I’ve been involved in a number of sides of animal welfare: volunteered with Alley Cats and Bide-a-Wee when I was a teen, volunteered latter at a county shelter in Santa Cruz, worked at open admission non-profit humane societies with contracts for animal control and at a county shelter, as well as volunteering with a breed rescue group and currently working at a limited admission shelter that provides a range of services from sheltering and re-homing cats to offering no-interest loans for emergency veterinary care.
I am a member of two local groups that are working for a better future for our animals in the Metro Portland area. One is a shelter reform group, mostly very strongly “no-kill” in philosophy, and the other is a city task force putting together recommendations for changes in city animal services.
I listen to a lot of conversations and debates on the different ways that animal welfare organizations should/ought to be serving their community.
I try to open people’s eyes to the reality of pet over-population and the hard road that most animal welfare workers face.
I often ask folks to read “One at a Time – A Week in an American Animal Shelter” for a clear vision of what it is like. If you haven’t read this book, I strongly suggest it. It is also a blessing of a tool to those that work in animal welfare to explain what their days look and feel like to friends and family. It is not easy to explain to outsiders the stress and strain of just doing you job… http://novoiceunheard.org/OneAtATime.htm
Here is a bravely written article about a day in the life of a shelter that sheds light and pushes back the shadows.
“Tough morning ritual -
Although many employees dread mornings in the office, few face workplace stress like Malmberg and shelter services coordinator Bill Motteler do.
Their grim task is to decide whose time has expired. At about 8 each morning, they must roam the cages and select animals for euthanasia…”
http://www.pjstar.com/stories/050408/HEA_BFHKNRMO.022.php
We need the public to understand. We need all the various groups to understand. We need to understand each other. Sharing, openly and honestly with compassion, can bring us together.
1 comment:
The Peroia article was very powerful, I felt the comments were from the heart, and each person carries their own thoughts on euthanasia..If the readers of the paper felt the heartbreak looking at the pictures, can they not feel the grief of the people actually there ? Not seeing the pictures that were apparently in the paper but not online I don't know about the puppy dragging scene. I felt the same way when I watched footage from a dogmeat farm in Korea. There is something so helpless about an animal being dragged, we want to jump in and shout NO NO NO ! I watched all the footage on the HSUS sites, I felt if I were not going to put my head in the sand I wanted to know, even though it kept me up nights. And it was awful. Every bit of it was awful, but the truth will set them free. we must quit pretending that things are just fine. I can do little about Korea Or China or the dog/cat fur trades but I can inform myself and anybody who has any interest. I have appraoached store managers with a HSUS pamphlet on the nice German Shepherd fur coats they had on the racks. I guess the point I am making here is, you can't change the behavior of a society and hide the truth. If we want to pretend every puppy finds a home, the public will buy that, and keep producing and dumping. I say, get the facts out there.
Post a Comment