The Season for Giving and Thieving

Courtesy Wikimedia commons

Holidays, disasters, tragedies and social causes bring out the best and the worst in us. It is as common as dirt for con artists to pretend to be charities, to fake a sick children and to concoct a variety of tall tales in order to steal funds from an extremely well-meaning and philanthropic citizenry. Yes, stealing. Obtaining funds by misrepresentation and false pretenses is larceny. That said, it is also not uncommon for legitimate charities to behave badly and misrepresent material facts to secure donations that should go elsewhere or for another use. Charitable scamming is so prevalent that this year the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office issued a "Fraud Alert" specific to the animal rescue industry among the variety of alerts issued in other industries.

The  California State Attorney General has a Department dedicated to the regulation of, and, if needed, the shutting down of fraudulent charities which also includes a consumer friendly search tool that anyone can use to research a charity that is registered and/or fundraising in California. It is also important to protect yourselves and use the available tools to check the legitimacy of an organization, to ensure that the programs important to you are occurring, and where, why and how funds are used before donating. If you send funds to an organization in New York believing that they are an umbrella organization for spcas everywhere, and expect that local animals will be assisted, you would be wrong. Donating locally is recommended as you can visit and see your charity in action. Funds sent for hurricane victims, wounded warriors, disease research and anything else must go to those efforts and doing the proper research before investing will help achieve that.

This holiday season is the last one in California where predatory "lease to own" financing (analogous to subprime mortgage loans) for dogs and cats will be legal. Very simply, if a pet dealer offers an installment plan to pay for a dog, that plan might, in fact, be a lease where a huge balloon payment is due after the lease period in order for you to keep the dog. In other words, despite what you think, you didn't buy the dog. This "payment plan" can be catastrophic for a variety of reasons from having your pet repossessed to ruining your credit rating. As of January 1, 2018 this type of transaction will no longer be legal in California, but is legal right now.

The bottom line is that the world is a better place because we care about vulnerable classes and are willing to do something about it.  As such, there are always those willing to exploit our generosity and run a scam for their own benefit. Let's be more vigilant about this so those that need our help, get it.

Let's make sure that this holiday season we give to those in need rather than to those who thieve.

Do More than Just Say Thank You This Veterans Day

I was dealing with a project today involving multiple players with diverse views and a fair amount of baggage, when it was suggested by one that further discussion should occur away from the group, privately, although the matter concerned the entire group. Usually, this happens when someone is disagreed with and doesn’t want everyone to see that, or worse, he or she senses dissent and is forming an “enemy camp”. I began thinking that this behavior has become common from the heights of government power, to the television networks and often when religious or social issues are involved. It helps not the world at large and surely not our animals and vulnerable classes as it is a form of discourse that accomplishes nothing but petty score setting with the stated goal becoming an excuse for a fight rather than an achievement.

Trying to force people to stop sharing opinions publicly, whether via a list serve, news program, schoolroom or Twitter should shock our collective conscience. We can all choose to agree or not, participate on a list serve or not, watch a program or not, donate, tweet, protest or not. We can participate in any project or not.  We cannot, ever, shut each other up.

On this Veterans Day I ask all of you to stop trying to hide comments that you disagree with, stop trying to silence the dissemination of information that you don’t want to hear, and honor the freedoms that we have that allow us to both brawl and hug in public. These are the freedoms for which our veterans fought, and continue to sacrifice their time, health and lives. Saying “thank you for your service” or “our prayers are with you” is a nice easy social conceit that honors them not at all if we squander our freedoms and their valiant efforts to protect them.

Time to Speak Truth to Power - Words Matter

The term "no-kill" has been abandoned and seriously debunked by legitimate animal welfare professionals. My prior article "No-Kill does not Mean No Death" discusses the inherent divisiveness, misdirection, dishonesty and cruelty suborned by this characterization, as well as the appropriation and pollution by irrational ideologues of the original and noble aspiration of the concept, which is that no adoptable pet should be put to sleep simply for lack of time and space. The further aim was to also

rehabilitate those pets that could be made adoptable as well. This is actually what reputable shelters and rescue associations do! The term continues to survive because it connotes something quickly and graphically to the public. By public, I refer to the reasonable citizen consumer and not to the politician who knows better but silently stares guiltily at his shoes while demanding the achievement of arbitrary no kill goal by a set time. Such a politician prefers to be lied to rather than demand the transparency and honesty to which the public is entitled.

It is interesting that when you talk to said consumer and ask her expectations of an animal shelter, she will tell you clean, humane, safe, honest, reliable and committed to social responsibility and public safety - not inconsistent with what we all already practice. She further will tell you that she does not expect the experts, (us) to ever give her, a non-expert, either an unsafe pet (animal or people aggressive), or a sick pet without full disclosure of these conditions. Finally, she thinks that both dogs and cats, in fact any animal lost or hurt, deserves the safe harbor promised by government animal control centers. She thinks that no animal that is adoptable or could be made so should be killed while understanding the heartbreaking realities of pet overpopulation.

What is crystal clear, is that the animal welfare professionals, members of the public, and the legitimate no-kill followers all concur that it is the moral, ethical, and socially responsible thing to treat the animals both inside and outside the shelter with care, and to be honest, transparent to, and mindful of the safety of the consumer. Additionally, behaving responsibly promotes and reinforces the belief that adopting from any of these sources is safe - a desire we all share.

Only the pathological ideologues and the politicians are outliers. To that end, these outliers will sanitize the records to hide prior bites or medical issues. Not only is this dangerous to the new adopter, but, if you allege to love animals what about the dog ripped apart on the street by this newly "sanitized" family pet? Do we not care about that dog? These outliers will even mask the breed name to trick an unsuspecting or perhaps first time dog adopter.  Of course, we can't be responsible for guessing with certainty the breeds of shelter dogs or represent that because they physically resemble a specific breed we can predict behavior and temperament consistent with that breed. But we can explain and educate that reality. What we cannot say is that a dog is a "brown male dog" to try to push a bully breed on someone who doesn't want one or doesn't know what he is looking at. Does this inspire confidence in the system?

These extreme ideologues will force an animal to suffer mercilessly, maintain them in hoarding conditions, and deprive them of any quality of life to feed their contorted statistics. They will even treat cats like squirrels i.e. another species of wildlife to reduce shelter intake.  All of this creative writing is intended to manipulate and produce illusory no kill statistics. The consumer neither expects, nor condones this once the truth is revealed. Do you think she would return to another animal shelter after learning this? How does this help us convince people to adopt rather than to purchase pets and actually achieve the desired goal of not leaving an adoptable animal behind?

It is time that the legitimate and responsible animal welfare professionals unite behind a better, honest and more realistic collective vision. Socially responsible and humane behavior towards animals and the public we serve rather than sustaining antiquated yet lingering no-kill dividing lines. Protecting animals from people and people from animals are both critical parts of our responsibility.

I am asking that we, as an industry shed this itchy, divisive and inflamed skin of the ideologues, and emerge with a new uniting, truthful characterization and message of "engaging in progressive and socially responsible animal management", something that most of us and our public already agree upon, expect and should have.

Let us turn this fiction into truth. What say you?