The events of this last week which took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, have left most people angry, upset and outraged. We have all seen the video clips and images of the rally and counter-protest which led to the death of one woman and two state troopers and left 19 others injured. I watched along with everyone else and felt a profound sense of sadness as I wondered what happened to bring our country to this level of hate and outrage.

On Monday night, I received an email from a No Kill contact in Texas. He wrote to warn me that a common contact of ours who led a non-profit organization had been "outed" as having been present at the white nationalist rally. I thanked him for telling me, but didn’t take any steps to look into it. My first reaction was that surely this was a case of mistaken identity. I told myself I would look into on Tuesday morning. As I watched the evening news, I heard a news story about people being "outed" on Facebook using video clips and images of the rally and violence. The story reported that people were being encouraged to call out those people who attended in support of the "Unite The Right" rally if they saw images or video clips of people they knew. I was sure that there was some error. Surely no one I know would attend a rally in support of bigotry, separation, discrimination and separation.

I was wrong.

Most of us interact with people in our lives with whom we do not share they same political beliefs. That truth has been no more evident in my life than in the last year. The political divisions in our country are wide. I keep my beliefs to myself for the most part. I know there are people with whom I have little in common in terms of my political positions and I tend to just stay in my own lane of travel and let other people do the same. There is a vast difference between having a general awareness that someone you know has vastly different political views than your own and having any concept at all that they would align themselves with groups of people whose values are both repugnant and intolerable to most of us. It was suggested to me that many of the people who attended the rally in Charlottesville did so in order to stand up for free speech and protect Constitutional rights. I firmly believe in the First Amendment right to free speech. I just draw a line  personally when that speech is hate speech of the KKK, white supremacists and Neo-Natzis.

I had no idea.

I have never met Debi Day, the founder of No Kill Nation, Inc. We have connected by email and on social media. We’ve interacted about No Kill philosophies and about issues related to breed bans of pit bull type dogs in Miami-Dade county and across the nation. I held her in high regard due to her commitment to advance No Kill philosophies to save the lives of shelter animals, much of which was shown through her financial support of No Kill Conferences and her financial support toward the production of the documentary film about the No Kill movement which was released in 2009. I was acquainted with her due to common interests, but I would not say that I really knew her.

On Tuesday morning, August 15, 2017, I severed all ties with Debi and with No Kill Nation, Inc. I have absolutely zero tolerance for the behavior of any person who promotes, defends of enables voices of hate, bigotry and separation. I will not be associated with that behavior in any way. Period. The No Kill Nation website and Facebook page are now gone.

I fully recognize that there are opponents of No Kill philosophies and opportunists who are using the revelations about Debi Day’s behavior and associations to try to taint the entire No Kill subject. There is really no discussion to be had on this topic. The No Kill movement is bigger than one person. It is bigger than Debi. It is bigger than me. To those who are trying to discredit a social movement the focus of which is saving the lives of animals, I say this: you are wasting your time.

No Kill advocates across the country have already banded together to continue to speak with one voice to end the needless destruction of healthy and treatable animals in our nation’s shelters using tax dollars and donations even though many of us are grieving. If you are so incredibly outraged by Ms. Day’s behavior, as am I and are my peers, do something productive with that outrage. Get involved in our own community. Speak out for what you value in your own life. And speak out for the shelter animals who need you to be their voice. Saving lives is not a partisan issue at all and it has nothing at all to do with politics beyond holding municipalities accountable for how they spend our money. I stand in solidarity with other No Kill advocates across the country who have spoken out against Debi’s behavior and have severed ties with her. I stand for animals who need my help and for advocates who are working incredibly hard to bring about reform in their own communities.

Think about what you stand for and then go do something about it.

 In the years since I had my unwelcome epiphany about the plight of shelter animals – which led to greater awareness about a host of issues concerning companion animals in general – I have had the privilege of connecting with people across the country whom I consider trailblazers for the sake of animals. If you are new to the topic of animal welfare, you may not know their names. I call them Nathan and Mike and Theresa and Rudi and Dan and Mary and Ryan and Tamira and Davyd and Becky and Brian and Valerie and Debi and Terri and Kathy and Christie and Doug and Bett and Karen and Keith. All are very active related to the topics of no kill animal sheltering and ending puppy mills and ending the chaining/tethering of dogs and getting lost dogs back home and TNR of community cats and ending breed stereotypes and bans. What all of these contacts of mine have in common is that they don’t work for large national animal welfare organizations. Some of them manage nonprofit organizations, but most of them work full-time jobs and aren’t paid a dime for their advocacy. It is something they do because they are compelled to take action to improve our society and improve the welfare of the dogs and cats we say we value and care for. They act because they have to and it is part of who they are as people.
 
I get a lot of email from people in other states about a variety of issues due to my outspokenness. Many want to know how to bring about change in their own areas and really don’t know where to start.  Most have put some reliance on large national organizations to bring about change and have been left disappointed in that process. They ask, “what could I possibly do as one person? How can I possibly make things better related to _____________ (fill in the blank on the topic) in my city or my state?” I think that for most of us, the idea of taking on an issue ourselves is pretty daunting. We know we want to help, but may feel overwhelmed at the work we see before us to bring about change. The problems just seem so – to use an overused word – HUGE.

Take heart, animal advocate. Because you do have the power to bring about change and your voice is louder than you may imagine. You do need to educate yourself on your topic. An informed advocate is an effective advocate. But speaking out on your own can be of more value than you may realize in your current state of mind.

I was reminded of this recently while reading a book written by a contact of mine named Becky Monroe called Bark Until Heard: Among the Silenced Dogs I Found My Voice.  Becky and I just recently connected on the topic of puppy mills as a result of one of my earlier blogs on the topic. I have yet to blog about her book, but the reasons she wrote her book got me thinking about this whole topic of advocacy by individual people. Without taking away from your enjoyment of Bark Until Heard, the premise is pretty simple: Becky ended up at a puppy mill auction somewhat unexpectedly, saved a dog she named Thorp and was forever changed by the process, making it part of her life’s purpose to educate others about the horrors of the puppy mill industry in an effort to bring an end to it.  I’m sure when Becky started what could be described as a crusade to end puppy mills, she had no idea how successful she would be. But that didn’t matter to her. She connected with like-minded people, she sent emails and composed letters, she wrote articles which helped people get a glimpse of what she had experienced and now she has a very successful book she is using as a means to reach more of the public. She truly did find her voice.

I was also reminded of this recently while engaging with fellow advocate Steve Shank of Lake County, Florida. Steve has been working for years to shine a light on the dark corners of the house that is animal sheltering in his county. He has been met with opposition, resistance and most recently what I would consider at best deception and at worst lies by the current shelter leadership to make things seem better than they are. Steve is just one person. But he did not give up and he stayed true to his vision. He ultimately connected with a county commissioner who got on board with his goals right away and in just a couple of weeks, a no kill consultant will be traveling to his county to meet with local officials and talk about plans for the county to run a no kill animal shelter using progressive and proven programs. I am sure that much like Becky, Steve had no clue where all this would go when he decided to take the risk of being the one to speak out for the animals who could not speak for themselves. The future of Lake County is still unfolding, but I’m sure we can all agree that there are many changes ahead and that the animals in that area are soon to be safer than at any time in the history of the county. Steve and his contacts will face opposition from a host of sources which will surprise many people. PETA, local rescuers and general naysayers will say that no kill is not possible or it means institutionalized hoarding or it costs too much. The problem with the pushback like that is that it seldom survives the reality of communities which change drastically and in very short periods of time. It’s hard to say the world is flat or we didn’t go to the moon or no kill communities are not real when they continue to emerge with increasing speed.

Being a voice for animals is hard work. It may cause you to lose what you thought were friendships. It may baffle the people you love who are closest to you who support you, but who may not truly understand the depth of your commitment to bring about change. It may cause you to be vilified by organizations or individuals as they defend the status quo and focus more on the messenger than on the reasons why the message was necessary in the first place.
 
But never doubt the power of individual advocacy related to companion animals whether it is on a general topic or whether is it focused on a state or municipality which is using tax dollars related to animals in ways which are not consistent with our culture and our values in America. Sometimes all it takes is one person putting themselves “out there” to help others find the courage to do the same. Which means that instead of being an army of one, you may find that you are one of many as you work together to change our society and help many more animals than you may ever realize.
 
To borrow a lyric from Sara Bareilles, show me how big your brave is.

It happens every day. Pets get lost or go missing, people frantically try to find them and in some cases, they never do. As the go-to animal person at my office, I hear about this regularly. The family cat who was scared by fireworks on New Year’s Eve and bolted through an open door. The newly adopted rescue dog who was let outside to relieve herself and ran because she was scared by a car. Maybe the worst one I heard at work was about an elderly dog with limited vision who slipped out a door when some contractors were doing renovation work. The family felt she could not have gone far and did all the right things:  searched the neighborhood, knocked on doors, put up flyers, put a “lost” ad in the local paper, put food and her bedding outside. They even went to the municipal animal shelter with photos in hand to look for her, only to be told, “sorry, your dog is not here.” They searched and knocked on doors for days. After almost a week of anguish, the family went back to the shelter one more time on a hunch, only to discover their beloved dog had been there for a week and was scheduled to be euthanized the next day. This family was both lucky and incredibly relieved. Some are not so lucky.

I know that animals end up in shelters for a host of reasons and that some of those reasons have to do with public irresponsibility. But not every animal in a shelter is there because of someone’s fault. We do better at a society to treat each and every shelter animal as someone’s beloved pet who is lost than to presume that “the irresponsible public” does not care enough to keep them safe. Gates get left open by children, contractors pay more attention to ladders and tools than to cats and animals are displaced due to traffic accidents and bad weather. Life happens. It is a reality of our animal sheltering system that healthy and treatable animals are destroyed every day and in most cases these are simply lost pets who could not be identified in order to be reunited with their families. It is a national tragedy.
 
I’m a huge proponent of microchipping all pets whether they live inside of not. You simply must prepare for the possibility that they may end up outside and while collars and tags are also advised (with breakaway collars for cats for safety purposes), nothing can really take the place of what amounts to a barcode for your companion animal to help them be identified if they get lost and end up in a shelter, with a rescue group or at a veterinary office. Most microchips cost very little, including lifetime registration, and really can make the difference in ensuring your pet can be identified if he or she is lost (or even if they are stolen).

If you do a simple search on social media using the words “lost found pet” you will come up with a variety of groups and pages all trying to help people find lost pets or trying to reunite found pets with the families searching for them. As valuable as these pages may be, they all have one thing in common. They are geography specific. Just because your dog goes missing from your home in X city doesn’t mean he or she will stay in that city. He may very well end up in Y county for whatever reason and you may never know that.  Animals don’t know geographic boundaries and the reality is that once your dog or cat is outside of your control, you really never know how far they will travel either on foot, in the back of a truck bed or in a vehicle or even taken an unknown distance by a good Samaritan who is simply trying to help them.
 
All this leads to an announcement about a wonderful new tool in our animal lover’s toolbox I learned about recently: a website called Helping Lost Pets (HeLP).  The website has been active since 2010 and is used across Canada and the United States.  The site is the brainchild of Rob Goddard of Goddard Information Systems Limited and is currently funded by his company (with hopes to be funded by sponsors and advertising at some point). I learned about Helping Lost Pets just recently and I’ve been telling everyone I know about it because it’s just such an incredible tool.

The concept is simple: the website is a map-based site and is free to use for shelters and animal owners alike. If you run a shelter or animal control department and you pick up animals running at large or found animals reported to you, you enter them on the site with an image and some basics about where they were found. This allows pet owners to look for their lost pets. If you are an animal caregiver and your pet goes missing, you enter them on the site with an image and some basics about where they belong. This allows animal control personnel and social media platforms to help reunite lost pets with their families.  Helping Lost Pets describes the website this way:
 
HelpingLostPets.com (HeLP) is a FREE nationwide database for lost and found pets that connects shelters, veterinary clinics, rescue groups, the public, and volunteer groups across the nation to effectively reunite lost pets with their owners. What makes HeLP unique is it is mapbased and fully searchable by breed, location, size, color, gender, and other identifiable information, making it easy to match lost and found pet listings. To ensure our listings stay current, our system automatically contacts owners/finders for status updates at defined intervals. This allows our system to remain uptodate and display only pets that are still missing and truly need our help getting home. We have found that flyers are one of the most effective ways to reunite a lost pet. When someone list a pet, free flyers are instantly generated to provide an effective tool in getting a pet home.

What makes the website even more powerful is the many volunteer groups across the country that also use the website to help pets get back home.  Lost Dogs of America is their largest partner with chapters in over 30 states now.

If you manage or are affiliated with an animal control agency, rescue group or veterinary office which often takes in lost pets, I cannot encourage you strongly enough to learn about this wonderful resource. If you are a pet owner, I encourage you to take all the normal steps to find your pet: talking to your neighbors, putting up flyers, putting an ad in a local paper, posting on social media, putting food and bedding outside, etc.

Having a pet go missing to never be found again can be a life-altering experience for you and can be a life-ending experience for your pet.  Please use HeLP. It’s quick, it’s free and you just never know when using that one extra tool in the toolbox will help you be reunited with your beloved companion. 

Lost Dog Recovery Tips:
http://lostdogsofamerica.org/lost-dog/recovery-procedures/
Lost Cat Recovery Tips:
http://www.missingpetpartnership.org/recovery-tips/lost-cat-behavior/

Older Dogs (and Cats) Can Learn New Tricks.  Training a puppy or a young dog can take a lot of time, effort and repetition. You have to be consistent and help the dog learn what behaviors are expected and which are not appropriate. This includes involving all members of your family, including your children. Adult dogs and cats are simply more focused and learn fast.  If your senior dog needs to learn about how to function in your family, you can enroll him or her in an obedience class or consult with a behaviorist so you can learn how to read your dogs' behavior and how you can be a good pack leader. Although people perceive that cats cannot be trained due to their independent nature, most can be trained to follow basic instructions.

You Still Have Plenty of Time With Them.  Whether or not a dog is a senior is based on breed and size. In general, the larger the breed or size of the dog, the shorter the life span. Many large breeds are considered "senior" by the age of 6. Many smaller breeds are considered senior by the age of 10. Most cats are considered senior between the ages of 7 and 10. Regardless of the age of the senior, older pets still have plenty of great years left. If you get a medium sized dog who is 6 years old, he or she may have 10 good years left. If you get an 7 year old cat, he or she may have more than 10 years with you. You can talk to your veterinarian about ways to keep your senior dog or cat happy and healthy for many years after your lives together begin.

Older Pets are Great for Seniors. A lot of older people don't get new pets because they worry about their ability to care for them for the entire life span of the pet. A dog or cat can live from 10 years to 20 years and some older people are worried that their pets may outlive them. When seniors adopt seniors, it can be a perfect fit. The older person gets an animal who is more mellow and who is more content to just spend time together and the animal gets a new life in a more mellow household where companionship is the focus of the relationship. Many animal shelters have Seniors for Seniors Programs in which adoption fees are either waived or greatly reduced and with programs in place to re-home an adopted pet if something happens to their adoptive family.

Be a Hero, Save a Life. Older dogs and cats are often overlooked in shelters and end up being destroyed in all but the most progressive communities even though they are perfectly healthy. When you adopt a senior animal, you are quite literally saving that animal's life.  If you have ever loved a animal into their old age, think about what a tragedy it would have been if that animal had never been given an opportunity to live out their last years in comfort. Although you may have fewer years together than with a puppy or kitten, your rescued senior may enhance your life in ways you never imagined. The health benefits of pets is well documented - they lower our blood pressure, reduce our stress levels and provide us with unconditional love that we rarely provide each other as humans. Older pets somehow just seem to know that you have done a good thing to help them and you may find yourself bonding with a senior much faster than you would with a younger animal.

There is a concept in animal sheltering called the Bubba Factor which essentially means what it sounds like: that people in “the south” are incapable of doing better for companion animals because they are simple minded and have antiquated attitudes regarding animals as property. Although I was not born in the south, I have lived in Alabama for many years and consider myself one of the locals in many ways. I have seen enough over the years and engaged with enough people “from here” to know that it is time to rethink the whole Bubba Factor concept when it comes to companion animals.

I will be the first to admit that a cultural divide still exists in some areas of the south regarding “inside” animals v. “outside” animals. My dog will never live outside. He is a member of our family and I would no sooner relegate him to a fenced yard 24/7/365 than I would do that to a human member of my family. I know people whose animals will never live inside. They would no sooner have a dog living inside 24/7/365 as a family member than they would set a place for a rooster at the dinner table.

Some people confuse these cultural differences of opinion for a mindset that animals are just things which lack feelings and self-awareness. And they do so unfairly. The south is no different than any other area of the country when it comes to irresponsibility and treatment of animals as things. We have plenty of people who should not be allowed to have companion animals at all and some who should likely be legally enjoined from ever having pets. But there are people like that across the country. From where I sit, the southern family which allows a dog to run at large with an antiquated mindset that the dog is not harming anyone and can easily be replaced if hit by a car is no more irresponsible than a person in Los Angeles who buys a dog at a pet store, carries it around in a purse like a status symbol or a living piece of jewelry and then decides the dog must go to a shelter when it won’t stop making a mess in the house in spite of being told in plain English to “stop”many times.

The thing that I think people tend to forget about the south is this: for all of our negative history and all of the undeserved stereotypes about values and intelligence, people from the south are some of the most morally grounded people in the country. Many people here are deeply religious and have very strong values when it comes to treatment of domesticated species. They see themselves as stewards of all animals, whether those animals serve some specific function or they share their homes with human caregivers. Most people in the south do want the very best for all animals and need only be educated on issues related to humane treatment and better choices to change how they think and function. When we tell people about the benefits of spay and neuter, the cruelties of perpetual chaining, the dangers of allowing animals to run at large and the benefits of microchipping to ensure lost pets can get back home, they listen and they adjust their behavior accordingly.

I know that at some time in the next month I will see someone in a Walmart parking lot either selling or giving away puppies. It will infuriate me enough that I will stop and we’ll have a conversation about why that’s happening. They’ll look at me like I’m from another planet as I drive away. And as I remember that there are people in that same Walmart parking lot who had their cat spayed this week or donated a dog bed to a local animal shelter or did a flyer for a lost dog who wandered into their yard or helped an elderly neighbor pay for veterinary care of a very sick and much beloved cat or bought a dog bed because they realize that their aging canine companion will be immeasurably more comfortable inside the house. More people here love and value their animals than don’t and even in the south, there is enough compassion in our communities to overcome the irresponsibility of the few.