Saturday, April 12, 2014

THE TOMPKINS COUNTY 'NO KILL' MIRACLE EXPOSED

Recently a couple of articles were purchased from the archives of the Ithaca Journal. These articles tell the tale of Nathan Winograd at the Tompkins County SPCA, a tale of deceit that continues to this very day. The publicly available abstracts are presented for both articles.


The first of these two tales is that of the protection of a puppy mill by Winograd while in Tompkins. 
The Ithaca Journal - Ithaca, N.Y.
Author: LaMattina, Diana 
Date: Feb 22, 2003 
Abstract (Document Summary) 
According to Winograd, the investigator informed him there were numerous complaints with the kennel and the dogs' care. According to Winograd, he has been aware of what he termed "unfit conditions" at the Groton kennel since he began working at the SPCA a year and a half ago.

A year and a half these dogs were left in these conditions. The reason is that Winograd wanted to save his numbers. Imagine the amount of suffering that occurred during that time.

"Many of them were so filthy that your hands turned black from touching them. The conditions were pretty shocking and horrifying, and she wouldn't allow us to go back to the kennel cages," said Christine Thomas. "Some of them had mammary tumors from being bred and bred. They were all filthy with urine and feces. Their coats were so matted, we had to shave several of them."

"My goal was to reduce the number gradually over time, so it's manageable," Winograd said.

You don't wait to reduce numbers gradually when the animals are in these conditions. Many, if not most, of the dogs were old and not the adoptable types. They needed extensive medical, lots of money for a private shelter whose director never raised the contract amounts of the contract cities. HE LEFT THEM THERE !!

This blogger is familiar with this story personally. I spoke with Patricia Sipman. Patricia Sipman described the incident. She also took the time to relay this incident to the Rancho Cucamonga City Council who was considering hiring Winograd at the time. Sipman is a native of San Dimas, next door to Rancho.

Sipman had just moved to Ithaca from California. She had been a paralegal in Pasadena. She went to the Tompkins County SPCA to adopt that day. While sitting in the lobby, a Cornell student brought in a pitiful Pit Bull. The student was the owner. Sipman said the dog was extremely ill, emaciated, mange ridden to the point of little hair left, stunk with blood coming from sores. She petted the dog in sympathy. Sipman has wondered what happened to that poor dog.

The counter people went to get Winograd. He came out, look at the dog from the distance, and said "We don't take dogs like that" and walked back into his office. Sipman was mortified at this and wrote a letter to the Ithaca Journal.
Jan. 28, 2004

"I visited the shelter often last fall and saw a dog turned away. It was not vicious; indeed I petted it. It was underfed, neglected, had advanced contagious mange and perhaps other health problems. 

When I asked, I was told that the SPCA routinely rejects such animals, but conveniently no statistics reflect this. The dog could and should have been quickly, humanely euthanized."

Patricia also went on in her letter to speak of the deceit of the stats provided by the TC SPCA.

"Tompkins County SPCA Executive Director Nathan Winograd has said ".....a no-kill shelter was a fantasy. In five years, we have reached that goal." If the director is referring to his facility as no kill when in fact 2,012 animals were killed since 1999, he's still fantasizing. Likely the "no-kill" facilities he transferred 882 animals to are, like Tompkins County, euthanizing animals."

Patricia told me also that Winograd sent 3-4 nasty emails to her afterwards. Most rational people would try to explain their actions, especially to a taxpayer/concerned citizen, but not Winograd. He called her names, childish behavior as Patricia said.

So here are two documented cases of the true nature of Nathan Winograd. His dedication to his program at the expense and suffering of animals is unconscionable. Ask him to provide any documentation of his accusations of others.

THIS IS PAT DUNAWAY

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that is truly horrible! That is inexcusable behavior! Nathan just writes about his "success" when he has none.Everyone needs to know about this. No one people like Camille Hankins who was convicted of animal cruelty support him.

Mary Cummins said...

Nathan posted this in one of his letters which I have. He said he legally could not refuse any animal. So not only did he refuse an animal that needed help but he violated his contract with the county.

"So when the opportunity presented itself, I packed my bags and moved to the rolling countryside of upstate New York to head the Tompkins County SPCA. I wanted to bring the urban no kill message—and its success—to rural America. At the time, the Tompkins County SPCA was typical of rural shelters. It was small, it was under funded, it was running a significant deficit and it was killing a lot of animals. But I believed in no kill and the programs and services necessary to make it happen.

As Executive Director of the Tompkins County SPCA, I managed the full range of animal control and adoption shelter services. Despite animal control contracts which required that we accept all dogs and cats, in my three years there:

• We reduced the death rate by 75% to 1.8 animals for every 1,000 human residents, over eight times less than the national average and the lowest of any community in the United States;
• Tompkins County became the safest community for homeless dogs and cats in the U.S. for two years in a row (source: Animal People); and,
• We became the nation’s only no kill community saving 100% of healthy and treatable dogs and cats, and 100% of feral cats (93% of the animals overall).

At the same time, I more than doubled the average gift, closed a budget deficit, created a major donor category for the first time in the organization’s history leading to consecutive years of surplus funding, and built a state-of-the-art Pet Adoption and Surgery Center. In a year and a half, while the death rate declined by 75%, the Tompkins County SPCA went from a $100,000-plus annual deficit to a $23,000 operational surplus.

The success in Tompkins County—both in terms of the lives saved and the dollars earned—proved the naysayers wrong. We proved that no kill is possible and that it does not matter whether you live in a major metropolitan city or in rural America. We proved that while no kill costs money, it is ultimately cost-effective. In fact, it is the policy of impounding, holding and then killing animals—losing both adoption revenue and public support—that has kept shelters from raising the money they
need to save lives. Money is a by-product of no kill success, not its cause. But perhaps more importantly, we proved that people do care and want to help build a better life for animals.
By 2003, the Tompkins County SPCA had become a beacon of hope for the 5 million dogs and cats who face certain death in U.S. animal shelters every year. And for good reason—if every community in the United States did what we did, 41⁄2 million of those dogs and cats would find in their shelter a new beginning, instead of the end of the line."

HonestyHelps said...

Lori Tyler was director before Winograd and she states that no kill was already in place there when he arrived.

Then the surplus, nope, he was caught on that lie by the Rancho Cucamonga City Council in fact. That is in public record. He made a statement that it was the fault of the interim director after him. That interim director denies it on this very blog.

Mary Cummins said...

Here is the original letter from Nathan Winograd announcing NoKill Solutions

HonestyHelps said...

San Fran wasn't no kill because the SPCA would not take pits from the shelter. I need to locate that contract again.

Anonymous said...

Now Nathan Winograd works directly for the puppy millers with his AKC commercial breeder pals.

He even has hooked up with the American Dog Breeder Association team of pit bull breeders. They sponsored at least one of his convention scamaramas, and spoke on the panels at them.

Winograd has to be one of the worst frauds hising behind a fake animal welfare label.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
HonestyHelps said...

To the person who wants me to email them. Sorry, I don't do that. However, I do moderate comments. You can send whatever in the form of a comment and mark it Not For Publication. I will respond.