Animal Welfare Movement

I frequently tell people that pet licenses are an insurance policy.  Animal Control Officers are frequently dispatched to injured animal calls.  The Officer has to make a decision as to whether the injuries are within the allotted cost of their organization’s budget.  If the animal is wearing a current license, that makes the officer’s decision easier.

Additionally, many animal shelters choose to increase the holding period for animals wearing licenses.  Although you can’t expect a license to be a free ride home for your loose pet, it usually affords you a free call home for your pet.

One of the most difficult concepts in Animal Control Ordinances is to get pet owners to understand what it means to have their animal under control. In many ordinances, the concept of being under voice command is the same as being under control. Anyone who trains dogs knows that once a dog is off-leash, the handler never maintains 100% control. That control jumps to 0% if a rabbit jumps up in front of the dog. In Eugene Oregon, we provided for verbal control if while in one of the city’s parks if the owner could call their dog and have the dog leashed within 20 (or so) seconds. Many dogs, distracted by ducks and geese, demonstrated that their owner had no control over them.

So, most ordinances claim that to be under control requires a leash. But a leash is not sufficient. If you have ever watched a child walking a large dog on a leash, you can clearly see that the child has no control and probably won’t for another several years. Thus, ordinances have to indicate that the person on the other side of the leash is competent to restrain the dog. I was approached by a guy walking his Saint Bernard dog the other day, and that dog decided that it needed to sniff me. I could see that the guy didn’t have the ability to stop the dog’s actions. He appeared competent, but he had little physical control of his dog.

So, in addition to being on a leash, the ordinance must indicate the person’s competence and ability to maintain physical control. When those things don’t exist, the dog has the ability to be unconstrained by his own desires. If that Saint Bernard dog had decided to bite me, I could make a case that although on a leash the dog was not under control.

Most of the problems associated with pet ownership is the inability of owners to keep their pets under control. Although a cute puppy or baby snake is fun when they are small; does the potential owner consider what the animal will be like in five or ten years. Possibly, one rule of thumb is to never purchase an animal that can one day become larger than you. Before you horse owners start to jump down my throat, keep in mind that horses only become a problem when they are not kept in agricultural areas. And don’t get me started on pigs.

The best that I can describe society is that we are dimwits. We are just discovering that social media is destroying society and I have been preaching that truth for years. Social media allows the voice of one to sound like many. People will align themselves behind any cause, whether the cause is real or imaginary. The problem has never been the fault of social media itself; it is the idiots that blindly follow anything that they read or hear. It isn’t that we don’t have the capability to research an issue, we just don’t want to be proved that our cause isn’t real. We are not lazy, we just want to be a part of a crowd that believes the same way that we do. They don’t seem to care if it is righteous. To them, the cause is its own truth. Finally, people are seeing social media for the first time and understand that they have been lied to the whole time. Well, it is about time. Maybe we can get back to being a society that can think on its own.

The best computer software is of no value unless it has a user interface that a person can figure out how to use the program.  User interface testing is the final, and usually the most important aspect of software programming. Too often, we become so focused on our mission that we forget that others might not be able to figure out how to communicate with us.

People like to communicate in four ways: directly, by phone, by text, by email. I recently ran into a problem in which a company emailed me and I replied to that email, not knowing that no one checks that email account. I discovered later that they preferred phone conversations because they were less likely to be documented.

In order to cater to our clientele, we need to understand how they wish to be communicated to and figure out a way to accommodate that method. In the animal welfare business, it is best to communicate with your clients in a manner that can be recorded. But, whatever way your clients choose, attempt to accommodate them.

If you are a government organization, keep in mind that any communications that you have will fall under the records retention laws. It becomes most difficult to maintain text messages under these laws.

Most government IT Departments have software that automatically copies every email for the sole purpose of keeping a record for someone who requests information under the Freedom of Information Act. If you collect any records, you can be sure that at some time, someone will want access to them.

Although phone calls can be recorded. It is very difficult to search through phone records for specific messages or keywords.

Although you want to accommodate your community, keep in mind how you’ll deal with recording their dealing with you. If you prefer to talk to them on the phone, make sure you have someone that answers your incoming calls. And in my case, if someone emails you, make sure you respond to replies or clearly state in the message how you must communicate back.

One of the issues that have plagued our profession is the use of night drop boxes for animals to be left at the animal shelter after hours as opposed to people tying them up at the first available fencepost.

The biggest issue with drop boxes is that the animals rarely come with any background history that you would usually obtain at the time of surrender during regular shelter hours.   It is nice to know whether the animal is owned or stray.  This makes a huge difference in holding time.  If the animal is being surrendered by its owner, we can obtain medical and behavioural information.  If the animal is a stray, we can learn as to the area that it was captured.

There are a multitude number of problems that face drop boxes.  In Salt Lake County, we had drop boxes that were built into the side of our building so that in the winter, the animals would be warm.  We had locks on the doors that would secure the animals from being removed.  It would have appeared that we thought of everything; except owners would come in at night looking for their lost pet and open and close each dropbox.  Once closed, the boxes became useless to anyone else wanting to drop off an animal.  The police would call out our animal control officer to come in and reset the locks.  It was a real pain.  Our drop boxes became a place for the homeless to sleep.  And a neighboring animal control shelter used our drop boxes to dispose of their surplus animals.  It is a great way to reduce your euthanasia statistics by dropping off your animals at another shelter at the end of their stray hold period.

There are reports of people “setting free” the animals from drop boxes.  In Florida, we had an incident in which the released animals were hit by passing cars.

Given the problems that faced using drop boxes, most shelters stopped using them; they became more of a liability than a public service.

Sometime last night my domain host received a request to change my website’s password; the request came from an IP address in Moscow.  Several years ago, this website was hacked and a malicious software file was added.  Fortunately, I paid the extra bucks to have my website routinely scanned.  But, I realized that they were able to access the site through my password.  I admit that my password was weak at that time.

In the latest attempt at hacking this site, they came across a much stronger password and attempt to get my hosts to change the password.  Of course, my host is not stupid.

I can think of no benefit of hacking my website; it carries no secrets.  In fact, I pretty freely speak my mind.  So, with our current administration’s lack of will to go after hackers; the hackers are now free to use a shotgun approach to hacking.  They will just hack anyone and everyone.

Now is the time for your to review the strength of your passwords.  And hope that there is a special place in hell for cybercriminals.  I’d also like to add spammers to that list as well.  Don’t forget to constantly scan your work and personal computers for spyware as well.  China seems to want to know everything about us.