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When Nathan Winograd announced that he was leaving his posh job as a corporate lawyer in Marin County, California, to run an animal shelter in Tompkins County, New York, his father looked at him for a long minute. Then he said, "What the heck do dogs and cats need a lawyer for?"He shouldn't have been so surprised. Nathan Winograd has been rescuing injured and homeless animals since he was a boy. Walking home from school when he was 12, he found a stray cat. He named it Guido, and some 20 years later, when Winograd packed up his family to head east, the cat came along.
The move meant giving up eight weeks' vacation, an office with a view of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and a big house among the redwoods, and moving to a rural area known for its harsh winters. But Winograd's wife, Jennifer, also an animal lover, was all for it. So they packed everything they owned into a rented RV, and with two young children -- daughter Riley was five, son Will was one -- plus two dogs, Guido, and a bunch of other cats Winograd had rescued, drove cross-country.
On Winograd's second day on the job, he was confronted with a dilemma: "The cages are full," an employee announced. "We just received another litter of puppies. Who do we kill to make room?"
"I asked them simply, 'What's plan B?'" says Winograd. "I said, 'I didn't drive 3,000 miles listening to "Daddy, are we there yet?" every five minutes so I could start killing animals.'"
So staffers found an old horse trough, filled it with hay and nestled the pups inside. They placed it next to the front desk, and within a day or two, all six had homes, adopted by people who walked into the shelter and couldn't resist.
"When you take killing animals off the table as an option," Winograd explains, "you'd be surprised at the creative solutions you come up with."
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