Saturday, March 29, 2008

ron sims, rat lover


recently, king county executive and shelter advocate ron sims stopped by to give some props to the kcac employees and volunteers. besides being a big hugger, we also discovered that he's a fan of pet rats, which he had as a kid. yay for ron, and yay for rats everywhere.


Wednesday, March 19, 2008

a birdalicious afternoon

the quince bush in front of our house was chock full of these little finches this afternoon, all singing and hopping around. it was so neat, especially because we'd just gone to see the jean-luc mylayne exhibit at the henry and all his photos contained birds. a nice little diversion.



Tuesday, March 18, 2008

your tax dollars at work

i know that few of you, friends and family of mine, have been spared my ranting about the recent citizen's advisory committee/witch hunt evaluating conditions at king county animal control, in which shelter employees were portrayed as negligent, animal-abusing retards, even though none of us were given the opportunity to tell our side. we were recently treated to another reaming at the hands of nathan winograd, a private consultant that the county hired to investigate the shelter, for which the county paid him just shy of $50,000. winograd is the author of the book redemption, in which he claims that there is no pet overpopulation problem, and that the blame for the tragic euthanization rate of our country's unwanted pets lies in the hands of shelters, not with breeders, puppy mills, pet stores or lack of spay/neuter.

mr. winograd was at the shelter a total of 5 days. the staff he spoke with were the shelter director, two of the supervisors and the shelter vet. he did not interview the officers who work in the trenches with the animals, nor did he bother to verify many of the claims he made about what negligent retards we are. while it is true that the shelter is in need of a makeover, winograd's report contained exaggerated, sometimes fraudulent claims, some of which i know from personal experience to be untrue. call me crazy, but wouldn't that 50 grand have been better spent on improvements to the shelter? x-files conspiracy theory moment: the council has been talking about shutting us down for some time, so isn't it handy that the consultant they hired to condemn us had a preexisting bias against open-door shelters? hmmm.

i won't go on here: if anyone has questions i'd be happy to discuss it further. if you happen to be chatting about this--or the inflammatory article that just came out in the PI--with your friends and neighbors, please reassure them that we at the shelter are doing the very best with our limited staff and tiny budget. we care about the animals, that's why we work there! if anyone is in a civic-minded mood, feel free to contact the council and urge them to help us by allocating us more staff and resources. thanks for listening.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

what the??

this tiny puppy came in to the shelter yesterday and we all fell in love with him. he never made a normal puppy noise even though he talked a lot -- i think at one point he even said "redrum"...

Monday, March 03, 2008

my new favorite thing

i may be the last frequent flier on the planet to use this, but how sweet is farecast? it analyzes trends and notifies you of the best time to buy an airline ticket. for example, in its infinite wisdom (confidence 80+%), it is telling me to wait to purchase a flight to isla holbox in mexico for an upcoming (may) spay/neuter clinic. okay, psychic farecast, i await your direction . . .

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