We are two small business-people in Portland, Oregon moved to act on behalf of every animal who, for whatever reason, ends up in a shelter.

Our efforts to protect homeless animals started in 2008 when we began to follow the fates of the thousands of animals who end up at Multnomah County Animal Services every year.

In 2008, former Multnomah County Chair Ted Wheeler and former City Councillor Randy Leonard, created the Joint City/County Animal Services Taskforce. Concerned over wide-spread public dissatisfaction with this widely reviled agency, they appealed to concerned citizens to examine MCAS operations and propose practical changes. By the time the task force concluded in 2009, however, both officials had moved on to other offices and issues.

Wheeler and Leonard’s waning interest only served to further ignite our sense of urgency and responsibility to the dogs, cats and other animals impounded at MCAS.

Since then, we have committed every minute of our extra time to studying the records, yearly budgets and all available performance measures in an effort to assess MCAS’s chronic deficiencies. We’ve attended conferences, traveled to other shelters, produced detailed documents and materials, met with City and County officials, lobbied and testified. We even brought the Director of the successful, self-sustaining Calgary Canada Animal Services to meet with our local elected officials. His passionate presentation of this impressive, importable model, had us believing that County officials would be willing to make changes to improve MCAS’s performance. But, once again, they retreated into inaction.

Because of their failure to act, Multnomah County Animal Services is now in a complete state of collapse.

For the last 15 years, we’ve employed every approach imaginable to convince County Commissioners to bring about reform. The names and faces of the Commissioners and officials have changed - what hasn’t changed is the continued failure of MCAS to carry out its mission.

Regardless of how long it takes, we will never give up our fight for change.