Thursday, October 2, 2008

Humane Education


Being out of work and watching the field as hawk-eyed as I have been some ideas have been brewing in my head.

My education department was not the only one cut recently. While mine was cut all together, a number of other shelters in the Northwest have had education programs suffer cut-backs or redirection of their time away from education to outreach. What does that mean? More hours for events and fundraising and less hours for directly educating the public.

While I strongly feel that it is the responsibility of these local animal welfare non-profits to be doing this educational work, if their leadership does not agree with my priorities a painful gap is left in the community.

Sadly, but predictably, many children and adults do not learn at home what they need to know to be responsible pet owners. To tell the truth, I did not learn the lessons that I really needed when I was young. I was taught kindness, which is the most important lesson certainly, but the serious day to day meeting of animals’ needs (beyond the basics of food, water and shelter) was something that I was not prepared for. Pets suffered for this. I suffer still for having been the cause for their pain.

There are a number of independent organizations trying to meet these humane education needs.

Healing Species is a program doing some amazing work using an 11 week program, leading classrooms of children to expand their understanding of others and to learn empathy. Through sharing stories, group projects and conversations, and simple but deeply changing positive interactions with real animals the students’ views of stewardship, kindness and community are nurtured.
www.healingspecies.org

Doggone Safe brings safety programs to both children and adults. A majority of injuries that are caused by dogs could be avoided all together if basic skills about interactions with animals were taught widely. These programs also instruct on reading canine body language so that a person can understand a dogs intentions more clearly. A wagging tail does not always belong to a friendly dog!
www.doggonesafe.com

Kids and Storks teaches soon-to-be and new-parents pet safety lessons and how to properly prepare and then integrate their family pets with the new arrival – a baby. So many pets loss their loving homes because parents lack these skills!
www.dogsandstorks.com

Come the beginning of the year, I will be re-launching a humane education curriculum for a local Head Start school. It is a program I developed and taught while employed at a local humane society; yes, that one that no longer has an education department. I’ll be teaching these classes with my feline and canine partners: Guido and Moon. We’ll be strictly volunteers. The schools can’t afford to pay and the small non-profit that I’ll be working under the auspice of, has only has three paid employees and a dedicated group of volunteers.

Where does is all this leading me?

Oregon law says:
Oregon 336.067 Instruction in ethics and morality. (1) In public schools special emphasis shall be given to instruction in: …(c) Humane treatment of animals.

If the animal welfare larger non-profits cannot, or chose not to, provide humane education then perhaps independent contractors and smaller non-profits will have to step up and fill the need.