I wanted to let everyone know about two worthy website links added to my Progressive Animal Welfare list at the right: Animal Shelter Tips and Rescue Ink.
Animal Shelter tips offers a wide variety of ideas for shelters, from fundraising to getting more volunteers to how to get more people in your shelter to adopt more animals vs. the alternatives. This site is out of Santa Fe, NM, too. Two shelter cats are the inspiration for the site.
Rescue Ink is the site of that famous rag-tag group of big biker rescue guys with hearts even bigger than their biceps. If you have not watched Rescue Ink Unleashed on the National Geographic Channel, please try to check it out on Friday nights. It airs right after The Dog Whisperer. If you don't get this channel, look out for it on DVD in the near future.
When you watch what these guys accomplish, you wish there was a group of similar tough guys with big hearts in every community to track down animal abusers and deal with the issues they encounter in reasonable, yet firm and powerful, ways. They strive to change the situation for animals and to educate abusers and teach people how to provide better for their animals. When that is not possible, they strive to get animals out of bad situations themselves.
They have great results because there is something about eight tough, inked bikers knocking on doors that garners instant respect. I can't see getting that same response if myself and some other older ladies went knocking on abuser's doors.
All kidding aside, we need this kind of outreach and help in our community. If there are any people out there reading this, whether you are a tough guy with heart or not, we need your assistance to help educate and train people to provide better for their animals. Not a week goes by that I don't get a call as the Dogs Deserve Better representative about a chained dog that could use a group of people to advocate for him or her, and I just got a call this week about an abused, half-starved female husky that is being used as a puppy machine and is being beaten by her owners. The lady witnessing this tragedy is elderly and afraid for herself and her own dogs should she try to approach this family.
Right behind the need for more spay/neuter in our area, we could really use a Rescue Ink of our own as well. I hope that as more people sit at home and watch this show, more big guys with big hearts will be inspired to do the same kind of work in their own communities.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
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