America's animal shelters don't care enough about saving lives (according to a celebrated animal shelter advocate)

The voice of America's displaced pets and the conscience of the animal sheltering industry, Nathan Winograd, claims that "uncaring and corruption are endemic to the [animal shelter] industry [in the US]"

A New York animal control officer was arrested for stealing Hope, a family’s 9-year-old dog. After Hope was found by a neighbor and taken to the local shelter, the officer sold her to people in Ohio. When Hope’s real family came forward, the officer told them that she had died. Hope is now back with her family. While animal control insiders want to pretend that the officer is a rare bad apple, the tragic fact is that uncaring and corruption are endemic to the industry. And though the facts of this case may be somewhat unique, uncaring and corruption aren’t. - Nathan Winograd

Nathan Winograd was motivated to claim that America's animal shelters don't care enough about saving lives and that there is corruption at an unacceptable level within the animal shelter industry, by a story currently on news media which reports that an animal control officer, Casterline, 51, stole a Yorkshire terrier whose name is Hope and then sold the dog to an unsuspecting purchaser.

Hope had been lost in Corning, California, and then found and taken to a local SPCA (Chemung County) from where Casterline picked up the dog and took her home and then eventually sold her to a family in Ohio.

I believe that this is little Hope. So pleased that she/he is back with their true owner. Image: Nathan Winograd's email.

The original owners of the dog became suspicious and telephoned the local police who investigated. Through a telephone number they discovered the family in Ohio who had bought Hope. This family released the dog which must have been difficult to the police.

The true owner of Hope had become very distressed because Casterline had told them that their dog had died.

Hope was then reunited with the original owner while Casterline was arrested for various misdemeanours including theft and he will be tried in the criminal courts. He has resigned his job.

CROSS-POST:  US animal shelter ‘industry’ accused of endemic uncaring attitude and corruption.

The big issue here is perhaps not the story of Hope which ended well, but the statement by Nathan Winograd. He clearly has a very negative viewpoint of America's animal shelters.

And I think it comes from the fact that he is a world expert in no-kill animal shelters and he insists upon high standards and the employment of various methods to ensure that the maximum number of shelter animals are rehomed and their lives saved.

He criticises many animal shelters for failing to use efficient and widespread methods to save lives. He accuses them of being lazy and hiding behind rather feeble excuses such as there are too many dogs and cats coming into the shelter and not enough adopters to take them off their hands. Often this isn't the case. It's just an excuse. An excuse to wriggle out of responsibilities. That would be the argument of Mr Winograd.

Another excuse is that the animal is unadoptable because of their behaviour. But shelters create bad behaviour in animals because they are relatively inhospitable places with strange noises and lots of commotion. A shy animal will become reclusive and difficult. They will be deemed unadoptable. Or the animal might become aggressive when approached because they become defensive thanks to the environment in which they are temporarily incarcerated.

This, too, will allow the shelters to kill the animal being deemed unadoptable. This applies to both dogs and cats. For example, in New York City shelter the authorities deemed it acceptable to kill animals that were 'mentally stressed'. They decided it was better to kill them than to take them out of the shelter and place them with a foster carer where they wouldn't be mentally stressed. It is that kind of thing I'm talking about.

Nathan Winograd should know because he is an expert as stated.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Meta, parent company of Facebook, have agreed to a new online fraud charter in the UK

Facebook has agreed to introduce measures to stop fraudsters 'selling' on their platform. The new charter will require anyone who is asking for payment to have their details verified by Meta first. And further, the changes will require sellers on Facebook Marketplace to verify their identity and location before they can sell something.

UK police say that Facebook facilitates organised crime because they can sell stolen goods on the platform. There has been a surge and continues to be a surge in shoplifting in the UK. A lot of this is conducted by organised crime and they sell their stolen items on Facebook and other outlets such as eBay.

This will be a voluntary agreement committing tech companies to a new standard of verification and vetting of people who use these social media platforms to sell services and goods.

The only problem that I have is whether the charter will be properly enforced because at the moment Facebook is unable to enforce their policies with many people selling kittens and cats online (my area of expertise) and sometimes fraudulently because they take money without actually providing the animal.

In any case, it is a very bad idea to purchase a kitten or cat online sight unseen from somebody you don't know. It just doesn't work. It's entirely wrong and promotes the bad people who engage in these sorts of scams and dodgy businesses.

It's reported that there are "soaring rates of authorised push payment fraud". This is when a customer is tricked into authorising a payment to an account controlled by a criminal or criminals.

There has been a 29% rise in the number of romance scams. This type of fraud has netted £18.5 million for the criminals involved in the first six months of 2023!

There are some shocking stories about romance fraud on social media. A former police officer was taken in. She handed over her retirement fund of more than £100,000 to a scammer she met on a dating website. He said that he was involved in building apartments in Cyprus. He persuaded her to buy a plot. Can you believe it?

Other scams have netted the criminals £239 million over the first six months of this year. Research indicates that 60% of all reported authorised push payment fraud is connected to Meta. Meta also owns WhatsApp and Instagram.

However, it's nice to read that Mehta has agreed to this online fraud charter in the UK.

In the modern world full of fraud and bad behavior always be vigilant and switched on to scammers trying to steal your money.

Here is an infographic I created earlier which may be useful:

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Battersea Dogs & Cats Home will defy British law after December 31 and rehome American bully XL dogs

NEWS AND COMMENT - UK: On December 1, 2023, it will be a criminal offence to breed, sell, advertise, rehome, abandon American XL bully dogs or allow them to stray. Owners of American XL bully dogs will be required to keep them on a lead and muzzle at all times in a public place and the dog should be in a secure place when at home.

Battersea Dogs & Cats Home. Photo: Architects Journal.

Battersea Dogs & Cats Home and Blue Cross, both top animal charities, the former being perhaps the best-known animal charity in the world in terms of rehoming rescue animals both cats and dogs, have said that they will continue rehoming the breed despite the new rules. They plan to defy the criminal law which is extraordinary.

They disagree with the new law. And they are not the only people who do because the argument is this: the problems with American XL Bully dogs is not that they are a dangerous breed per se -although, as I recall, they are not a registered breed with a recognised kennel club. The problem is the people who are involved with breeding them and owning them. That's the problem area.

RELATED: American XL bully should be docile according to the co-founder of the breed. But owners are giving them steroids and making them aggressive to be attack dogs.

Secondly, the argument is that because each individual American XL bully dog is not registered in a kennel club studbook, the only way you can identify them is through their appearance, which is very dubious. It's very difficult because there are hybrids of this dog. They are crossed with other dog breeds and the argument is that it is almost impossible to identify with accuracy an American XL bully by appearance alone. It'll be a nightmare for the police.

American XL Bully. Image believed to be in the public domain.

I believe that that is the argument of these charities. Anna Wade, the public affairs manager at Blue Cross, said: "Any dog can be dangerous and by stigmatising one breed you are sending out the wrong message."

That point has been made before as well namely that a little cute French Bulldog can be dangerous and bite people under the right circumstances, background and experiences.

Blue Cross has estimated that about between 50,000 and hundred thousand dogs might be affected by the new rules.

Rishi Sunak, UK's Prime Minister, is determined to eradicate this "breed". As mentioned, it is not a formal breed as registered. He has described the dogs as a "danger to our communities" after an attack in Birmingham by a cross bred XL bully which injured two men and a girl aged 11.

We shall wait and see what happens because the question now is whether the authorities will prosecute these two charities which they will be able to do if the charities carry out their intentions. I don't think they will.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Young people don't want to smoke which is great for the domestic cat

The young people of Britain, today, are 50% as likely to smoke as their parents were at the same age according to figures released recently.

I've mentioned it before because it is something which is not often mentioned; the passive smoking of domestic cats. A lot has been spoken about human passive smoking but we must think of the animals both cats and dogs who in a home occupied by a persistent smoker will be passive smoking themselves most of the time.

Passive smoking is a known risk factor for several types of cancer including throat cancer and lung cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer is classified second-hand smoke as a group 1 carcinogen. This means that it is carcinogenic to humans AND companion animals (I have added the animals into this statement because they must also suffer from this carcinogenic substance in the atmosphere inside the home). 

Full-time indoor cats are particularly vulnerable as they are exposed to these carcinogens long-term. It needs to be added, too, that cigarette smoke can linger on furniture and other surfaces. The smoke particles can settle on furniture and carpets and floors. This is where domestic cat sit, and sleep and snooze. It will get on to their coat and then they will lick the carcinogenic substances off their coat and ingest them when they groom themselves.

In the news today, in The Times, it is reported that young people are already shunning cigarettes in the UK. And this might apply similarly in other countries particularly developed countries. That's why the tobacco manufacturers are targeting developing countries to maintain their businesses. It is shameful.

But in Britain, there will be a ban on young people smoking cigarettes as promised by the UK government.

But at the moment, only 13% of people aged to 16-24 smoke cigarettes. This compares very favourably with 34% of young people of that age who smoked in the mid-1990s. And compared to their grandparents, the smoking rates are less than one third.

Before cancer was linked to smoking, pre-1950s, 60% of men and 42% of women smoked. Since then, the numbers have gradually fallen to 13% of men and 10% of women in 2022.

RELATED: Dangers to cats.

Source: Twitter. Sunak's feed.

The government will set out legislation to bring the rate of smoking by young people to zero. Smoking is still the number one cause of cancer in the UK.

We don't know how many domestic cats and dogs developed illnesses because of passive smoking. Nobody keeps those records. When these companion animals develop an illness, the cause of which cannot be identified, it is called idiopathic.

It is my contention that in many instances these idiopathic illnesses are generated through inhospitable elements in the environment in which they live inside the home one of which is cigarette smoke. Other substances would be cannabis smoke and chemicals used to preserve carpets or fire retardants in furniture. It's these kind of hidden causes of ill-health which I think people need to address more vigorously.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Bunch of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) police beat up woman selling vegetables

NEWS AND COMMENT: This is the tweet: "The Communist regime’s dog-like city management officials, beating a poor woman who sells vegetables! It appears her husband is forced to watch this scene! Beasts! #CCPChina".

Do they need a license to sell vegetables in China? What has she done wrong? That is not the point though. The point is that if she has done something wrong the police should either caution her or after spelling out her rights regarding evidence arrest her for violating a specific law.

But this is China where they kill dogs in the street all the time by beating. Where cats are stolen for the cat meat market in their many thousands and where the f*** police prefer to beat up a woman rather than abide by the law.

Note that her husband is retrained while he is forced to watch this crime by the police whose job it is to stop crime.

If they had owned a dog, it would have been killed there and then. An example of poor human rights in China. As you can expect animal right are pretty well non-existent in China. You don't want to be a dog in China. You really wouldn't.

Chinese police beat up woman trading in vegetables. Screenshot.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.