Perception

I’ve heard the phase, “perception is reality” too often at executive meetings, indicating that if someone has a specific perception, it is their reality. In some way, there was an expectation that we manage people’s perception; even though they created the perception to manipulate reality. Let me explain:

Only in the realm of politics do we see greater misuse of manipulation to manifest a false reality. Our generation will be known as the keepers of fake news. We live in a world in which people create their own reality my falsifying the events around them to drive their own agenda.

Fake news for animal welfare began with the no kill movement and was fuled by social media. Social media became the number one place to obtain false information. People pushed fake news either for attention or to bully. Unfortunately, the ploy was fairly successful. Organizations were bullied into making decisions that were not in their own best interest to mollify the social media noise.

Evidence of those bad decisions are documented on PETA’s website: No Kill Policies. It saddens me to see what shelter managers are going through as a result of caving to the outrageous demands of a few people. My mantra was to “do the right thing.” Today, the “right thing” is different for every person. I always believed that keeping the community safe was the right thing. Now there is an expectation that shelters should save every animal. Saving animals is a good cause, but shelters must not compromise the safety of their community or the care of those animals in that effort.

The officials who oversee the operation of their community animal shelter are frequently more concerned about what people say on social media than they are worried about the safety of their community. They want to cater to those who make the most noise. It has never been a more difficult time to manage an animal shelter due to the competing demands and unreasonable expectations.

Dog owners have the worst case of perception. For that reason, I have found employment in the animal control field for over thirty years. Neighbors, on the other hand have finely tuned perception. There is nothing worse than a dog owner maintaining one or more aggressive dogs behind a flimsy fence. Commonsense would dictate that the dog owner would want to keep his neighbors safe. My career has been founded on the lack of commonsense that is found in many dog owners.

The problem with perception is the legal aspects associated with whether a person’s perception is real or imagined. Until the aggressive dogs break through the fence and mauls a neighborhood child, the perception is imagined. It is most unfortunate that a child has to suffer to prove the perception real.

People who choose to own aggressive dogs are evidence of a fracture of our society in which these folks believe their rights are greater than the risk they place on their neighbors. I have witnessed neighborhoods in which owners of (perceived) aggressive dogs are turned loose. I have seen the same neighbors begin to carry means of protection from the dogs.

The problem with pet ownership is that there is no examination that proves a person fitness to be a pet owner. The fact that people like myself have made careers in this field is evidence that we live in a world of unfit pet owners.

Parents should constantly watch their children because they are usually the litmus test when determining the intent of a dog’s actions.