The post about the 3 dogs which were dumped on 2nd Street in Berkeley had a lot of people wondering why Night Boxes at local animal shelters had been closed. Permanently. The idea of the night boxes was that the public would have after hours kennels available to leave animals they find or need to surrender. Increasingly, animal shelters felt that people were using these instead of bringing the pets to the shelter during open hours. That may have been true, but many of them failed to connect that with the reduction of their open hours. Of course some owners didnt want to face a live person at the front desk of a police or sheriff run animal shelter. If your pet was sick or injured, if you had outstanding citations for animal related issues, if you were bringing a dog from another jurisdiction - you probably wanted or needed to avoid the confrontation. For those of us believing in harm reduction, the night kennels were a positive way animals could get into the safety of a shelter while giving a fearful or even malevolent owner the chance to do the right thing for their pet. Its the reason why no questions asked drop offs of babies to hospitals is the right thing. What is more important? To be able to harangue the mother for abandoning her child, or be able to rush that baby into care? Its why we oppose owner surrender fees for pets. When Oakland Animal Services turned away a woman who was trying to surrender her pregnant pit bull, they were more concerned with punishing the owner (by insisting on a surrender fee and by telling her to come back in 3 weeks for an appointment), and were revealing that animal safety AND pet overpopulation were less important to them than trying to hold the owner responsible. Creating responsible pet owners is a worthy ideal, but if we profess to care about the animals first, they should have taken the dog in - immediately - preventing not just that litter of pitbull pups from being born but the hundreds of subsequent litters. What is it we want? To be right, or to accomplish a mission everyone says they share but sadly cant agree on the way to achieve. Oakland was among the first to shut the night kennels, leaving a tragic situation of dogs and cats being left in the small concrete parking lot on 29th Avenue in Fruitvale as their owners sped away. Some died right there on the busy road, others ran fearfully down the rail tracks, others took refuge in the Storage facility across the street. Of course the owners were to blame. But what is the outcome we want? Many of the pets were unaltered. Leading to more dogs and cats running loose. Other shelters followed suit. And finally, Berkeley Animal Care Services did the same. I cannot fault them for saying we cant be the only shelter in the region with after hours kennels. The politics of animal sheltering is a brutal terrain filled with pitfalls, angry voices and disagreements between cities and counties, between animal welfare advocates, between rescue groups and staff at shelters. There is not one set of guiding principles or protocols for shelters - even within the same county - let alone across the state. And a recent White Paper produced by a group of animal welfare representatives called Charting The Path Forward has been met by outrage by others in the same industry - yet all of us seem to share the same mission. We tell it like we see it here at PAW FUND, and we have a history of accomplishing change in our own area which is why we feel our voice and opinion has some validity. But, these 3 brown dogs - even though only one person bears the ultimate responsibility for the tragedy that befell the last of the little guys - until shelters are completely removed from the clutches of law enforcement, and until the welfare of the individual animal is - above everything else - the guiding principle of all decisions, these tragedies will continue. Like the mother who drops her baby at a hospital, wishing she were a different person making different decisions is just that - wishing. Wishing pet owners did not discard their pets (whether for good or bad reasons) doesnt make it happen. If we profess to care for the victims then we had better step up and do so.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 15:31:07 +0000
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