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Archive for SpayNeuter

Loving Animals means Loving Ourselves

By Denise Boehler
Monday, August 31st, 2020

I woke this morning to the blasting cacophony of gravel trucks on the highway and the screaming cries emanating from the flock of magpies invading our valley. After a restless night of graphic nightmares of dogs in the San Antonio shelter for the second night in a row, I felt as beleaguered as the magpies felt predatory on our barn swallow nestlings.

It’s been feeling impossible to help in situations over which I have no control, from which I feel removed geographically. And yet, I feel affected. Like all women (& enlightened men) in this rescue dog advocacy movement, my own love for dogs isn’t limited by loving just my own. Tapping into and being open to their love and vulnerability in a world at constant odds is what drives people into advocacy. In the process, while the heart and all its potential for wounding is at stake, the intrinsic risk and tormenting nightmares plague our realities.

Will the dog in harm’s way be saved by one of the seemingly endless rescues stepping up to save him or her, or will they fall victim to the ill-conceived policies born out of the cold constraints of our economically-driven, utilitarian society?

Quite simply, advocacy can be a painful place to live. One feels they are waiting in a kind of purgatory with a vulnerable animal condemned to die through no fault of his or her own. If we could crawl into the kennel and sit whining and barking along with them, I’ve no doubt many of us would. Being subject to the will of others who have fallen deaf to the calls for compassion or ignorant to new ways to see and treat a homeless animal can feel an exasperating pull on the tendrils of an aching, tender heart. What’s more, its effects are irreparable traumatizing to a mind already overwhelmed with a deluge of sociopolitical chaos and cultural turmoil.

The mind can only handle so much. Taking a break, however, can feel as essential as drinking a glass of water – just not for too long. Leaving off to tend to other needs in life, like relaxation and quiet, self-care and sustenance, can feel as though one is abandoning a helpless victim in the hour of need.

And yet, the need for a pause or a longer break is imperative in this movement. The heart needs time to process the emotional residue intrinsic to this kind of advocacy. The passion and love driving one through the front door, the frustration and helplessness in the waiting, the disappointment, anger and angst intrinsic in the loss. The stress and contempt arising for the people creating the situation, enforcing barbaric laws, or the sheer ignorance or worse, abuse, in which animals are nothing more than helpless victims.

I recently heard a dog trainer familiar with the dog shelter situation in California and clearly hardened through his own experience call women saving dogs at all costs psychologically disturbed. It’s the remark – delivered in the course of a Q&A for this trainer’s promotional video – that I felt deeply offended by. Not only for myself, but for the hundreds of women (and enlightened men) in this movement who feel nothing less in their hearts than love for animals in peril and an authentic need to save them. What’s more, having been at the receiving end of similar types of such misogynist insults, I felt the misunderstanding inherent in such a statement.

Affording him the benefit of the doubt, I understand what he was trying to say. That saving dogs must come with limitations and perspective. For certain, there is wisdom in observing such protections, for they expand our awareness of the possibilities for an older, overlooked, quieter dog in the corner, who may not get a chance when our attention is drawn to the more dramatically intense ones. Who speaks for them, then?

I believe there are enough people paying attention that they too, will find an advocate.

I digress. The point is, the heart gets tired, the mind, battle weary. When advocacy starts to feel like we’ve gotten into a civil war, it’s in the better part of our interests to take a health break and let the movement go on for a bit without one’s presence. Just for a little while. There are others – and there is also, let’s toss this one in – the phenomenon of faith. It feels severely absent in this movement, albeit for good reason. There is more harm and injury being done to the innocent and unprotected than any of us can remember.

Quite simply, it’s hard to do our best work when we feel beleaguered and assaulted by the deleterious effects of advocacy. We also stand the risk of incurring burnout and meltdown, not to mention an unhealthy dose of PTSD. When we feel so close to the edge, we must do everything we can to give ourselves the unconditional love and nurture that we heap upon these dogs in peril every day. We deserve such self-love, and our own voices of unworthiness must fall silent as we woo and coo ourselves into a more soothing, self-sustaining state of equanamity and peace of mind. To do anything less is to guarantee we will run out of the emotional and psychological wherewithal to sustain for the long-haul. And that becomes a loss not just to the movement, but to the dogs in need themselves.

Loving animals is, as anyone with such tender propensities will tell you, a blessing and a curse. Always, the same sensitivity opening us up to their needs travels the same road as the one that may deliver pain. There are times when it can feel like a head-on collision. And when that happens, we just have to step out of the car, look up at the expansive azure sky, and thank some divine presence for being here to help and lie witness to it all. We can thank fate and serendipity for uniting devoted hearts in the movement. Loving animals makes us more compassionate people sensitive to the needs of others, the trick of which is to always, first and foremost, love and include ourselves.

Namaste, and thank you for reading.

Categories : Help Save Animals, Of Dogs
Tags : Animal advocacy, animal rights, animal welfare, Consciousness, County Shelters, fostering, fostersaveslives, high kill shelters, Homeless dogs, homelessdogs, Mutts, rescue, rescue dogs, shelters, SpayNeuter

Just say No to Kill Shelters, and Yes to Foster-Based Rescues or Sanctuaries

By Denise Boehler
Wednesday, June 24th, 2020

What we do to the animals, we do to ourselves. I don’t offer that up as some lofty ideal. I don’t share it from any perch of moral judgment.

I say it because I believe it needs to be said. I say it because my heart aches just a little bit more today, to hear of the death of yet another homeless animal in the Downey, California Shelter, a gentle pitty mix named Pirate. He could have gone, as foster advocates were crying on his behalf today, to one of them.

Instead, he was put to death by lethal injection at the hands of the shelter’s policies. A petition is circulating on his behalf, should you feel so moved to sign it; it’s available at the end of this essay.

Back to the subject at hand, as I am reluctant to drop down to a level of intellectual justification steeped in the quicksand of statistics – though we who love on and advocate for the lives of animals know where the numbers lie – we also know that the remedy to the long-term problem of homeless animals is spaying and neutering, education and outreach. (And if all you breeding animals could please stop to consider that for each life you bring to earth, you deliver a death sentence to a life already here, it would be appreciated on a whole ‘nother level.)

There is all that. And again, not as pressing as promoting the higher ideal of creating a more compassionate culture, because I believe that advocating for a change in ideology, philosophy, paradigm shift, consciousness or whatever term you prefer, is what is being called for in our present culture.

Isn’t your own heart feeling battered enough these days?

Let’s call for a more compassionate culture for shelter animals, who through no fault of their own, are put to death DAILY at the hands of man-made policies. (Yes, the number is 2,000.) The domestic short-hair three-year old cat, the wandering pit-terrier mutt, the Labrador mix, have an hourglass on their head from the moment they are dragged off the impound truck and brought through the shelter doors. Depending upon the shelter, it could be a matter of days – for others, months – before the pinprick of death is administered. (A good friend from NoKill Colorado once informed, a shelter animal has a 50/50 chance of making it out alive.)

Even more brutal (and still happening in certain states), are the practices where they are thrown like leftovers into a dark gas chamber to their unimaginable horror, struggling helplessly until they breathe their last breath. (Activists in Shawnee, OK successfully staged a sleep-in to end such practices for that city’s shelter in 2017.)

Whether one is a policymaker invested in the pragmatics of space and resources and economics, or a beleaguered shelter worker whose heart breaks just a little bit more each time they must hold a homeless dog or cat, look them in their pleading brown eyes and say,

Today’s your day to die,

we are reducing our humanity – and our culture at large – to a brutal, ego-centered, economically driven culture, indeed.

Anyone who’s been paying attention to what’s happening in our patriarchal, capitalistic-oriented society these days understands just how those of us on the lower rungs are being treated. It’s the same for the homeless animals – even worse, I would argue, if so inclined.

Think it has to be this way? Think again.

I’ve been looking for the alternatives to such outdated, inhumane practices for years now.

Miley, a Paws and Effect Rescue pup, available for foster

I have found – and keep finding – more foster-based rescues nationwide, than ever before. (See list below, for a few of my personal favorites.) It makes my heart feel light – and hopeful for our culture – for every foster-based rescue I learn about. There are scores of people in every state who feel the lives of dogs and cats are worth saving. Animals who get to share the homes of foster parents relax into their environment, are spared the stress of being caged up among dozens of other stressed animals, and their authentic dispositions are allowed to unfold. From there, a foster parent can communicate to potential adopters about the true nature of the fostered dog or cat before they are ushered further into their forever home. (It happens all the time!) Some become foster fails – and that’s okay, too – but it doesn’t have to be the rule. Sometimes, the dogs and cats just need a soft place to land for a while.

Don’t we all?

Our culture needs to see the foster-based rescues in existence, better support them in all ways essential – through our own fostering efforts, by donating or fulfilling a wish list – by sharing the photos and stories on our Instagram or other social media feeds – until they can find their furever homes.

When we support the efforts of others to care for the homeless lives already here, we support the higher ideal (if I now may say,) that these lives have value. They deserve the life given to them through some divine force; because, after all, what right, beyond relieving real physical suffering, does anyone have to intervene?

We honor the being before us, be it a scruffy street terrier, an abused pit-bull, a mangy shepherd mix or an elderly family dog cast out onto the street for no other reason than failure to amuse a busy family. We also say no to an outdated shelter system that treats homeless dogs and cats as inventory aging on a shelf that must be rotated in order to make room for more.

The time has come for us to reconsider what a more compassionate culture can look like – and find, create or support alternatives. It will make all our animal loving, tender, aching hearts, ache just a little bit less today.

Pirate, an unfortunate victim of shelter circumstance at the Downey Care Shelter

In memory of Pirate, and all his friends in equal peril – JUST SAY NO TO KILL SHELTERS, AND YES, TO FOSTER-BASED RESCUES.

Namaste, and thank you for listening.

To sign the Downey, CA Petition:

https://www.thepetitionsite.com/182/644/876/demand/

Some of my personal favorite foster-based rescues:

https://pawsandeffectrescue.wordpress.com/, a foster-based canine rescue in the Denver metro area

https://farfels.com/, a foster-based Colorado rescue pulling dogs from high-kill shelters

https://dooverdogs.com/, a foster-based rescue pulling dogs from Colorado & Wyoming from high-kill shelters

http://www.sparpets.org/, a foster-based rescue in Shawnee, OK

https://www.pawsgivemepurpose.com/, a sanctuary for difficult to place dogs, in Southern New Jersey

https://therescueproject.net/, a Kansas City, MO foster-based rescue, providing education & resources to the community on the needs of spaying & neutering

https://bestfriends.org/, a Kanab, UT animal sanctuary dedicated to helping end the practices of killing in America’s animals shelters through building community programs & partnerships across the nation

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Categories : Help Save Animals, Of Dogs
Tags : Adopt, Adoption, dogs, Downey California, Downey Care Animal Shelter, foster, fostering, fostersaveslives, homelessdogs, rescue, rescuedogs, SpayNeuter

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