Some stats I found.

~~~ Did You Know? ~~~

Number of cats and dogs entering shelters each year: 6-8 million (HSUS estimate)


Number of cats and dogs euthanized by shelters each year: 3-4 million (HSUS estimate)


Number of cats and dogs adopted from shelters each year: 3-4 million (HSUS estimate)


Number of cats and dogs reclaimed by owners from shelters each year:
Between 600,000 and 750,000 -- 30% of dogs and 2-5% of cats entering shelters (HSUS estimate)


Number of animal shelters in the United States:
Between 4,000 and 6,000 (HSUS estimate)


Percentage of dogs in shelters who are purebred: 25% (HSUS estimate)


Average number of litters a fertile cat can produce in one year: 3


Average number of kittens in a feline litter: 4-6
In seven years, one female cat and her offspring can theoretically produce 420,000 cats.


Average number of puppies in a canine litter: 6-10
In six years, one female dog and her offspring can theoretically produce 67,000 dogs.

This is really hard to read.

The NC Coalition for Humane Euthanasia sent this to me via Myspace:
It's really hard to read... but I feel that this has given me the proverbial kick in the ass to get something going on with the project:

From: How Many Kitties?!?

Oh, how sad what this young man is faced with! For many of us in the rescue community, Friday is our least favorite day - you know why! Friday is often PTS day, and many of the urgents we have been cross-posting like crazy, and saying prayers for, are now only sad memories. But, that is nothing compare to the horror this beautiful young soul deals with on his Fridays.

If anyone, after reading this awful account of his Fridays, can still say that spaying and neutering are cruel surgeries that take away an animal's natural right to breed, think again - and remove me as your friend! What is more cruel - a quick surgery that prevents overpopulation, or the gruesome way too many animals are forced to die?


From: Debby
Date: Apr 17, 2007 4:23 PM

My Husband Found This On Craig's List...HORRIFYING!!!!!!!!!!

This was on Craig's List:
The Gas Man

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Reply to: see below
Date: 2007-04-16, 3:01PM EDT


Yes, I Gas Dogs and Cats for a Living.
I'm an Animal Control officer in a very small town in central North Carolina.
I'm in my mid thirties, and have been working for the town in different positions since high school.

There is not much work here, and working for the county provides good pay and benefits for a person like me without a higher education. I'm the person you all write about how horrible I am.

I'm the one that gasses the dogs and cats and makes them suffer. I'm the one that pulls their dead corpses out smelling of Carbon Monoxide and throws them into green plastic bags. But I'm also the one that hates my job and hates what I have to do.

First off, all you people out there that judge me, don't. God is judging me, and I know I'm going to Hell. Yes, I'm going to hell. I wont lie, it's despicable, cold, cruel and I feel like a serial killer. I'm not all to blame, if the law would mandate spay and neuter, lots of these dogs and cats wouldn't be here for me to gas. I'm the devil, I know it, but I want you people to see that there is another side to me the devil Gas Chamber man.
The shelter usually gasses on Friday morning.

Friday's are the day that most people look forward to, this is the day that I hate, and wish that time will stand still on Thursday night. Thursday night, late, after nobody's around, my friend and I go through a fast food line, and buy 50 dollars worth of cheeseburgers and fries, and chicken. I'm not allowed to feed the dogs on Thursday, for I'm told that they will make a mess in the gas chamber, and why waste the food.
So, Thursday night, with the lights still closed, I go into the saddest room that anyone can every imagine, and let all the doomed dogs out out their cages.

I have never been bit, and in all my years doing this, the dogs have never fought over the food. My buddy and I, open each wrapper of cheeseburger and chicken sandwich, and feed them to the skinny, starving dogs. They swallow the food so fast, that I don't believe they even taste it. There tails are wagging, and some don't even go for the food, they roll on their backs wanting a scratch on their bellys. They start running, jumping and kissing me and my buddy. They go back to their food, and come back to us. All their eyes are on us with such trust and hope, and their tails wag so fast, that I have come out with black and blues on my thighs.. They devour the food, then it's time for them to devour some love and peace. My buddy and I sit down on the dirty, pee stained concrete floor, and we let the dogs jump on us. They lick us, they put their butts in the air to play, and they play with each other. Some lick each other, but most are glued on me and my buddy.

I look into the eyes of each dog. I give each dog a name.
They will not die without a name.
I give each dog 5 minutes of unconditional love and touch.
I talk to them, and tell them that I'm so sorry that tomorrow they will die a gruesome, long, torturous death at the hands of me in the gas chamber.
Some tilt their heads to try to understand.
I tell them, that they will be in a better place, and I beg them not to hate me.

I tell them that I know I'm going to hell, but they will all be playing with all the dogs and cats in heaven.
After about 30 minutes, I take each dog individually, into their feces filled concrete jail cell, and pet them and scratch them under their chins.
Some give me their paw, and I just want to die. I just want to die.
I close the jail cell on each dog, and ask them to forgive me.

As my buddy and I are walking out, we watch as every dog
is smiling at us and them don't even move their heads.
They will sleep, with a full belly, and a false sense of security.

As we walk out of the doomed dog room, my buddy and I go to the cat room. We take our box, and put the very friendly kittens and pregnant cats in our box. The shelter doesn't keep tabs on the cats, like they do the dogs.

As I hand pick which cats are going to make it out, I feel like I'm playing God, deciding whose going to live and die.
We take the cats into my truck, and put them on blankets in the back.

Usually, as soon as we start to drive away, there are purring cats sitting on our necks or rubbing against us.
My buddy and I take our one way two hour trip to a county that is very wealthy and they use injection to kill animals.

We go to exclusive neighborhoods, and let one or two cats out at a time.

They don't want to run, they want to stay with us. We shoo them away, which makes me feel sad.
I tell them that these rich people will adopt them, and if worse comes to worse and they do get put down, they will be put down with a painless needle being cradled by a loving veterinarian.

After the last cat is free, we drive back to our town.
It's about 5 in the morning now, about two hours until I have to gas my best friends.

I go home, take a shower, take my 4 anti-anxiety pills and drive to work.. I don't eat, I can't eat.
It's now time, to put these animals in the gas chamber. I put my ear plugs in, and when I go to the collect the dogs, the dogs are so excited to see me, that they jump up to kiss me and think they are going to play.
I put them in the rolling cage and take them to the gas chamber. They know. They just know. They can smell the death.. They can smell the fear.
They start whimpering, the second I put them in the box.
The boss tells me to squeeze in as many as I can to save on gas.

He watches. He knows I hate him, he knows I hate my job.
I do as I'm told. He watches until all the dogs, and cats (thrown in together) are fighting and screaming. The sounds is very muffled to me because of my ear plugs.
He walks out, I turn the gas on, and walk out.

I walk out as fast as I can. I walk into the bathroom, and I take a pin and draw blood from my hand. Why? The pain and blood takes my brain off of what I just did.
In 40 minutes, I have to go back and unload the dead animals. I pray that none survived, which happens when I overstuff the chamber. I pull them out with thick gloves, and the smell of carbon monoxide makes me sick. So does the vomit and blood, and all the bowel movements. I pull them out, put them in plastic bags.

They are in heaven now, I tell myself. I then start cleaning up the mess, the mess, that YOU PEOPLE are creating by not spay or neutering your animals. The mess that YOU PEOPLE are creating by not demanding that a vet come in and do this humanely. You ARE THE TAXPAYERS, DEMAND that this practice STOP!

So, don't call me the monster, the devil, the gasser, call the politicians, the shelter directors, and the county people the devil. Heck, call the governor, tell him to make it stop.

As usual, I will take sleeping pills tonight to drown out the screams I heard in the past, before I discovered the ear plugs. I will jump and twitch in my sleep, and I believe I'm starting to hallucinate.

This is my life. Don't judge me. Believe me, I judge myself enough.

Viewing tonight.

Unfortunately, our interview with Dr. Mizrahi at Cape Fear Spay and Neuter Clinic fell through at the last minute yesterday, and as we could not find anyone to fill her place this morning, we wont have too much to show today except some B-roll footage that we collected today. BUT-- we do have some exciting interviews set up for this week and this weekend. There is a spay-a-thon at the New Hanover Co. animal shelter, and we have gotten permission to film some surgeries then, as well as we hope to reschedule with Dr. Mizrahi, as she is running the only program in the county that offers specifically low cost options to people who need to sterilize their pets. We went by to see if we could catch her before they opened, and was unexpectedly greeted by a huge line of people waiting for the doors to open. they were all there with either vouchers from the rescue group/shelter that they adopted from, or were there for low-cost sterilizations. We talked to a really nice girl who had had her dog for 18 months, but had just now decided to spay her because she didnt want to have her go into heat again... another guy had a male cat that he was getting fixed because he didnt want him spraying the house anymore... ANOTHER reason to S/N... it seems really selfish to say that they wanted to get it done to convience the owners, but as long as the pet gets to experience the benefits of reduced cancer rates, and healthier lives (as well as the obvious non-reproductive benefits) I guess it's whatever works.

At the animal shelter today!

Brittany and I got up early and headed down to the 'ol equipment check out to grab a camera and sound stuff last minute for an interview at the New Hanover Animal Shelter. When we got there, we were suprisingly warmly greeted and given a full tour of the facility. I was expecting some kind of resistance, considering that the shelter is arguably the last resort for an animal, and the project that we're doing does show that we are trying to save animals from living in this kind of shelter. But, the lady that we talked to was in agreement, saying that she hates to see so many animals be processed through the shelter system. We brought up the statistic of low income families, and how if they had better access to low cost or no cost sterilizations for their animals, how the number of euthinazations might fall. I wasnt expecting her answer: she holds college students accountable for a lot of the admissions. The transient nature, combined with the lack of responsibility, she said usually turns into a situation where they would rather dump the pet on the shelter than go through the trouble of taking care of their companion. It seems to make sense in our college town, but these college kids also fall into the "low income" bracket as well. They are just as incapable of paying for rabies vacc, spay/neuter, yearly check-ups, etc. as families who are living in section 8 housing.

Basicly, she said in her opinion, if someone in New Hanover County was really looking for a free option for spay and neuter, they would have access to it. She holds people's apathy and laziness accountable for the growing numbers of strays and feral cat colonies that are living on the streets. Makes a lot of sense. Which is why I hope our project can get through to people who feel that sterilizing their animal is not a priority.

So, I won't be in class today because I'm on location in New Orleans, but I'm happy to report that I've been meeting some great people here that have given me a lot of insight on the project. Last night, I was discussing the project with a guy that is making his own short documentaries. His thoughts on what he knew about the project was to do a 10 minute piece with just images, and do one narrative voice over. He thought that this would make a clearer piece, not jumbled up by interviews.
Hmm... Personally, I think that it might be cool to do something like this, but I think it's important to get source interviews as well to reinforce the message-- especially to people who are trying to find holes in the message.
I guess there is a huge difference between a documentary that can be used as an art piece and one that can be used as a tool for change.
M.

Treatment for "Fixed"

Treatment of “Fixed”

The opening scenes starts with one voice sympathetically, almost imploring the viewer to be drawn into a problem that affects every community all over the United States, even the world, one that could easily be fixed but would require all people to come together for this cause. The message is soon taken on by another person, but still communicating the same monologue: “The pet overpopulation problem is one that can be fixed. Providing spay and neuter services is the humane and compassionate answer that would help stem the overwhelming number of pets who could be amazing companions if there were only enough homes.” The message is taken on by more and more people, all carrying on the startling statistics on euthanazations, pet abuse and the inaccessibility of treatment for animals whose owners are classified as low-income. People’s faces are intercut with images of the animals whose only hope is to be saved from a shelter or the streets by a loving family. Our scenes will be a montage of quick cuts including graphics, quotes, interviewees and photos, but our message will be the same: that every companion pet should be spayed and neutered to ensure that the number of pets available will one day be lower than the number of people wanting to give them good homes.

Although reliable euthanasia numbers are hard to come by, it is widely accepted that almost 9.6 million animals are humanely released from their suffering every year. That’s almost 19 companions every minute. We want to communicate this hard fact by reminding people that while watching this 10 minute documentary, about 190 animals will be put to sleep. Another statistic that needs to be communicated is the massive amount of animals that are born to families who can not afford to spay and neuter their pet. Almost 70% of the pet overpopulation problem is caused because the pet owner does not have access to the services that could prevent millions of animals from being born.

Because the subject of spay and neuter is so all-encompassing, our subject will focus on the low-income families that could be of the most benefit to the pet community that usually ends up in our shelters or roaming transiently; at the mercy of cars, the elements, and people that would do them harm. There are many successful programs that provide sterilization services for free or at an extremely low cost to the community-- programs like Spay Jax which has seen a dramatic drop in admissions to shelters, and an even larger effect on euthanasiation numbers. These programs are funded by government grants, usually at a lower cost than to provide for the overpopulated shelters and animal control services that are needed in areas that do not cater to humane prevention measures.

The film will be far from a preachy, over bearing shock and awe message to scare, repulse or astonish people into reacting to our mission. We want to celebrate the people who are doing their part to control the problem, as well as the people who are devoting their lives to preventing the problem. We want to encourage people to shift the public mind-set towards the animals; that pet overpopulation comes as a result of yesterday’s community overlooking the spay and neuter problem. Having a more compassionate, progressive and responsible attitude towards our companion population is the only way to see the shelters empty, with more families and pets “fixed” in the belief that sterilization leads to happier, healthier animals as well as a balanced community.

30 second commercial idea

I had an idea of getting together a really strong monologue together that described the pet overpopulation problem, the spay/neuter stats, and basicly the backstory that would help anyone who was not aware of the problem to quickly associate themselves with the topics we would be bringing up in the rest of the film. We would then film a lot of different people saying the same monologue and intercut their voices and images to create a huge collage of people all saying the same message. I feel that this will portray that people really are united in solving this problem... as well as visually it will be more exciting to the viewer.
The people portrayed will be anyone from the people we interview, to actors that we can solicit from One Tree Hill or the film that I'm working on, to PETA rep's, to (hopefully) someone like Caesar Milan who would be a HUGE assest to our message.
Anyway... we really want to get this put together asap so we can maybe turn our intro into a 30 second commercial that we can give to local tv stations for community education and awareness.

We want this to be a tool to help stem the pet overpopulation problem... we need to get it out there any way that we can. This seems like a great opportunity if we can get it together.

Update on Caesar

I emailed Caesar Milan's foundation (of The Dog Whisperer) to ask if there would be any way that he could contribute something to our project. I felt that it would be a long shot, but getting people like him to appear in our project could really allow it to get out there and reach a lot more people. On Thursday, I heard back from a representative, who said that his publicist would get in touch with me soon. Hopefully it will work out... I really admire the work that he does, as well as the amount of awareness that he tries to bring into his shows to spay and neuter.

Focusing our project

Last night, our group got together for our weekly production meeting to discuss what we would be doing for this week. We all decided that we have a HUGE topic that has a lot of facets...enough to make an entire series of documentaries on the subject. We decided that we need to focus in on our specific topic, which is finding the low cost/no cost spay and neuter programs for low income pet owners. It has been documented that the lower income families who make up the bottom 3% of the economic population contribute to 70% of the pet overpopulation problem because they can not afford to sterilize their pets. I think that all of our interviews need to be somehow directed to addressing this problem, or to what we can do as a society to make low cost/no cost sterilizations a priority for all communities.

Dom brought over the camera kit, and him and I set up a couple of shots to get familiar with the equipment. I'm looking forward to the workshop to refresh myself with all of the camera techniques.... I've been asking people here on the film to help me with some of the technical stuff, like our music editor has agreed to lend advice for our sound quality, and my friend is a production designer, and has said that he would help out with any visuals.

Audience Ideas...

So far, everyone that I've told about our project seems really interested in the approach that we are going to take on the subject. I would hope that the documentary would be for anyone who is interested in learning more about the pet overpopulation problem, from pet owners, to children who are getting their first pet. I really want to see our project go as far as possible, to spread the message to as many viewers as possible. I think we are really lucky to have forums like youtube.com and myspace.com to put up our film for free viewing to people all over the world. Also, I would like to get a website domain set aside for us, so that we can not only have a streaming video feed of our film, but also an explination of our mission, behind the scene footage that shows how we made the film (hopefully it will inspire others to continue on if they felt that we missed something), and links to websites that provide free/low-cost spay and neuter programs in local areas and also to the people that will help us on our project (peta.com, sunburst foundation, etc.) I would also like to contact local vets in our area to see if we can provide our film for their waiting areas. They usually have a looping film of some kind of heartworm medicine, or flea control pill... they might welcome having this kind of message shown to their customers (especially those who have yet to be convinced that their animal needs to be sterilized for whatever reason). To offset the cost of producing the dvd's for the vets, we could go to pet companies or stores to shop for sponsorship, or to buy an commercial ad to be placed on the dvd (like at the beginning).

Peta gets their point across...

Whether it's animals suffering in a shelter, or being sold off to animal testing labs, the problem originates with there not being enough good homes for all of the animals that are born.

Exciting News!!

I contacted PETA last week about getting an interview set up for our documentary. They called me back today, and said that they'd love to participate!! I think that having them as one of our sources will lend A LOT of weight to our project. I'm sooo stoked. We just need to figure out now if we want to do a phone interview with them, or if we want to do a road trip to Norfolk...

2 Additional Topics

I was thinking about what else I would like to work on...
I guess the first would be to talk about is the new HPV vaccine, Gardisil. There is a lot of controversy over whether parents want to administer the drug to their pre-pubescent daughters to provide protection from an STD they may get in the future that could lead to cervical cancer. The commercial uses the slogan, "One Less" to show strong girls who are taking a stance against getting cervical cancer... but I'm sure there are mothers out there that do not want to send the message to their daughters that because they are now protected from this one disease, they are given the green light to become sexually active. Another controversial topic would be the fact that the vaccine hasent been extensively tested, and mothers are afraid of the long term effects of the drug. However, cervical cancer is the number 2 killer among women. If this vaccine can overcome hurdles, such as price (at $360.00, it is the most expensive vaccine ever produced) and the sessions of treatments (3 treatments spread over 6 months), it could possibly become a mandatory vaccine for school-aged girls. I'd be excited to get out into the community to see what reaction people have to this topic.

The second would be the wide spread infiltration of meth in Hawaii. This topic is really interesting, because it is a drug problem that has arisen out of the inability to smuggle other "traditional" drugs like cocaine and heroine out to the islands. Meth is made in home-based labs on the island, and is the most readily available drug. In 2005, meth was cited as one of the island's largest problems, accounting for over half of drug seisures, vs. 14% for the rest of the country. It would be incredibly hard to document this, geographically as well as socially. People who are users would be wary of a foreigner who was wanting to document thier drug problem. The other problem would be that getting the story would be incredibly dangerous. But, this would be a great topic to explore.

Hilarious Spay/Neuter Video

If you don't spay/neuter, your cats will be making sweet, sweet love all over your house, as shown in this video.

John McEnroe PSA