A better way

Today, Bad Rap had a great blog featuring photos of a recent shot clinic that they had in an Oakland area community. I'm going to make you click through to see the pics -- but I highly recommend you watch the entire slide show (30 or so pics).

For about a decade now, Bad Rap has been working in the East Bay area to do outreach into some of the low-income communities in the Oakland area. Oakland has a lot of problem areas -- with over 17% of the population living below the poverty line.  It can be a tough crowd at times.

But Bad Rap has persisted. They continue to offer free services for shots, spay/neuters, collars and even training.

And people come. And they come early -- with one woman coming 3 hours early to be sure her dog was able to get in line. The pride that these people show for their animals in these photos tells a story of people -- many of them struggling to make ends meet -- doing right by the dogs.  And that's pretty cool.

Bad Rap has gotten there in these communities by HELPING these people become better dog owners. As an animal welfare community, we have somehow gotten in our minds that we need to try to punish people for not altering their pets -- and consider them 'not worthy' of pet ownership if they don't. So instead of taking the time to educate, and to be part of the community and being people who want to help, we become the people trying to take their pets away.

And if the animal welfare continues to create a divide between itself and various communities, we will fail. As Donna notes in the post: "To decrease euthanasia rates and curb irresponsible ownership, we need proactive, cost effective solutions to embrace the human-animal bond, rather than tear it down."

Those are wise words.

These types of proactive, targeted outreach unequivocally work -- and are why the majority of animal welfare organizations prefer them to mandatory spay/neuter laws. Here are the current statements from several of the national animal welfare organizations on mandatory sterilization laws that are built to punish owners for not complying vs working with them to create communities of responsible pet owners:

AVMA - Mandatory spay/neuter a bad idea

ASPCA - Position Statement on Mandatory Spay/Neuter Laws

Best Friends -Proposed Mandatory Spay-Neuter Ordinance has serious flaws

 American Humane Association - Mandatory Spay/Neuter -the right fix for your community?

 No Kill Advocacy Center - The Dark Side of Mandatory Laws - Why Punitive Legislation Fails

And for good measure, you can read Peter Marsh's A Strategy for Tomorrow

It seems that it's 'common knowledge' that people in the projects won't comply with voluntary spay/neuter programs....but 'common knowldege' is wrong.

Working WITH pet owners to help them become better pet owners is a far better approach than trying to punish them into submission -- and it's the kinder way too - for both the animals and the owners.

Comments

[Donna]

Thank you for this support, Brent. In addition to having some heavy weights from the ABA with us, we were really excited to have the ADBA (American Dog Breeders Assoc.) at our side at this event -- a sign of progress if I ever saw one. They kicked ass, btw, and proved that providing services to under-served dog owners is as easy as showing up and having the right attitude. More to come as we all move forward with best ways to help pit bull owners in the east bay.

[Brent]

Gasp - working with breeders to help solve the problem?

That's awesome - and yes, we too have found that promoting voluntary spay/neuter programs brings a lot of allies out of the woodwork to help solve the problem that you don't always find under oppressive laws.

[MichelleD]

Donna, if anyone give you grief let me know. I'll take them out back ;-)

I can't find the words to express how great these new partnerships and programs you're creating are...this is exactly the kind of thinking that will help us end the killing.

[Dianne Rhodes]

The Washington Animal Rescue League is doing a once-a-month free neuter/spay clinic for pitbulls -- no restrictions. They open at 8 am and by 8:15 they are full. Checkout the smiling dogs and proud owners on Debbie's blog for kids:
http://warlkids.blogspot.com/2010/08/doing-right-thing.html

[MichelleD]

That is awesome Dianne!

In an article about people literally lining up to be responsible why do they have to play the negative nelly card? It doesn't even make sense for this post.

" If only every dog and cat guardian would feel the same. This is a particulary tough time of year for animal shelters -- puppies and kittens, litter after litter, all needing homes showing up daily. "

They had to book overflow for pete's sake but we're never going to miss an opportunity to bash the irresponsible public.

[Valerie]

Of all of the things that piss me off, and it is not a short list, I think that the 'irresponsible public' rhetoric that so many people mindlessly and destructively spout, pisses me off the most. It holds back lifesaving progress. The corollary that public irresponsibility regarding animals defines the South gets my hackles up even further. And don't get me started on the misconception that the North is some sort of magical, mythical wonderland for animals where everyone is responsible. Relying on the Myth of the Irresponsible Public as the root of all shelter killing reveals an endemic lack of disciplined thought about how to solve problems effectively (ie with the willing participation of the public). A little disciplined thinking can go such a long way. Blaming the public leads to so many missed opportunities.

[CristyF]

I know this is an older blog posting, but I wanted to say I completely agree with it!

A long time ago, I once watched one of those "Animal Cops" shows on Animal Planet. This one was located in South Africa, at the Cape of Good Hope. They had a truck go to an extremely poor neighborhood (and I mean POOR, poorer than we can imagine here in the US), and offer free spay/neuter and veterinary services to these people, and they lined up at this truck with their pets (who were well fed and loved, even though the people probably could barely feed themselves). These people were happy to see the SPCA's truck pull up, and I remember thinking what an amazing program this was. I wondered, if they can have a successful program in South Africa, with all that strife going on over there all the time, why can't we have some good programs over here??