A Doggone Shame

HumaneWatch has frequently noted how miserly the Humane Society of the United States can be when it comes to actually providing care to animals. Even though it receives more than $100 million in contributions, HSUS only gives 1% of its budget to local pet shelters. And even though HSUS can afford to stash away $50 million  in Caribbean hedge funds, it turned to crowdfunding to raise $150,000 to care for chimpanzees in Liberia.

As it turns out, HSUS’s international arm, Humane Society International (HSI) is just as cheap.

According to the Times of India, HSI has dealt the city of Thiruvananthapuram’s stray dog animal birth control program “a major setback” by calling it quits because the organization did not feel it was being paid enough. HSI had been entrusted with sterilizing the city’s 5,380 stray dogs, but had constantly been fighting about money with city officials. To add insult to injury, HSI only got to 1,041 of the 3,500 dogs it was supposed to sterilize in Thiruvananthapuram.

HSI isn’t an organization that needs to be pinching pennies. According to its publicly available tax return, HSI received more than $7.4 million in contributions in 2013. It’s not clear how much money was in dispute with this animal birth control program, but the Times of India report mentions that one point of contention was a survey for which HSI demanded to be paid $2,600 more — or 0.0035% of its annual budget.

Talk may be cheap, but this latest incident in India shows HSUS and Humane Society International are cheaper.