While there are bad people in the business of supplying dogs to fighting rings and running the puppy mills who villify HSUS, there are also many people of good repute with decades of animal welfare efforts listed on their CVs who see serious problems of policy antithetical to animal welfare aims.

Nathan Winograd, animal welfare people at the Pet Connection, and other legitimate agents and organizations have concluded by HSUS’s own actions that, like testifying against San Francisco’s bid to be No Kill city just weeks ago, there is something that needs fixing at HSUS. This does not negate the very good work they do in so many areas. it is just a fact of the institutionalization of policy that stays on the “books” without review or with the review of the same people who wrote it. In other words, no new thinking gets through.

It then becomes incumbant on the rest of the community to point out the problem. Without substantive response to the community, the community then asks more publicly. It seems to be the only way to get an indication of what such a large fund-raising organization is going to do about these concerns, if anything.

HSUS seems entrenched and invested in out-dated models of dog behavior, case in point, the Michael Vick dogs, and the recent travesty of HSUS testimony supporting the killing of all dogs captured from a fighting ring, including puppies that had already been in foster homes before the “bust” occured. There’s a story on this blog that will give you the details.

These are the precise points of diverging policy between those who work with dogs and agents like HSUS. All dogs captured from fighting rings need not be summarily destroyed, as proved time and again by Best Friends and their coalition, as well as by the hundreds of shelters who work to rehabilitate these dogs over years. Working against a no-kill city, as HSUS did in San Francisco, is another symptom of something else gone wrong. What is anyone supposed to think?

“….I understand when cockfighters or bear baiters attack HSUS-backed legislation, spreading their invective and outright falsehoods. They are generally not good citizens, and their ideas have long been discredited. But there is a class of commercial dog breeders out there—apparently, a good number of them who are not even high-volume puppy mills—who raise their voices loudly against any attempt to impose reasonable standards of care for dogs and limits on how large these operations can be. Since they can hardly attack the substance of the legislation—because the provisions are so obviously rational (such as giving the animals an opportunity to exercise, or not forcing them to live on wire flooring their entire lives)—they attack The HSUS, almost unable to restrain themselves. They spew knowingly false things about The HSUS wanting to ban all pet ownership. In the past, in my blog and elsewhere, I’ve addressed these prevarications, where they take one quote completely out of context from 15 or 20 years ago, and treat that fragmented comment as doctrine, even though there are decades of public statements and action on my part and that of my colleagues that unmistakably celebrate the human-animal bond and The HSUS’s vigorous support of pet keeping.

Not only is pet keeping a birthright and bedrock principle of The HSUS, but we actively support responsible breeding. We always advocate that would-be pet owners go to shelters or breed rescue groups to get a life-long companion, but we ask those who do not to please follow specific guidelines in purchasing a pet from a breeder. In fact, we are about to launch an HSUS Breeders’ Advisory Group, comprised of long-time dog breeders who care about the welfare of dogs and support reasonable limits on the conduct of commercial breeders….”

Here’s the quote and date:

“We have no ethical obligation to preserve the different breeds of livestock produced through selective breeding. One generation and out. We have no problem with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding.” Wayne Pacelle, of Humane Society of the United States, Animal People, May, 1993.

“My goal is the abolition of all animal agriculture.” J.P. Goodwin, Director of Grassroots Outreach with HSUS. Formerly with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Mr Goodwin has a lengthy arrest record and a history of promoting arson to accomplish animal liberation.

Enough proof for you?