Response to comment about full utilization of space in shelters:
As this blog progresses, we will discuss all of these programs and ideas of how to implement them in greater detail. We can explore ideas of what may or may not work here, or we can form groups to hit the street and start talking to people to find out the exact reasons they don’t spay/neuter their animals, etc., and work on campaigns and programs that target these reasons or give people more incentives to act differently.
Is culture in this area fully responsible for the lack of respect for animal life? Are
Cases of neglect and cruelty happen everywhere in this nation, and all you have to do is watch Animal Cops on Animal Planet to see that. As we all know, media focus does not tell the full truth either. These stories on this one TV show illustrate one slice of a very large pie made with hundreds of ingredients.
People from different cultures and backgrounds may show apathy and cruelty in unique ways particular to that group of people—but, the bottom line is the same: There will always be neglectful, cruel people in this world of every race, color, sex, age, social status, etc. Because they exist or cannot be influenced or changed does not mean we can’t reach no kill for many years to come. If we waited to try to change every “bad” person out there, we’d never get to no kill because some miracles will never happen. No kill does not worry about these people except to support the punishment of cruelty and to encourage these people to not own pets and to stop adding to the problem.
In other words, it isn’t just the lower classes in this county who are capable or guilty of cruelty. For example, I live across the street from a typical, middle-class American family with a nice home and huge yard that have a dog living outdoors and fenced into one corner of that yard. He never gets any attention from the multiple members of that family, and he barks and barks and barks out of boredom. But, because he has shade, a dog house and adequate food and water, the owners are not breaking any laws. Alternately, the lady at my office that works for our janitorial service lives in Chaparral, is from
I believe reaching no kill means you have to start by showing compassion for people, too, which means to try to think about these issues in the larger scheme of things and from differing perspectives. We must also remember that people do awful things to each other on a regular basis. Furthermore, in the U.S., what we do to animals in various industries in the name of science, the food we eat, etc., is very cruel, and many of those animals are not covered under state or federal anti-cruelty laws. You could say that our entire HUMAN culture considers many animals “throwaways”, so it is no wonder some people extend this system of beliefs to cats and dogs as well. It's truly a global problem that manifests itself differently in different regions based on belief systems.
This reminds me of something I read in the true story of Best Friends and how this organization made it their mission to NOT concentrate on the bad they see on a daily basis, and this has been the cornerstone of their success. After a call to go rescue some dogs from a puppy mill, one of the Best Friends founders, Faith Maloney, was furious and cursing people and the world on her drive back to the sanctuary. When she got back to the office, she noticed someone had erected a huge Wall of Triumph, a collage of pictures and stories from around the world of all the good things people were doing with and for animals.
Personally, I approach any animal legislation with caution when it s trying to force responsible pet ownership. Just like you can’t change some people’s spots with humane education or awareness campaigns or an hour-long conversation where you both want to pull each other’s hair out, there is no way to easily force people to do the right thing through laws alone. If that were the case, all our current animal laws would have us closer to no kill than we are, and we'd hear very few and rare stories about animal neglect/cruelty.
The only way I’d personally support mandatory spay/neuter would be if many support programs and services were in place to provide low-cost, high-volume surgeries so that these laws don’t have the backlash effect they can lead to, which is more impounds of animals and more killing at the shelter. Sometimes, it does behoove us to contemplate how these laws will be enforced, in other words. In fact, you can get out in the community with progressive spay/neuter programs and ideas and work toward more surgeries without the need for mandatory laws.
I wonder if laws for spay/neuter are necessary when I think back to the positive experience I had when I volunteered the weekend the Santa Fe Spay and Neuter Van made its way to Chaparral a few months back; the response there was immense! People were asking when we’d be back and talking about the need for more visits, and in the end, Chaparral's people donated more than $400 to the Free Spay Neuter Program jar over that weekend because they were so grateful to get the services for free.
While we were there, we convinced a lady to keep her spraying male cat and gave her ideas of how to deal with the issue because many of us have one of “those” cats at home, too, and another lady whom we took a litter of puppies from agreed to have the mama dog fixed in return, who was a stray, and agreed to keep the mama. We ended up saving all the puppies, and they were all adopted to good, responsible homes some weeks later after living with and driving their foster family a little nuts! One shares a home with the new volunteer coordinator at our shelter!!
These are those small victories and the building blocks that help get us to no kill. Let's all try to remember our own Wall of Triumph stories to keep us from falling into the Black Hole of Helplessness. None of us can act positively from that point-of-view.