Category: Social Media

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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.

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Volunteers Gone Wild

I used to think that volunteers were the best thing that could ever happen to an animal sheltering organization; then I moved to southwest Virginia.  I understand the vested interest that volunteers have in the success of an adoption program; but, I found a place where volunteers thought that they should drive the organization.

It all started when one of the local animal welfare organizations infiltrated our shelter with their own volunteers.  One of their volunteers sat in a County Commission meeting on the first day of my arrival to lament me being hired.  This same volunteer would sit in on many County Commission meetings, using her status as a volunteer (as being in the know), to misrepresent information about our euthanasia rates.

This is the first organization that I have ever directed that did not have an adoption program.  All animal were placed through other rescue groups and that is the way that everyone wanted it.  We could be the bad guys and they could be the good guys.  Well, that was going to change. 

I decided to start adopting animals from my shelter.  The volunteers that came from the other rescue organization all quit.  They staged a walkout when we started adopting pets.  What a stupid thing to protest.

We started seeing an immediate increase in our placement rate.  Dog adoptions were over 92 percent.  We had an incident in which  a couple dogs that were loved by a few volunteers started showing aggression to staff and visitors.  I have a rule that any time a dog starts trying to eat the hand that is feeding it, it is time for that dog to go.

The two dogs were euthanized and the remaining volunteers decided to organize a protest by picking the shelter and bullying us on social media.  They brought in the local media and wanted to show the shelter staff the trouble they can cause if we don’t do what they tell us to do.

Although the volunteers would never be able to bully us to adopt out aggressive dogs, they were successful with those who oversaw our organization.  They didn’t like drama and they felt that giving in to the volunteers would decrease drama.  From my view point, they were more concerned about keeping the drama to a minimum than protecting the public.

I am sharing this story to show  you that in the animal welfare business, you can be on the right side of an issue and still lose.  Throughout my career, I always said, “If you are going to get into trouble, get in to trouble doing the right thing.”  In this business, your first priority is to protect your community.

For a volunteer program to be successful, it is important that your volunteers are on the same page that you are one.  Feelings can run high between organizations, understand the motivation for those that claim to be your friends. 

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Social Media, the Back Story

It is no secret as to my feelings about social media.  I see it as a medium to turn normal people into bullies; to provide a soapbox to liars.

I have to give the no kill movement credit for turning me against social media.  The movement turns animal shelters into battlegrounds when the leaders of that movement encouraged volunteers to turn against the shelters that they volunteered for.

Volunteers are told that they were protected when speaking out against euthanasia as a first amendment right.  They are told stories of how volunteers speaking out made the difference.  They are told to take control of their shelter.  The movement’s intent is to turn animal shelter volunteers into no kill activists.

Most stories of volunteers “getting out of control” begins with the euthanasia of one or more animals.  Due to longer holding periods, it becomes more and more critical for animal shelters to provide enrichment programs to keep animals calm.  Those programs (like walking the dogs) work on most animals, but some just don’t respond to being caged for long periods of time.

Volunteers bond with the animals while taking dogs for walks.  The dogs bond with the volunteers.  In rare cases, a dog will only accept the volunteer; while aggressive to others.  When a dog becomes aggressive to animal shelter staff, a decision needs to be made concerning the dog.  If the decision is to euthanize the dog, the volunteer will not understand and might lash out at the people making that decisions.

In lashing out, the volunteer will garner support from other volunteers and create petitions, create narratives on social media, go to the local media and may even organize protests.  Their intent is to demonstrate to shelter management that volunteers should be feared.

The no kill movement has a motto that if you can put enough pressure on a shelter manager, they will leave.  If you go through enough managers, eventually you will get one that you like.  One who will place animals before people.  One who will ignore aggressive warning signs in dogs to adopt them out to families.  One who will do everything that he/she is told to do by the volunteers.

It appears that I am not alone.  A NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed that 57 percent of Americans believe social media sites do more to divide the country and 55 percent said that the sites are more likely to spread lies and falsehoods.  The poll said that 61 percent thought that social media did more to spread unfair attacks and rumors against public figures and corporations.

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Why I Hate Social Media

Reading my blog, you may suspect that I hate social media.  I do.  I believe that our freedom of speech is one of the most abused freedoms granted in our country.  Social medial gives people the platform to slander, lie, and defame others.  But the worst abuse is not from those writing posts, but from the folks that believe that crap.  Social media, quite simply, brings out the worst in people; it brings out the unfiltered part of our psyche; the part that we should keep hidden from the world.  I brings out our monster.

Lie + Social Media = New Truth

Watching the news is evidence that people have no filter.  We have become a society that cannot discern fact from fiction.  Worse, we are more likely to believe a lie than the obvious truth.

Social media provides a mechanism to boost our  own self importance.  We want to stand out and telling the truth just doesn’t provide the substance to become viral.  So, we have to state outlandish things.  People will believe them and will further spread the lie and future boost your online importance.

Animal welfare activists saw early on social media’s potential and exploited it.  They could get people to believe anything that they said, because we became a society too stupid to discern the lie, even when the truth is so obvious.  Social media became the means that our truth was whatever we posted.  As others have said, “Social media was dumbing down America.” 

People get so upset with foreign countries using social media to influence our elections, because we stupidly believe everything we read.  If we could gain back a lick of sense, like we had before social media, we could easily see through the sham.  If you want to find the truth, find someone who is not on social media.

We so desperately need to be heard and to be recognized, even if we have nothing to add to the subject.  It really gets my goat when I am reading a product review and someone asks a question.  To what end do you accomplish when you reply, “I don’t know.”  These people cannot stand the silence and need to make noise, just to hear the noise.