Steve - If I remember correctly at any one time you had 5 - 7 dogs in your in-home rescue. When you left Jersey City did you find someone to take that operation over for you, or did you just move on and are now attacking at a distance an organization that has seven less slots to put dogs into?[/quote]


Are you actually, publicly insinuating that I dumped my dogs in a shelter?

All of my dogs came with me.

You are truly unbelievable. What is it that you do for animals? You are a joke.

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Again, who are you and what experience do you have that you can in any way judge what I have to say?

You're continually making assumptions about things you know nothing about.

For instance, Rottweilers sometimes have a condition commonly referred to as "Rottie Rage". It is a form of epilepsy whereby the dog goes into an alternate zone, attacks, then returns to his normal state without any recollection of the incident, no adrenaline rush, nothing. It is sad but these dogs must be put down. It is a medical condition, not behavioral. It is rare but it occurs.

The Rottweiler who mauled my vet was brought to this particular vet directly from the shelter for shots and neuter to go to rescue. He was in the hands of experienced professionals and showed no signs of behavioral issues until he went into rage unexpectedly.

When you work with thousands of dogs this happens on rare occasions.

And you "suspect" the number of Pit Bulls that are dangerous is higher than the amount that I put forth. Why do you "suspect" this? Do you have any experience in this area? How many Pit Bulls have you met, handled, rescued, fostered, owned, trained?

Who are you?

If you don't take the killing of dogs lightly, why do you so vehemently defend people who kill them by the hundreds for space and convenience?

It is absurd that you defend the killing of healthy, adoptable pets and call those who defend them facists. You actually make no sense whatsoever.

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Really? Several thousand rescues and 2 go down, that sounds like terrible judgment to you? Sounds like you need a math lesson.

By the way, all of you with your personal commentary and all of you sticking up for these people who have killed half of the animals in this shelter, why don't you put your name to your comments?

Snide, ignorant remarks, vehement defenses of people who kill with abandon, weird, creepy facebook stalking, I guess I wouldn't put my name to this kind of stuff either, actually.

Deputy Dawg,

I don't know what your point is exactly. Yes, I have a dog that I need to consider putting down. This has nothing to do with what is going on at the "shelter" - some dogs, very few but some, are actually too dangerous to adopt out.

I lived in Jersey City for 11 years and have been active in dog rescue for all of that time. I just moved to New Orleans. I have rescued a couple of thousand dogs and have put down 2 - a Rottweiler that mauled my vet and a Chow Chow that was so vicious you couldn't even approach him to put a muzzle on.

This particular dog is a Black Lab mix. Breed has nothing to do with it. And nobody has suggested that dangerous dogs be released for adoption though it's abundantly clear that shelters, including Liberty, put down dogs who are not dangerous all the time and label them dangerous to excuse their failures and to hide the fact that they kill animals for space and convenience - I know, empirically from my own work, that a dangerous dog is one in a thousand.

For the record, my dogs are not around people until they have been assessed. They are always in my house, in a fenced yard or on leash. I always foster dogs in my home, at my own risk, before I adopt them out.

So next time you go on about 'people like me', try getting to know something about 'people like me'. You seem to know equally little about 'dangerous dogs' and the causal relationship between insurance premiums and breeds.

Please read the letter from the President of Pets Alive to the Jersey Journal.


Hi Melissa,

I have to say that I was disappointed to read your coverage of Liberty Humane Society.
...
I?m not sure where to start. First off, I am the President of Pets Alive Animal SANCTUARY in Middletown, NY and Elmsford, NY. While we are by definition a shelter, we act as a sanctuary for animals. We have been no-kill for 35 years and will continue to be.

The article characterizes the ?board? of Liberty Humane Society as victims that no one will help. And Pets Alive as an out-of-state organization that is going to sue them into being no-kill.

Neither of those are in any way true.

We contacted Liberty Humane very early on in this debacle and asked how we could help. We took two dogs immediately, and I arranged with the SPCA of Connecticut for them to borrow some outdoor runs to get the dogs out of the kennels, making it unnecessary to kill them, at least for the time being.

We then offered to sit down with them and help them map out the right way to be no-kill. We can?t SUE them into being no-kill any more than they can write a 5 year plan for becoming no-kill. Either you are going to kill the animals in your care or you are not. No-kill has not failed Liberty Humane. Liberty Humane has failed no-kill, and has abdicated their moral responsibility in the stewardship of these animals.

We are talking about a comprehensive plan that includes best practices for adoptions, training, fostering, working with rescues and anything else we can think of to help them get animals out the door instead of in the ground.

The boards, past and present, are textbook examples of the mindset chronicled in Nathan Winograd?s book Redemption, where he proves a theory that the egos of boards and shelter managers are the reason dogs and cats are being killed in places like Jersey City. Why is it that no-kill has worked or is working in San Francisco, Reno, Las Vegas, St. Paul, Tomkins County, NY, Austin and individually in thousands of shelters around the world? Is Jersey City that unique? No?it just has leadership that would rather kill animals and stroke their own egos than accept being wrong and make things right.

LHS is hiding behind temperament testing as an excuse to kill dogs that could be in rescues or in homes. We?ve seen it a million times and certainly we?ve seen it before from Liberty Humane. Take a look at Moet?.http://petsalive.com/moet.jpg

Moet is a senior dog (11 years old) that was deemed ?aggressive? by the testers at Liberty Humane. Volunteers were outraged, and pleaded for the life of this dog. Liberty Humane refused. At the time the idiotic policy of the shelter was that ?pit bulls? like Moet could only be adopted to rescues anyway. So that ensured the deaths of many of them BEFORE the temperament tests get them. A group of Pets Alive volunteers pleaded with us to take Moet, so we did. Moet was adopted a few weeks later and is still in a forever home. That picture was used for our Holiday card last year because it so perfectly depicts the love between animal and caretaker.

Where would Moet be at the hands of these people at Liberty if not for the volunteers that cared so much about the dog? DEAD?a fate that is befalling more and more animals at Liberty Humane. And that doesn?t have to be.

No-kill is what the volunteers at LHS want. It?s what the community wants. It?s the reason they got the contract from the Mayor of Hoboken. Yet they would rather kill dogs and cats.

We offered to work with them for free to come up with a plan to save the animals of Jersey City and Hoboken. We will bring in other experts where we need to, including Best Friends Animal Society, Nathan Winograd, the Tomkins County SPCA and anyone else whose advice would help make this a success. As the old adage says?if you want to be successful hang out with people who are. We are, and we can bring people to the table and work this out.

The board refused.

Someone told me that one of the board members felt like we we?re giving them an ultimatum. Actually, I guess we are. Either stop putting your own egos before your moral responsibility to those animals or get the hell off the board.

We are not going away. I have twenty or so emails from volunteers, ex- and current employees and concerned members of the community and in looking at them a pattern emerges rather quickly?Liberty Humane is disorganized, unresponsive, incompetent and hostile to those who simply ask for information or question what they do. I would be happy to share some of these with you if you wish.

In fact, until the light was shined on them, LHS was refusing to return phone calls from organizations and shelters (including ours) who wanted to take animals from the crowded cages they were stuffed into and waiting to be killed. This is not the behavior of an organization dedicated to the lives of these animals.

Pets Alive has put LHS on notice that we?re watching. We, unlike them, are listening to their volunteers and employees and even the Mayor(s) who trust them with their constituents? animals. They want transparency. They want to know about the disposition of specific animals. They want cogently articulated policy on which animals are being killed, and they want to know when an animal is about to be killed so they can work with rescues to commute that death sentence, even if LHS won?t. All of this information is arguably required to be provided by New Jersey?s Open Public Records Act (OPRA). We are collecting the requests that they have not responded to, and we may consider a class action lawsuit to get the information on behalf of the citizens of New Jersey who want to know. Those are the kinds of lawsuits we are contemplating.

It?s about right and wrong. Killing these animals when there is another alternative is wrong.

http://petsalive.com/moet.jpg
petsalive.com

Hello HAA, who am I speaking to, David, Blanche or Aurora?

All I've done is ask a series of questions and copy the appropriate people so that they have the opportunity to clarify. How is that awful behavior?

If anything can be clarified, people can clarify. Pretty straightforward.

I had some discussions with Joanna about developing programs to support a no-kill shelter. She was on board. No big secret, no big scandal.

I don't know everything about what Joanna had done/was going to do but she is not here now so I am directing my questions to the people who are now in charge and killing animals. I find it amusing that people are attacked for expecting transparency.

Your organization specifically has put forth, repeatedly with your "fact/rumor" note, that it is not and was never a plan to mass cull the animals at the shelter.

And yet here we are, a plan, I hear and have asked for clarification on, to kill at least 32 dogs and probably at least as many cats on Friday. Is it any wonder people don't believe the information you and your colleagues put forth?

Most of all, you are all missing the point. This is an organization, a corporation, yes. But first and foremost it is an animals shelter.

We had the beginning of a no-kill movement in Jersey City. Sure, it was very imperfect. There was a major donor behind it. Did you and the old guard step in to support it?

No, you all stepped in to kill no-kill and paint those who tried as hoarders to provide political cover for the mass killing that is now beginning anew.

Nikki Dawson has replied to my note to say that it is her job to "euthanize" the aggressive animals. Does she imply by omission that she does not kill adoptable animals for space?

This is an animal "shelter". It is called Liberty "Humane". If someone can stop the killing and goes over her budget, It's not appropriate to fire her, to quit in protest or to kill the animals as a solution.

You raise the money.

And by the way, this board has not been in power for a few weeks, they have been in power for years.

They are the old board brought back. They are the ones who wrote and signed the contract with the city, they are the ones who, I believe, have neglected their responsibilities to the animals and to the city (where would we be now if those 75 dog runs had been built years ago as they should have been?). They are the ones who have, for years, killed about half of the animals under their 'care'.

It is not only completely appropriate but it is necessary to hold them accountable.