IT'S TIME TO CHANGE A LITTLE; FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE DOGS

Everyone is different.  Everyone has a different way of being, thinking, speaking and doing.  Everyone sees things from a slightly different perspective.  I get that.  I totally get that.  What I don’t get is how so many people who are all claiming to work toward a common goal approach it so differently and at times because of the choice of how to approach that goal can be an obstacle to meeting that goal.

In this instance, once again, I’m talking about the animal welfare community, and in this particular instance I am talking about how so many seem to have such a negative way of going about networking to get a dog get out of a shelter; in particular how so many seem to find it necessary to pass judgement on a former owner or the person who ‘dumped’ the dog at the shelter.

I understand this community is based on emotions.  I understand that a vast majority, if not all, of the people who get involved in this community do so because emotionally they feel a need to help, to save, to educate and to make a difference in the lives of animals.  The needs of animals most certainly tug on our heart strings and when so many have seen so much abuse, neglect and abandonment it can be a very emotional task to network for animals in need.  It’s so very easy to become deeply emotionally invested in the welfare of a single animal that we are networking for or are trying to save. I get all of that and understand that because it’s such an emotionally driven community that at times some people involved absolutely do operate solely on their emotions.  In no way would I ever suggest that we stop feeling or becoming emotionally invested in these animals because our emotions are often what drives us, even to the bitter end, to succeed on behalf of an animal.  However for some of us we tend to become far too emotional and at times as a result we become far too narrow-minded and quick to judge when we see an animal that has been given up on by someone else.

If I had a magic wand and could wave it over this animal welfare community to repair one single thing it would be to help people STOP including judgmental, and at times downright hateful, comments about the people who they view as being the reason why the animal, for the sake of this discussion I am talking about dogs, ended up in a shelter and in need of a foster or home. 

So often we don’t know, and will never know, the reason why someone surrenders a dog to a local shelter.  We can guess or assume but likely more often than not we would be incorrect in our assumptions.  Assuming that everyone, or anyone, who surrenders a dog to an animal shelter does so out of heartless, selfish or uncaring reasons is dangerous; dangerous because when we make these assumptions and follow them with negative, hateful and judgmental words about the former owner in our efforts to network for these dogs we are putting THAT FACE on our community.  ‘THAT FACE’ meaning the face of an insensitive, conclusion jumping, extremely critical, judgmental and sometimes hateful group of people who lack compassion for anything but animals.  Why would anyone ‘out there’ want to interact with a group like this, unless of course they were the same way, or donate to a group like this or help a group like this or approach a group like this in order to adopt a family pet?  WHY would they???

There apparently are many members of this community who either feel or have learned that this is just how we help dogs, how we network for them.  Meaning that for some they truly feel that the more heartless and uncaring you can make a former owner appear to be for ‘dumping’ their dog at a shelter the more likely someone will step up sooner to help the dog. While I don’t believe that there has ever been a study of this phenomena or it has ever been quantified I just can’t believe that this ‘method’ of networking for dogs in shelters has been any more successful than efforts would be if we chose to not even mention why the dog ended up in the shelter.  Suffice it to say no dog ever ends up in an animal shelter through any fault of their own so why do so many feel it so necessary to assign blame and find fault?  The dog is in the shelter.  The dog needs to get out before it’s killed for space.  That is all anyone outside of the shelter personnel who are directly involved with the dog really needs to know in order to help the dog, foster the dog or adopt the dog.

There are wonderful organizations that exist today that are helping a LOT of dogs but not by judging the humans who have them or who are trying to surrender them to shelters.  These organizations are founded on helping humans to keep their dogs, train their dogs, vet their dogs and perform/provide the many other tasks that so many of us who are better informed and have financial means do ourselves and tend to feel is being a responsible dog owner.  Organizations like ‘Home Dog LA’, ‘Fences for Fido’, ‘The Coalition to Unchain Dogs’, 'Brown Dog Foundation', 'HSUS' Pets for Life Project' and many, many other fine organizations that have found that most often the best way to lower dog populations in shelters is to help dogs remain in the homes they already have; no matter how we might feel about the people in those homes or their station in life.  So many organizations are overlooking snap judgments, racial and class prejudices and many factors in order to help PEOPLE keep their dogs and help PEOPLE learn how to be better and more responsible dog owners AND IT'S WORKING!!!

We can’t educate those who we judge.  We can’t influence those who we judge.  We can’t help those who we judge.  We just can’t continue to make those snap judgments that end up in verbiage in networking posts on social media like; ‘POS owner dumped this dog’, ‘heartless owner dumped this dog’, ‘uncaring POS dumped this dog’ and so many more. 

We may be penning these posts targeting others in the animal welfare community, others who have seen all the horrors we have seen, but in the end just people in this community are not the only ones to see those judgmental and often hateful posts.  As a fairly recent inductee into the animal welfare community by virtue of becoming a pit bull advocate I can be a voice for those ‘outsiders’ in the world who have never had much contact with animal welfare and/or who have only ever tried to adopt a dog or help a dog.  From the outside looking in, without knowing all the horrific abuses that go on, the animal welfare community appears to be a group of emotionally unstable, closed-minded, judgmental and often very radical people who don’t seem to have any compassion for humans but only for animals.  We appear to be a tad on the ‘crazy’ side to many and as long as we continue to spew our judgmental rhetoric and to treat humans like so many of us do we will never benefit from the support, financial and in other ways, from the public that we so desperately need.  We may think that we can do this all on our own in spite of the ‘uncaring, selfish and heartless’ public but we can’t.  We need adopters.  We need people who donate their time and their money.  We need fosters.  We need people to help us network for dogs to find foster and permanent homes.  We need THEM so if we can’t at least stop making assumptions and snap judgments or if we can’t stop posting emotion driven tirades about POS former owners on social media then we are sunk and we ARE on our own.

Is it time for us to use our emotions solely for our motivation to help animals and to stop being led solely by them in our efforts?  I think it is time.  We must have a united front and that front must exude compassion for ALL living creatures, not just animals, so that people won’t just see us as a bunch of old biddies who surely all have a hundred cats at home and can’t have a healthy relationship with any humans.