission until capacity of care becomes available as shelter numbers to down.
Other types are outright prohibitive, e.g. municipal shelters no longer accepting owner release, a change we are witnessing in North Carolina. Perhaps these practices should be referred to as what they are, namely, restrictive admission.
The real question for all of us may now be: What is the next iteration of shelter practice and community animal sheltering? We need to assemble diverse elements of our past practice to address and navigate the current crisis.
Thank you, Bob. I appreciate your thoughtful insights. I agree that support programs and targeted spay/neuter work best as complementary strategies, one helps families keep the animals they have, while the other reduces future intake. I also think your distinction between capacity-based managed admission and restrictive admission is an important one. As shelters evolve, greater clarity about both our language and our goals will be essential if we're going to build systems that are both compassionate and sustainable.
Ed, @ 2009, LAAS's flourishing, ever improving S/N programs were laid low by Audubon Society's hatred of taxpayer $$ used to help feral cats and subsequent lawsuits. And Nathan Winograd produced a flood of "we can save them all" literature fluff. You've never name checked either. Were they not important in the Big Picture ?
Thank you, Lisa. Yes, both were important parts of the larger story, and both had real influence on how the conversation and policy landscape evolved. In a short piece, I can’t name every factor, but your point is well taken: those years were shaped by both legal setbacks and powerful messaging that redirected the field.
I like how this is easily broken down for people who try to over complicate the issue. People who fully get what you write is who needs to be in charge of shelters, not BF and the likes who do everything but prevention.
Thank you, Kelly! I really appreciate that. Too often we make these issues more complicated than they need to be, when the real answer starts with prevention. I’m grateful this resonated with you.
Thank you for this insightful piece Ed. Your work is deeply appreciated.
As you know PACC has been working for 4 years to establish a CA Spay Neuter Fund that would flow $64M a year, for 15 years, through our public shelters and non-profit spay neuter clinics earmarked for community based spay neuter.
Our so called leaders @cagovernor Newsom and the CA legislature have all turned deaf ears, content to ask Californians to shoulder the hefty burden of well over $460M PER YEAR to pay for a broken sheltering system that does not invest in spay neuter until the animal is ALREADY in the shelter. Wayyyy too late!!! We are being asked to endlessly pay for a problem (read tragedy) that is readily solvable through the much less expensive investment of ongoing, adequate, PREVENTATIVE and far more humane SPAY NEUTER.
We are hopeful that a new governor and a new slate of legislators will have more courage and compassion than their predecessors and will sponsor, support and/or fight for this bill.
We are likewise hopeful that every CA shelter, rescue, animal advocate will strongly encourage their local legislator to either sponsor or support this effort. We are gearing up for our next go at this long overdue legislation.
Thank you, Kit, I deeply appreciate your leadership and persistence on this. You’re absolutely right: prevention is far more humane, effective, and fiscally responsible than waiting until animals are already in the shelter system. I’m grateful for the work PACC is doing to keep this issue in front of lawmakers and the public.
When we make the story about shelter euthanasia, the mission becomes rescue. When we make the story about shelter intake, the mission becomes prevention.
Beautifully said, Julie. That captures the distinction perfectly: when we focus on intake, we finally start addressing the cause instead of just reacting to the consequence. Thank you for putting it so clearly.
As someone we all know now residing in high public office says and/or believes, that if one says/articulates the same thing/idea over and over again, eventually most people will come to believe it. It certainly worked for him for some period of time.. Now, perhaps, as REALITY intrudes ,that is fading. Though I understand our concerns as advocates is not the same thing . Since many iterations in this vital Series are essentially saying the same thing - strongly advising Prevention over Managed Care etc.,-- perhaps, this will indeed seep into the consciousness of all of those sincerely invested in finding THE solution to the over-capacity problem. But we do know from the historical record that PREVENTION DOES WORK. Such a statement or philosophy deserves constantly repeating its message.
Thank you, Elaine. I think you’re exactly right: repetition matters, especially when it is grounded in reality and supported by evidence. Prevention works, and sometimes the most important thing we can do is keep saying so until people are finally ready to act on it.
England: new legal rights for pets
Recent reforms under the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 (in force from May 2026) give tenants in England a statutory right to request permission to keep a pet in their rental home.
Key points:
• Landlords must consider pet requests and cannot simply rely on blanket “no pets” clauses anymore.
• They are expected to respond within fixed timeframes and can only refuse on “reasonable” grounds (e.g., building rules, property unsuitability), not just preference.
• Guidance and commentary from landlord groups and letting agents frame the law as creating a default presumption in favor of allowing pets, with many standard tenancy templates now designed to be pet‑friendly or at least pet‑neutral.
So while landlords aren’t forced to accept every dog or cat in all circumstances, the legal starting point in England is now that tenants may have pets, and the burden is on the landlord to justify refusal.
Thank you for sharing this, Bernard. That's a significant policy change and an encouraging example of how housing policy can support keeping people and pets together. Reducing barriers to pet ownership is an important complement to prevention and can help reduce the number of animals entering shelters in the first place.
Another great one! Thanks Ed 🙏 I like that you’re treating this as an infrastructure problem, not a PR problem. I feel like that’s the only way any of this changes!
Most of my work has been in that decision layer you’re talking about trying to:
- Keep an animal’s history intact across systems so cycling and bite risk don’t disappear every time they get re‑intaked somewhere new.
- Define success as placements that actually hold and surrenders we safely prevent, not just bodies leaving cages.
- Make returns, deaths, and bad placements show up as part of the record instead of something the system can quietly wipe.
I’m working to test these ideas in a small LA County network to see whether they actually change intake pressure and repeat entries in a real crisis environment.
I’m curious, what in your view would count as convincing evidence that a system is truly turning down the faucet, versus just getting better at managing overflow?
Thank you, Shannon. I appreciate your thoughtful perspective and the work you're doing. I think you've put your finger on an important distinction: better data should help us measure lasting outcomes, not just throughput. For me, the clearest evidence that we're truly turning down the faucet would be sustained per capita reductions in shelter intake and shelter dependency over time, specifically in high intake zip codes, and not simply more efficient movement of animals through the system. I look forward to seeing what your pilot project reveals. Please keep me posted.
Perfect analysis IMHO and long time experience in animal welfare and rescue!
And sickengly, LA City just took $14 million dollars from
best Fiends and ASPCA without a penny apparently going to spay and neuter. Which is abysmal in LA. Outrage continues!!!
I second Bob's comment.
Without prevention, they may as well try to scoop water out of a sinking boat w
a teaspoon. No matter how they dress it up or rearrange the pieces, the ship will sink.
So tragic.
I actually responded to the LA announcement today: When does charity stop supporting government and start shaping it? Los Angeles just approved a $14 million partnership for its animal shelters. The money isn't the real story. The structure is. Read why.
https://animalpolitics.substack.com/p/when-charity-becomes-public-policy
I hope everyone reads this--"when charity becomes public policy." And w all the data collected they will get far more back ($$) than their drop in the bucket 14M.
Thanks for reporting on this Ed.
Thank you, Kathy, I appreciate that. You’re right to highlight both the policy implications and the value of the data being gathered. I’m grateful for your support and for helping draw attention to what’s really at stake.
Thank you, Bob. I appreciate your thoughtful feedback and your many years of experience in animal welfare. My hope is that we can keep shifting the conversation toward prevention, because lasting progress will only come from reducing the need for sheltering in the first place, not simply managing its consequences. Thanks for adding your voice to the discussion.
As excellent as the faucet metaphor is, another that might work with a lot of guys, especially gearheads, comes from the history of modifying engines to produce maximum speed. For decades the emphasis was on building bigger & bigger engine blocks & fuel injection systems, to pour ever more gasoline or nitromethane (depending on whether it was oval track racing or drag racing) through the engines, faster. That meant carrying more fuel aboard the car, which translated into more flaming crashes & casualties. Then the various racing regulatory bodies began limiting fuel carrying capacity, & in oval track racing, limiting the number of fuel stops. Suddenly the issue became efficiency. Relatively rapidly, engineers figured out how to go farther, faster, on less fuel, & auto racing casualties declined to the point where as of 2024, when we last looked at the comparative data, racing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was markedly safer than owning a pit bull in Indianapolis (1 human death in 14 years vs. seven.) Think of an animal shelter as a sort of community carburetor: you can pour ever more animals into it, ever more inefficiently no matter how big you build it, or reduce the flow through spay/neuter (better design) to get ever better outcomes.
Thank you, Merritt and Beth. That's a fascinating analogy, and I especially like the emphasis on efficiency over simply increasing capacity. That reinforces the central idea of the article: lasting progress comes not from handling ever-greater volume, but from reducing the flow that creates the demand in the first place. Thanks for adding another memorable way to think about it.
If breeders paid the public back for all the food and vet bills we pay every year for every abandoned cat and dog who ends up on the street, breeders would not make a profit. Sometimes, the public also pays for pounds that kill those animals. The public, the animals should not be slaves to the pet breeding industry.
Thank you, Deidra. I appreciate your passion for the animals affected by overpopulation. Whatever our views on breeding, I think we can agree that reducing the number of unwanted litters through effective prevention is one of the most compassionate ways to reduce suffering for both animals and the communities that care for them.
Excellent analysis!
Thank you, Beth!
Many shelters in Iowa are BF affiliated. And we see exactly the same problems: TNR shut down, overcapacity, staff shortages, and everything else on your list.
Thank you for sharing, TFC. Hearing that you're seeing the same pattern in Iowa suggests this may be a broader systemic issue rather than one unique to a single community. It's exactly why distinguishing between expanding shelter capacity and reducing shelter dependency through prevention is such an important conversation. I appreciate you adding your firsthand experience.
What is so great about this one is that it is all-encompassing, it is the solution made clear. Cannot imagine someone not "getting it" when it is this concise and compelling. Shelters need to read this and find the way back to reducing intake by reducing numbers born. It worked between 1990 and 2010 and it will work again.
To add to the clarity, a new group, United Spay Alliance, has produced a handy booklet people can use to demonstrate the advantage fiscally to spaying/neuter:
https://www.unitedspayalliance.org/financial-guide-for-spay-neuter/
This Animal Politics article is so valuable we all need to share it with five people and ask them to share with five as well. Public awareness needs to be raised. Numbers of cats and dogs need to go down. This is the only road to success. A bit of work now will lead to far less stress in the future.
Thank you, Elaine. I truly appreciate your thoughtful comments and for sharing the United Spay Alliance resource. I agree that lasting progress comes from reducing intake, not simply expanding capacity. Prevention requires patience, but history has shown it can change the trajectory for both animals and shelters. Thank you, too, for encouraging others to share the article, that kind of conversation is how better ideas spread.
Consider how much suffering might be avoided entirely if landlords were compelled by local law to accept pets.
I don't think you can mandate by law that pets must be accepted, BUT if LL's were smart, they would always accept pets.
I could not agree more,Bernard! Landlords are the oft overlooked no-kill ally: https://animalpolitics.substack.com/p/mobilizing-landlord-support-to-end
In terms of conceptual clarity, Ed, this is one of your best columns. It helps clarify the very significant difference between shelter capacity and community animal population.
A related point may be that the number of animals needing to be sheltered can be affected by as support programs such as food pantries as well as targeted spay and neuter. Absent the latter, the population of animals should be expected to rise and not decline (all else being equal). But spay and neuter and support programs can work together to reduce the number of animal intakes and the population itself.
It seems that we need to begin to distinguish between between different types of managed admission. Some types may delay admission until capacity of care becomes available as shelter numbers to down.
Other types are outright prohibitive, e.g. municipal shelters no longer accepting owner release, a change we are witnessing in North Carolina. Perhaps these practices should be referred to as what they are, namely, restrictive admission.
The real question for all of us may now be: What is the next iteration of shelter practice and community animal sheltering? We need to assemble diverse elements of our past practice to address and navigate the current crisis.
Thank you, Bob. I appreciate your thoughtful insights. I agree that support programs and targeted spay/neuter work best as complementary strategies, one helps families keep the animals they have, while the other reduces future intake. I also think your distinction between capacity-based managed admission and restrictive admission is an important one. As shelters evolve, greater clarity about both our language and our goals will be essential if we're going to build systems that are both compassionate and sustainable.
As I’ve said for years, you can’t euthanize them if they aren’t born in the first place.
Take a look no further than the Charlotte, NC municipal shelter, it is now restrictive intake as I’m sure you’ve seen by now, Bob.
Yes. For three days now.