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PETA

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) gained their early notoriety  with shock and awe tactics.  Their campaigns to end the use of animal pelts as articles of clothing revealed the naked bodies of many of their volunteers at public and private functions.  Obviously  it was an organization that you can get behind.

My first encounter with PETA was early in my profession when one our community’s pets mauled a young girl.  As the decision was being made as to what to do with the dog, I got a phone call advising me that if any harm came to the dog, I would be killed.  The caller identified himself as being from PETA.

I notified the local press, because I wanted to discredit the mentality of that caller so as to prevent any further foothold of people in my community to stand behind an aggressive dog over the life of a child.  The newspaper called PETA for their response.

I have  to admire Ingrid Newkirk for her response that PETA values all life and it is inconsistent with their mission to harm a human.  She advised the reporter that her organization has many volunteers who fail to follow strictly their organizational values.  In the years that followed, her words were a prophecy that I witnessed over and over with my own volunteers.

Over the years PETA has been criticized for their tactics that seemed inconsistent with their mission of doing no harm to animals.  Recently, I caught a CNN article claiming that they wanted to eliminate the term “pet.”

The Oxford Dictionary already includes animal in their definition of PETA’s new word for pet: “companion”.   PETA has declared the word “pet” as being derogatory.  Anyone who has ever cared for a dog will know that a dog isn’t debased by the term “pet”.  Cats, on the other hand, view humans as servants and being called a “pet” by our cat would be the closest thing to a kind word ever offered by a cat.  Lovers often call one another by pet names.

I understand where PETA is coming from; we live in a “woke” world and words have new meanings.  We have become a society in which words are used to declare our awareness of the plight of the world.  But the people who chain up their dog in their backyards are no where near being the woke people who PETA hopes that they are.

PETA’s latest adventure into the woke world is to believe that their plight in fighting for animals  is much like the plight of fighting against racisms.  Although I am not convinced that Black Lives Matter would agree.  One of PETA’s latest efforts is to make people woke on using animal names to describe  people.  For example: calling a person a “pig” is an injustice to pigs.  Of course people have tried to point out that pigs really don’t have any feelings about this.

I think PETA’s greatest accomplishment was getting people to rethink their behavior toward eating animals.  They made a great impact on creating a world of Vegans.  However, many vegans worry that PETA’s efforts to piggyback on every passing cause will only diminish the vegan cause due to the craziness of these side issues that PETA engages in.

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Downfall Mistakes

I like to research the circumstances that make job announcements available to those seeking employment in public animal welfare.  Many of the vacancy openings are the result of mistakes by the director.  These mistakes almost always center around decisions that are made as they relate to the euthanasia of a pet.  The following accounts are intended to rethink your euthanasia decisions.  Once euthanasia is carried out, there is no “do overs.”

Court order euthanasia — Most communities have laws the sentence dogs to death for being vicious.  When you are issued an order from a judge to euthanize an animal, please do not forget the owners appeal process.  Too often you hear about a dog being euthanized while the dog owner is seeking an appeal.  In cases like these, you should always be slow to follow the judges order.  Even when giving a specific date by which to execute the order, wait.  There is nothing worse than to have a judge reverse an order after the dog has been euthanized.  I was once told by a judge that I would never be held in contempt of court if I delayed his order to perform euthanasia.  You should always delay a sufficient length of time to insure that the appeal period has expired.  Work with your city/county attorney to watch clerk of the court filings to make sure nothing gets past you in the complicated court process.

Aurora Colorado had a case in which the owners of a dog were charged with animal cruelty for having sex with their dog.  This case demonstrates the problem with dogs being held for trial.  I have had cases that required a dog to be held for over two years while the owners kept delaying the court proceedings.  Court ordered custody of an animal is never in the best interest of the animal.  While an animal is in custody, the animal undergoes such protection that it limits the animal to social interaction.  It is not uncommon that the animal will begin displaying aggression as it sits in a cage day after day.  When the dog is finally handed over to the animal control department for disposition, they are faced with an animal that fails to meet their adoptions standards.

Keep in mind that the community has been watching this case on the news for months as the case went through the court system.  People would naturally take a vested interest to see that this dog have a good outcome.  Aurora animal shelter staff did not recognize this investment when they decided to euthanize the dog.  To them it was just another unadoptable dog that needed to be kept off the streets.  They quickly recognized their mistake; but, as always with euthanasia, you cannot undo your mistake.

Here is how I would have handled the situation:  I would contact all of the animal behaviorist/trainers in the community and ask them to submit a bid as to how they would turn the dog’s behavior around.  These folks would be begging for an opportunity to get their names in the news as they worked with the dog.  Most would be willing to provide their services at no charge because of the media attention that they would receive.  I would give the trainer as much time as they needed to make the dog adoptable.  Even if the effort failed, you could show the amount of work that you performed to a favorable outcome for the dog.

I know that you are constantly dealing with overcrowding in your shelter, but sometimes it just makes sense to think slowly when it comes to making the hard decision.

 

 

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Personal Narrative

From the moment that we are born, we are creating our personal narrative.  As we get older, outside forces begin to boister or corrode that narrative.  It is too bad that many fail to follow the teaching I learned in the Boy Scouts to be “trustworthy, loyal, helpful, courteous,  kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.”  As we age, we begin to carry two personal narrative:  the real one and the one that we put out to others.

Our real narrative is the one that determines if we have the good qualities of our species, like integrity.  Oddly it one of the traits that I see less often.  We are all born with the same amount of these good qualities and many of us start selling the off through life.

As you choose to loose those better qualities, we create a narrative that we project to others; these are the kind of things that we put on our Facebook page or on a dating app.  Social media is a good place to determine the kind of person you are.  Do you post to get attention or do you post to make the things better.  Do you push your agenda on the world with truths or lies?  Are you supportive or are you destructive?  This is your public narrative.   It is the one that most people see.

For many people they create their public narrative, the embellish it, and when told a sufficient number of times, they begin to believe it.  In your narrative, you can become the hero or the victim.  I’ve noticed a growing number of victims because they have started believing their public narrative.  In stead of taking responsibility for their lives, they want to blame others for their failures.

What kind of narrative are you creating?

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Our Largest Obstacle

The greatest obstacle that we have in performing our jobs is protecting the public.  I frequently query job openings in our profession and then seek out the back story.  I would like to find the happy story about an animal shelter director who retired after a long fulfilling career of service to his or her community, but that is rarely the case.

Many directors are fired for doing their jobs.  The problem with doing our job is that there is always some one who thinks that the job should be done differently.   It usually involves the euthanasia of an animal.

In our business, there is ALWAYS someone who will second guess our decisions.  Most of our decisions are geared toward keeping the public safe, but someone will always come along to champion the cause of an animal that you have killed.  Even if their cause is righteous, death usually rule outs other outcomes.  Many times, you don’t know that someone is interested in the animal until after the deed has been done.  In almost every case, it deals with the decision that the animal shelter personnel believes the animal to be aggressive.

When you decide to get into this profession, you need to realize that it possible that you can get fired for just doing your job.  Petition sites and social media have no obligation to tell the truth, their purpose is to get people excited; hopefully to get the people in a rage.  People used to be able to see through these scams, but not any more.  People believe what they are told and are too lazy to research the truth for themselves.

My mantra in this business is:  “If you are going to get into trouble, do it for doing something good.”  Do the right thing.  You may be with your employer only a couple of years, but you must live with yourself the rest of your life.

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Why? 2.0

Last month, I celebrated my second year in retirement.  My one-year anniversary of creating this blog.  The blog is therapy for me; yes, after two years of retirement, I am still winding down from the experiences from my adventures in animal welfare.

The early days of my profession were easy; people had better control of their emotions and had some semblance of commonsense; but best of all, they had not harnessed the destructive power of social media.  My last two gigs were a bit more complicated.  In one gig, the “powers” surrendered their efforts of evolving to a no-kill operation to appease one employee.  That employee didn’t like having volunteers around or allowing rescues from coming into the shelter.  Although I was the Executive Director, it was clear who had the power.  In the other gig, the “powers” were more concerned about positive social media than having a properly run operation.  Without someone showing some constraint many, many aggressive dogs would have been released into the community.

I bring this up because in the animal welfare profession we come with great expectations of making our organizations great, only to be undermined by the social and political currents that surround us.    While I was in the heat of the fire, I frequently asked if I had made a poor career choice.  In looking back, I remember all of the good that I participated in.  Looking in the soft eyes of an animal in pain,  I felt the strength to help that animal.  Humans are a thankless species, but the dogs and cats that we help make up for the grief that we receive from our own species.

The purpose of this blog is to help someone who might be considering animal welfare as their own profession.  I report mostly on the negative things to prepare you for what you have to face, but the rewards are great as well.  For those who are in the fire now, leave your office and walk back into the kennels and hold one of the animals in your care.  As directors, we feel alone, but what you are experiencing is happening to many, many others.  Fight the good fight, provide your community with what they need, not what they want.  Protect the innocent.

In our profession, we will get plenty of advice.  Much of it will be bad advice.  Some of the worst advice I ever received was from a County Attorney who told me not to say anything bad about an employee who petitioned the County Commission for reinstatement.  How can you make a case that you don’t want a bad employee back, if you cannot tell the truth?  My mistake was that I listened to the attorney.   The next time, I was told by a City Attorney that you cannot fire a volunteer.  This time I was smart enough not to listen.  The No Kill Movement depended on City/County Attorneys making this mistake when they encouraged volunteers to stand up for their rights.  But, just as you can fire an employee, you can fire a volunteer who is disrupting your organization.

So, you are faced with many decisions and you’ll have to make the best decisions for your community.  You will face many people telling you what to do and many of them will try to bully you into doing what they want; for that reason, your decisions must be ethical, sound, and consistent with the morays of your community.  This blog is intended to pass along my journey and it is up to you to decide if any of it pertains to you.  During my walk, I have become biased, for good cause; but, that doesn’t mean my advice is sound for your situation.  Your are being paid to make the right decisions that will impact your community and the pets within that community.  I spent a lifetime of compromise and now I can reflect back as to whether I did the right thing when I made those compromises.  The funny thing about history is that at the time it felt good, then history later shows your mistakes.  Do the best that you can with the information that you have at the time and hopefully  you can later live with the results.  And later in life, you can sit back and hopefully help someone else who has just started their journey.

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Being Creative

High praise to the Oklahoma City Animal Shelter for their “Come Storm our Shelter” promotion.   The shelter saw the social  media following posts of people wanting to storm Area 51 and used the energy of those posting to encourage people to adopt pets.

Smart shelter folks keep an eye for media cows and think of ways to milk them to bring attention to their humane mission.   Smart job Oklahoma.

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Records Request

We have entered a period in our society in which people want to second guess government decisions.  In an effort to peak into our decision making processes, people will make requests for information under the freedom of information act (FOIA).  Many requests that are made are overkill and as such government has the right to charge the appropriate fees when responding to such requests.  Many times, when government provides an estimate to the cost involved with producing the request, the requester will either refine their request or claim that the information is for the “public good” and ask that the information be provided at no charge.

FOIA requests give us opportunity to review how our information is stored.  Most requests are for emails on certain topics.  Many large government organizations backup the email server nightly and email requests can be handled through the IT Department.  Organizations need to be constantly reminded that retention of documents must be adhered to.

Some government organization prohibit texting and social media because the information is usually not archived and thus unsearchable.  If you cannot search records that are used in your government employment, you should not use that method of communication.  It becomes critical that your staff does not delete messages, text, or social media posts if they are used to conduct government business.  The more methods that you use to conduct your business, the more searching you have to do when responding to a FOIS request.  Anyone who works for an organization that records telephone calls will understand the difficulty in searching audio files that have been requested.

When updating your local laws, it might be a good idea to see how your client records are protected.  I have had FOIA requests for licensing data of pet owners.  Your database is a good source of data that someone can use to target the pet owners of your community.  Although FOIA states that you must give the information in the form that it is maintained, electronic data becomes problematic and it might be a smart move to offer the data in printed form… maybe a mailing label, so that data is used only once.  If you are considering protecting your data from vendors, you should consider protecting the data that comes from your veterinarians when administering rabies vaccinations, since licensing requires that information.  By protecting the information from veterinarians, your licensing data will also be protected.

It is  common for someone to request adoption information.  The request is usually by the owner of a pet who failed to timely reclaim their pet and wants to use the information to bully the person who adopted their pet.  I would suggest that you find a way to protect that data as well.  There are two ways to do that: the first way is to protect the data by ordinance, the other is to put a check mark on  the adoption contract in which the adopter can ask for confidentiality.  It would force the old dog owner to take you to court for the information; then you can explain to the judge that the previous owner has no legal right to the animal and providing the information may place the adoption family at risk.

FOIA requests have become so common that you might consider having a person specifically responsible for handling them.  Time limits are set and it is important not to violate a person’s right to information.  When working on a FOIA request, you’ll need to track the length of time to conduct the search and wages of the people involved.  You should calculate the cost of paper and the ware and tear of your copier or printer.  Many organizations just simplify the process by charging per page.  Some database request would resort in thousand of pages, so to save paper, you might consider converting the files to PDF and provide them via email.  Make sure you collect your fees first.

FOIA is a necessary service for the public to see how their government is working, but it frequently is used to bog an organization down in work to punish  the organization for performing an action that a person dislikes.  It is important that you are meticulous in performing this function; many times the person knows that there is a specific file (probably one leaked from an employee or volunteer) that they are looking for and if you fail to find it or fail to provide it, you will face some difficult questions that you will have to answer.

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Working for Bureaucrats

An article out of White County Illinois tells of a story of an Animal Control Officer being fired.  My best guess is the County Commissioners attempting to punish the officer for social media abuse; a frequent problem in our profession.  As with many bureaucrats, they puff out their chests and proceeded to do the wrong thing.

This particular Animal Control Officer started extended the hold time for animals to get them adopted and asked volunteers to come in to provide socialization with the animals.  The local bureaucrats wanted all of these programs aborted.  Their actions hit a nerve with me, not just for the callousness toward the animals, but it sparked an old memory.

While going to college, over 30 years ago, I was the animal control officer for Pullman Washington.  I worked under the Police Department.  I had a good relationship with the Washington State Veterinary College and local media.  Relationships that every animal shelter operator treasures.

The shelter was a small shelter and the adoptions were slow.  I convinced the local newspaper to run a weekly pet of the week and show all of the animals at the animal shelter.  One of the local councilman began following the pet list and discovered that many of the pets had been listed and relisted in the column.

The Police Chief paid me a visit and demanded that I stop holding  animals and ordered me to euthanize every animal that was over its five day stray hold period, much like what is happening in White County.  I was so angry.  I returned to the animal shelter, had a good cry, and followed my orders.

I believe that the order was immoral, as are many mandates from bureaucrats.  I had arranged for all of the shelter’s food be donated and the only cost to the City was the time I spent cleaning cages.   Did I continue holding animals?  Of course, but I knew that I had to be smarter.  I would make small changes in the appearance of the animals in the newspaper article, so that the busy body councilman would not see the same animal listed twice.

The problem with many bureaucrats is that they fail to see that the animals in our care represent a life and all life is precious.  Not a tool to bully their animal welfare staff and demonstrate their own self importance.

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Work and Social Media

Social media has become one of the greatest ways to destroy work relationships.  People post everything that happens to them and what they are thinking on their social media page and then claim they were victimized by a coworker reading their posts.  Some people have not figured out that when you post on social media, anyone in the world can read it.

Work was so much easier when we didn’t know every secret thought of our coworkers.  We knew when to keep our mouths shut; so why have people become so open on a public forum?  I got so tired of people coming to me to complain about what someone else said about them on social media.  Just because a thought goes through your head, doesn’t mean that you need to speak it or post it.  Going on anyone’s social media page, you will discover crap.  We produce a lot of it.

I worked with a human resource director who believed that every social media post had the basis of being rooted in some fact.  She could not understand that many posts have no basis in fact.  If it appeared on her social media account, it must be taken care of.  Do you have any idea how much time is required to manage baseless nonsense?  Social media has proved that our first amendment right is one that we so often abuse.  People feel free to say anything that they want on social media; at least in the old days when you would talk person to person, we developed some skills of diplomacy.  Deplomacy is a skill that our society is quickly losing. 

Many people take advantage of the fact that government employees cannot sue for slander that occurs as a result of their work place.  We just have to accept that suffering lies is a job requirement.  Because we cannot sue,  there is no opportunity for people to learn any lessons for slandering.  Even organizations that have government contracts are in the same situation.  If you are feeding at the government trough, you are facing the same restrictions as other government workers.

Social media is becoming a mechanism in which people are leaving behind their civility.  It is becoming evident in our every day lives.  We see people acting out in public places over the smallest of issues because we are becoming a society that doesn’t teach how to control ourselves.

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When Fools Dive In

I was browsing the news feed for Google when I saw a headline: “Saving a dog from the dogcatcher.”  The feed was from reddit where people owning a laundry posted a sign (I am printing it as it reads): “NOTICE ‘STRAY DOG’ INSIDE THIS LAUDRY SHOP.  We are currently saving this innocent dog from the dog catcher since they will be put to SLEEP/KILL if they’ve been caught.  We understand that you will feel uncomfortable with this situation and you are welcome to go to another laundry.  Thank you!”

This bothers me on several fronts.  The store owner is making several assumptions: the owner of the dog will just happen to go inside this laundry and identify his dog, and of course the obvious, the animal shelter should be the first place a person goes to find their lost dog.  I am not even going to address the idea that all stray dogs are put to sleep, I don’t know where this is; but it is unlikely.

I’ve always hated the terms “dogcatcher,” and “pound” until I moved to places that have it formally written into their code.  The words commutate meaning that may and may not exist.  At some point we just have to get over it.

I would have felt better about the posting if the dog’s finder had done more that post a sign (with commentary) on their door.  We have other ways to communicate: call the animal shelter, post a found ad in the newspaper, and even post on Facebook (I know, it is a shock that I would suggest that, but we are trying to get a dog home), and you can post flyers in the neighborhood.

Anytime something like this happens, I also post the negligence of the owner who has no exterior identification showing.  Let’s face it, most people are not smart enough to take a dog to a veterinarian or the shelter to have it checked for a microchip.  I have always  called microchips the worst secondary form of identification.  They are better than nothing, but just barely. 

Just as there are responsibilities of pet owners to keep their pet from getting lost, there are responsibilities of people finding pets.  It is not enough to take in a dog and make little or no effort to find the dog’s owner.