(Beth Clifton collage)
From “No more homeless pets” to “We can save them all”: the Best Friends’ Animal Society has led a long march backward
Nearly 20 years ago, on June 27, 2005, in a Newsweek op-ed column entitled “The Dirty Little Secret In Your Community, Ed Boks as then-director of Animal Care & Control for New York City concluded, “It is time we rejected the mindless catch-and-kill methodology of the past. We must embrace preventive nonlethal strategies.”
Boks came to this conclusion through his experience of nearly 20 years as an animal control officer, followed by 10 years as animal control director for Maricopa County, Arizona, a jurisdiction of 4.5 million people including the cities of Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale, Chandler, and Tempe.
Ed Boks. (edboks.com photo)
No-kill animal control advocate splits with Best Friends
Now producing the daily blog Animal Politics, Boks moved on from New York City to head the animal control departments in Los Angeles and Yavapai County, Arizona, and for a year, the Spokane Humane Society.
Boks for much of this time was firmly aligned with the “no kill movement,” including the Best Friends Animal Society, speaking often at Best Friends conferences.
In recent years, however, Boks has become increasingly skeptical that the Best Friends Animal Society is working either in the best interest of homeless animals or contributing usefully toward achieving a “no kill nation,” if by that one means a nation with “no more homeless pets,” the Best Friends mantra until circa 2014, when superseded by the phrase “we can save them all.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
A realistic view
A realistic view of “no more homeless pets” would mean spaying and neutering out of existence the most problematic segments of the dog and cat population: those most likely to be euthanized in societal self-defense.
This includes dangerous dogs, especially pit bulls, who make up only about 6% of the U.S. but are close to two thirds of U.S. animal shelter dog admissions.
Also included are cast-off unwanted puppies and kittens born to low-income households, who are statistically the most likely dogs and cats to end up roaming at large, engaging in problematic behavior, including uncontrolled breeding of more puppies & kittens.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Denying the existence of homeless cats
Further to be included are both stray and feral cats, two behaviorally very different populations. Strays, mostly born in homes and once kept as pets, are handleable and largely dependent upon human feeding. Feral cats, born at large, are mostly un-handleable and chiefly self-sufficient.
The Best Friends Animal Society denies the very existence of these two different populations with different needs by relabeling both “community cats,” even when they live––or are dumped––miles from any actual human community, and/or are poisoned or shot by whatever “community” exists.
(See What to call cats, & why it matters: evolving terms; “Vagrant” or “feral” cats; Feral cats & street dogs; and “Community cats” vs. community health.)
(Beth Clifton collage)
Cooking the books
Observed Boks in the February 15, 2025 edition of Animal Politics, “As the clock ticks down to Best Friends Animal Society’s self-imposed 2025 deadline to achieve a no-kill nation, the organization has released its January/September 2024 Shelter Pet Lifesaving Data Report.
“The report highlights a 3.4% decrease in animals killed and a 4% increase in adoptions across a sample of 688 shelters.
“On the surface,” wrote Boks, “these numbers suggest progress. However, deeper scrutiny reveals troubling inconsistencies, omitted context, and transparency issues.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Not counting the inconvenient
“The report analyzes data from 688 shelters, a sharp reduction from the 4,119 shelters included in [the Best Friends Animal Society’s] 2023 data set,” Boks detailed.
“This drop coincides with the Best Friends Animal Society’s shift from [use of] Shelter Animals Count, which aggregated data from 13,527 organizations in its 2024 report, to its proprietary Shelter Pet Data Alliance.”
Boks noted that changing data sources potentially allowed the Best Friends Animal Society to “control the narrative by excluding over 3,400 shelters—disproportionately omitting underfunded or struggling shelters, particularly in marginalized communities.
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Smoke & mirrors
“This narrowed data set,” Boks continued, “aligns with allegations that the Best Friends Animal Society prioritizes optics over impact, focusing on shelters with fewer systemic challenges while avoiding complex shelter issues.
“The Best Friends Animal Society 2024 report lacks year-over-year comparisons and regional breakdowns,” Boks added, leaving “unclear whether reported trends reflect genuine progress or temporary fluctuations.
“Without intake and failed adoption data,” Boks explained, “the reported 4% increase in adoptions may mask deeper issues such as overcrowding” to avoid euthanizing hard to rehome animals––such as fractious pit bulls.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Ignoring spay/neuter
“One glaring omission from the Best Friends Animal Society’s 2024 report,” Boks finished, “is its lack of emphasis on spay/neuter programs—historically the most effective strategy for reducing shelter intake and euthanasia. The Best Friends Animal Society has deprioritized spay/neuter funding over the past decade in favor of adoption marketing and public relations.”
Unfortunately, the whole “no-kill movement,” chiefly led by The Best Friends Animal Society over the first quarter of the present century, and eventually the whole animal sheltering sector, got hijacked after the April 2007 arrest of former football star Michael Vick on dogfighting-related charges.
(See 15 years ago Michael Vick’s pit bulls killed the humane movement.)
(Beth Clifton collage)
Admitting distortion
The Best Friends Animal Society and the American SPCA, in particular, manipulated public sympathy for Vick’s pit bulls into a pit bull advocacy movement that has now deformed every aspect of shelter operations, animal control, and data tracking.
Shelter Animals Count, recognized by Boks as more inclusive and therefore more accurate than the Best Friends’ Animal Society’s own Shelter Pet Data Alliance, itself exemplifies such distortion.
Indeed, the 2025 edition of Shelter Animals Count indirectly admits this, albeit without using the words “pit bull”:
“Non-live outcomes in shelters have risen by 0.5% for dogs,” acknowledged Shelter Animals Count. (“Non-live, please note, means dead.)
(Beth Clifton collage)
Killing is up at pounds. Duh.
“The increase for dogs is driven by government organizations,” Shelter Animals Count said, meaning open-admission animal control shelters that cannot legally turn away dangerous dogs, “where non-live outcomes grew by 1.5%, now standing 17.5 higher than in 2019, with a non-live outcome of 15% of total intakes.”
The term “Non-live outcomes” includes euthanasia, disease spread chiefly through overcrowding, and cases of pit bulls killing each other when housed two or more dogs to a run.
This occurs often when unadoptable pit bulls are warehoused to avoid euthanasia.
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“The results are often tragic”
Boks on February 22, 2025 blogged in particular about a recent breakdown in animal care standards in Douglas, Arizona, under pressure from the Best Friends Animal Society to achieve a 90% “live release” rate.
(See Why we cannot adopt our way out of shelter killing and New Best Friends & HSUS execs flunk economic logic that dogs understand.)
“The issues in Douglas mirror a broader national crisis,” Boks wrote. “Shelters across the country are facing similar challenges as they scramble to meet arbitrary no-kill benchmarks set by the Best Friends Animal Society, an organization with limited sheltering experience,” and none, he might have added, with animal control managed to promote public health and safety.
“The results are often tragic.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Failures of adoption screening? What adoption screening?
Boks cited, among a string of animal sheltering disasters that ANIMALS 24-7 has also spotlighted repeatedly, how the San Diego Humane Society transferred hundreds of small animals via the Southern Arizona Humane Society to The Fertile Turtle, “a reptile breeding business where many reportedly became reptile food.”
(See 318 missing small pets: San Diego Humane vs. HS of Southern Arizona and Cold, hard evidence re small mammals missing from humane societies.)
Boks also mentioned that from 2016 to 2019, “The Best Friends Animal Society managed the Northeast Valley Shelter. During this period, multiple lawsuits emerged over dangerous dog adoptions, including a case where a pit bull severely injured a young girl.”
(See $7.5 million award for mauling by pit bull rehomed from L.A. Animal Services and Jury orders L.A. Animal Services to pay $6.8 million to mauled volunteer.)
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Overcrowding & public safety concerns”
Boks further cited how in El Paso and San Antonio, “Efforts to boost live-release rates led to overcrowding and public safety concerns when dangerous dogs were adopted out without proper vetting.”
(See $2.5 million hiring of “shelter expert” Kristin Hassen brings taxpayer lawsuit.)
Returning to the ongoing multi-dimensional San Diego disaster, Boks reminded that, “A recent injunction against the San Diego Humane Society over its Community Animals policy exposed legal and ethical flaws in Best Friends Animal Society-aligned strategies.”
(See San Diego cat control trial verdict & L.A. shelter fine expose “no kill” failures.)
(Beth Clifton collage)
Indianapolis: speeding around in circles
Boks has blogged before in depth and detail about all of the above continuing crisis situations and more, including the seemingly perpetual meltdown at the Indianapolis Animal Care Center.
“Despite having a Best Friends Animal Society-embedded manager in 2024,” Boks wrote, “a year end report revealed the [Indianapolis] shelter faced a steep decline in performance metrics, leaving the community frustrated and questioning what went wrong.”
Actually, “faced” is the wrong verb for the sentence, because reality is that Indianapolis, from the mayor and city council on down, has not faced sheltering issues which have only been faced effectively over at least the past 30 years by the FACE spay/neuter clinic in downtown Indianapolis, which has not been able to turn the whole misguided city animal care-and-control apparatus around by itself.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“A cautionary tale of unmet expectations”
“The partnership between the Best Friends Animal Society and Indianapolis Animal Care Services, once heralded as a transformative collaboration to achieve no-kill status, has instead unraveled into a cautionary tale of unmet expectations and operational decline,” Boks alleged.
“Despite embedding a Best Friends Animal Society interim manager throughout 2024,” Boks explained, “Indianapolis Animal Care Services performance metrics have plummeted to historic lows,” including “its lowest animal intake on record—a 46% drop compared to 2019—far exceeding the national average decline of 11.3%,” with no indication of a comparable drop, or indeed any, in the numbers of homeless animals left on the streets.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Six-day response time for animal control calls
“An explosion of stray animals on the street could explain why response times for animal control calls ballooned to six days by the end of 2024,” Boks suggested, “a tenfold increase from 2019.”
This may explain why Indianapolis animal control seems to respond more often to pit bull attack victims in decomposition than to those who can be saved.
(See Why Nathan Winograd disciple Doug Rae won’t be Canonized and Racing at Indianapolis is now safer than giving two pit bulls a bath.)
“The slight improvement in Indianapolis Animal Care Services’ live-release rate—from 84.89% in 2023 to 86.68% in 2024—masks deeper issues,” Boks noted. “Animals are spending longer periods in the shelter, with average lengths of stay reaching their highest levels since data collection began.”
Teresa Chagrin. (Beth Clifton collage)
How to tell Teresa Chagrin from Ed Boks
Unlike Boks, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals animal care and control issues manager Teresa Chagrin, formerly Teresa Gibbs, was never a no-kill sheltering enthusiast.
Neither was she even approving of neuter/return cat population control, despite overwhelming evidence that properly managed and monitored neuter/return is the only approach to reducing numbers of cats at large with any history of lasting success.
That observation, though, requires the notation that “properly managed and monitored neuter/return” is never to be confused with either outdoor pet-keeping or “return-to-field,” amounting to dumping impounded cats at large to fend for themselves.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Successful neuter/return takes work
“Properly managed and monitored neuter/return” is just plain more work and requires more sustained investment than most public agencies are willing to put into doing the job right.
Volunteers working on limited budgets with the help of sympathetic veterinarians are often able to do neuter/return right in their own neighborhoods, with visible cumulative impact on national survey data.
(See D.C. Cat Count confirms low feral cat population, lots of free-roaming pets.)
Turning local successes into effective national policy, however, requires a level of commitment and investment that no national organization, including the Best Friends Animal Society and the allied foundation Maddie’s Fund, with assets of circa $260 million, has so far been willing to make.
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“Don’t take ‘help’ from Best Friends”
Chagrin, though, despite approaching no-kill issues from almost the opposite direction as Ed Boks, albeit from a comparable background, sounded a lot like Boks in a February 10, 2025 commentary published by myRGV.com, an online periodical serving the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.
“A recent decision by the city of Mission to end an animal control contract with the Rio Grande Valley Humane Society, in light of alleged horrific conditions for animals at the facility, is wise,” Chagrin agreed.
“But the last thing that city leaders should do now is accept ‘help’ from Best Friends Animal Society, the group whose policies created this disaster in the first place,” Chagrin advised.
Pit bull lobbyist Ledy Vankavage.
(Best Friends Animal Society photo)
“Reckless policies”
The Best Friends Animal Society “recommends reckless policies — including refusing entry to animals who have nowhere else to go, warehousing animals in cages, and handing over animals to anyone who will take them, even convicted abusers,” Chagrin alleged.
“The city of Harlingen experienced this first hand last year,” Chagrin reminded. “The Rio Grande Valley Humane Society, which, at the time, went by the name Harlingen Humane Society, was also running Harlingen’s animal shelter.
“The Harlingen Humane Society allowed the Best Friends Animal Society to ‘embed’ there and take control of the facility’s policies. Soon after, city leaders exposed that the facility was refusing to accept animals from residents and had sent at least 50 dogs and cats to an out-of-state, self-professed ‘rescue’ that was raided by authorities because of criminally cruel conditions.
“The city of Harlingen eventually took back control of its animal shelter,” Chagrin recounted.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Public safety risk too”
“The policies the Best Friends Animal Society pushes are cruel and counterproductive in the extreme,” Chagrin charged. “Animals who are rejected by shelters keep breeding — creating even more with nowhere to go — and die in agony on the streets after starving, being hit by cars, contracting diseases, or suffering other cruel fates.
“It’s a public safety risk, too,” Chagrin mentioned. “Dogs have fatally mauled people in Florida, Texas and Michigan after public animal shelters refused to accept them,” an understatement of a reality now having occurred in perhaps more states than not.
Boks, meanwhile, in his February 20, 2025 Animals & Politics blog pointed out the inevitable outcome of an animal care and control district focusing on achieving a 90% “live release rate” to please Best Friends Animal Society disciples, instead of making a serious, sustained effort to fix the underlying problem by fixing the problematic animals.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Euthanasia up 72% in “no-kill” Los Angeles
Best Friends Animal Society president Julie Castle exulted on March 10, 2021 that, “Los Angeles has entered the ranks of our nation’s no-kill communities as the largest such city in the country!”
But as Boks recited, “In the first nine months of 2024, Los Angeles Animal Services euthanized 1,224 dogs—a staggering 72% increase from the same period a year prior. Over 1,500 cats were also put down, marking a 17% rise.
“The Los Angeles Times recently reported that dogs are now being killed simply for lack of space, not for medical or behavioral reasons. This marks a devastating reversal of the city’s long-standing commitment to no-kill policies.”
Why? Because those policies were never sustainable in the first place.
(Beth Clifton collage)
First things first
Getting to “No more homeless pets” has to come before “We can save them all!” and getting to “No more homeless pets” requires getting to no more pit bulls, no more stray cats annoying citizens, and no more feral cats breeding up to problematic visibility, visibility being the last thing any wild nocturnal rodent-hunting cat actually wants.
Boks put the spotlight on a recent 3.3% reduction of the Los Angeles Animal Services budget “from $31.7 million in 2023-24 to just $30.3 million for 2024-25, a third of what the department requested.”
Yet, had Los Angeles ever really been within daydreaming distance of authentic no-kill animal control, such a budget cut would scarcely have been noticed: there would have been at least a 3.3% reduction in the numbers of dog attacks, stray dogs and cats at large, and citizen complaints about same.
Would you adopt a “used dog” from Kristin Hassan? (Beth Clifton collage)
“Leadership must be held accountable”
Concluded Boks, “Los Angeles Animal Services leadership must be held accountable for past failures. Continued reliance on the Best Friends Animal Society and consultant Kristen Hassen, despite their track record of policy missteps, has exacerbated the crisis.”
(See $2.5 million hiring of “shelter expert” Kristin Hassen brings taxpayer lawsuit.)
“Their Managed Intake and Community Animals programs have encouraged a dangerous shift in policy, pushing vulnerable animals back into the streets rather than ensuring they receive proper shelter and care,” Boks said.
Boks has now detailed his critique of how the Best Friends Animal Society has become the worst enemy of homeless animals in 16 installments, several of them summarized in his October 14, 2024 ANIMALS 24-7 guest column Best Friends’ no-kill initiative power play, by Ed Boks.
Ed Boks & friend. (Beth Clifton collage)
The Ed Boks bibliography
- The No-Kill Illusion: How Best Friends’ Policies Fail Animals and Communities
- Best Friends’ Los Angeles Campaign: A Cloak of Collaboration, a Core of Control
- Demanding Answers: Why Los Angeles Must Investigate Best Friends Animal Society’s Role in Animal Welfare
- Best Friends or Big Trouble? The Irony of Julie Castle’s Critique of LA Animal Services
- Best Friends’ Latest Play in LA: Is the Cat Out of the Bag?
- Ghost Animals: How Best Friends’ Shelter Policies Fail the Most Vulnerable
- No-Kill or No Accountability? A Critique of Best Friends’ 2024 National Impact Report
- Best Friends’ 2024 Report: Lifesaving Data or Smoke and Mirrors?
- Best Friends’ Year-End Appeal Raises Questions About Transparency and Accountability
- Easy Wins or Easy Marks? Best Friends’ Controversial Shift in Markets
- Best Friends’ No-Kill Initiative: A Power Play with Local Consequences
- Best Friends’ Playbook: Manipulation Disguised as Advocacy
- The Battle for Animal Welfare: Interview with Best Friends’ Worst Enemy
- Best Friends’ Marketing Empire: The Gap Between Image and Impact
- LA’s Dangerous Gamble: Are Homeless Animals Pawns in a Numbers Game?
- Best Friends or Broken Trust? The No-Kill Movement Faces a Crisis in Los Angeles
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“We told you so”
ANIMALS 24-7 pointed out the underlying issues back in 2014, updated a year later, in Why we cannot adopt our way out of shelter killing.
Today we can say, “We told you so.”
But much more gratifying would be to look back at a decade-plus of authentic progress toward no-kill animal control that could have been achieved if “No more homeless pets” had really been the Best Friends Animal Society goal instead of the illusory and elusive 90% live release rate.
(Beth Clifton collage)
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