Agenda - 09-19-2006-7b - Laserfiche WebLink

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Orange County Animal Services Sheltering Practices and Philosophies tQ shelters, breed adoption groups, veterinary associations, and other Denver-area groups with a stake in finding solutions to animal homelessness, the Metro Denver Shelter Alliance has become a model for collaboration, Now other local participants in the Asilomar Accords are bringing the concept back to their awn communities, In Seattle, a community with a "pretty wholesome working environment" for animal protection organizations, there are still groups promoting their own agendas by painting a negative picture of other agencies, says Nancy McKenney, CEO of the Humane Society of Seattle/King County. And the community is still lacking in real area-wide statistics and measurement tools, she says, The new Asilomar documents are a good "baby step" toward solving those issues, says McKenney, who is in the embryonic stages of forming a coalition in her area, The documents lend weight and credibility to the process, she says. "I think this has a lot of potential positive repercussions in showing the communitywide statistics and in showing that groups are getting together to try to look at the problem and actually obtain some more concrete information," she says, "as opposed to some of the more emotional rhetoric that tends to occur." Because they must take in animals in varying behavioral and physical states, animal control agencies often perform the most euthanasia-and therefore may be skeptical of a document that requires them to report all their numbers alongside those of better-funded agencies, says Belinda Lewis, director of Fort Wayne Animal Care and Control in Indiana, Ideally, however, the statistics will be used to show not how many animals one agency is euthanizing but how many homeless animals the community is generating and sending to shelters in the first place, she says. "In the coalition type of approach, you're not looking at euthanasia at the animal control agency-you're looking at euthanasia in the entire community," says Lewis. "And the theory behind Asilomar is not pointing fingers at one agency who, while they may do their best to [head] in the right direction, still has to face the limits that they have, Sa if in fact a coalition is true to the Asilomar nature and is honest in its information and its direction, then the coalition becomes the defender of the animal control agency," In other words, consistent reporting-when adapted by all sides of the spectrum in a kind of team approach-will make it "socially unacceptable" to engage in name-calling and derogatory behavior, says John Snyder, senior director of Companion Animals and Equine Protection for The HSUS. Gathering around the table for peace talks is na small feat in communities with a history of feuding, But the Asilomar Accords and the alliances in Denver and San Francisco-and, most recently, Chicago and Monterey-are evidence that nothing is impossible.