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Author Archive for Denise Boehler – Page 2

The Heart of Animal Lovers

By Denise Boehler
Tuesday, July 14th, 2020

Lincoln, a 2-year old Lab mutt pulled from a high-kill shelter in Utah by Murci’s Mission

There’s something so familiar and natural about diving deep into the world of rescue dog advocacy. I can feel the tug in a visceral way. I own that part of me feeling so deeply disenfranchised and deprived of opportunity for independent, full-on happiness in a life fulfilled, that I can see it in every dog at the edge of survival. Every image I see or story I hear moves me as no other need of another being in the struggle to live a blessed and beautiful life.

Perhaps my fellow animal lovers feel the same way.

As I rub the glossy belly of my fat and sassy Lab mutt Charlie, I ache to find equally loving conditions for dogs like Lincoln and Bella, two others freshly pulled back from the precipice of death this July in Utah and Texas. Like every other dog lover with an overly full household, I contemplate the possibilities of adding them to our own full menagerie

Bella, freed of ticks and the torment of homelessness by Up Pup and Away, a Denver-based rescue pulling dogs from Big Springs, TX

. I wander around the psychic terrain with my ever sweetly loving husband, who is willing to entertain the notion, if it pleases me.

I love him for it, and make my own decision to restrain, out of the best interests of our pack of three. And set about the removed means of social media to promote Lincoln and Bella, into finding forever homes. All the while, I carry the sentiment so deeply engrained with me since I was six years old:

Mommy, can we keep him?

            No honey, was the common reply, the landlord won’t allow it…

For every animal lover walking this blessed and aggrieved green earth, I promise the story is similar. Being born with a sensitivity to the needs of animals inherently means our hearts open early – and often. We can no more pass by an injured rabbit in a forest than we can leave be a stray dog by

Lincoln in pure happiness…it’s what we animal lovers live for.

the side of the road. We spend our lives encountering the tender beauty of a set of golden eyes and swearing upon our very existence to care for it with all we have, until our last dying breath – or find somebody who can.

Animal lovers are born – though they can be made – and if you’re fortunate enough to be in life with one, it’ll take all the patience, tolerance, love and understanding as you share your king-size bed with sprawling mutts at night. In return, you will also come to know the true warmth emanating from their vastly open heart, steeped in commitment and devoted to everlasting love, capable of embracing all the mosaic forms of life on this blessed, joyful green earth.

Namaste, and thank you for reading.

Categories : Help Save Animals, Of Dogs
Tags : Animal advocacy, animals, dogs, high kill shelters, Homeless animals, Murci's Mission, rescue dogs, shelters, Up Pup and Away

Calling All California County Shelters: Stop Killing Animals and calling it Euthanasia

By Denise Boehler
Tuesday, July 14th, 2020

This afternoon, I have to speak out on behalf of the One Hundred Thousand animals being put to death at the hands of California’s county-based shelters. I sent a letter to one of them, which I share with my animal-loving friends:

Date: July 14, 2020

Dear Shelter Policymaker,

A few weeks ago, we spoke about the plight of homeless animals in one of the county shelters (and county-funded California shelters, in general). During the course of our discussion, you put to me the question,

Did I find it more humane for an animal to spend a lifetime in a shelter, or be spared the suffering of homelessness, through euthanasia?

I responded,

I believe it is the right to keep the animal alive – for dead is dead. Who are we to take away its life?

Source: Best Friends Animal Society

Since then, I’ve been contemplating your query on a deeper level. I’ve also had the unfortunate experience of learning more about the rate of euthanasia in California’s county-based shelters; more notably, the death of Turbo, in a Modesto shelter. (Best Friends Animal Society has ranked California #1 in animal deaths of over 100,000 a year.) I believe it is worth sharing with you some thoughts, at the risk of personal offense, because you are situated in a position of trust and responsibility at one of these shelters.

And, I realize that as a shelter worker, you are working with others rescuing animals. I mean no damage nor disrespect to this relationship; I also mean nothing personal in sharing further thoughts with you on the issue of euthanasia of homeless animals. I am simply imploring that as much as you are situated in a position of trust, that you reconsider the shelter’s policies when the opportunities arise. And further, I suggest that contrary to any assertion that the shelter workers putting these animals to sleep are acting in their best interests, they are indeed, not – as agents for the shelter, they are carrying out the shelter’s policies that are more concerned with the economic and space-oriented resources, further perpetuating the cycle of homeless animals.

The death of any particular animal in the care of the shelter is a harm not simply to the animal itself, who is often in fear and reacting therefrom, for its life feels threatened, but it is a wrong – as are any of the deaths by the shelter’s euthanasia policies – of healthy animals.

Food for thought, based on the teachings of Thomas Regan, philosopher and author of The Case for Animals Rights,

      Do we have a moral duty to animals?

            Indeed, we certainly do. I offer up his teachings (with which I resonate wholeheartedly) in the interests of reconsidering the shelter’s policies around euthanasia. Most importantly – what the shelter – and I use that term intentionally loosely, as they are not thus – they are, rather, killing places – where a healthy, homeless animal goes for an indeterminate period of time – then is put to death at the hands of people imposing the shelter’s will upon them.

All in the interests, as is evident by the existence of the self-perpetuating cycle, of continuing the status quo of making room for more homeless animals. (In the words of Thomas Regan, who examined this issue in-depth: to kill an animal ‘for his own good’ is paternalistic: we impose our will and our judgment on the animal, for the animal’s own good, as we conceive it. Paternalistic euthanasia is an appropriate label for this type of euthanasia.)

             I realize that from the outside any shelter walls, this can feel like idealistic thinking or snowflake liberal philosophy. I ask that you indulge me and read further, in the best interests of the animals.

All animals, I’m sure you might agree, have preference interests – they can make conscious. intentional choices around their pains and pleasures – they can choose to play in joy or rest in exhaustion – they can choose to eat when hungry or refuse when sick or satiated. They can choose to lie alongside the couch with us, or resist our company and take solitude in another room. The consciousness of animals has long been proven; I will spare you the tedium of boring reiterations on the ways in which they conduct themselves as separate, sentient, beings. (For further reading, there is Regan, Peter Singer, and Marc Bekoff – who writes on the emotional lives of animals, to name a few.)

Animals can make conscious decisions in favor of their lives. They choose to avoid pain and suffering – much as these animals are doing when they react in fear when in a shelter. They suffer when detained, they suffer when caged, they suffer when led down the hall to the euthanasia room. They sense, as they are highly intelligent creatures with developed acuity, they are approaching death. They know and are aware of the ones who have gone before. They resist – I have no doubt you’ve seen this for yourself firsthand – that their healthy, full lives are about to end. They are expressing a preference to live – not out of fear for suffering, but out of a preference for the life that the shelter workers are deliberately and intentionally taking

Respectfully, I suggest that these choices are being made in the interests of the shelter – not in the interests of the animals – again, for space and economics, to make room for more homeless animals, thus perpetuating the cycle of homeless animals in a persistent search for a permanent place to live their lives.

The euthanasia practices of shelters are not euthanasia at all, as mentioned earlier. In Regan’s words, again: To persist in calling such practices euthanizing animals is to wrap plain killing in a false verbal cover. It deserves a reconsideration of this characterization, for euthanasia, a Greek term meaning good death, is an act of ending the suffering of a living being. Is the animal being put to death at the hands of the shelter actually suffering, or simply reacting in fear-based aggression at the hands of those putting the needle to his or her paw?

Again, the dogs subject to the confines of the shelters are instinctively aware of the motives of those handling him or her – They can sniff out intentions as well as they can sniff out a delicious beef bone – and they are reacting accordingly. I urge you to consider the words of Thomas Regan on the issue:

Virtually, all cases where healthy, unwanted pet animals are said to be euthanized fail to qualify as euthanasia. Because these animals are healthy, killing them can only erroneously be classified as preference-respecting [for pleasure, pain, freedom, will to live, etc.]. And because those who kill these animals could refuse to do so, instituting instead the policy, as a few shelters do, of keeping animals until they are adopted into a responsible person’s home, it is false that these animals (that is, the ones already in the shelter, the ones who would be killed) are better off dead than they would be alive. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that these animals would be better off alive, if those who ran the shelter took proper care of them until they were adopted.

Even assuming they are killed by the least painful means available…and granting that they believe they are acting in the interests of the animals they kill, what they do is not euthanasia, properly conceived. It is no more true to say that healthy dogs and cats are euthanized when they are ‘put to sleep’ to make room for other cats and dogs at animal shelters than it would be true to say that healthy derelicts would be euthanized if they were ‘put to sleep’ to make room for other derelicts at human shelters…

To acknowledge that these animals are not euthanized but are killed will not resolve the moral dilemma face those who work in animal shelters. It might, however, help occasion a fresh reexamination.

(Regan, p. 115-116)

In consideration of a thoughtful reexamination of the term euthanasia, I am also calling into question the so-called behaviorists employed at the shelter. From the outside, it appears to be more the case that determinations of an animal’s authentic nature and suitability for long-term companionship and housing in these moments when they are disoriented, confused, confined, constrained, deprived and feeling threatened – IS NOT IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE ANIMAL – but in the interests of others – the shelter’s policies, resources, etc. This belief is false – simply untrue – that the shelter’s staff is at that time acting in the best interests of the animal in depriving him or her of the life they were given.

The arrogance with which the shelter, in general, is taking away the lives of these animals and calling it euthanasia is intolerable and lacking in any moral, legal or ethical justifications. These animals are being deprived of the right to live – and instead are suffering at the hands of people abusing the power they were given to care for their well being.

Again, respectfully, I am imploring that you reconsider what you and the shelter staff – or any of the county-based shelters in California – call euthanasia. At best, it can be classified, in the words of Thomas Regan, as paternalistic euthanasia – making paternal-based decisions to end early the life of a healthy animal – against their strong, independent, sensitive wills – in the economic interests of limiting costs, preserving resources, making room for more, and the like. Such actions not only perpetuate the cycle of homeless animals, but actively encourage the indiscriminate, ignorance-based greed of breeding and reproducing animals for profit, pleasure, or casual disregard of the health of any one animal.

If the shelter were indeed acting in the best interests of the animals in its care, it would cease its practices and reallocate the economic resources towards training, spay and neuter education and services, and foster-based care programs. It would better allocate its resources towards ridding the community of breed-specific legislation that treats American Staffordshire Terriers as outlaws (which seem to be a majority of the shelter’s inhabitants), and it would promote, instead, the idea that landlords accept these animals into their communities under the responsible, experienced care of mindful dog owners. To do any less is to do a grave disservice to the animals in the shelter’s care.

And, I might add, the shelter’s adoption of these reconsiderations would facilitate a reduction in the intense, deeply-rooted, and long-standing suffering to the animal-loving people intensely concerned for the animals’ welfare, who are actively being harmed on emotional, psychological and spiritual levels, for the stress and angst they incur daily, every time an animal is in the hands of the shelter. Even in the words of another philosopher on the same issue, Peter Carruthers, he considered the moral duty we owe to animal lovers – and concluded that as they suffer harm every time we cause an animal harm — we owe them a moral duty, as moral agents in our social arena, and refrain from acting, thusly.

Thank you for your time. May the shelter and all its workers operate in the best interests of the animals.

Sincerely,

Denise Boehler, M.A., Writer, Ecopsychologist Rescue Dog Advocate wildsight.co

 

Categories : Help Save Animals, Of Dogs, Of Ecopsychology
Tags : American Staffordshire Terriers, Animal advocacy, Animal murder, Animals are sentient beings, California shelters, Consciousness, County Shelters, Downey Care Animal Shelter, Ethics, Euthanasia, Homeless animals, Homeless cats, Homeless dogs, Just say No to Kill Shelters, Morality, Mutts, PItbulls, Sentient being, shelterreform, shelters

How can I help? Diving into the world of animal rescue

By Denise Boehler
Tuesday, July 7th, 2020

This morning, I’m holding Smudges and Charlie, our two rescue dogs, a little tighter than I normally do. They’re enjoying more Bully Bites, Greenies, & Milk Bones than on any other Tuesday morning. Is it due to the emotional and psychological impacts of learning about the high-kill shelters in California, Texas, Florida, and a few other states? I’m certain it does – and it may also be connected to learning, much to my personal horror and torment, that gas chamber shelters still exist. I just learned of a two-year old Labrador mutt awaiting its entrance, should rescues fail to snatch him up in time, in a facility in Lindon, Utah.

The mind reels in helplessness, urgency and desperation. The first impulse is to scream,

NO!!!!!!

in fear, outrage and tormented helplessness. The next impulse is to share and post to all my Instagram connections, so that someone close by the subject rescue may call and claim the dog in peril, drive over and put them in the back of their overloaded SUV/minivan/Subaru/Toyota, lead them out of said vehicle and walk them through their own front door. After I’ve shared, I call the shelter holding him to inquire of his status. Have any of the rescues called to claim him?

Often, the beleaguered workers are animal lovers as myself, or in poorer rural areas, volunteers wholly sympathetic to the plight of any given animal. It helps my mind and heart to think of them that way and give them the benefit of the doubt.

Welcome to the world of animal welfare, I muse, where the actors are as emotionally impacted as a mother tending a wounded child. And yet, not all are equally resourced. In diving deeper into this world, I’m becoming intimately familiar with who-does-what, all in an effort to find out,

What’s needed?

Among such animal-loving spirits – volunteers and paid shelter staff — they’re often trying to save the animals coming through their doors. It’s not ideal. Then there’s the rescue coordinators, calling – or taking calls from – the closest rescues in what becomes the life-and-death race to save a particular dog or cat. They’re not the policymakers – and largely, not the decision makers. Often, they’re as caught in this torturous, dysfunctional, stressful and broken system as those trying to rescue any one particular life.

Would they listen to any of us animal lovers advocating for change in the system? Have they heard of the No Kill goal of Best Friends Animal Society and their Gap Analysis Tool, for instance, and if so, are they interested?

Certainly, the pragmatic resources are endless – and that’s not what I’m looking to provide. I’m still navigating around the terrain, sniffing out the truth and digging down into the details. And then, there’s the inherent problem of education, on the issue of how we arrived here to begin with:

Animal overpopulation, the problem of which has been birthing over decades of indiscriminate, accidental breeding, increasing costs of spay and neuter, and a new generation largely unaware of the problem of overpopulation and euthanasia to begin with.

It can make a well-intentioned animal loving soul’s head spin in endless confusion and too many options. Where to jump in?

Trying to insert myself, with all my heartfelt passion, love and sensitivity for animals in peril, into an ongoing conversation feels as vulnerable, confusing and uncertain as the future plight of our nation. I want to help do something – somewhere. It’s also an intrinsic female trait to feel plagued with self-doubt and uncertainty every few steps.

In posting, for instance, on social media of the animals in peril, am I offending someone, turning them away? Often, the situations look dire, depressing, or emotionally impactful. And I do like to consider my audience: sensitive, animal-loving souls who should be spared the traumatic effect of the dark details. I’m not proclaiming I’m Suzy Sunshine, just that I resonate with those who toss and turn in sleeplessness for the plight of a dog situated, such as Lincoln.

In this world, there seem to be those given to high drama for its own effects. I want to avoid these connections for the obvious burnout effect I’ve seen so often in the animal rescue movement (not to mention the PTSD and associative medications involved).

There will be those in the animal world who simply enjoy the photos of pine siskins, moose. They share often of their own deliriously happy, fat and sassy rescue dogs. They, like me, are as wanting more of the joy in life than not, particularly in our chaotically dark, sociopolitically transforming world.

On any given day, who can blame them?

And then, I return to those as hungry for joy and peace – those actively situated in the rescue movement — running a race to attain it for all involved. For them, questions arise:

How to be most effective to help them? What’s most needed, and can I somehow provide it, or facilitate the effort to achieve it? In some cases, the system they’re entrenched in is enduring. And often, the powers-that-be with whom they’re dealing have some kind of emotional, psychological, physical or even financial investment in maintaining the status quo.

Take the case of a New York shelter. Not a high-kill shelter, Thank you, Jesus. And, they have long-term residents – LexiMama, Diego, Juniper, and a ten-year old shepherd. They share on their situation almost daily. People (including moi) repost. And the dogs wait, day after day, for the quintessential furever – or any – home.

I took it upon myself to research options for these long-term residents. I found programs with nonprofits pairing PTSD veterans with homeless/rescue pit bulls. There are certainly enough to start a conversation:

  • Operation Sidekick, with the American Pit Bull Foundation
  • Pets for Vets
  • Vet Dogs

are the more notable ones. I passed this info along, contacted the shelter.

All fell into an abyss of silence and absence of response.

Meanwhile, the posts are regurgitated daily – the bios the same – the only thing changing is the count of the number of days the dogs remain in the shelter.

It begs the question, recently asked of me, by a rescue coordinator in California:

So, let me ask you – Do you find it humane for a dog to remain in a shelter for months on end? Is that any kind of life for him/her?

I responded:

Yes, I do think it’s better than the alternative. While the dog’s alive, at least he/she still has a chance of finding a forever home. Who are we to take their lives away?

It’s been a month since I began caring about these particular dogs and options for them in that New York shelter. I wonder, Where is the breakdown, and just how much is pandemic-related?

It comes back to the dilemma of how to best help. Some – like the rescue folks in California – are action oriented, equipped to respond to the call of a dog in danger by physically pulling her out of the shelter, getting them (hopefully) the training, love and guidance needed. After decompressing from the trauma, before going on to a furever (again, hopeful) home, they solicit donations and support along the way to help with the costly expenditure of undertaking the rescue. I envy those people – wish our fully-populated canine/feline rescue household could accommodate such efforts. And for all reasons pragmatic and then some, I simply cannot.

Where, then, can an animal lover best help? Certainly, the first question to be answered – Is my help needed?

Here in the bliss state of progressive Colorado, dogs are as welcome, valued and loved on as they dream they ever could be. We are indeed privileged – and I don’t mean that in a spoiled, entitled way. I mean that it feels as though the systems and people in them appear to be working well enough to not even be considered as being a condemned member of the higher-kill states.

Which brings me back to more notable high-kill states — California and Texas – to name two. I’m connecting with all whom I can, asking questions, listening intently. I’m trying to make efficient my actions, stay on the positive side of messaging, and steer clear of the emotionally draining burnout of high drama.

I may, in the end, return to efforting through the legal end of things, ala organizations like the Animal Legal Defense Fund. I appreciate the solid, known ground of a life in law cultivated over twenty-five years. When hearts and minds cannot be convinced through moral, emotional, ethical or psychological means to do right by animals, that’s where the law comes into play – for the benefit of the animals, a place it counts the most.

And yet, the question is still open, my heart and mind still unresolved, as to other ways to answer the oft-asked question in the rescue movement,

How can I best help?

Namaste, and thank you for tuning in…And by the way, Lincoln was rescued before any harm could come to him, thank you to the ones pulling him out of the way.

Categories : Help Save Animals, Of Dogs
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