Kibble Bubble or Talk to the Dog

A Colbert Report re-run about the financial crisis has just ended, so I turn the tv off, grab my jacket and the leash, and head out for a walk with the dog. She's oddly pensive as we head up the street. After a little while, she stops and asks, "What was that all about?"

"All what?"

"All that 'crisis' and 'bailout' stuff. It sounds scary."

"Well, a bunch of banks made a bunch of really bad loans, and people have lost a lot of money."

"I got that," she says. "I may be a dog, but I'm not stupid. I'm asking how they lost a lot of money."

"Well, it's complicated, but I'll try to explain. Let's say you have a whole bunch of kibble--"

"How much kibble?"

"I don't know. A lot. Fifty cups."

"Oooh! I like how this starts." She wags her tail excitedly.

"You won't like how it ends. Let's say you have fifty cups of kibble, and the Weimaraner across the streets comes and asks you to loan her one cup, and promises to pay you back five cups over the next year. Do you give her the kibble?"

"No! It's my kibble!" She looks offended at the very idea.

"It's only one cup, and she'll pay you back five."

"Yeah, but I don't trust that dog. Where's she going to get five cups of kibble? She's just going to eat the one cup, and I'll never get paid back. She's a bad risk."

"Exactly. Now, imagine that some human comes and offers to sell you a piece of paper for ten cups of kibble, and the paper says you get fifty cups of kibble over the next year. Do you buy it?"

"Sure. Humans have lots of kibble. They're good for it."

"You might think that. The thing is, the paper says that some human gave ten different dogs-- the Weimaraner, the two Yellow Labs on the next block, that beagle around the corner, a bunch of others-- some human gave each of them one cup of kibble, and they promised to pay him back five cups over the next year."

"But it's the human giving me the kibble, right?"

"No, the dogs are. They promise to pay whoever has the paper. The human just sold you the paper."

"Well, that's not so good. But as long as the human vouches for the dogs, I guess it's not too bad a risk."

"The thing is, he doesn't know any of the dogs. He bought the paper from somebody else, who bought it from somebody else, who bought it from a dog somewhere, who made the original loans."

"Wait a minute. Why on earth would anybody do that? You can't trust any of those dogs to give me back my kibble."

"Well, the theory is, if you put ten dogs together, they might not all pay you back, but as long as some of them do, you can get back the kibble you started with. If you get lucky, and they all pay you the kibble they owe you, you've got almost a hundred cups of kibble."

"That sounds good. So am I a lucky dog?"

"Of course not. You can't trust those dogs, and none of them can give you any kibble."

"Oh." She looks sad. "Well, ok, then I'm out ten cups of kibble. That's bad, but I've still got..." You can see the wheels turning as she struggles with the math.

"Forty cups left."

"Thank you. Forty cups left. That's not too bad."

"Right, except you wanted to get a lot more kibble, so you went and borrowed another fifty cups from some other dog, and promised to pay her back a hundred cups."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because you're greedy."

"Well, why would she give me the kibble?"

"Because you had forty cups, and showed her a piece of paper saying that you'd get fifty more in the next year."

"But those bad dogs didn't give me my kibble."

"Right, so instead of having forty cups of kibble, you have minus sixty. You owe some other dog sixty cups of kibble that you don't have."

"Well, that sucks."

"Exactly. That's the financial crisis, in a nutshell."

"So what's the bailout?"

"The bailout is that I step in, as your owner, and give you the hundred cups of kibble you need to pay off the dog you borrowed from."

"Oh! That's good." She wags her tail. "This is why we love you."

"Thanks. The problem is, because I had to spend money buying kibble to bail you out, I no longer have the money to buy you squeaky toys."

"But... but... but..." she's really flustered. "But I like squeaky toys! I like kibble! I want my squeaky toys and kibble!" She's about to melt down completely.

"Take it easy. Your squeaky toys and kibble are safe. This is all just a hypothetical."

"Oh." She calms down a bit. "So, hypothetically, who's to blame for all this? I bet it's that Weimaraner. I never did trust that dog."

(For the record, the dog in question is perfectly nice, and has very nice owners. I have no idea why Emmy dislikes her so much.)
"No, it's not her fault."

"But she borrowed kibble she couldn't pay back!"

"Yeah, but Alan Greenspan told her it was a good idea, and she believed him."

"Who's Alan Greenspan?"

"Another human. He's... a veterinarian, and takes care of a lot of dogs."

"Oh. Well, what about the human who sold me the paper? It's all his fault, isn't it."

"Not really. He bought the paper from somebody else, and trusted them when they said it was a good investment."

"So, it's the dog who made the initial loans, isn't it? Let's find him and bite him."

"He might be the right one to blame, but nobody remembers who he was. And anyway, he had a mathematical model that said the whole thing would work out. It was very complicated"

"Oh. Complicated math is very convincing to dogs."

"Also bankers, more's the pity."

"So there's nobody to bite? We're out all this kibble, and there's nobody to bite?"

"Nope. At least, nobody we can identify easily. All we can do is buy more kibble, and hope for the best."

"Hmmph." She looks dissatisfied, and we walk in silence for a while. "You know what? I bet it was a cat."

"A cat?"

"A cat. Whenever there's a crisis, and kibble goes missing, there's a cat at the bottom of it somewhere."

"That's an... interesting theory."

"You should see if any of these bankers are cats. I bet one of them's a cat. That's who you should blame."

"I'll be sure to pass that on to the appropriate authorities."

"Good." And, with the nation's financial problems solved, we continue on our walk.

http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2008/10/the_kibble_bubble.php

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.

Building Coalition

Responsibility, Transparency, Community Support, and Willingness to Change

Without these from local animal welfare organizations (and I include rescues, open-admission, limited-admission, private and government agencies here) there will be "bright new day" in animal welfare. The euthanasia numbers will not drop. The public will remain ignorant, committing neglect and abuse. Spay and neuter efforts will fail.

As a member of two local task forces, I have seen the intent to embrace the four principles above from a number of organizations. They are brave; they are truly willing to serve. Some may have something to lose by walking the walk here – the limited admission shelters are moving of their own free-will toward a level playing field.

Yet there are those that still refuse to share information about their operations. Some organizations publish their annual reports in a newsletter, or even better on their website - including intake and live release numbers, budget information and program specs. Others chose to keep this information tucked away only for the eyes and minds of their board members.

Trust is an issue.

Does one chose to trust other local organizations or hide information? Do we choose to lay the numbers and the issues on the table, and educate our public or opt for the nanny-state answer that they can’t understand so they shouldn’t have the information?

Integrity is at risk here.

With the Asilomar Accords (www.asilomaraccords.org) common language, at least on a local level, can be reached so that terminology on what is Healthy, Treatable, or Unhealthy within a community will have same usage. To come to these terms is not an easy discussion and cannot be held solely within the animal welfare community. By calling in members from the animal welfare community (shelters and rescues), as well as veterinarian, trainers and behaviorists, owners of pet related businesses, to honestly discus what an average pet owner is likely to do in various situations – these definitions can be classified.

These terms are by no means rubber stamps for disposition. If the resources are available in a community, “unhealthy” pets can be placed. If the resources are not there, not even all “healthy” pets will be placed and euthanasia of these animals will continue. But without at very least common terminology a community cannot work together as a whole to end that tragic practice.

I applaud my local community coalition ASAP (http://www.catadoptionteam.org/cat/adoption/info/408) for the work they are doing and I am proud to be a small part of the process. I can only hope all of them will follow through and not hobble the process with their own fears.

Prison Dogs

Project Pooch www.pooch.org – just south of Portland doing some amazing work with incarcerated teens. At risk shelter does are brought in for on-site training by the at risk kids. Both canines and young adults are learners and trainers in their own way. Dogs are adopted out, mostly with their Canine Good Citizenship http://www.akc.org/events/cgc/index.cfm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canine_Good_Citizen and the teens learn a lot about themselves through their dog’s eyes.

The program I was involved with for two great summers is Project Click http://www.clickertraining.com/node/310 . “Project Click! is a highly structured program matching at-risk teens from the Clark County Juvenile Court System with difficult to place animals from our shelter. Project Click! students learn the clicker training method to rehabilitate behavior challenged dogs and learn first hand the value of reinforcing positive behavior. The interaction with our animals helps these troubled teens gain a sense of responsibility, self-confidence, and patience. In addition, students learn problem solving skills and a greater understanding of the animal sheltering world. Many students express an interest in the field and all come to value the importance of community service.” That is what I wrote for the website anyhow but it is so much more than that! The bonding experience, the way that we all learn to trust, the power of positive interactions will make those times shine for me forever!

PenPals down at Marin Humane where I used to work brings shelter dogs to San Quentin: http://www.marinhumanesociety.org/programsservices/PenPals/PenPals.html.

And there are a number of programs that are doing basic service dog training within prison walls such as: http://www.puregolden.com/service-prison.htm http://www.champdogs.org/prison-program. There are many more simliar programs out there, making a huge difference to a lot of people and dogs.

It is a ripple effect as well. These programs make real changes for the better in ways that just shutting someone, pet or person, in a cell never will.

What have I been doing?

"Then, at the urging of Portland Commissioner Randy Leonard, a joint city-county task force began meeting in May to study service and financing options for animal services inside Portland city limits. "

http://www.oregonlive.com/metroeast/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/metro_east_news/1214951113247720.xml&coll=7

This article is not the best view of the issues. As these Task Force meeting continue I am increasingly convinced there is no best view. We Task Force members are doing what we can to weave together near cacophony of different opinions, concerns and demands to work through the process of finding out what is to be done to provide the Portland metro area with the animal services it needs.

If only there were some what to check the agendas at the door!

In the past, at other shelters, I have seen very successful work using inmate work crews to help with animal shelter chores and up-keep. It is a win-win-win situation when handled correctly. The animals get the care they need, the staff gets to spent their time on more skills intensive tasks, the inmates get a dose of humanity and animal bonding.

I’m going to float this at our next meeting, after talking some with the shelter where I’ve seen this sort of program work so well.

Wish me luck!