Dogged Blog

Kyrie: 1999-2011

Winter came early for Kyrie.

She collapsed this morning, and I rushed her to the vet. They were unable to do anything for her pain and so I let her go.

Love you, my fairy dog.

 

 

 

Are your pet adoption listings hurting pets?

This is my question for people writing pet adoption listings and posts: What are you trying to do?

That's not a rhetorical question. It's a sincere one, inspired by a disturbing conversation I had recently with some rescue group volunteers.

I manage a Facebook page for a campaign promoting shelter pet adoption. We welcome people posting pets needing homes on our wall, but there's a catch.

The research done for the campaign found that in order to find homes for all the dogs and cats currently dying in shelters, we need to push beyond the circle of people who adopt pets already. In other words, we need to market shelter pet adoption to a group of people who aren't already doing it.

It's not a lot of people, relative to the number who are adding pets to their families every year. In fact, it's a very doable task. But standing in the way is the perception on the part of many of these potential adopters that shelters are horrible, dank, scary places where terrible things happen, and that shelter pets  are neglected, unsocialized, sad, badly behaved and sickly.

Add to it negative emotions like guilt and fear, and whammo: they're turned off. They get their pet somewhere else.

So, how do you think those adopters are going to feel when they see a listing like this:

Sweet Leisha cries in her cage, she doesn't know why she is in the shelter, she doesn't know that it isn't her fault that they are going to kill her. She has done nothing wrong, yet here she sits, in a cold shelter. Leisha is a good girl, a friendly girl, an affectionate sweetheart that only wants to love and be loved. Can you foster or adopt Leisha? Her life is depending on it!

Or this one, titled, "To be destroyed Tuesday!":

New photo on sweet Sandy xoxo. Poor girl is just a baby yet the ACC decided to wrong her as they do so many others. She has a behavior rating of NONE and was hidden away in a back room until she caught "the cold". NEVER had a chance to be adopted or walked because 95% of the volunteers are only allowed to walk the 17 (yes, 17) dogs in adoptions. Thank god we at least have a picture... Just look at Sandy's eyes.. they are the window to her soul and I swear this dog has a pure soul that is full of love. Help her... SAVE HER!

In talking with a group of rescuers who have been posting these types of messages a lot lately, I said, "You know, if we want to save all the pets in shelters, we have to appeal to adopters who won't respond to this kind of message. We have to focus on the pet and his or her personality, and make them seem appealing and the adoption process seem fun and rewarding."

The reply? "We want to tell it this way, because we need people to know what's going on at  the shelter, and how bad it is, and how many wonderful pets are dying there every day."

I get it. You want to reform your local shelter. It makes perfect sense, and you should do it.

But not at the expense of the animals in that shelter.

Look at Austin, Tex. In the midst of a very intense fight to reform their local animal control agency, the adoption group, Austin Pets Alive!, stayed out of the political fray and focused on getting pets into homes. Day after day, while FixAustin.org stormed the barricades, APA! wrote glowing, sunny adoption listings, pointing out how wonderful every pet was, and appealing to the broadest possible group of adopters while turning off no one. Like this one for Shakespeare, the dog in the photo on this post:

Shakespeare is poetry in motion. He is super active, very curious, and loves to play.

Shakespeare has had a bad break. He injured his leg a long time ago and it healed at an odd angle. But that doesn't bother this Chihuahua mix one bit. He can keep up on a walk with no problem!

Once he knows you and can tell you want to be his friend, he will crawl right in your lap and love all over you! He is a happy-go-lucky dog who needs a home to call his very own.

Come see Shakespeare today and see all that he has to offer!

Today, Austin has reformed its shelter and is a no-kill city. Last month they saved 96 percent of the homeless dogs and cats in their community. They'd reached nearly 80 percent city-wide even before getting a new director at the city shelter, just on the strength of their adoption and rescue efforts alone.

Would you like some of that in your community? Then stop mixing your messages. Don't use pet adoption listings as a weapon of attack against bad sheltering practices.  Separate the two causes. Because ugly, frightening messages like the ones I pasted above will not only turn many adopters off of adopting that pet, but off pet adoption in general. Your messages are poisoning the well for other pets in your community and, thanks to the power of social media, pets all over the country.

When you want to adopt pets, focus on the pets and their personalities. Get people to feel curious and excited about them. Think about a soccer mom while you're writing the listing, and consider whether it describes a pet she'd want sleeping on her kids' feet at night, or one she'll perceive as a PTSD victim bringing baggage full of doom and gloom into her family.

And when you want to reform your shelter, Austin did it this way; check it out and try it in your community.

But leave the animals out of it; they are entirely innocent and should not be dragged into an ugly political battle, or tarnished by the ugliness happening at our country's worst shelters.

And above all, realize that potential adopters who are already on the fence shouldn't be shoved over to the other side by "WILL DIE TOMORROW" messages about "death row" and "hellhole shelter" and "slaughterhouse."

Republicans 2012: Keeping millions out of work to put one man out of a job

 

What is particularly painful about this truthful observation is that most Repbulican VOTERS don’t feel this way — this is about the egos and blindness of Republican legislators and the racism and ideological madness of a small but vocal group of faux-patriots.

I’m not saying I think that rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats don’t want different things for the country; I think we do. And the country I want doesn’t match what Republicans want. But I would say that nearly everyone in this country regardless of party wants to see more jobs and a better economy. Just a wild guess.

Buzz kill: How jargon is making you a crappy communicator

If someone's going to make their living as a communicator, you'd think they'd know how to communicate in clear language everyone can understand. Instead, professional communicators frequently speak in such a gobbledygook of jargon that no one who isn't a seminar-obsessed marketer or PR pro could ever figure out what the heck they're talking about.

Take this real-life Google+ exchange I had with a friend who is a writer, actor (including of Shakespeare) and legal professional, who I can assure you understands and knows how to use language quite well:

Him - Okay, what does "leverage my core competencies" mean? Did I leave my brain somewhere?

Me - It means "use my skills."

Him - Ahhh. Why would somebody say that?

Me - Because they think it makes them sound smart and connected, but it just makes them sound pretentious.

It's certainly true that we sometimes need specialized language to describe specialized aspects of a skill, job, hobby or other form of activity. I am not asking surgeons to stop talking about myocardial infarctions at their medical conferences (although I still think the phrase "heart attack" should spring to your lips when talking with a patient or her loved ones).

But using contrived and frequently made-up words, including turning nouns into verbs ("operationalize") and verbs into nouns ("learnings"), doesn't serve any purpose. It's simply making it harder for clients or journalists or whoever it is we're talking to to understand what we're saying. Which is, let me remind you, the exact opposite of what language, to say nothing of professional communications, is supposed to do.

I'm not suggesting that language should be held sacrosanct and never change. I'm not being a fuddy-duddy. I'm saying when you use this type of language, you sound like an idiot and no one not in your world understands you.

Kill the jargon. Speak clearly in ways people understand. Stop trying to sound like you're super-smart by using buzzwords. Sound super-smart because you have good ideas that are clearly expressed.

Our first fall in Michigan, and Rawley redecorates

This is the tree right outside my front door. The first turning leaves of fall!

I'm quite sure the whole Michigan category of this blog is going to be nothing but me acting like a kid at every seasonal change. From now on, I'll try to get the dogs in my photos, at least, LOL.

Off to the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market to pick up some meat for the dogs from a small rancher who has a stall there, and then have lunch with a friend/colleague I've never actually met who just moved here. Then home to let Kyrie out -- she really can't use the dog door, even though we put a ramp to it and it's taller than she is. I'd like to think it's Kyrie's autumn, too, but I'm pretty sure we're well and truly in winter now.

Also? Rawley just tried to drag one of my rugs out the dog door. To join the six towels he took out while I was in the shower. Oh, puppy. Never grow up.

Dear Typepad, can I haz spam controls now plz?

What with all the angst at Pet Connection closing down, the last thing I want in my life is any more CHANGE, but I'm thisclose to moving this blog.

I can't freaking believe the amount of spam I get in my comments, sometimes 20 spam comments a day. I've had to put the blog on moderation, which I HATE both because it slows down the conversations or even stops them, and because in general I loathe a heavy hand.

I filed a support ticket over this a few weeks ago, and the person was very apologetic and said they were working on better spam controls, but this is the thing: I get email notifications of new comments on this blog. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the notifications for spam comments are being caught by Gmail's filters. ZERO percent of my actual comments are.

  I can tell at a glance that these things are spam; they all have similar syntax in the username. They all have the same phrases in them. Obviously Gmail has no problem identifying them as spam.

Typepad, seriously: What's the problem? If I had the energy, I'd already be gone. And in every other way, I love this service. I'd happily pay twice what I'm paying now to make this crap go away and be able to turn my moderation off.

Yours in extreme annoyance,

Christie

Where you find caffeinated pet foster homes

I saw this flyer at the Starbucks in Auburn Hills, Mich. In case anyone's wondering, this is how you get more foster homes: go to where the people are, tell them why it's something they'll get a lot out of and that it saves animals, and put photos of cute pets on it.

Notice nearly all the phone tabs are gone.

This Starbucks is located in a very wealthy community very near one of the branches of the high-kill (77+ percent) Michigan Humane Society. Wonder if they could kill a few less animals if they were equally aggressive recruiting foster homes?

Freddie Mercury would have been 65...

The bell that rings inside your mind
Is challenging the doors of time

Fuck AIDS.