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Archive for Of Ecopsychology

On the Path of the Love Trail: Life in Rescue Dog Advocacy

By Denise Boehler
Wednesday, August 26th, 2020

Toby was saved by the rare event of adoption at the shelter

About two months ago, I got into rescue dog advocacy. Loving and caring for animals is my raison d’etre, a sacred and selfless lifelong calling.

Besides which, I preferred it to the monotony of waiting out the pandemic. Perhaps you resonate with such sentiment.

As I step further in, however, I’ve found this to be a very challenging way to help animals from

Rockefeller was saved by Bella Vita Rescue

afar. It’s all via the internet and on the telephone. This kind of advocacy involves high stakes at-risk animals in shelters across the country needing help before the clock strikes twelve, taking them along with it. Time is always of the essence and loss feels as eminent as a sunset.

And yet, there is beauty and hope to be found in people coming together, united by nothing other than the common bond of hearts in love with dogs and aided by technology. Dogs who have been cast aside or abused by others, in pain, neglected and uncared for by their trusted two-leggeds, or just never cared for after they grew from puppyhood. It feels to be a crazy, emotionally weighty and tenuous movement at times, and yet, it’s all there is to help the true victims in our society in a state of rapid decline. We network, communicate, advocate, coordinate, and in cases where the dogs are geographically situated close to the rescues able to pull them (for the privileges must be applied for and the rescues must be financially supported), physically extricated and placed onto the safe couches of foster care. From there, they transition into furever homes, often after training and any other attendant needs are met.

I’ve met some awesome people. Fellow rescue dog advocates and networkers — Rhonda from Pawsitive Gratitude, who updates me daily on dogs in need of sharing and networking, supports and encourages my involvement — and Sheryl, founder of Pet Pardon, an app designed to track pledges for “condemned dogs” by rescues and advocates wanting to support them.

Flynn, saved by Central Texas Ruffugees & Denkai Animal Sanctuary

Are there wins in this movement? To be certain, YES, ABSOLUTELY! Bella Vita Rescue stepped up this past week to rescue Rockefeller, a long-haired German shepherd on the kill list with Devore Animal Care Services in California. Flynn is safe in Denkai Animal Sanctuary’s foster care coordinator’s living room up here in Colorado. After being at risk of death for his burn injuries and infection at the San Antonio Shelter by Central Texas Ruffugees, he was personally transported with six other puppies en route to 4P4L outside of Denver by the founder, Marla and her husband.

Then there’s Tyson, the blind and deaf fifteen-year old Staffordshire terrier dumped by his owner for age-related decline after a lifetime in their home, pulled by the gentle hand of grace into foster care by the Philly Bully Team. Cereberus, a two-year old boxer/Staffordshire terrier mix, was pulled out of San Antonio’s jaws of death before the Saturday morning Ten O’clock termin

Tyson, saved by Philly Bully Team

ation date by Rescue Pets Serving Vets. Pledges were made and donations honored in the process, all of which are given by those loving on these sacred bringers of light and love in the world. More financial aid is always needed for the rescues involved, and grants during this time of Covid-19 feel in short supply.

It’s all a movement in process — created out of necess

Cereberus, saved by Rescue Pets Serving Vets

ity and born of love and passion for animals. It’s geographically expansive, uniting animal lovers all across the states, many of which drive and fly all over this blessed planet to cradle the furry bodies in need and transport them to safety. Omar, with Alpha’s New Life Adventure, brings along his own dog with every transport out of Texas, and volunteer pilots with Pilots ‘n Paws fly the precious cargo of homeless pets into new homes each hop they get.

I feel heartened every day for the unification and success of this movement and the ability of a small group of people to effect change in the lives of the most vulnerable and innocent. All dogs want at the end of the day is s bit of food, lots of love and a warm place to rest their heads at night. Is that so very different from any one of us?

Categories : Help Save Animals, Of Dogs, Of Ecopsychology
Tags : Animal advocacy, animal rights, animal welfare, Bella Vita Rescue, California, Central Texas Ruffugees, Colorado dog rescue, Denkai Animal Sanctuary, dog rescue, high kill shelters, Pawsitive Gratitude, Pet Pardon, Philly Bully TEam, rescue dogs, San Antonio Animal Care Services, San Antonio Pets Alive, Texas

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

Creating a More Compassionate Culture: Ending the Cruelty in High-Kill Shelters

By Denise Boehler
Tuesday, June 30th, 2020

Snoopy, waiting for his rescue people to come retrieve him at the shelter

This afternoon, I’m spending my time advocating for a dog named Snoopy. Snoopy landed on death row in a California shelter. I tracked his status with the shelter, which was a maddening back-and-forth with others on his status. I landed on the moment when a fellow rescue advocate sent word that a rescue has stepped up to pull him from the shelter this week. I breathed a sigh of relief that the good people at this California rescue would indeed follow through and save Snoopy.

No sooner did I get word on Snoopy being cleared, than another dog – Dexter – came through. Another red code on the euthanasia list – which means, he could be killed at any time. He was at another California shelter, which just so happened to be one I’d spoken with last week, about the euthanasia policies, behavioral assessments rendering a dog aggressive, and the timeframe allowed by the powers-that-be for an animal to live.

The woman at the shelter said,

Oh, I don’t know how they’re going to handle that dog – I’ve seen the intake video – he was code red from the beginning.

Dexter was rescued by bff_pet_rescue this week

Of course he was. As my fellow rescue advocate said, They can smell the euthanasia room right next door.

Tonya, with Ok What’s Left Rescue in CA, on a recent rescue

In other shelters – in Utah, for example – literal gas chambers are used to take the life of a homeless animal. It can take up to thirty minutes to die while the animals are tossed inside in a dark chamber, clawing and pleading, as their lives slowly terminate. For any animal lover, it is a horrific nightmare throwing us into sleepless nights for weeks on end.

The dogs and cats in these shelters are terrified – they know they are unsafe, not in the hands of people with their best interests in mind. The behaviorist on staff at the shelter is looking for signs of problems or aggression, which quickly becomes an excuse to put them on a euthanasia list.

How would you react?

I think we can all agree — we’d be nervous, stressed, wary, defensive, disoriented, fearful, and fighting for every breath within us. Especially if I realized that death was literally just down the hall. Any animal pulled from a shelter by a rescue – or an adopter – needs decompression time, adjustment period and lots of tender, loving, patient care.

In response to these dire, desperate, dramatic circumstances, rescues all over the country are frantically running pell-mell, hither and thither, at mock speed and in high-adrenaline, always in emergency mode, to save the next dog before the shelter determines their red code status and puts a needle in their tender paw. They share the status of any particular animal on social media – Instagram, Facebook, Twitter – connecting up with the urgency of a wildfire about to burn through a valley.

In many instances, it is only a matter of a few days before an animal is euthanized.

A 2-year old Labrador mutt on death’s door at a Lindon, Utah facility via gas chamber

Does it have to be this way? I believe we should be doing better by our animals, better by each other, and better in the higher interests of a more conscious, compassionate society. We may not be there yet, and sociopolitical challenges notwithstanding, we are going in a positive direction.

And yet, the policies in these shelters have to change. The mentality creating them must be the starting point. The mentality viewing dogs and cats as expendable, if they fail to meet human standards for behavior, is as eschew as the way we treat ethnicities different than the Caucasian one. The ethos allowing the powers-that-be to cast judgment on the life of an animal in its custody through no will of its own, holding it captive in the unlikely event of its reclamation by its guardian, is immoral, inhumane, cruel and unethical. These animals are sentient beings, and while shelters have a place in society – to be a temporary holding facility until an animal may find its forever home or be returned to the one they had – they have now become killing institutions.

According to California-based Bella Vita Rescue:

Gavin, a fortunate spirit rescued by BellaVitaRescue in CA (looking for his furever home!)

Of the approximately 800,000 dogs and cats killed in shelters each year, half of them are in just five states…

Texas, 125,000

California, 110,000

Florida, 66,000

North Carolina, 62,000

Georgia, 43,000

Is it politics? Funding? Abuse of power? I don’t profess to have all the answers. I know there are hundreds of rescue organizations actively involved in trying to save all the dogs in these high-kill shelters in many of these states. I know there are rescue coordinators in shelters that they work with, people in charge that they contact to pull a particular dog. I know there is an hourly drama, each and every day, around the life and death struggle of each dog. And I know that hundreds slip through the cracks, because the rescues are busy tending to the ones newly saved. They simply aren’t resourced sufficiently to save them all.

Where does the problem lie? It’s complicated – and yet – not.

Backyard breeders, for one thing, are creating an overpopulation of animals for which there will be no home. Certain patriarchal cultures prohibiting spaying and neutering, those allowing animals to reproduce without intervention (spaying and neutering) – a dog may have five or six puppies from the time she reaches maturity (between six to twelve months). With a gestation period of only sixty-days – you get the picture — many of these animals will never find a home, some of them may wind up at these high-kill shelters. Or more simpler yet, the guy obtaining a puppy from his friend, who has refused to spay or neuter his own dog, who says,

I just can’t imagine them taking his cajones – while grabbing his own crotch – thus, refusing to spay and neuter his own puppy, when of age.

All of these actions and a few more are creating desperate situations. Shelters are reacting with lethal force, citing anything from lack of homes (and yet, the foster-based rescues do indeed find homes for these animals), lack of space, medical situations or aggressive behavior. The dogs are suffering, ultimately paying the price, when they wind up homeless and in the hands of these shelters. Policies in place allowing them to discard these as animals is a tool they’ve created in response to an extremely complicated situation that fails to ever place the animals’ well-being on any kind of level playing field.

So, what’s needed? Obviously, more laws requiring spaying and neutering – and enforcement. Denver, for example, has laws prohibiting breeding without a license. Is it enforced? That’s a good question. At least, having it in place is a start – without such laws, there can be no remedy or restriction. Denver laws also require that a dog be spayed or neutered – again, a good step to prohibiting the consequences of an accidental close encounter.

Making spaying and neutering more affordable, especially in areas socioeconomically challenged – yes, poor, rural areas. Denver has Spay Today, Neuter Now, for instance. Best Friends Animal Sanctuary just raised over $2 Million in funding for low cost spay and neuter programs – an amazing effort to address the problem at its birthplace.

What’s also needed is training for these animals. Many come from places where they were never properly taught how to be good canine citizens, and wind up in high-kill shelters for fighting with another dog in the household, or showing reactivity mistakenly termed as aggression to perceived threats. Training is crucial to showing these animals not just that they are safe, but for how to control their instincts – chasing prey, protecting their people, reacting to intruders. Some favorites:

Consider The Dog is a great starting place that has many free videos from some of the best trainers in this country.
https://www.considerthedog.com/authors/tyler-muto
For the dog psychology side of things —
http://www.schoolofdogpsychology.com/  (Podcasts) Linn Boyke
or try Ian Grant, who runs a doggie daycare/board & train/dog training facility in Vermont — he has a great Podcast where he’s interviewed at least one dog trainer from every state, deals more with basic everyday issues that most pet parents deal with and he does a Facebook Live each week…
https://vermontdogtrainer.com/

And finally, a change in these policies must be made. Shelters must not use the remedy of euthanasia as the easy, go-to solution for sending a stressed, disoriented, terrified dog to its death. Gas chambers as an answer to euthanasia are everyone’s nightmare – and must be abolished. Euthanasia has become a remedy being abused at the dogs’ ultimate peril, and will never cease to be utilized so long as people are permitted to use it with such liberty and abundance that it becomes the norm. It must change – and we must support the foster-based rescues, trainers, and others on the frontlines, until then. Advocating for the lives of animals is an uphill, long-term commitment – requiring communities and people to work together in service of the common goal of bettering the lives of the animals.

Namaste, and thank you for reading.

Categories : Help Save Animals, Of Dogs, Of Ecopsychology
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