Last Wednesday animal networker Maria Sanchez, who constantly visits the San Bernardino City shelter in order to help their impounded animals find homes and rescue, was arrested by the cops who actually run the shelter. Her crime? Coming back to the shelter prior to the 72-hour “cooling off” period that was given to her after she was kicked off of the property days prior by Adam Affrunti. Why was she kicked off? Because she was repeatedly trying to bring attention to the poor health of a dog named Sue (#A462498) who was battling pneumonia and going untreated by the shelter. Maria asked numerous times that the dog be treated, was told that it was going to be, and then came to find out days later that it still hadn’t been. Sue is shown on video curled up on the concrete floor because her bed with a blanket on it was all wet after being placed directly under a leaking roof. Maria was begging them to treat Sue. That’s it. That was her initial crime. Then returning within the 72-hour window was her second crime. That’s it.

The code that the shelter staff/police used to kick Maria out of the facility was 9.12.030, subsections A and B. That is unfortunately the law in the city of San Bernardino. Is it an unconstitutional law? Of course it is! But the law does exist so they can clearly try to use it in order to harass and fluster visitors as they see fit. It reads “whenever there is reasonable cause to believe that such person has willfully disrupted conduct of activities.” Nice.

Some online have been hyper-critical of Maria and I’d like to add my 2 cents in her defense. Was she possibly mouthy in the moments of heightened contention? Yeah, probably. Was she resisting arrest? Yeah, technically. But what I saw while viewing the main video was a cop who repeatedly put their hands on her and then immediately went to handcuff her when she pulled away. After they took her phone she was trying to maintain her physical position inside of the facility in order to get her phone back, or be able to view that it was going to be given to her friend instead of kept.

Going way further, let’s take many, many steps back. I can relate to Maria Sanchez because she does similar things in relation to trying to advocate on behalf of a certain shelter’s impounded dogs. She’s there, day after day, to help the dogs gain exposure that will hopefully lead to their safety, as well as to shed light on the system that would much rather kill them. She knows the dogs. She cares for the dogs. She’s invested physically, mentally and emotionally. She sees what she has the power to do for them, and should, by any stretch of the imagination, be viewed as an asset to the shelter. They instead choose to view her as the enemy.

So, in the midst of something completely absurd and ridiculous such as this happening, along with the suffering of Sue, who she was holding and trying to get help for, she was definitely agitated and emotionally distraught. Can you blame her? I wasn’t there, and had that been happening to me there’s no telling how I would have reacted. Also, some people just aren’t going to systematically roll over to a police officer who is on a power trip, and clearly the officer who was standing alongside Affrunti was on a power trip. Not to mention how they were contorting her arms and dragging her, holding her against walls. I also understand how others could say that Maria should have just left, waited the 3 days and then came back. But she didn’t, she made a different choice and I respect her for it.

In the days following Maria’s arrest the shelter has retaliated in the form of killing groups of different dogs that were being networked, and while they’ve had upwards of 30-40 kennels sitting empty. Their oppressive tactics against Maria and others have been mentioned on my website before. They are now trying to say that Maria “assaulted a peace officer,” after the cop tripped over her feet while dragging her outside. This is the type of cowardice bull that’s trying to rewrite the history of what happened. And all of this complete nonsense is because a woman goes to the shelter to photograph their dogs, hoping to save their lives.

The above video shows some of the public comments from Monday’s San Bernardino City Council meeting. Steve Miller, you brought me to tears when talking about the dogs. Thank you for saying what you said, man. It is incredibly important. Marla Tauscher’s comment was also hugely powerful and posed questions and scenarios that absolutely need to be addressed. I wish I could have been there. The community standing up for themselves is always a good thing, no matter what the issue is. Keep doing it. At the end you will see that the Mayor says something to the affect of “we’ve heard enough about the animal stuff,” as he is attempting to shut down public comments. His microphone was still live and it was picked up on the video feed. Below are 2 television reports, from KCAL and KTLA respectively, that attempt to bring further attention to the happenings.

As some of you know I met Councilman Steve Madison at the Pasadena Humane Society on Saturday March 29th. It’s something I’d been trying to make happen since shortly after the last relevant January Council meeting. My ultimate goal was to just put him in front of some of the dogs that he so eagerly demonizes. Dogs are the best teachers, and they do more for themselves than any person who would be out aiming to advocate on their behalf.

But none of that would matter if Madison wouldn’t be open to the interaction and experience. How many demonizers of Pit Bulls are completely shut down to the idea of interacting with one? How many demonizers of Pit Bulls have had little to no experience with one? I’d say that the answer to both of those questions is the vast majority.

Since the shelter here in Pasadena is obviously open to the public I asked him to meet me there and we could walk through as 2 members of the community. To Madison’s credit he eventually said that he would and told me to call his office to arrange a time. A few days after leaving him a voicemail about my schedule I received an email from his field representative saying that a guided tour of the facility had been arranged with PHS director Elizabeth Campo. Not exactly what I had in mind but you have to roll with these things as they come.

What I honestly envisioned is that we’d both show up, spend a few minutes at each dog’s kennel, have him see me interact with each dog, maybe him take an interest in wanting to meet or pet that dog, maybe even take a few dogs to the play yard, and hopefully talking more in depth along the way.

Unfortunately none of this actually happened. I had since asked dog behaviorist Brandon Fouche to meet us there, as he is a huge wealth of knowledge for anyone wanting to know about dog aggression, and so upon arrival myself and Brandon, as well as Marla Tauscher and Steve Madison got the facility tour by Elizabeth Campo. This was cool, and the facility is huge and really nice, but we were there for about an hour and the tour lasted around 50 minutes. About 15 of those minutes were spent walking through the runs, hardly ever stopping to focus on any of the individual dogs. The rest of the time was spent touring the attached buildings and offset rooms that were affiliated with the Humane Society. We were not allowed to get any of the dogs out. I only got to directly converse with the Councilman for about 60 seconds while the others poked in to observe some kind of training class that was going on. He spoke of the “amount of damage” that is done by the dogs and I spoke about human recklessness and the failures of breed identification.

Councilman Madison then had to run, and I know he is a busy man, but I just thought that it would go so differently. Again, I give him credit for taking the time to come out. I do appreciate that much.

5 days later I saw that he had posted a link onto his Facebook page regarding “Pit Bulls” that had allegedly killed an 85-year-old Texas woman. Along with this link he chimed in that bans on breed-specific legislation “make no sense.” However there was no mention by Madison of how the dogs were kept locked in a back bedroom for months, or of the other 6 that were found on the property who lived their entire lives outside as caged yard dogs. Interviewed neighbors stated how some of them were known to run loose in the neighborhood (7 documented complaints). Many of the dogs visible in the numerous provided videos look nothing like Pit Bulls, but they were repeatedly called Pit Bulls anyways. The pictured dog embedded inside of Madison’s linked article looked pregnant with stretched nipples. According to relatives, the victim’s son apparently breeds the dogs.

Further, several articles claim that police are uncertain on how the woman died. Um, that’s kind of important…

It is unclear whether the dogs were responsible for her death, or if the Kaufman woman died before the animal attack.

Police say that 2 Pit Bulls, yesterday around 5 o’clock, mauled Hamilton. Police don’t know if she died before being attacked or was killed by that mauling.

So much for him not continuing to exploit tragedy in an attempt to achieve his desired legislative objective. What was wonderful though is that one of his fellow Council members, Councilwoman Jacque Robinson, came onto his thread to politely refute his assessment. See below…

He then responded, not to Jacque but to the thread in general, that Pit Bulls are responsible for 90% of the fatal attacks yet only represent 4% of the dog population. Both of these figures are absurd lies and unprovable fallacies promoted by 1 website, the anti-Pit Bull operation DogsBite.org. When one points out the invalidity of the statistics, or the twisted bias of the source (Colleen Lynn), or the fact that said statistics are completely cherry-picked from unverified media mentions, or the non-science and failure involved in breed identification, or the numerous reckless circumstances surrounding whatever incident, well, all of this usually goes ignored by Steve. I’m not sure why, if he’s truly concerned with public safety, but he still ignores it all.

So there is an update on what’s going on in regards to Pasadena and Mr. Madison. I hope to see all of you come out for the next related City Council meeting in July.

Colleen Lynn and DogsBite.org cult members who want any dog even remotely resembling a Pit Bull dead: Meet your philosophical guideline and how it views in relation to a class of people!

It is unbelievably embarrassing that any fellow human being could/would ever think in such a way. What’s more pathetic is that they are actually proud and work to promote and spread such a fucked way of thinking.

Coming from someone that desires news reporting that is more honest and thorough, the idea that robots and computer algorithms are generating immediate news stories should be a problem to all of us. We already live in a media culture that seems to salivate over gossip, celebrity and otherwise pointless nonsense. Much, that I’d personally consider newsworthy, already goes ignored. And now we are taking the human element further out of the process? A process that can only get worse if we continue allowing machines to further litter the landscape with repetitive and unverified crap.

From Singularity Hub…

This is possible because some kinds of reporting are formulaic. You take a publicly available source, crunch it down to the highlights, and translate it for readers using a few boiler plate connectors. Hopefully, this makes it more digestible.

I imagine the computer populating a Venn diagram. In one circle, it adds hard data (earnings, sports stats, earthquake readings), in another, a selection of journalistic clichés—and where the two intersect, an article is born.

The program chooses an article template, strings together sentences, and spices them up with catch phrases: It was a flawless day at the dish for the Giants. The tone is colorfully prosaic, but human enough.

The founder of Narrative Science, the company creating a lot of the computer generated news being discussed, predicts that upwards of 90% of the world’s news could be written by computers come 2030. Major companies and media outlets are already using the technology, and most are using it anonymously.

So as we hope for integrity in journalism, and for less of a monopoly at the top of the media spectrum, this signals for a high probability of the opposite. As we hope for more fact-checking and perspectives that can only be genuinely fleshed out by actual humans, we may get even more sensationalistic, exploitative and formulaic rubbish in the coming years.

The phrase “Pit Bull” generates news. The attempted process of breed identification and using actual scientific evidence rarely plays a role in making those assessments. And this is now! Just imagine a software system loaded with catchphrases and templates, whose sole purpose is to quickly generate news, writing an article on an alleged “dog attack.” The thought couldn’t be much worse.

The Lake Elsinore City Council seems hellbent on rolling forth with the breed-discriminatory plan that was first passed in October by the Riverside County Board of Supervisors at the behest of Riverside County pound director Robert Miller. Interestingly enough, this peddled ordinance has nothing to do with anything that has actually happened in the city of Lake Elsinore.

It sadly passed its 1st reading on 3/11 by a vote of 4-1. The 2nd reading and vote is currently scheduled for 3/25. If you’d like to attend this meeting I’ve setup a Facebook event that you can join which has all of the pertinent details regarding how to get there. It is this upcoming Tuesday at 7 pm. Here is the agenda, the staff report and the ordinance itself.

Worth pointing out is that this Lake Elsinore effort is taking quite a different public face. Those involved are using tactical doublespeak and political maneuvering to appear less prejudice towards the dogs themselves.

Councilman Brian Tisdale seems to be the main Councilman desiring to see that this legislation is passed. From my eyes and ears he is taking a less rhetorical approach in demonizing the dogs. He makes statements like “I love the breed,” while using disingenuous justifications in order to promote this effort to target them. In essence, he’s a hell of a lot slicker than a Steve Madison from Pasadena or a John Tavaglione or Jeff Stone from Riverside County.

But then again, why do all of that stuff when you have “expert witnesses” attending who are doing so with the sole purpose of publicly shilling for the bill? Riverside County chief veterinarian Allan Drusys, known here for being the guy that compares breed identification to viewing pornorgraphy, and Animal Friends of the Valleys director Willa Bagwell, known here for being the local shelter manager who practices breed regulations in-house, were both in attendance and also both gave testimony as to why Pit Bulls needed to be targeted. Along with them was animal control supervisor Monique Middleton, who is also an employee of AFV.

On the backs of their statements, which each came after the public comments (all of which were opposed), this bill was essentially rubber-stamped with little hesitation by every member of the Council not named Steve Manos. You can watch those deliberations below…

I’d like to examine the statements of Tisdale, Drusys, Bagwell and Middleton, and explain why they just don’t seem to comprehend (at least publicly) why this bill is being opposed by many concerned citizens of both their community and other communities as well.

Above is Councilman Tisdale explaining his “comprehensive plan.” A plan in which he promises to stay vigilant at crafting and expounding upon. I use the word expound sarcastically, as there was no details shared regarding how he plans to go about the processes of spaying and neutering, licensing and microchipping the animals of the community. There was also no focus paid to legitimately reckless owners, or the “dog fighters” that he likes to reference when explaining this ordinance’s need. He says…

It’s unfortunate that the folks that are here, and I guarantee that everyone that spoke who has a Pit Bull, probably has a altered, licensed, vaccinated Pit Bull, or a Pit Bull-mix. Most Likely. Anyone not?

So? What exactly is your point? Not only does that statement attempt to vilify those who haven’t altered, licensed, or microchipped, but it also attempts to paint them as the problem in regards to why the community of Lake Elsinore apparently needs BSL. Let’s make something perfectly clear: The irresponsibility involved in failing (or choosing) to not do those mentioned things is not even remotely the same as the irresponsibility and recklessness involved when someone allows their dog to freely roam all over the place, or chains it 24-7 in its yard, or gives it no attention or socialization, or treats it like dirt, or exploits it by fighting it or using it as a yard deterrent or an alarm system. So let’s make that clear. Yet there’s no context given to these types of statements and it comes off as a pretty lazy way to legislate.

He says “if we don’t do this then people aren’t going to register their animals.” Um, all existing evidence shows the opposite of this to be true. When laws like this are put into place more people actually avoid registering their animals, as to avoid paying the fees aligned with the surgery, and further, any potential fees that become tacked on by them being in violation of said law for whatever period of time. This is not VOLUNTARILY going out to your community and EDUCATING them about the needs for these things, and then making it AFFORDABLE for them to do. No. This is the opposite, and mandating that all of these things be done under the guise that those who have not done them are bad and irresponsible people. Worse, this law attempts to criminalize their chosen dog, simply by the way that it looks, and then enters their dog into a database for another politician to possibly further target at a later date. I talked about this at length in a YouTube video that I made regarding what was happening in Pasadena.

So how does this help dogs or people for that matter?

Tisdale references a Pit Bull attack “in the county area,” one that the newly passed Riverside County breed-discriminatory law did not stop by the way, and jokes about not being able to spay and neuter the owner of the dog instead. Okay, but he literally takes no time to point out the circumstances behind this specific “attack.” Let me do it… It was a property with numerous roaming yard dogs, intact males and a female in heat, and little puppies on the property. What’s been reported is that there was a scuffle between 2 of the dogs, over a puppy, and that someone on the propery came out and picked up the puppy. He was then attacked by 1 of the dogs and a neighbor had to run his van through a chain-link fence in order to scare the attacking dog away. What an actual eyewitness said was that the person came out hollering about the dogs, kicked the dog, and then he was bitten by the dog that he kicked. Regardless, these are all yard dogs who are not being treated as family pets, and they are openly breeding them. None of this goes mentioned by Tisdale. Just that it was a Pit Bull attack.

He then talks about how many unaltered pets he sees while out running and tells a story about his fondness for visiting the shelter. He talks about seeing docile and sweet Pit Bulls, and states that he “loves the breed.” He goes on…

We have to start somewhere. And this is part of 1 plan. This is 1 piece of our plan that we are going to put together to tackle this issue. And again, this issue is not just a Pit Bull issue. $500,000 that can be used for roads and streets and sidewalks folks. We shelter animals. $500,000.

No mention of the state of California already having a dangerous dog law that is truly specific to individual dogs that have shown a propensity to be dangerous. They could use and enforce this. That goes ignored. No mention of the Lake Elsinore leash law that clearly goes unenforced. No mention of both the anti-dog fighting law and the anti-chaining law, either of which could be used and enforced in any number of different scenarios. And he wants to note how much money is being spent “sheltering” animals, while giving no attention to the fact that Willa Bagwell halts the majority of Pit Bull adoptions via her 7 in-house regulations that she’s put in the path of them potentially being adopted. He then says that “no one is taking them.” C’mon, man. Not to mention that their law is a carbon-copy of the Riverside County law, created by a man (Robert Miller) who houses the majority of their impounded Pit Bulls in buildings that are not made accessible to the public. Miller then, like Tisdale and Bagwell and Middleton and Drusys, says that “nobody wants them.” C’mon, man. What about the money that it’s going to take to enforce this type of a law? Or will it be enforced? Or how about the amount of money that you could potentially have to cough up if someone sues the city for violating their due process and property rights? This is apparently of no concern.

After the meeting I briefly spoke with Councilman Tisdale and he told me that I could hop in his truck and within 5 minutes of entering Lakeland Village he could “take me to a dogfight.” That we’d “just have to listen for it.” If he’s so knowledgeable about specific illegal activities such as this going on then why in the hell is he doing nothing about it? I also tried pointing out the problems with demonizing certain breeds or types of dog and he cut me off to say that “they’re already demonized!” That he “didn’t have a choice” because they are already demonized, “that’s what you guys aren’t getting.” He said that “people are scared.” I said that people are scared of a lot of things. That no offense, but some people are scared of black people (Tisdale is black). Some people are scared of white people. That still doesn’t make it right. His response? “Yeah, but this black person won’t bite you.” Clearly he didn’t get my point. But he doesn’t have a choice? See, now that’s where he’s wrong. You always have a choice, and he’s choosing to go down the discredited path of vilifying vague groups of individual dogs in order to basically offer up nothing more than a false sense of security.

Animal Friends of the Valleys director Willa Bagwell says “the Pit Bulls do cause damage.” So what is the implication there, that no other dog doesn’t? Or is it that every dog deemed by you to be a Pit Bull is more capable of causing damage, or more significant damage, than every dog deemed by you not to be a Pit Bull? Some extremely incoherent and all-encompassing language, as it’s unclear what she’s even saying and yet she’s apparently comfortable with talking on behalf of millions of individual dogs as if they are all the same in those ways. The only way in which dogs are all the same is that they are all the same species, meaning any dog being called a Pit Bull is scientifically categorized as being no different than any other breed of dog. They are all dogs. They all originated from the same place. And most dogs are mixed amongst different breeds and types. So if you are going to be so vague in your statements then you should not discriminate with your vagueness. On the contrary, if you are going to go any further than being as vague as humanly possible then you have to acknowledge that each dog is an individual, with its own temperament and experiences, and that they should be judged on their individual merits or not judged at all.

Bagwell tells the Council that she “provided some information, provided pictures” for them, in regards to justifying the damage claim, and based on my further communications with her (and others who have had interactions with her) I’m quite confident in saying that it was very likely numerous images of a senior woman’s arm who is alleged to have been attacked by 2 roaming Pit Bulls in 2011. I say “alleged” not to lessen the reality of the attack that clearly happened, but to point to the fact that none of us ever get to see the actual dogs in question. They were just called “family Pit Bulls” and then that became the evidence. What we do know is that these dogs were definitely out roaming freely. Willa does not know the background of these dogs, she knows what the owner told them after they had attacked a human being. I’m sorry, but how is using 1 set of images from 1 specific incident in any way indicative of what all Pit Bulls (or any type of dog) would do? That’s a crap move and it’s implying to the Council that her vague claim about damage is a factual claim that is somehow backed by evidence. Take dogs out of the equation and use, as an example, any other group of domesticated sentient beings… How in the world would singular evidence such as this be used to scapegoat everyone fitting an appearance-related parameter? This is fear, and fear tactics shouldn’t be used to set public policy. She continues…

In the last 2 months we’ve impounded 50 Pit Bulls, 2 were adopted, 3 were rescued, 8 were returned to the owner. 60 Chihuahuas in 2 months 24 were adopted, 9 were returned to their owner. Most of the shelter is Chihuahuas and Pit Bulls.

So by my math that means 37 Pit Bulls were killed totaling a 75% kill-rate for this period and that 27 Chihuahuas were killed totaling a 45% kill-rate. Can’t we then focus on increasing adoptions of these animals instead of using 7 different regulations to thwart the possibilities of Pit Bulls making it out alive? Being “very careful” in Willa’s words amounts to this in reality, which is not right. And can’t we stop pushing legislation that promotes the idea that Pit Bulls are somehow different from other dogs, further creating a gap between them and potential adopters?

During a phone conversation on 3/14 with Willa Bagwell she outright told me that this law would not be enforced and that the Council members already knew that. She should know, as her department is the department that’s set up to enforce it. Does no one see a problem with this?!? How are they voting on something that they already know they have no intention of enforcing?

Also worth note is something that I found while researching AFV… Here is the “potentially dangerous dog” list for 6 cities (including Lake Elsinore) from the years of 2010 through 2013. The existence of this list proves that they know the actual process of identifying individual dogs as “potentially dangerous” or “vicious” based on actual things that they may have done. This list details 30 dogs, 29 of which have been declared “potentially dangerous,” 1 who was declared “vicious.”

Here head animal control officer Monique Middleton says about the public commenters: “These are the responsible people, this will not affect them.” I beg to differ! I specifically drove all the way out there because every inch that someone takes towards breed-specific legislation and prejudice against a huge group of dogs absolutely affects my dogs. This then, by extension, affects me. My dogs are my family members, so any bullshit law meant to imply that my dogs are “different” or “dangerous” certainly does affect me and my dogs. It perpetuates stereotypes and scapegoats dogs, that most will never even take the opportunity to meet, for all of society’s ills. I resent Middleton’s flippant statement and way of coddling the audience away from this quite clear reality.

Middleton also echos Tisdale’s statements that “we have to start somewhere.” How about any other spot other than breed vilifying? This is a multifaceted problem (public safety in regards to dogs) which has many solutions. Many things that, if done, add up to a safer community. I repeatedly detail these things in my writings. I’m saying things that many folks have said before me. This entire effort is a pacification of their city’s genuine concerns, if there are legitimate safety concerns being voiced. Demonizing types of dogs is not going to make your community safer. Enforcing actual laws, meant to deal with reckless owners of whatever dog or dogs, do that. Not any of this. Monique Middleton knows this. Willa Bagwell knows this. Brian Tisdale knows this. She goes on to say that “we have to make people responsible for a breed.” How?? By mandating that this or that group be sterilized? How in the hell does that, in any way, deal with those human beings who have already been reckless with their dogs and who will be reckless again in the future? And why will they be reckless again? Because no one dealt with it or held them accountable when it happened in the past, that’s why.

Lastly, Riverside County veterinarian Allan Drusys telling the Council members that identifying Pit Bulls is like watching pornography, and that you “know it when you see it,” is quite literally one of the most asinine things that I’ve ever heard. There is no evidence to support this claim. None. The peer-reviewed evidence that exists on the topic says the exact opposite, and that most shelter workers can’t even properly identify their own impounded dogs.

A Victoria Voith study, which was in part done at the shelter that Allan Drusys works at, showed that 73% of the time animal control officers and shelter workers got it wrong when compared to actual DNA evidence. Allan Drusys knows both Dr. Voith and Dr. Irizarry, who were part of the extensive study, and this information is just discarded. Dr. Irizarry, a geneticist, was actually present at the Riverside County Board of Supervisors meeting in October to give a public comment opposing their ordinance. He referenced the study. He explained the genome. Allan Drusys was present. They ignored him. Irizarry also referenced a 2010 study done by Dr. Elaine Ostrander which showed that “the morphological appearance of a dog is controlled by 50 genes, out of the 20,000 genes that make up a dog’s genome. And so when you say a dog looks like a Pit Bull you’re really saying it has 4 or 5 genes that affect its physical shape, its head-shape, its snout, and it has no basis whatsoever on its behavior.” They ignored him. Maddie’s Fund and Dr. Julie Levy did a similar study, and it showed the same types of results.

Going further, 3 different pieces of legal case law exist deeming definitions of “Pit Bull” as unconstitutionally vague… American Dog Owners vs. City of Lynn, MA (1989), American Dog Owners vs. City of Des Moines, IA (1991), and State of Ohio/City of Toledo vs. Smith (2010). The 2010 court case Cardelle vs. Miami-Dade County (2010) found that animal control officers were not qualified to visually identify Pit Bulls. It also found that there is no scientific basis for admitting such an opinion. The Animal Control Association doesn’t even offer a course in breed identification! Yet Monique Middleton, an animal control officer, would confidently suggest otherwise. Mr. Allan Drusys gleefully continues repeating his pornography metaphor. This utter crap is being accepted by the Lake Elsinore City Council as “expert testimony.” It is truly a shame.

There’s nothing comprehensive in Councilman Brian Tisdale’s comprehensive plan, and there’s nothing specific about breed-specific legislation. This is a sham being perpetrated against the Lake Elsinore community, dogs of all kinds, the genuine idea of actual public safety, and the state anti-BSL law. Please oppose this move, and the nasty philosophy behind it, with all of your might.

To email the Lake Elsinore City Council: njohnson@lake-elsinore.org, smanos@lake-elsinore.org, dhickman@lake-elsinore.org, rmagee@lake-elsinore.org, btisdale@lake-elsinore.org.

The Carson shelter has preposterously taken 23 days to complete 1 simple temperament test. This was made official on 3/12, after someone working for this shelter finally brought themselves to take an initiative and do their job. Yes, this test was requested on 2/18. All the while this amazingly sweet boy named Freckles had been waiting to pass, so that he can then be let out of his kennel for a walk or some interaction in the play yard.

See, at the Carson shelter they state that any dog they themselves deem to be a “Pit Bull” is not allowed to leave its kennel, under any circumstances, until it receives and passes a temperament evaluation. This is their in-house BSL at work. This pays no mind to the fact that temperament tests are not automatically given to dogs, and when they are requested it routinely takes the staff over a week (or more, such as this case demonstrated) to do them. What happens to the Pit Bulls, amounting to most all of them, who never get a temperament test? They just never get out of their kennel until they are taken out to be killed.

Many times after the temperament test has finally been completed it’s the shelter manager’s next move to then give that dog 24 hours to find rescue, or it’s potentially targeted to be killed. This manager’s name is Gil Moreno and he’s about the last person that should be managing a shelter. The 23-day wait for the temperament test to be done is apparently being explained away because they are “under staffed,” yet they fire incredible volunteers (like Dianne), decline other volunteer applicants (like myself) and do a whopping 1 training class per year. I’m also just posting this story now, now that I know that Freckles is officially safe, because this shelter has been known to retaliate against dogs that I promote and kill them out of spite. Yes, this is the culture that we traverse.

Lastly, they graded submissive Freckles a “C” after he started playing with the rubber hand on the stick that they try and incite the dogs with, which they point into their food while they are eating. Really fair, huh?

Here’s a video that I shot on the morning of 3/7, again, just posted now because I didn’t want it floating around online and have them retaliate against me and kill Freckles in response.

This email address recently emailed a UCLA law professor last week, coincidentally less than 24 hours after I spoke at her class, with an unsolicited pile of steaming anti-Pit Bull rubbish taken from a string of blogs created to lobby for bans on Pit Bulls and the extermination of dogs deemed to be Pit Bulls.

The email message comes being addressed from a “Humane World” and with a subject line of “The Annotated Cultural Bibliography of Pit Bulls.”

This professor certainly didn’t ask for the email, and no one publicized my speaking at her class, at all. What I did do was create a zip file entitled “UCLA” and put the link to the file onto my Twitter feed, with no explanation as to what it was, so that the students of the class could easily access different documents that I’d potentially be discussing. Hmm… What this leads me to believe is that both my website and social media pages are being staked out by someone with the intent of promoting BSL and demonizing innocent dogs.

After doing a Google search on “7canines@gmail.com” it also was shown to have been sending the same type of materials out to people involved with opposing Pasadena’s attempt at BSL. These emails were also not asked for and people were wondering how this sender even got their email addresses in the first place… Well, the Pasadena City Council publicizes the correspondence (both for and against) that they received to their ordinance. Whomever is behind this 7canines email must have went through and noted everyone speaking out against breed-specific legislation in this instance and collected their email addresses, with the future intent of sending them this canned email blast promoting both hate and fear against all Pit Bulls.

At the top of the body of their email it says this…

SRUV email alerts are currently mailed to over 3800 international humane and animal welfare professionals, scholars of animal law and human-animal studies, ethologists, bioethicists, veterinarians, and journalists with an interest in canines.

So yeah, this type of obsessive behavior is likely being forced upon God only knows who else, any number of people that whomever is doing the spamming would deem potentially influential to their anti-Pit Bull cause. It’s lame, but being a faceless fearmonger is all that these hateful people have left.

This writing would be my personal counter to such trollish behavior. The goal being that next time someone gets an unsolicited email from this email address, simply googling the address will bring up this article.

To whomever you are: Know the source of the misinformation that you receive from 7canines@gmail.com. Know that these persons are oftentimes faceless and not accountable to anyone or anything. Know that their agenda is one of lobbying for breed-discriminatory legislation, bans, and the extermination of any dog even remotely looking like a Pit Bull. Know that they advocate for a philosophy that deems millions of dogs “guilty” or “bad,” and simply based around the way that they look and nothing else. Know that they are actively promoting both hate and fear, appealing to the lowest common denominators of human thought. Finally, know that not even a single dog or human safety expert organization has come out saying that breed-specific legislation is effective. Know that all mainstream and professional animal welfare groups are totally against breed-specific legislation as well. You can click on each organization to read their own words as to why.

The Riverside County “breed-specific” mandatory sterilization ordinance against Pit Bulls is being peddled and copied all throughout the state of California. First it was Riverside County, then onto the city of Riverside, then to Pasadena, and most recently it was duplicated in Lake Elsinore. An aspect most concerning to me is the loose way in which the breed identification portion of the ordinance is being patently accepted as indisputable obviousness.

What this means is that people like Allan Drusys (chief veterinarian with Riverside County), with their unscientific and ignorantly subjective opinions, are sometimes in the positions to make the ultimate breed identification decisions. This is a horrifying reality considering Drusys thinks that identifying a Pit Bull is as easy as recognizing pornography. First off, who said that pornography was easy to identify? The Supreme Court says otherwise. But this notion in regards to visual dog breed identification is asinine on numerous fronts, and yet Drusys’ arrogant claims are quite literally being entrusted as “expert testimony” when in front of any number of elected officials.

Worse, he is claiming a “consensus” when reality utterly refutes that claim in full. Mr. Drusys willfully contradicts a peer-reviewed breed identification study done by Dr. Victoria Voith, part of which was done at the very shelter that Drusys works at. This past Tuesday he was in Lake Elsinore doing this very thing, using the pornography claim to lobby on behalf of the anti-Pit Bull ordinance which is a copy of the one that he helped get rubber-stamped in Riverside County while using the same claims. This is happening now.

On Tuesday night the Lake Elsinore City Council ushered in breed-discriminatory legislation against Pit Bulls by a vote to 4-1. I’ll write about this more in depth in the coming days, but for now I wanted to focus some further examination on their local shelter Animal Friends of the Valleys. Representatives from the shelter, including manager Willa Bagwell, were also in attendance and in support of the prejudicial moves made by the Council.

Surprisingly, or not, they also employ an in-house anti-Pit Bull policy that pretty much amounts to violations of the California state law. This was first brought to my attention last year, where I detailed 7 regulations that they readily enforce against dogs that they themselves deem to fit the visual characteristics of being “Pit Bulls.” In other words, STOPPING PUBLIC ADOPTIONS AND RESCUES. The flaws in this process were further examined, and all which garnered me page visits from Bagwell herself, where she threatened another commenter with a lawsuit and then accused me of “bashing” their shelter.

This was followed by other defenders of the shelter, who didn’t come to specifically address any point that I was actually trying to raise, but instead came to just blindly defend AFV against someone who would dare criticize them in any way. How dare I do such a thing!?

One commenter, accusing me of “attacking” the shelter, insisted that I “get out from behind” my keyboard, and not only once but twice in 1 paragraph. This same person then implied that I do no educational work, called all owners “idiots,” and then told me that I should “help find homes for homeless pets.” Apparently she has no idea about how much I at least try to help those homeless pets. The same homeless pets that this shelter is actually discouraging folks from adopting. Wouldn’t me going to lengths to point out this absolute fact be considered “helping” homeless pets? At least those who have been made to seem less-than by a shelter policy that discourages their adoptions. But I guess that doesn’t count, right?

Then a former employee of the shelter came on to further defend AFV, asking me if maybe this policy is done for the animal’s own good… So we should just stifle the adoption potential for this large group of animals and ultimately kill them to hypothetically protect them from any potential abuse? Um, isn’t that what PETA says and does? She then tries to blame this policy on the “negative media attention,” not giving any thought to the fact that policies such as these perpetuate said media attention, perpetuate low adoptions numbers, and further, perpetuate the passing of laws (BSL) like the one that was just passed on Tuesday (and with the support of this shelter). This law, of course, further perpetuates that pesky “negative media attention” that this former employee tried to blame everything on back in July of last year. Awesome. By the way, my question about them having the same concern for all of the non-Pit Bulls “falling into the wrong hands” has still went unanswered…

Well, nothing new under the sun apparently. My Facebook event for Tuesday’s City Council meeting again brought out shelter manager Will Bagwell, where she again accused people of “bashing” her shelter, and for simply pointing out that AFV employs a policy of in-house breed discrimination.

Well Willa, your shenanigans are up, and they will continue to be talked about publicly. The in-house breed prejudice that you’ve put into practice at AFV is pretty much public knowledge to anyone that’s been paying attention. So how exactly is telling the damned truth about your unlawful regulations considered “bashing” your shelter? And regarding the keyboard thing, I was actually there on Tuesday night and said what I said about your shelter to your face. So, as many of us do use that damned internet contraption in the year of 2014 (including you, imagine that), we also SHOW UP AND OPPOSE YOU TO YOUR FACE. We are not just some faceless entity, a lot of times not even a real person, that trolls from behind a computer screen.

I can only speak for myself, but I’m a pretty dedicated (on the ground) advocate for both Pit Bulls and shelter reform. I don’t have to work at AFV to know that a policy not only exists but is also being used to squash potential adoptions. It’s on your website, and further, I have your shelter policies and procedures manual. I also have personal insight into the fact that you use Merritt Clifton’s unscientific and disingenuous “study” from Animal People, a study that derives their attack numbers from media accounts (and without proper breed identification), in order to justify your private positioning (that you won’t even acknowledge) against Pit Bull adoption. Not to mention the fact that Clifton is a popular hack for DogsBite.org, an anti-Pit Bull hate group hellbent on lobbying for their extermination. Nice touch.

So no, you will not be succeeding in demonizing the dogs in full, or any other tool, like a computer, in full, just because you are too pathetic to account for an actual reality that is both on your website and in your policy manual.

Without further ado, direct from their shelter manual:

Call me crazy, but this pretty much shows a control freak micromanaging the adoptions of certain groups of animals while also trying to indoctrinate volunteers by having them, well, as stated, go out of their way to “discourage” Pit Bull adoptions.

I want to preface what I’m about to write by saying that I genuinely like and support Karma Rescue, think that they do great work, and have literally nothing against them. It’s just that in this specific scenario I fundamentally believe them to be wrong, and want to use this incident to make further social points.

Seems like everyone has heard at least something regarding the situation swirling around the Rhodesian Ridgeback named Raffiki. She escaped her backyard (was possibly stolen), found her way into the arms of a civilian who then took her to the West Valley shelter, was rescued and then promptly adopted back out to a new family, and all before her prior family could even locate her.

It’s quite the sad circumstance, and for all parties involved. That much is clear, if nothing else. You can read up on it here, here and here. Karma Rescue released a statement, which is here. Karma’s former Marketing Director, who resigned over their handling of this, released another timeline meant to refute Karma’s timeline, which is here. Raffiki’s Facebook page is here.

What I want to focus on in my writing is the aftermath. The public reaction. The outrage. The judgment. The hypocrisy. All the rest of it. As you could imagine this has elicited a vast amount of commentary, some of it coming from the animal rescue community itself, and a lot of which has not even remotely been helpful.

Some examples, taken from the comment section of the L.A. Times article as well as from Karma Rescue’s Facebook thread addressing the issue:

The fact that you totally downplay the first owner’s irresponsible behavior – no spay, no chip, no tag – is bad enough. But then you make it sound like class wars because the rescue said Torres wouldn’t qualify as an adopter anyway. I do rescue as a volunteer and one of the things I do is a home check on potential adopters. I have seen far too many large dogs in small homes. I have seen far too many sick animals denied vet care because owners don’t have enough money for themselves, let alone a large, hungry dog. You don’t like that fact? Tough, neither do I. But I’m not here to make someone like Torres feel better about herself by giving her a dog to placate her child. I do my work to ensure an animal goes to an appropriate home. That doesn’t mean a luxury home, just an APPROPRIATE home. I re-homed a cat last year to a couple living in a tiny cottage. I would never have approved them for a big dog, though.

Never let Torres ever again have an animal. Keep Raffki where she is, safe and cared for properly.

This is the way I see it: Mistakes were made, feelings hurt, but the dog is safe and will be loved, thanks to Karma. The 4-year-old will recover and hopefully learn about responsible pet ownership.

You guys did everything right. First, if the owner would of done her part, none of this would of happened. Second, she would of spent endless hours looking for her, like the rest of us pet parents would of. Third, her dog was saved from certain death. This lady should be grateful. I’m sure she is sad, but her sadness comes from selfishness and poor her. Not the dog. It really should be shame on her, but we don’t need to go there.

If someone who genuinely loves their pet were to lose them they would search tirelessly. This looks like attention seeking on the supposed owners behalf.

I’ve had dogs all my life. Now 59 years old. NEVER lost one. Never cruel to one. And never without a tag and collar.

Whoever the owner was, they were clearly irresponsible for not tagging/microchipping, losing, then not even bothering to check animal control for their “beloved” dog. They don’t deserve the dog back! As far as their behavior… Like your rescue name suggests… Karma will take care of them in the end!

At least her dog wasn’t put down by shelter when she NEVER showed up to claim it. Probably didn’t want to pay fees.

Torres clearly cannot afford to properly provide for herself and her son, much less an animal. Torres needs to get her act together, work to make a decent living for herself and her son and then when she can properly provide for animal which includes spay/neuter, microchipping, and providing an I.D. tag then she can adopt another animal.

I stand with Karma Rescue. Despite the smear campaign that was initiated by the dogs “owners,” it was obvious that Karma did nothing but save a dog from a likely grim future at the shelter. Plus, what proof is there that the dog actually belonged to those people in the first place? No chip, no collar. More importantly, not fixed! This is an unpopular opinion, but given how many unaltered abandoned dogs I have come across in my years of doing rescue, I don’t feel a lot of sympathy for people whose dogs get out that have shown that kind of irresponsibility.

No tags, not spayed, no chip, lives with her parents with her son. Sounds like she needs to get her priorities straight before she takes on the responsibility of a dog. The cycle of poverty continues…

Yeah, I don’t think poor people should be allowed to have dogs either.

Jesus. This harkens back thoughts of something that I wrote in December of last year. My point then was that these types of paths one verbally goes down, and they go down it because their mind is thinking it, is 1 of the main reasons why we have so many immovable road blocks in the roads of breed prejudice issues and shelter reform issues.

I love this community very much, but at times it is also extraordinarily divisive and irrational, to the point where emotion is almost always fueling 90% of the verbiage being supplied by “supporters.”

From what’s been made publicly available it seems that Raffiki was impounded at the West Valley shelter on 2/13. She was wearing no identification and had no microchip. The shelter customarily held her for the 5 day stray hold and then at some point on 2/19 she was made available for public adoption. In the “morning” of 2/20 Raffiki was officially pulled by Karma Rescue, spayed, and then sent to the NKLA adoption center in West Los Angeles on that same day. The dog was given the name “Kami.” At 4:57 pm on 2/21 Rosa Torres, Raffiki’s owner, left a voicemail with Karma Rescue. At 6:03 pm Karma “received, and approved, an adoption application for Kami, and requested the applicant family have an in-person meet-and-greet with her.” Their release goes on to say that the approved family “met Kami at NKLA and took her home that day.” At 6:54 pm Karma received a 2nd adoption application from Rosa Torres, where she was claiming to be Raffiki’s owner. Karma said that “this application was not reviewed until after the adoption was complete.” They also claim to have been unaware of the voicemail until “after the adoption had taken place.” At 9:00 am on 2/22 Karma called Torres to let her know that Kami had been adopted. Their statement from the release states that “had she contacted the organization sooner, Karma would have been in a better position to reunite her with her dog.” They also apparently spoke with Kami’s adopters to “apprise them of the situation” prior to speaking with Torres. Going further, they also mentioned that both LAAS and the LAPD “have confirmed that there has been no illegal conduct on the part of the rescue.” This would obviously imply that they went out of their way to ask both departments and, if smart, likely did it before speaking with both Torres and the new adopters.

The release goes on, below the timeline portion, to kind of imply that the owner of Raffiki is using a fake alias to engage in “mud-slinging on the internet.” They mention how Rosa Torres has been “notably absent” from the online fray. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I find it pretty disturbing that amidst this and other public statements they are actually defining what has played out as a “smear campaign” being pushed by the dog’s prior owner. Not only is that incredibly unfair but it’s just a formulaic cop-out in the face of what many would deem to be some legitimate criticism.

Some will argue that Raffiki could’ve hypothetically been killed at whatever point on 2/19 when she was taken off of her stray hold. This is true, albeit extremely unlikely. There’s multiple layers to this, and let me try to give my perspective on it… L.A. City shelters keep dogs, on average, far longer than any L.A. County shelter does. I’d pretty confidently claim that it’s rare for any city shelter to immediately euthanize a dog that has just been made available, and that goes for any dog. Further, this dog was either a purebred Rhodesian Ridgeback or Vizsla, and a puppy at that. These dogs do not come into the shelter often, as there’s not many of them, and when they do I think it’s safe to say that they don’t have much trouble being adopted and/or rescued. This gives far more credence to the thought that this dog was absolutely going to be given some time. Karma did a great thing in rescuing any dog, that isn’t in dispute by me at all. But don’t give the not-knowing public the impression that you were saving it from an impending death either. Even if the dog had personality quirks not best suited for such an environment, or could have developed kennel stress over time, it wouldn’t have garnered the dog an immediate death.

Going back to their press release: Did anyone else notice that they conveniently didn’t hear a voicemail, or get a 2nd application, even though those events directly sandwiched (66 minutes prior, 51 minutes after) a 1st application that they were all over? I say “all over” because they received, approved, requested that the family meet the dog, had the family drive to meet the dog, the family met the dog, and then the family left the NKLA adoption center with the dog, and all from 6:03 pm to 8:00 pm of that same day. All of that happened in 117 minutes. The NKLA adoption center closes at 8 pm. Karma Rescue also isn’t an organization run by 1 or 2 people, and instead run by many different people doing many different facets of their business. Just saying. They certainly could’ve missed the voicemail, as I personally miss, and sometimes willingly engage in the prolonging of listening to my own personal voicemails. I get that. But how is your organization able to be so proactive about 1 application, to the point where the adoption is completely done in less than 2 hours from the original point of contact, and yet you claim not to have heard or seen the attempts at communication coming from Raffiki’s owner?

I pass no judgment onto Karma for the quickness of their adoption, or for potentially not doing a home check, or for their internal choices when it comes to which dogs to take and not take from a shelter. I completely realize that those are in-house decisions and they are individually made amongst the people that have the right to make them, which is Karma Rescue and only Karma Rescue. I’m with you… But I mention all of this because many of their own supporters have been unbelievably judgmental towards Raffiki’s original owner. Yet these are probably many of the same people that would relentlessly grill someone else over not doing a home check, for example.

So many people have taken extreme issue over the collar, and the tags, and the microchip, and the not being fixed, and the getting loose. They say that this characterizes Rosa Torres as “x.” First off, people don’t know if this dog was wearing a collar or not. Collars fall off. This didn’t stop many from rampaging on and on about it anyways. There’s many pictures showing that the dog was definitely wearing a black martingale collar. It did not have tags on. That was a mistake, for sure. But a mistake that many people make! Do you know how many times my own dogs, who are sterilized and microchipped, don’t have their collars on? After baths they routinely go at least a full day without wearing their collars, as they are either wet and/or getting cleaned and drying.

There’s also conflicting information out there regarding “when” the best time to get a pet sterilized is, and plus, the option also exists not to do it. It’s freedom of choice. I personally advocate for voluntarily spaying and neutering, but people can’t act as though everyone who doesn’t do it is either not responsible or some kind of a criminal. Who’s to say she wasn’t waiting for a certain age, or didn’t already have something in the works? The dog was still a puppy. Certain information coming from many respected sources in the field of medicine show that there are health concerns linked to both sterilization (age-related) and microchips, as well as vaccines for that matter. I’m not cosigning all of the information, just saying that it exists. A claim coming from Torres states that she had Raffiki’s spay surgery scheduled for 3 days after she went missing. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s kind of irrelevant in the face of the point that I’m trying to make.

I can personally speak to vaccines, as Sway developed Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia from a secondary rabies vaccination. This disease ultimately killed her, after battling with it for over 2 years. Neola, my current dog, developed mast cell cancer in the exact spot of her last rabies injection. I absolutely do not do any kind of booster shots and only give 3-year thimerosal-free rabies vaccinations to my own dogs. Neola gets no vaccine due to a medical waiver. Does this make me in any way “irresponsible”? Many of you judgmental pricks would apparently say yes! Absolutely! Take his dogs!

Regarding how Raffiki got loose in the first place… Dogs do unfortunately get loose sometimes. It is many times recklessness and carelessness that allows this to happen, that’s not being debated by me. But sometimes they simply get loose 1 time. Sometimes a gate is left ajar, sometimes they jump over or go under the containment, and sometimes they could even be stolen. According to Rosa Torres her family’s backyard was surrounded by a 6 foot fence. It is possible that the dog was stolen. No one knows either way, do we?

At the end of Karma’s release they say “we request a $300 donation from every adopter, but always waive this fee if the adopter has limited resources.” That’s great, and compassionate, and I hope that it’s at times true. We all know why the donation is deemed necessary, and we all know what it’s meant to represent. There’s nothing wrong with asking for some kind of financial contribution to serve as a representation of a transaction and a token of responsibility. But what about all of the judgmental commenters who support Karma, are out reaming Torres, and also saying things to the affect of x-person shouldn’t have x-dog because they don’t have x-amount of money? Karma’s own statement on their policy refutes your judgmental way of thinking! Listen!

But then there’s these quotes from Karma: 1) “The application did not meet the qualifications that Karma looks for when adopting a dog to a home.” 2) “Had she been a little more diligent, we would have spoken with her.” … Let it be known that this is not just a random person that they are speaking about, this is the owner of the dog! The mother of the 4-year-old boy who is Raffiki’s best friend.

More diligent? Oh, now we are talking about diligence… Why is no one, Karma and many of their supporters included, concerned with the lack of diligence shown by the East Valley shelter front desk? Did the staff check their own computer system when Rosa Torres went into her local shelter? It’s a Ridgeback or Vizsla puppy! If she went into a physical shelter and asked the staff about her lost dog, which she did on numerous occasions, why did no one tell her to go to another shelter? Even the neighboring shelter? Why did no one check their Chameleon shelter software by the breed of the dog? Neither of those things ever happened. Regardless of whether that’s typical staff behavior or not, I think that it should be going forward, because to me that’s a basic helping hand and the minimal effort that one can make at the front desk if someone comes in looking for a lost pet. How is this not already protocol? Any desk officer not having the time to do a simple software search, especially for a breed that rarely comes in, is not acceptable in my mind. That’s their job and it’s just common courtesy on top of everything. She wasn’t even advised to go to the West Valley shelter. She went into the East Valley shelter and wasn’t even advised to go to the West Valley shelter, where Raffiki was ultimately sitting. That may seem like common sense to most of us, but for people outside of this world none of it is, so to not have everyone on any staff know to minimally explain things so basic is a huge failure for any shelter. This is not a vilification of the East Valley shelter. Tons of people would do the right thing, make and effort, protocol or not. But whomever Rosa Torres spoke to apparently made no such effort at that time. Why is this not a focus of Karma Rescue?

To make matters even worse… Karma’s Marketing Director actually resigned over the poor playing out of this situation. She’s went public, her name is Jessica Gary. She not only stated that Karma absolutely did know about Rosa Torres, because she personally told them, but that Karma Rescue made the decision not to return Rosa’s call and email. Further, they then adopted Raffiki/Kami out to this new family without a home check and with full knowledge that the family already had another dog who was not neutered! While Karma implies that Rosa was irresponsible for not having Raffiki spayed… While many of their supporters applaud Karma on cue, and are quite vicious in the most judgmental way possible towards Rosa Torres… But the judgment, and the philosophies behind the judgment, isn’t consistent, is it? That’s massive hypocrisy.

If the goodness of humanity couldn’t prevail in the private handling of this situation, amongst the affected parties, then that’s just depressing as hell to me. The last thing that should come out of this is the alienation of the new family, who chose adoption. That’s to be applauded by all, I’d hope. But I’d also think that, knowing the circumstances now, they’d be up for facilitating this dog’s return. Apparently that is not the case.

Here’s another point, regarding the legalities that Karma now seems to be hiding behind: They claim that they are not able to legally do anything, which to me seems like an attempt to shift the focus off of them… Well, have you ever seen a rescue contract before? Anyone’s? They almost all universally say that x-dog will come back if this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this or this happens. Right? So if they think that they can just randomly snatch up someone’s adopted dog months or even years later then why isn’t that line of thinking consistent in this case? I see that as wanting to have it both ways. You can’t hide behind legalities now and still claim that you can delve in and take a separate person’s legal property if they don’t meet “x” condition later.

So to me it’s JUDGMENT and HYPOCRISY giving “rescue” its undeserved bad name and reputation. Not Rosa Torres, not Sandy Banks of the L.A. Times. There’s plenty of good going on, and we all see it each and every day. We each know countless people that are fantastic human beings, people that inspire us, make us want to do better. But the problem is the judgment and hypocrisy that, at times, runs rampant through what is genuinely a fantastic premise… Adoption, and rescue, and shelter reform, and saving lives, and giving 2nd chances. These are all beautiful things. This is the community that is the community needed to facilitate these things, and move these ideas forward. So when some making up this community are also the ones always caught up in not being consistent, and further, being downright irrationally cruel to one another, well, that’s what has the biggest negative impact on these goals in my own personal opinion. Those ugly characteristics have to keep a certain amount of people who are on the outside willingly remaining on the outside.

Raffiki’s owner going public about this incident is not meant to give all rescues, or all shelters, or even Karma specifically, a bad name. It is to make a further genuine attempt at getting her son’s dog back, since private attempts didn’t work. To those unilaterally implying that going public on a specific situation has the potential to do x-amount of sweeping damage to some entire vague premise (such as rescue), and thus becomes a valid reason to keep quiet instead, well that’s to basically discourage people from using the avenue of communication and publicity in the face of a wrong. It instead promotes the opposite, which is to do nothing and take it. This creates an environment where morally wrong things just endlessly happen, perpetuating each new thing on the back of the prior thing. Karma’s poor handling of this entire situation has been the biggest contributing factor to why this is the mess that it is. They can’t pass that buck and others shouldn’t be excusing it by giving the impression that Rosa speaking out about this very specific circumstance somehow does this massive amount of damage to the rescue community (and the premise of adoption) as a whole. I’ve seen this point try to be made repeatedly. It’s not true, even if certain people want to unfairly use it against the community as a whole. I might even now be criticized by others under the same premise, and while using this article as their evidence. But all people have to do is actually read what I’ve written to know that it’s not true. If people are to treat everything with kid-gloves then there would be no progression in society. We can all be better. We can all treat people better.

Everyone is capable of thinking before they speak. Everyone is capable of putting themselves in the other person’s shoes. Everyone is capable of respectfully disagreeing on things. That’s not to say to never be emotional, or passionate, or even critical… All 3 of which I am on numerous issues. Trust me. But I at least attempt to pick my spots, and it’s usually backed by information and not just stooped in layers of petty judgment or the need to give my forever unwavering allegiance to something.

I love Karma Rescue, would happily be the first to say it, but I also believe them to be very wrong here. They’ve shown a stunning lack of compassion and empathy for their fellow man and have pretty flagrantly disrespected the bond between dog and human. This is someone’s dog, a child’s dog. Once it was discovered that this dog was someone’s animal that should have been the end of it. Instead they willingly have seemed to ignore this fact and chose instead to violate both the law and a pretty basic standard of ethics. This woman was out looking for her dog from the time it went missing. She made a considerable effort. You cannot blame her for not knowing every nook and cranny of the animal sheltering world. She literally had 6 days to physically locate her dog prior to it being shipped to NKLA’s adoption center. Yes, it could have hypothetically been killed, but it wasn’t, and Karma knew she was actively looking and knew that she existed. And they chose not to do the right thing, and then lied about it, and then blamed Rosa Torres for leading a “smear campaign.” And so many people just allow it, and defend it aggressively, and toss judgment around like snow balls in a school yard. C’mon people!!

I write all of this fully realizing that I have my own fans and followers, amongst them many people that would likely defend me just because it’s me and for no other reason than that. I get that, and I appreciate the support that that would represent, but I honestly wouldn’t want that kind of support and I don’t need that kind of support. I’d instead wish that each person took the time to, at some level, critically think about the issue at hand before coming to my defense or coming to whatever conclusion that they came to. I’m not infallible and neither is anyone else. We should all want to be held accountable, and strive to reach the best versions of what we could potentially offer and be. But instead it seems that many people simply carry the water of whatever person or organization that they are a fan of or familiar with. This really isn’t that helpful, as it kind of “dumbs down” the communications for lack of a better term.

What does this show? Is this because some in our society are getting more apathetic and too lazy to go the non-irrational route, instead just firing off emotions before looking further into something? Is it because many of us, at the center of whatever issue, are incapable of defending ourselves in any kind of a transparent way? Or are people’s emotions and allegiances that fragile that the mere unalignment on a singular issue potentially risks the throwing havoc onto entire relationships?

I’m now over 5,000 words in, which is ridiculous, so I’ll end my commentary while happily acknowledging some of the fantastic comments that I found during my search for the opposite:

Responsible owners lose dogs. Gates get left open by visitors. Doors get opened a fraction of a second too long. Tree branches fall unseen on fences, and dogs escape. RESCUES and SHELTERS have lost dogs. Veterinarians have lost dogs. Leashes break. Collars slip off. Microchips can be a health issue, and migrate or some brands can’t be read by some scanners. All your Utopian suppositions are invalid.

Too much discussion is wasted on whether the dog was tagged, microchipped, spayed or not. All of that is irrelevant. The bottom line is: A family lost a dog, somebody else found it and later knew who the dog belongs to. They just have to return it. That’s not only the legal but the moral thing to do. No questions asked. That’s it. Anything else is irrelevant.

It’s easy to sit on a soapbox chastising others for the treatment of their animals. When you do not know the circumstances you should not pass judgment. Just like everyone has very strong opinions on raising children the same exists with raising a dog. Instead of just saying someone is doing something “wrong” show them a different way. People can’t learn another way if they are never kindly shown.

Microchips are not the only answer folks. If someone finds your pet and decides that they like it and want to keep it, all the microchips in the world won’t get your pet back. If the finder doesn’t request that the animal is scanned, or if you move or otherwise don’t keep your chip subscription perfectly up to date and pay required fees, then a microchip is useless. Ditto for collars and tags. If someone wants to keep your pet, then they will just throw away any existing i.d. tags. It is ultimately up to people to do the right thing. I hope the ironically named Karma Rescue gets a little karma in return.

Holy crap. These are animals that need love, not an upper income tax bracket.

This is pissing me off to no end. I’m involved heavily in animal rescue and this reeks of moral judgment. Not fixing, not microchipping, etc. is all really annoying and borderline irresponsible, but making a moral judgment about it and deciding it gives you ground to STEAL someone’s dog is disgusting. How about educating? Encouraging?

To all of the holier than thou commenters who somehow think that this could never happen to them, think again. I am on the board of a non-profit that works very hard to help reunite lost pets with their families. We are thrilled to be able to assist 1,000+ families recover their dogs. It takes a combination of hard work, luck and a supportive, non-judgmental community to do so. This is 1,000+ dogs that do not go into the rescue system allowing other dogs to be saved. If we were to serve as the final arbiter as to what families were fit or not fit to have their dogs returned to them – there would be an uprising just as you see in this case. When the first phone call came in identifying the owner, why did Karma Rescue not do the right thing and return the call? This is a huge red flag! If they truly felt that Raffiki’s family was unfit or that she was somehow abused, then why weren’t appropriate authorities contacted? This situation is appalling and Karma Rescue behaved in an arrogant and myopic manner.

Oh, and Eva, I volunteer at a shelter, too. Whoopity doo. That gives you zero credibility to me. I’m just aware that in the life of a dog, crap happens, and I’m not willing to punish every single pet owner that doesn’t live up to my expectations, especially one with no history of problems before, arbitrarily determining who does or does not get to keep their dog based on my personal whims. It’s not fair to the dog, it’s not fair to the owner, and if only 20% of lost dogs nationally are recovered by their owners each year, I’d rather help that become 21% than 19%… You obviously don’t feel the same.