The Commission of Animal Care & Control has finished taking testimony from a wide range of organizations on whether to mandate a No Kill policy in San Francisco by enacting shelter oversight legislation that would require all San Francisco shelters, including the San Francisco Department of Animal Care & Control (ACC) and the San Francisco SPCA, to commit to saving San Francisco’s neediest animals. Testifying in favor of the proposal included the No Kill Advocacy Center, Best Friends Animal Society, Fix San Francisco, and a host of local rescue groups and animal lovers.

The most notorious animal abuser of our time was just given what he wanted most by being reinstated in the National Football League. I have to wonder how much he pleaded for mercy and empathy, even as the dogs he abused and killed received none from him. But most of all, I have to wonder how much Michael Vick played up his association with Wayne Pacelle and the Humane Society of the United States in his meetings with the Commissioner and others who held his fate in their hands. How he is now an HSUS spokesman. How the nation’s largest animal protection organization is now in his corner. How they forgave him, so why shouldn’t the NFL?

A feature in the Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minnesota’s daily newspaper, recently highlighted the transport of death row dogs from high kill rate jurisdictions in the South into Minnesota. The transport is part of a nationwide network of animal lovers who save dogs in high kill rate jurisdictions and take them to shelters, rescue groups, and even loving, new homes in states where the demand for dogs is said to outstrip supply. This effort is also the focus of Bonnie Silva’s book, Fifteen Legs, and is the subject of her award-winning documentary of the same name, which is scheduled to broadcast on PBS stations later this year. It has been compared to the “Underground Railroad” before and during the antebellum period, when slaves were smuggled out of Southern States and transported North and ultimately to Canada to gain their freedom.

Animal lovers across the country are anxious about the fate of some 400 dogs who were seized from dog fighters and are now in the custody of the Humane Society of Missouri (HSMO). Initially, all we heard were ominous statements from those involved—including the Humane Society of the United States whose CEO stated that he was “pretty certain” most of the dogs would be killed, the ASPCA whose representative stated that we should not expect the same outcome as the Michael Vick case (where most dogs were saved), and even HSMO which would not comment.