Rescue Journal

whatever it takes.

Carol  ·  Nov. 23, 2014

i think if you seriously want to do rescue, it is critical to be willing to invest in doing it the best that you can. in a sense it is like parenting...a partial or limited effort doesn't really cut it. there are things as parents that we sacrifice, like in part ourselves. once we become parents we are kind of stuck pulling up our socks and trying to be a good responsible parent and a good role model for our children.

the skills we develop and use as effective parents will serve us well in rescue....no one around us wants to hear we think they are stupid, ignorant losers..that they do not know anything and will never be as good or smart as we are. if we tried to talk to our kids like that, they certainly would not listen and neither will other adults.

rescuers need to learn to take the personal out of rescue...we need to focus on issues and speak in non angry, non violent, non judgmental ways that gets our points across. in other words as far as communication with others is concerned we need to practice a bit of respectful restraint.

for years rescue has been a shouting match..yelling insults back and forth and we got into the habit of thinking in order to win....we had to have the loudest voice.

we can shame people, we can belittle people, we can bully people in our fight to make the world right. but we are never going to win that battle because people do not like to be shamed, belittled or bullied...it usually makes them stop listening and just start throwing punches right back.

if we look at the numbers of homeless dogs in BC as the complex issue that it is....it would be naive to believe that the only reason we have homeless dogs here is because so many are imported from out of country every year. yes bringing in a thousand more homeless dogs, adds a thousand more dogs looking for homes to our dog population but we had too many homeless dogs before importers began mass importing. do we have too many dogs because too many dogs are being bred, either on purpose or by accident? most likely that is part of the problem too. are there so many homeless dogs because instead of committing to providing them with good homes for their entire lives...the trend now is to commit only until it becomes inconvenient. when people get dogs and do not meet the dogs basic needs for food, shelter, companionship, socialization, training and medical care..the dogs soon become some kind of problem to their families and lose their homes. and we are such an instant gratification, mobile and disposable society, is it any wonder so many of our canine companions fall victim to this? importing more homeless dogs, not spaying and neutering, having dogs we are not prepared to responsibly provide for, disposing of them after we get them all adds up to our homeless dog problem issue.

was there anything offensive in that last paragraph...any thing that was rude or untrue...anything there to get mad at?

someone might read that non offensive, non confrontational last paragraph and think about imported dogs, or breeding their dog...or even getting a dog if the time is not quite right yet.

we cannot continue to try to educate with a baseball bat...it is ineffective..it just doesn't work. and we cannot continue to participate in ideal wars because everyone is too busy watching the soap opera drama before them and not even considering the underlying message.

we need to learn how to discuss issues...not persons. it is the issues that affect millions upon millions of really sad and unhappy homeless dogs.

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