![\"Sharon](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.animals24-7.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Picsart_25-04-26_19-57-44-269-e1745722784840.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/p>\n(Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n PORTLAND,\u00a0 Oregon\u2013\u2013<\/strong>More than 250 people on April 24,\u00a0 2025 crowded into the Governor Ballroom at the 116-year-old Sentinel Hotel in downtown Portland,\u00a0 Oregon to sing the praises of Sharon Harmon,\u00a0 66,\u00a0 retiring after 36 years at the Oregon Humane Society.<\/p>\n Harmon started as the Oregon Humane Society operations director in 1989,\u00a0 becoming president and chief executive in 1998.<\/p>\n Sharon Harmon retirement party.<\/strong><\/em> Announcing her impending retirement in February 2025,\u00a0 Harmon had already introduced as her interim successors co-presidents Jessica Carl,\u00a0 \u201cchief culture and people officer,\u201d\u00a0 and Stephen Kochis,\u00a0 chief medical officer.\u00a0 A permanent successor is to be named later.<\/p>\n Harmon herself,\u00a0 rarely inclined to seek the spotlight,\u00a0 only appeared on stage toward the very end of the ceremony,\u00a0 to say \u201cI\u2019m not here,\u201d\u00a0 and accept a plaque including a montage of her law enforcement badges,\u00a0 presented by Oregon Humane Society chief of law enforcement Chris Allori.<\/p>\n Harmon the rest of the time sat quietly at a table among the audience with her husband Gary Kish,\u00a0 Oregon Humane Society vice president for legacy gifts and strategic initiatives,\u00a0 and Humane Colorado president Apryl Steele,\u00a0 DVM.<\/p>\n Beth Clifton & April Steele, DVM.<\/strong><\/em> Steele,\u00a0 44,\u00a0 1,250 miles from home in Denver,\u00a0 is a longtime close friend of Harmon and fellow advocate of the \u201cresponsible sheltering\u201d philosophy of animal shelter management,\u00a0 articulated in 2019 by Steele and\u00a0Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region president Jan McHugh-Smith,\u00a0 66, \u00a0in response to catastrophic failures of \u201cno kill\u201d sheltering.<\/p>\n (See \u201cNo-kill\u201d debacle: will Pueblo bring \u201cresponsible sheltering\u201d into vogue?<\/a>)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n During the early years of the \u201cno kill movement,\u201d\u00a0 beginning with the first national \u201cNo Kill Conference\u201d in 1995,\u00a0 Harmon and McHugh-Smith were among the shelter directors who brought population control killing in their respective communities down the most and the fastest,\u00a0 chiefly by promoting and providing affordable,\u00a0 accessible spay\/neuter of dogs and cats.<\/p>\n Apryl Steele and Sharon Harmon celebrate Sharon\u2019s retirement after 36 years as president of the Oregon Humane Society.<\/strong><\/em> But after the \u201cno kill movement\u201d fell under the influence of the \u201cwe can save them all\u201d crowd,\u00a0 including Maddie\u2019s Fund and the Best Friends Animal Society,\u00a0 Steele,\u00a0 McHugh-Smith,\u00a0 and Harmon,\u00a0 along with former Denver Dumb Friends League president Robert \u201cBob\u201d Rohde,\u00a0 were among the few who stood up to say,\u00a0 \u201cNo,\u00a0 we cannot responsibly save dangerous animals,\u00a0 or irrecoverably sick and\/or injured animals,\u201d\u00a0 certainly not by transporting them hundreds or even thousands of miles to place them in inadequately screened homes where the animals would only suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n Steele in attending Harmon\u2019s retirement ceremony also returned a gesture of diplomatic respect expressed by Harmon herself in attending the 2018 retirement of Rohde after 45 years at the Denver Dumb Friends League,\u00a0 41 of them heading the organization.<\/p>\n (See Retired: Bob Rohde personified \u201cyour Dumb Friends\u201d for 45 years<\/a>.)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Steele recently renamed the Denver Dumb Friends League \u201cHumane Colorado.\u201d\u00a0 That was controversial,\u00a0 and remains so,\u00a0 but not nearly so potentially controversial as much that Harmon did,\u00a0 quietly sidestepping generations of mudslinging critics who mostly managed to hit themselves.<\/p>\n Roger Troen circa 1986.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Oregon Humane Society, \u00a0the flagship humane organization in the Pacific Northwest,\u00a0 now claims an annual income of nearly $30 million a year,\u00a0 with assets of more than $100 million.<\/p>\n But the Oregon Humane Society before Harmon had less than a fifth of the income,\u00a0 half the assets,\u00a0 and a cadre of critics,\u00a0 including Joan Dahlgren Meisenholder, (1927-2006?),\u00a0 who sporadically published an underground newspaper called Sizzle<\/em>,\u00a0 attacking both Oregon Humane and Multnomah County Animal Control;\u00a0 Roger Troen (1931-2008),\u00a0 a job printer who in 1988 became the first person convicted of \u201cAnimal Liberation Front\u201d activity;\u00a0 a couple of lawyers who more-or-less made careers of advocating for dangerous dogs;\u00a0 and the National Animal Interest Alliance,\u00a0 founded in 1991 by Portland dog breeder Patti Strand.<\/p>\n The Oregon Humane Society also had a very long up-and-down history,\u00a0 not all of it centered on animals.<\/p>\n Founded by Dr. Thomas Lamb Elliot on November 17, 1868, \u00a0though not formally incorporated until 1880, \u00a0the Oregon Humane Society is only eight months younger than the San Francisco SPCA, \u00a0which was the first in the western U.S.<\/p>\n Only the American SPCA (1866) and Massachusetts SPCA (1868) are older in continuous operation under their original names.<\/p>\n The Oregon Humane Society soon added child protection services to the original mandate, \u00a0and was the official state child protection agency from 1881 to 1933.<\/p>\n Humane education was put into the Oregon Humane Society mission statement in 1882.<\/p>\n Humane education remained the primary focus of the Oregon Humane Society in 1955,\u00a0 when it posthumously published The Lawyer & The Tramp:\u00a0 Advice to Young Teachers<\/em>, \u00a0by Caroline Clyde Holly (1866-1943),\u00a0 apparently through the influence of her daughter Helen Holly Douglas (1887-1954),\u00a0 a Coos River High School teacher who died a year before the book appeared.<\/p>\n Caroline \u201cCarrie\u201d Clyde Holly,\u00a0 one of the first women elected to the Colorado legislature,\u00a0 served only one term,\u00a0 but led a successful effort to raise the age of consent for young women from 16 to 18,\u00a0 a cause then taken up by early feminist organizations nationwide.<\/p>\n The Works Progress Administration built this shelter for the Oregon Humane Society in 1939. The last parts of it were demolished in 2000.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The initial mission of the Oregon Humane Society was protecting draft horses.<\/p>\n The Oregon Humane Society took over animal control duties for the city of Portland and Multnomah County in 1916.<\/p>\n The first Oregon Humane Society animal shelter,\u00a0 opened in 1918 and soon outgrown,\u00a0 stood on the same property that the current Oregon Humane Society shelter occupies today.<\/p>\n The Works Progress Administration replaced the original shelter as a job creation project in 1939.\u00a0 Remembered by Harmon as \u00a0\u201cA horrible place,\u201d \u00a0the 1939 shelter was still nationally regarded as a good example of shelter design as recently as 1963, \u00a0when it was favorably mentioned in The Quality of Mercy<\/em>, \u00a0 by William Alan Swallow,\u00a0 then considered the definitive history of the humane movement.<\/p>\n (It was nothing of the sort.\u00a0 See How \u201cQuality of Mercy\u201d Swallowed the humane movement (part 1)<\/a> and How \u201cQuality of Mercy\u201d Swallowed the humane movement (part 2)<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Oregon Humane Society team spays a rabbit.<\/strong><\/em> The initial design specifications called for the 1939 Oregon Humane Society shelter to employ 12 workers, \u00a0handling 4,000 animals per year.<\/p>\n By 1973 the Oregon Humane Society received 55,000 animals per year.<\/p>\n Giving up the Portland and Multnomah County animal control contracts gradually brought the Oregon Humane Society intake volume down to about 15,000 animals per year, \u00a0handled by 48 employees and 600 volunteers.<\/p>\n But total Portland and Multnomah County animal shelter dog and cat intakes rose to 116,490 by 1991,\u00a0 of whom 79,713 dogs and cats were killed,\u00a0 a ratio of about 130 to 140 per 1,000 human residents of the service area.<\/p>\n The national average was then circa 115 per 1,000, \u00a0but many cities with lower killing rates did not even try to pick up feral cats.<\/p>\n Sharon Harmon. (Beth Clifton photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Pet sterilization was promoted successfully enough that by 1993 the Portland\/Multnomah rate of shelter killing was down to 22.7 per 1,000 human residents.<\/p>\n Harmon believed the Portland\/Multnomah County community,\u00a0 with Oregon Humane Society leadership,\u00a0 could do much better.<\/p>\n Introducing early-age sterilization and support of volunteers doing neuter\/return feral cat control,\u00a0 Harmon as operations director helped to cut the community animal killing ratio in half during her first decade at the Oregon Humane Society.<\/p>\n By 2013 the Portland\/Multnomah County community animal killing ratio was down to 1.8 animals killed per 1,000 human residents,\u00a0 and the Oregon Humane Society itself was in effect a no-kill shelter,\u00a0 though Harmon refrained from claiming \u201cno kill\u201d status in acknowledgment of euthanizing some animals when appropriate and necessary.<\/p>\n The Animal Shelter Alliance of Portland,\u00a0 formed by Harmon in 2006 in partnership with six other local shelters had by 2013 cut the\u00a0number of dogs and cats killed within their jurisdictions from 18,000 to 6,000 in 2012,\u00a0 winning a proportionally divided grant of $1 million from Maddie\u2019s Fund to continue their efforts.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Oregon Humane Society received $470,000.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, \u00a0Harmon in 1993 initiated planning and fundraising to replace the 1939-vintage shelter.\u00a0 This had to be accomplished without a shutdown,\u00a0 necessitating a modular approach to construction.<\/p>\n Work began in February 1999. \u00a0The new dog housing was completed in November 1999.<\/p>\n Oregon Humane Society<\/strong><\/em> The 1939 shelter was then partially demolished while the rest of the new shelter was built. \u00a0The last of the old shelter came down after the new offices, \u00a0cat facilities, \u00a0euthanasia room,\u00a0 and receiving areas were completed.<\/p>\n Harmon included all of the now widely emulated key ideas, \u00a0floor plans, \u00a0photos, \u00a0and history of the rebuilding in a free downloadable PDF file entitled \u201cOregon Humane Society New Shelter Project 2000,\u201d\u00a0 just a point-and-click away for anyone with a web browser at https:\/\/www.oregonhumane.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/shelter.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sharon Harmon with Merritt & Beth Clifton.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em>(April Steele photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Features of the Oregon Humane Society design begin with an unusually efficient floor plan.<\/p>\n The traffic flow moves entirely from left to right, \u00a0from separate receiving stations for dogs and cats, \u00a0through separate holding areas for quarantined animals, \u00a0animals needing veterinary care, \u00a0and holds for rehoming.<\/p>\n Never is there need to take unfamiliar dogs and cats past each other.<\/p>\n Animals pass the entrance to the lightly used euthanasia room as they leave the receiving area, \u00a0on their way to be housed in other wings of the building. \u00a0If they sense the presence of the euthanasia room at all, \u00a0they sense that they are being taken away from it. \u00a0Animals arriving for euthanasia do not pass those in care. \u00a0Rarely is there need to take animals to be euthanized back past others still in care.<\/p>\n Merritt Clifton & Sharon Harmon.<\/strong><\/em> Animals offered for adoption rotate toward the lobby, \u00a0enjoying ever more attractive and comfortable surroundings as they clear health and behavioral checks. \u00a0Those at the shelter longest are displayed most prominently, \u00a0giving them the best chance to be the next animals to find homes.<\/p>\n Possibly the most active rabbit adoption center in the U.S. is just off the lobby.\u00a0 Access to it is arranged so that the rabbits have little if any awareness of proximity to cats and dogs.<\/p>\n The Oregon Humane Society added an Animal Medical Learning Center in 2007, and a $38 million adjacent \u201cNew Road Ahead\u201d four-acre satellite campus in 2022,\u00a0 including a community veterinary Hospital, a behavior and rescue center, \u00a0and an animal crimes forensic center,\u00a0 described in Harmon\u2019s retirement announcement as \u201cthe only one of its kind on the West Coast and a critical resource for helping law enforcement build strong cases against those charged with animal abuse and neglect.\u201d<\/p>\n (See The Oregon Humane Society: more than 11,000 adoptions for sixth year in a row<\/a>.)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Oregon Humane Society chief of law enforcement Chris Allori. (Oregon Humane Society photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cSince 1991,\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0Oregon Humane Society chief of law enforcement Chris Allori recited during his plaque presentation,\u00a0 \u201cHarmon has influenced nearly every animal protection bill in Oregon, including recognition of animals as individual victims of crimes, with a designated animal crimes prosecutor embedded in the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n \u201cSharon also introduced stiff penalties for animal cruelty and a prohibition of ownership for animal abusers,\u201d\u00a0 Allori said,\u00a0 and \u201cestablished the Oregon Humane Society as the sole humane law enforcement authority in the state, \u00a0with full police powers under the Oregon State Police.\u201d<\/p>\n Allori,\u00a0 himself a former 26-year Oregon State Police officer,\u00a0 explained the necessity of having a single state humane law enforcement authority to avoid conflicts of jurisdiction.<\/p>\n Oregon Humane Society law enforcement team circa 2015.<\/strong><\/em> Among the memorable animal cruelty cases that Harmon brought to court were the January 2013 arrest of Alicia M. Inglish,\u00a0 then 24,\u00a0 who ran an entity called Willamette Animal Rescue in Salem,\u00a0 Oregon.<\/p>\n Recounted Noelle Crombie of the Oregonian<\/em>,\u00a0 \u201cMarion County sheriff\u2019s officials arrested Inglish on 120 accusations of second-degree animal\u00a0neglect, \u00a0a class B misdemeanor, \u00a0and tampering with evidence.<\/p>\n \u201cInglish has been the subject of\u00a0many previous complaints from people who adopted animals through her\u00a0group,\u201d\u00a0 Crombie wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cInglish\u2019s animals were kept at a Brooks warehouse.\u00a0 Police encountered 149 dogs, \u00a0some of them starving. \u00a0Others\u2019 eyes were sealed\u00a0 shut with bodily fluids. \u00a0Their cages weren\u2019t lined with bedding. \u00a0As\u00a0many as five dogs were kept in kennels designed for one. \u00a0The stench\u00a0was overwhelming. \u00a0Waste ran down from one crate perched atop many\u00a0others, to pool on the concrete floor.\u201d<\/p>\n Oregon Humane Society cruelty investigator.<\/strong><\/em> The Inglish case furnished the evidence Harmon needed to persuade the Oregon legislature to substantially strengthen Oregon law applicable in mass neglect cases.<\/p>\n Reported Steven Dubois of Associated Press in December 2013,\u00a0 \u201cCatherine Ann Setere, \u00a066, \u00a0an Akita breeder who had 118 dogs and 21 horses seized by authorities, \u00a0was arraigned on felonies instead of misdemeanors Monday because of the recent passage of Oregon Senate Bill 6, \u00a0a law championed by the Oregon Humane Society and others that toughened the penalty for neglect offenses involving 10 or more animals.\u201d<\/p>\n Convicted on 43 counts,\u00a0 Setere continued appeals at least until 2020,\u00a0 but the conviction held up,\u00a0 as did many others during Harmon\u2019s tenure,\u00a0 including some that confronted unique defenses.<\/p>\n (See Stepping in poop without a warrant: Oregon Supreme Court rules.)<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n (Beth Clifton photo) <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Harmon also \u201clinked animal cruelty, \u00a0domestic violence and child abuse under the Oregon law providing for enhanced sentencing in recognizing the behavior is the same and often the crimes happen in the same relationship,\u201d\u00a0 Allori described.<\/p>\n Among the first cases coming up under that legislation was that of one Joshua Brian Woltmon, then 27,\u00a0 of Medford in Jackson County.<\/p>\n Woltmon in May 2017 was,\u00a0 while on probation for possession of methedrine,\u00a0 charged with sexual assault of an animal, \u00a0public indecency, \u00a0menacing, \u00a0and disorderly conduct.<\/p>\n Woltmon allegedly \u201cunlawfully and for the purpose of arousing and gratifying the sexual desire of a person [touched or contacted] the sex organs of a chicken.\u201d<\/p>\n He pleaded guilty. \u00b7<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was pushing for criminalizing sexual assault of animals,\u201d\u00a0 said Harmon, \u00a0\u201cI was thinking about the women and kids who are often concurrent victims. \u00a0Never did I think of this. \u00a0One sick bastard indeed!\u201d<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n To that point Harmon had addressed issues involving chickens chiefly by winning passage of a law to require egg producers to fully transition to enriched colony caging by 2026.<\/p>\n Implementing the law was threatened by a \u201ccage free\u201d initiative that the Humane Society of the U.S. in 2011 briefly petitioned to put on the 2012 Oregon state ballot.<\/p>\n Petitioning for the ballot initiative was suspended,\u00a0 however,\u00a0 as result of a Humane Society of the U.S. agreement with United Egg Producers to seek a single national standard for hen caging.\u00a0 The agreement expired in 2016 with no such standard advancing in Congress.<\/p>\nHarmon raised more money than 121 years of her Oregon Humane Society predecessors\u2013\u2013and did much more with it<\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n
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(Beth Clifton photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nInterim successors<\/h2>\n
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(Merritt Clifton photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nThe Denver connection<\/h2>\n
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(Beth Clifton photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nWhat \u201cresponsible sheltering\u201d is<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nInherited cadre of critics<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Up-and-down history<\/h2>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cA horrible place\u201d<\/h2>\n
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(Beth Clifton photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nBuilt for 4,000 animals a year,\u00a0 took in 55,000<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nSpay\/neuter pushed the numbers down<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nMoney from Maddie\u2019s Fund<\/h2>\n
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(Oregon Humane Society photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nBuilt in stages<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nFloor plan<\/h2>\n
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(Beth Clifton photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nRabbits<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cInfluenced nearly every animal protection bill\u201d<\/h2>\n
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(Oregon Humane Society photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nInglish case proved point<\/h2>\n
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(Oregon Humane Society photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nNew law was in effect by year\u2019s end<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cSick bastard!\u201d<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nHen caging<\/h2>\n