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humane
Dog's Life: Humane
Nationwide spay/neuter project adds to Bhutan’s canine Gross National Happiness.
Walk along the terraced rice fields of Pana, hike the switchbacks to the 17th-century Cheri Monastery in Thimphu or explore the back alleys of Paro and you see the same thing: dogs. In Bhutan, they are everywhere. Some nap soundly during the day, conked out on median strips and sidewalks and in the centers of traffic roundabouts, oblivious to the people and vehicles swirling around them. Others seem to have busy schedules, heading up to the monastery for the morning, then cruising back down to meet friends in the parking lot and head off on afternoon adventures. Near temples and tourist sites, they follow visitors in hopes of handouts, or seek shade under parked cars.
Look a little closer and you’ll notice something unusual: most of them—in fact, about 75,000 of the country’s estimated 100,000 dogs—have a triangular notch in their left ear. This distinctive mark identifies the dog as having been spayed or neutered as well as vaccinated against rabies. It also represents a huge milestone in the world of animal welfare.
Straddling the Himalayas, tiny Bhutan is perched between China to the north and India to the south. It may be best known for its Gross National Happiness index, in which Buddhist cultural and spiritual values are applied to socioeconomic development. The fact that these Buddhist values extend to all sentient beings is one reason Bhutan is now seven years into the world’s first—and arguably, most successful—nationwide spay-and-neuter effort, the reverberations of which are almost certain to be felt well outside its borders.
In partnership with Humane Society International (HSI), Bhutan has now sterilized about 75 percent of its total estimated canine population, hitting the critical tipping point at which most animal welfare experts believe a population stabilizes (meaning that growth stops and overall numbers decline). Maintaining that percentage will require about 3,200 sterilizations per year. The Bhutanese team, which now consists of highly experienced vets, vet techs, administrators and dogcatchers, intends to do that and more—to reach between 10,000 and 12,000 dogs per year and achieve its dream of both reducing the dog population and improving its overall health.
“Because the Bhutanese government was so welcoming and so supportive, we had a huge opportunity to tackle [canine population management] on a scale that was really unprecedented,” says Kelly O’Meara, director of HSI’s companion animals and engagement department. “Now we have this goldstandard model for a program covering an entire nation that we can use as an example for other governments who are looking for a real solution to their dog overpopulation problems.”
Community Dogs
Dogs in Bhutan aren’t typically owned, as we define it in the United States. But they aren’t really strays either. Although most households have dogs in the yard, these animals don’t go indoors, wear collars or chew on squeaky toys. Furthermore, Bhutan does not have dog breeders; the few purebreds in evidence likely come from India, Thailand or Nepal.
The majority are “community dogs,” meaning that they hang out in a specific locale—a city block, on the grounds of a hotel, at a temple or bus station—and the people who live and work in that area feed them, in accordance with Buddhist practices. The Junction Bookstore in the capital city of Thimphu, for instance, prominently displays a change jar on the counter to collect money to feed the eight dogs in its immediate area, all of whom have notched ears. Most community dogs are a healthy weight and reasonably well socialized, but that doesn’t mean they have easy lives. Among other things, almost no one takes responsibility for them if they’re injured or ill. (See the sidebar for an inspiring exception.)
Prior to 2009, Bhutan’s dog population was exploding. Overall economic development, including a proliferation of meat markets, had resulted in new sources of food scraps and garbage. Females were having multiple litters, and their puppies were wandering into traffic, with predictable results. The sight of so many dead puppies along the roadways upset both the locals and visitors flooding the country as a result of its push to expand tourism. Tourists were also complaining that they couldn’t sleep because of incessant nighttime barking; some tour groups and guides even suggested that their clients bring earplugs. (Unneutered male dogs bark and fight over females.)
Eager to appease the tourists and also to have cleaner streets in preparation for the 2008 coronation of a new king, the government began looking for ways to deal with its dog-population problem. As Buddhists, they rejected widespread killing in favor of impoundment, rounding up thousands of dogs and confining them to facilities in which they mingled freely. The result was dreadful; disease spread quickly, fights and injuries were rampant, and adult dogs routinely slaughtered newborn puppies.
HSI had cautioned against impounding, and about a year into the experiment, Rahul Sehgal, director of HSI Asia, did a status check with the government. He asked to tour the sites with government officials and religious leaders, all of whom were sickened by what they saw. “We knew that if they saw the conditions, it would have an impact,” says O’Meara.
Impounding isn’t just inhumane, it’s also ineffective. So is culling; killing dogs does not control the population in the long term. Both simply provide short-term relief from the symptoms “We really struggled,” recalls Sehgal. “But [then] we started recruiting and training local Bhutanese, people who could breathe easier, for one thing, speak the language and climb mountains. And it all began to take off.”
As part of the program, the Bhutanese government launched a massive public education campaign to explain the goals to its citizens. The national cable television network ran public service announcements about the importance of spay/neuter in decreasing sexually transmitted diseases and reducing injuries from dogfights. In television spots and in the local papers, officials described the meaning of the ear notch and announced that Tuesdays were “Love Your Dog Day.” Every Tuesday, people are encouraged to bring their dogs—however loosely that ownership is practiced—to the local clinic for free sterilization, health checks and vaccinations.
At the end of three years, the HSI/ Bhutan team had reached its goal of 50,000 sterilizations. The only problem was that the team’s field experiences had showed that initial estimates of the population size were way off— rather than 70,000 dogs, there were more like 100,000. With that in mind, both parties agreed to a Phase II extension from 2012 through 2014. Phase III followed and is set to end in 2018. Over the years, the makeup of the teams has shifted until it is now almost entirely Bhutanese; Sehgal provides oversight and can board a plane to Paro at a moment’s notice.
As Phase II began, the Bhutanese vet students were completing their educations in India and starting to join the national campaign. To hone their highvolume sterilization skills, they were all trained by HSI vets from India.
These techniques were on full display one Friday last May at a small clinic in Paro, where veterinarians Sangay Dorji and Bhakta Bdr Gurung made quick work of their 10 patients, who had been netted in the neighborhood that morning and soon thereafter, anesthetized and prepped for surgery, which included ear notching and cauterization. Post-surgery, vet techs placed the dogs on blankets in an outdoor recovery room. Each dog also received a rabies vaccination, ivermectin for parasites and skin problems, and a B complex injection. Once the dogs were back on their feet, the team returned them to the area in which they were originally caught.
Ten patients was actually a slow day. These roundups, which take place in every precinct of Bhutan every Friday, typically net 20 dogs, and Dorji has seen as many as 50 dogs come in a single day. He has performed 5,000 procedures since joining the program in 2013—he can spay a dog in less than 15 minutes and neuter one in less than 10. (Compare that to 45 minutes and 30 minutes, respectively, using a traditional method with a larger incision.) With a female patient on the operating table, he demonstrated a technique for keeping the stitches on the inside of the skin to reduce the likelihood of infection.
Dorji says that he and his team spend a lot of time out in the community, talking about animal health and spay/ neuter at schools, temples and hotels, sometimes even going door to door. They almost always have a receptive audience. “We’ll go to a temple and explain it to the monks, tell them it may take an entire day, but in the long term, it will be much better for everyone,” says Dorji. “Then all the monks work with us to bring us their dogs. Once people understand what we are doing and why it’s important, they always agree to help.”
That may be because animal welfare is already an integral part of Bhutanese culture. “As Buddhists, we believe that a dog could have been your parent in a former life, so we feed them and treat them with compassion,” says Dorji. “If anyone is seen abusing an animal, that person would be immediately challenged by other people.”
By now, most “owned” dogs in Bhutan are sporting notched ears. So, the remaining challenge is to target the dogs who have repeatedly evaded even the most expert dogcatchers. Dorji hopes to engage the community in that effort as well. He thinks that the people who regularly feed dogs in certain areas may have enough of a bond with them to be able to bring them in.
Kunzang Choki, who runs the dogfriendly Junction Bookstore, agrees. She and her coworkers have set up crates for the local dogs to sleep in outside the storefront, and dogs are welcome to lounge inside and partake of an occasional belly rub—not to mention regular meals, courtesy of the change jar. “We’re a small country,” says Choki. “If everyone took the initiative to take care of the dogs in their own area, we could solve this problem.”
Dogs Endure
For anyone worried that this effort is going to deprive Bhutanese of canine companions in the future, never fear. Even an effort as comprehensive as this one isn’t going to catch and neuter every dog in the country. “It will never happen that there won’t be dogs in Bhutan,” says Sehgal. “As long as there is garbage and an ecosystem to support them, there will be dogs, no matter how many we spay and neuter.”
BARNYARD BHUTAN
Jamie Vaughan fell in love with Bhutan on a visit in 2005 and decided she wanted to live there. A native of Virginia, Vaughan had been working for the local water district in Colorado, but figured she could take advantage of Bhutan’s incentives for attracting foreign investment to open a hotel. She just didn’t realize that her “hotel” would have long-term guests and that those guests would be animals.
But, these days, as founder and head of the Maya Foundation, which runs Barnyard Bhutan Animal Rescue & Sanctuary in Paro, she takes care of about 240 dogs, 25 cats, 14 horses and mules, 45 goats, 19 pigs, 18 cows, two mice and a pigeon.
“In the U.S., we just aren’t exposed to this kind of suffering. I started seeing dogs on the streets who had been hit by cars or injured in a fight or had horrific skin conditions, and I couldn’t leave them, so I brought them home,” she explains. “And then one dog turned into seven, which turned into 50, which turned into 100, and then I stopped counting.”
An ardent animal lover with no previous experience in animal welfare,Vaughan taught herself basic first aid, such as cleaning and bandaging wounds. She’s trying to secure Bhutan’s first-ever X-ray machine for animals, and works closely with Animal Ortho Care in Virginia, which makes prosthetic legs for her dogs and equines. She even helps build the new pens and enclosures that are constantly being added.
In a country with no animal shelters (as there is no culture of adoption) and no long-term-care facilities, Barnyard Bhutan serves a critical need. Vaughan collaborates closely with the government vet hospital in Paro, taking over nursing duties for animals who have been seriously injured or have had surgery at the hospital and keeping them at her sanctuary as long as needed—even if that’s for life.
Though she tries to return as many rehabilitated dogs as possible to the sites where they were originally found, that often isn’t possible. Dogs with permanent disabilities—such as amputations or brain damage from distemper or head traumas—can’t fend for themselves on the streets. One of her star residents, a dog who looks like the Himalayan cousin of a Bernese Mountain dog, was found at the iconic Tiger’s Nest Monastery by a filmmaker/tourist named Tim Gorski, who brought him to Bhutan Barnyard. The dog, named Tim in honor of his rescuer, is now the picture of health, with a glorious fur coat. Returning Tim to Tiger’s Nest would require him to exercise skills that he’s likely to have lost during his many months of rehab—namely, establishing himself in the existing pack—and Vaughan doesn’t want to risk it.
For more information about the Maya Foundation’s Barnyard Bhutan Program, or to arrange a visit to meet Tim, find the group on Facebook.
Dog's Life: Humane
Transporting shelter animals to northern California, Oregon and Washington
Since its inaugural journey on Valentine’s Day of 2015, Rescue Express has been the ticket to a guaranteed future for more than 5500 animals who were once at risk of euthanasia. Headquartered in Eugene, Oregon, Rescue Express picks up dogs and cats from shelters located mostly in high-volume shelters in Southern and Central California and delivers them to underpopulated shelters in the Pacific Northwest. Twice monthly, the former school busses — now outfitted to provide and comfortable animal transport — have been traveling a well-worn route along Interstate 5.
Then, tragedy struck the Gulf Coast. So in early September, the organization expanded its outreach to include animal victims of the recent flooding in Louisiana. With local shelters unable to accommodate the influx of displaced pets, several national and local organizations worked in concert to help bring dogs and cats — those for whom owners could not be located — to safety around the U.S. The Rescue Express bus picked up 55 of those pups who had been transported to Salt Lake City. From there, they headed farther west to “receiver shelters” in Oregon and Washington where they can be adopted into loving homes.
For now, transport needs are still great along the I-5 corridor. But plans for the group’s future include initiatives like providing low-cost spay/neuter services and working with local lawmakers to improve animal welfare regulations. Want to help? Get on board and make a donation to — or read more about — Rescue Express.
Dog's Life: Humane
Little Allie has a true Cinderella tale. I first encountered her at a former landfill-turnedpark along San Francisco Bay’s eastern shoreline. Lola, our Pointer spotted her; I just heard warning barks, then saw a flash of white fur. The next two mornings, same thing. Curious, I contacted Mary Barnsdale, a friend who heads that park’s dog user group, and learned that they had been hearing stories about this elusive stray going back almost six months, but no one had been able to pinpoint a location. Now we knew where to find her!
Animal Control, stretched thin, didn’t have the personnel to corral her, so Mary turned to Jill Posener of Paw Fund to see if she could humanely trap the little dog, and I gladly volunteered to help. The first two tries came up short, but on the third day, we went out at the crack of dawn, set the traps with hot fried chicken—Jill’s go-to lure for hungry dogs—and bingo, we got her!
Albany PD officer Justin Kurland helped us ferry Allie in the capture crate to the parking lot. He, too, was thrilled; he had often seen her when out on park patrol, but she always eluded him. (For more about Allie’s rescue, see thebark.com/allie.) It’s amazing to consider how much intelligence and resourcefulness it took for such a young, small dog to survive on her own. Since there’s nothing in the way of food or fresh water at this park, her feat is even more impressive.
After a brief stint at the Berkeley shelter, Jill fostered Allie, got her ready for an adoption event and, in short order, found her the perfect match: Mary Lou Salcedo, a retired senior. As Mary Lou told us, “Allie gives me so much happiness after I lost my Bichon at the age of 16. Now I found my new companion.” Mary Lou has the time, patience and tender love that Allie deserves.
We are overjoyed to show her off on the cover in a photo taken a scant three weeks after her capture. The photo was taken by Mo Saito, who recently set up his Doghouse Photos studio near our office. A former London fashion photographer, Mo made a turn dogward in this country. He has a masterful skill, which he put to good use in getting this shot —while Allie wasn’t fearful, she was rather busy exploring the studio. Thankfully, Mary Lou’s friend, Chase Wilson, a San Francisco firefighter and ardent dog lover who’s been invaluable with Allie’s training, came along to help wrangle her. We think you’ll agree that she, Mo and Mary Lou did the trick.
News: Editors
A ruling in an animal abuse case in Oregon should have far-reaching ramifications because the Supreme Court of that state ruled recently that pets are not just “mere” property. The case involved the conviction of a dog owner who was starving her pet. In this instance the owner had appealed her conviction for second-degree neglect because a veterinarian had drawn the dog’s blood (without her permission).
According to the Court’s summary of the case:
The case at issue began in 2010, when an informant told the Oregon Humane Society that Amanda L. Newcomb was beating her dog, failing to properly feed it and keeping it in a kennel for many hours a day. An animal-cruelty investigator went to Newcomb's apartment in December 2010 and, once invited in, saw "Juno" in the yard with "no fat on his body." The dog, the investigator reported, "was kind of eating at random things in the yard, and trying to vomit."
The investigator asked why, and Newcomb said she was out of dog food but that she was going to get more that night, according to the summary of the case.
The investigator believed that defendant had neglected Juno. He asked her for permission to take the dog in for medical care, but defendant, who thought her dog looked healthy, refused and became irate. The officer therefore took protective custody of Juno without defendant’s consent, both as evidence of the neglect and because of the “strong possibility” that Juno needed medical treatment. He transported Juno to the Humane Society, where Juno would be housed and medically treated as appropriate. From medical tests, the officer expected also to be able to determine whether neglect charges were warranted or whether Juno should be returned to defendant.
The vet gave Juno food, charted his weight and measured his rapid weight gain over several days. The vet also drew Juno's blood and ruled out any disease. The investigator concluded nothing was wrong with the dog other than it was very hungry.
Newcomb was then convicted of second-degree animal neglect, a misdemeanor. Among other problems with the conviction, Newcomb argued, authorities violated her constitutional rights to be protected from unreasonable searches of property by drawing blood from her dog. Under Oregon law, animals are defined as property.
The prosecutor Adam Gibbs had argued that taking the dog to the veterinarian office was similar to care in suspected child-abuse cases. And further argued that a dog is not a container—like an inanimate piece of property—that requires a warrant. Rather, Gibbs argued that a dog "doesn't contain anything"—and that what's inside a dog is just "more dog."
The Supreme Court’s ruling agreed with his, stating that the chemical composition of Juno's blood was not "information" that Newcomb "placed in Juno for safekeeping or to conceal from view."
And concluded that the “defendant had no protected privacy interest in Juno’s blood that was invaded by the medical procedures performed.” And while dogs are considered personal property in Oregon, the ownership rights aren’t the same as with inanimate property, imposing other limits. “Those limitations, too, are reflections of legal and social norms. Live animals under Oregon law are subject to statutory welfare protections that ensure their basic minimum care, including veterinary treatment. The obligation to provide that minimum care falls on any person who has custody and control of a dog or other animal.”
Also interestingly the court added,
“As we continue to learn more about the interrelated nature of all life, the day may come when humans perceive less separation between themselves and other living beings than the law now reflects. However, we do not need a mirror to the past or a telescope to the future to recognize that the legal status of animals has changed and is changing still[.]”
See the full opinion here.
Dog's Life: Travel
Value-Added Vacations
Jenny Collins of Portland, Ore., is a dog nut with a big heart. She and her yellow Lab, Patience, a certified therapy dog, have spent years together in Reading with Rover programs at prisons on family visiting days and with children at Ronald McDonald House.
So, when she and her friend Amy, who works with a Beagle rescue group, began planning a Hawaiian vacation, they naturally wondered if they could incorporate helping a shelter into their time in the islands. When they discovered the Maui Humane Society (MHS) website and its Beach Buddies program, their first thoughts were “Perfect! Awesome!” And when they shared their plans with friends, the usual reaction was, “Of course you are!”
Beachin’ It
Shelter dogs everywhere benefit from a break in routine. Even in the best facilities, even in Hawaii, shelter life is stressful for most dogs. Getting outdoors, exercising and interacting with the world does wonders for their emotional health, which ultimately makes them more adoptable. MHS’s Beach Buddies program gives its dogs a day of fun away from the shelter, hanging with a vacationer who’s primed to go out and explore.
Beach Buddies started in April 2015 and required a leap of faith, according to Jerleen Bryant, the society’s CEO. “The shelter on Kauai had started a program called Shelter Dogs on Field Trips, and it had been going about a year; they had great success and limited problems.
We held off another year, asking lots of questions, [then launched] our own program.” In the few months it has been active, it has proven to be a big hit.
For Bryant, the overriding factor in determining whether to go with the Beach Buddies program was, How does the program benefit the animals? She knew that socializing and exposure would improve adoptions, and indeed, adoption rates are better because of the Beach Buddies dogs, according to Bryant. “Some people adopt the dog they took out for the day,” she says. (Kauai Humane Society’s website notes that they adopt out four dogs each month to people participating in Shelter Dogs on Field Trips.)
So far, MHS staff and volunteers— not to mention the dogs—love the program, which has grown from one day a week to twice weekly (currently, Wednesday and Friday) with five or more “Beach Buddies–approved” dogs available each day. “We choose rocksolid, no-red-flags dogs,” says Bryant. “Once the dogs are selected, people who sign up can choose among them, firstcome first-served.
“People are calling all the time to participate. The program is now always fully booked, but if people book a time far enough ahead, they’ll get in.” Bryant hopes that, with more resources, they can add more days per week to meet demand, which would be a plus for dogs and vacationers alike.
The program is run by a volunteer coordinator, who matches dogs with vacationers who have signed up online. The shelter has five staging areas, where, among other things, the lucky dogs chosen to participate are bathed before meeting their vacationer and heading out the door.
Both small and big dogs are available. They go out with special “Adopt me!” harnesses and leashes, a backpack with supplies for the day (towel, water, bowl, poop bags, treats, emergency contact info) and a list of suggested places to visit. Participants are encouraged to record their outing, and the shelter shares their videos and photos on its Facebook page.
Arriving at MHS for their Beach Buddies day, Jenny and Amy went through a short orientation, during which they were instructed to keep the dogs on-leash at all times and to not leave them alone in a car. Since they both wanted a dog for the day, they had asked for dogs who were compatible, and were assigned two who had been surrendered to the shelter together: Jax, a two-year-old Lab mix, and Zane, a hound/Corgi mix. As Jenny recalls, “Both connected to us pretty quickly. Dogs are so accepting; they roll with change.”
Jenny and Amy took their charges to a beach, but quickly realized that the pups weren’t into the ocean scene, so they went on a hike in an experimental forest (“It felt like Oregon,” Jenny says). Afterward, they went to more populated places, including a Starbucks, where they sat with the dogs on a patio. A couple of people came up to meet Jax and Zane, and Jenny and Amy happily handed out the bio cards the shelter had provided; the cards also supplied MHS’s contact information and a “wish list” of items the shelter can always use. Postouting, MHS asks participants to provide a write-up of their experience for potential adopters, and Jenny and Amy were happy to do so; it gave them another way to help the shelter and its dogs.
Come Fly with Me
Wings of Aloha, another MHS program, was born out of desperation, according to Bryant. On Maui, there are far more dogs than homes able to take them in. The island has a population of roughly 140,000, and the shelter takes in 8,000 animals each year, one-third of them dogs. (The shelter is working hard to control the island’s population of homeless animals. With grants from PetSmart Charities, they’ve started M*A*S*H [Mobile Animal Surgical Hospital] clinics, high-volume sterilization clinics that earlier this year provided free spay/neuter surgeries, vaccinations, microchipping and licensing to 712 cats and 338 dogs over a nine-day period. Nine more M*A*S*H clinics are scheduled through 2016.)
Given that there are a finite number of homes able to adopt, and that it’s especially hard for renters to do so, the shelter staff asked themselves what MHS could do to address the imbalance. The answer? Fly some of the dogs to the mainland, where partner shelters help find them homes. Thus, Wings of Aloha was born.
When Wings launched in 2012, Bryant was the shelter’s director of development. Before moving to Maui, she had run a rescue organization in Oregon, often pulling up to 40 dogs at a time from shelters if their lives were at risk. Moving large numbers of dogs didn’t faze her. However, the cost to do so was an obstacle.
Fueled by donor money, Wings of Aloha began by purchasing airline tickets and crates to transport the dogs stateside, also paying to return the crates, which turned out to be cheaper than buying new ones. Eventually, the shelter forged partnerships with Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines; the airlines agreed to attach a shelter dog to a passenger’s —any passenger’s—ticket, significantly reducing the cost of transportation.
During their Beach Buddies orientation, Jenny and Amy learned about Wings of Aloha, and signed up. As luck would have it, Jax and Zane were two of the dogs scheduled to go on the women’s flight back to Portland. They and three other dogs were all attached to Amy’s ticket, reducing the price per dog to $100 and saving the shelter approximately $1,000 in fees.
“The shelter people had everything ready,” says Jenny. “They know all the rules. TSA took each dog out of the crate, checked the crate and the food in the bag taped on top, and zip-tied the crate door closed after the inspection.” Even though they weren’t obligated to, at the airport, Jenny and Amy stayed with the dogs until they were taken behind the check-in counter on their way to being loaded on the airplane.
Upon arrival in Portland, in another act of generosity, the women waited with the still-crated, off-loaded dogs until volunteers from a nearby Vancouver, Wash., shelter arrived to whisk them off to their new temporary home. Both women felt a strong connection to these dogs and wanted to be sure they made it to their final destination. “The Alaska Airlines people were willing to cut the zip ties for us in Portland, but we didn’t have leashes, so we asked them not to,” Jenny says. Jenny was impressed with how seamlessly the whole process worked.
In addition to financial resources, Wings of Aloha requires a significant effort from MHS staff and volunteers. Two lead volunteers field calls from people willing to share their airline tickets, and coordinate with mainland shelters accepting the transported dogs. They create a weekly list of dogs to transport, including a bio, pictures and why they’re good candidates for transfer: they’re too stressed in their current environment, or they’ve been there too long and need a change of scenery. “We have plenty of awesome dogs,” Bryant says, noting that as we spoke, 13 dogs were being prepped for transfer the following week. Since the program’s start in 2012, MHS has shipped some 740 dogs to the mainland.
“It’s amazing to have so many people [willing to] attach dogs to their tickets,” Bryant says. “We get pictures of people with the dogs in their crates at check-in and post them to our Facebook page so everyone can feel good about these dogs and the wonderful opportunity they have to start over in the Pacific Northwest. [People are] doing their part to save a life.”
Jenny’s vacation experience with MHS and their dogs didn’t end when she waved good-bye to Jax, Zane and the others heading off to the Vancouver shelter. “Our Beach Buddies outing occurred on May 1; our flight to Portland was May 5. On May 8, I received an email from MHS saying that Jax and Zane had been adopted into forever homes. It was totally meant to be!” says Jenny, who couldn’t be happier about the outcome and her role in it.
Jenny remains on the MHS email list, getting updates on the shelter’s animals and programs. “I wanted to buy one of their T-shirts, but they insisted I take it as a gift, saying I’d done so much. [She and Amy purchased several items on the shelter’s wish list at the local Target and Petco stores and made a donation.] I cried!” Asked if she would participate again in either program, Jenny says, “In a heartbeat. The experience did so much for me. It was the highlight and best memory of my vacation!”
News: Editors
Today, actor David Duchovny (The X-Files, Aquarius) launches the “Lick My Face” campaign to support the nonprofit organization, Target Zero. In a new online video, Duchovny’s rescue canine, Brick, devours the actor in licks—whereby for every lick, Duchovny offers to donate at least one dollar to the zero-kill cause (to boost the lick count, peanut butter is applied). Duchovny challenges all of his social media followers, as well as fellow celebrities, ex-wife Tea Leoni and X-Files co-star, Gillian Anderson, to do the same. It’s a playful take on the hugely successive viral Ice Bucket Challenge phenomenon that benefitted ALS a few summers ago.
All silliness aside, Duchovny is committed to zero-kill and helping shelters meet the challenge. He is an active board member of the Target Zero non-profit and a longtime shelter advocate. “Target Zero is showing a clear path to end the euthanasia of adoptable shelter animals through its proven-to-work mentorship model. We’re currently in ten Fellow Cities, but I’d like us to be in 20, 30, 40 more as quickly as possible to keep saving more and more lives. My hope is this campaign will get the word out far and wide that we're here to help,” enthuses Duchovny.
Co-Founded by social entrepreneur and goodwill activist Tracey Durning, Target Zero provides comprehensive strategies to decrease shelter intake and increase live release rates to achieve the 90+% shelter save rate. Launched in 2013, Target Zero has already gotten two cities to zero; Waco, Texas and Huntsville, Alabama, with Brevard County, Florida set to get there by October 2016. The organization currently works in ten Fellow Cities. “No kill” is defined as 90% or more of cats and dogs getting out of a city’s shelters safely. 10% or less is accounted for by animals that will die from illness regardless of medical treatment and/or large dogs with nonrehabilitative aggression issues.
Visit lickmyface.org to get involved. The challenge is simple and easy, plus fun for the licked and lickee!
Lick My Face Guidelines
- • With hashtags: #targetzero #lickmyface,
- • Challenge others to join the cause
News: Editors
Bark’s long-time contributing editor Twig Mowatt has been covering humane efforts both here and abroad for nearly two decades. She recently had the chance to visit Bhutan, the country with the enviable “Gross National Happiness Index” to cover a story for us about how the Bhutanese are tackling their stray dog population. Twig just got back from this amazing trip and was approached by PRI’s “The World” (Public Radio International) for an interview with Marco Werman that aired yesterday. We are so proud of her (this was her first radio interview) and thrilled that the Humane Society International received this invaluable promotion. We hope that other countries are inspired by Bhutan’s innovative national effort in spaying and neutering.
Twig’s indepth article on this program and her trip will be featured in our next (Fall) issue. And, yes, there is a dog magazine called The Bark. And we are proud to have Twig as our International Humane Editor!
Click for a full transcript of the PRI interview and photographs.
Dog's Life: Humane
1. Every time you volunteer, you are fueled by love. And that kind of fuel is different from greed, or fear, or competitiveness. It will give you the strength to do things you never thought you could do. And then some.
2. Dress for the occasion, meaning wear jeans and a T-shirt that have seen better days. Leave your jewelry, especially dangly earrings, at home. Keep your hair in a messy bun (some dogs mistake pony tails for rope toys). Please don’t bother with makeup, it will inevitably be licked off your face. And for the love of God, no flip flops. The day you wear them will be the day you inevitably step in poop.
3. Don’t be afraid to talk to the animals. Tell them about the advice you give but cannot follow. Tell them your secrets and fears. And then let their tongues and thumping tails and clumsy paws remind you that there are still plenty of reasons to smile. That life is not as serious as it seems.
4. It is not a good idea to try posting pictures of dogs on Instagram when they are jumping all over you. Rather than typing, “Adopt Joey and Spot at the Department of Animal Services,” you will inevitably type “Department of Anal Services.” And then your post will go viral for all the wrong reasons.
5. When you tell someone that you volunteer at an animal shelter, and they say that they love animals—but it’s too sad, they could never do it—tell them that you once felt that way, too. Tell them how shocking it was to find out that you could in fact do it. And that sadness is not the enemy after all. The enemy is doing nothing. The enemy is fear beating out compassion and empathy and love.
6. Dog poop is gross, but not life-threatening.
7. In most cases, it doesn’t take much to make a tail wag. A yard of grass. Fresh food. A warm touch. A soft blanket. A ten-minute walk. Dogs appreciate the little things, and we can learn a lot from this.
8. The animals are seeking what we seek. They want to be warm, not cold. They want to be safe, not vulnerable and unprotected. They want to be seen and heard and loved, not invisible. They want to be themselves, not somebody else. They want to forget the pain of their pasts, but sometimes they can’t.
9. Learn to take care of yourself, even if at first, it’s for the sake of the animals. If you try to be everything to everyone, you will burn out. Set boundaries. If you don’t take care of you, you can’t take care of them.
10. Goodbyes are hard. Always.
11. Frequently ask yourself this: How might my life be transformed if I treated myself with the same love and kindness that I offer to the animals I care for? And then, every day, try to do it.
Dog's Life: Humane
How simple, innovative changes can improve shelter and adoption rates.
In journalist Kim Kavin’s book, The Dog Merchants, she investigates the complex businesses and networks involved in the buying and selling and “homing” of dogs: breeders, pet stores, pet brokers, the AKC, local shelters and rescue organizations. It is her goal to advance the conversation on how dogs are treated, from puppy mills to high-kill shelters. In the following excerpt, Kavin explains how rebranding shelter dogs can make them more desirable and, therefore, adoptable.
Her face is pallid, probably not just in the black-and-white photograph, but also in real life. She’s looking back over her right shoulder at the camera with eyes desperately wide and bloodshot. Nobody has to hear her speak to know she needs to be set free. “Chained to a desk with nothing but a mouse to entertain her,” the flier’s big type reads.
In another flier, it’s a male, also pale-faced and hunched over. He looks as if the air all around has become so thick, so stagnant, that he can no longer bear to rise. The corners of his mouth are turned down, darn near weighted by jowls. “For nine hours a day, he is kept in a tiny box,” it states. “And ignored.”
These fliers aren’t of dogs. They’re of people—models photographed sitting in office conference rooms and in the glow of a cubicle’s computer screen, wearing the dismayed expressions shared by so many nine-to-five prisoners of concrete jungles, all as part of a groundbreaking campaign called the “Human Walking Program.”
It sprang from the brain of Jake Barrow, a creative director in the Melbourne, Australia, office of GPY&R, a creative agency that is 600 people strong with a network of 186 global agencies. Barrow and his colleagues typically work on campaigns for big-ticket clients including the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival and Australia’s Defence Force, but he had an idea that had been in the back of his mind for a few years, and no matter how many times he tried to turn it off, it kept lighting him right back up.
“We were going through a busy period at work, and occasionally, I would walk a friend’s dog just for fun,” Barrow says. “And I thought, ‘Oh, that could be a service for office workers, to go out and walk a dog, completely to benefit the human.’ That was years and years ago, and I just remembered the feeling I got from walking that dog, and it was really good stress relief. It was completely selfish. I’ve been trained to recognize a good idea, and together with my copywriter at the time, we turned it into the Human Walking Program.”
There was no client. No income was to be made. That didn’t stop Barrow and his partner, who worked pro bono on the concept for six months and built it into a small presentation, sort of a miniature version of what they might do for a regular advertising customer. Then they asked one of the account salesmen at GPY&R to call the local shelter in Melbourne— which happens to be The Lost Dogs Home, founded in 1910 and today serving as Australia’s largest, caring for more than 31,000 dogs and cats each year.
“I said, ‘Hi, I’m Jake, this is Dan, we have this idea,’” Barrow recalls with a laugh. “They definitely saw the benefit of showing the dogs as the heroes instead of just sad. We did completely flip it around and say, ‘It’s about the humans getting out of their cages.’”
Shelter workers gave the GPY&R fliers to commuters from 8 ’til 9 a.m. in central business district train stations the week of the event, and they passed them around at all the buildings near the park where the walk would be held. Social media and radio stations were engaged as well, to spread the message that humans needed a break and a stroll—“to go walkies,” as they say Down Under—perhaps even more than the dogs did.
When the day arrived, the weather was gorgeous. Barrow, like everyone else involved, found himself standing in a park, waiting with a rumbly stomach, wondering what the heck might happen next.
“We were quite nervous,” he recalls. “Are we going to get the crowds we want? Is it going to be too big of a crowd? Is somebody going to get bitten by a dog? There were a lot of unknowns. You can only do so much planning for these things.”
During the next few hours, his unease gave way to elation. More than 5,000 office workers came outside to stand right alongside him, leaving behind their ergonomically accented desks for a much-needed meander the way nature intended. The Lost Dogs Home paired each participant with a homeless pooch so they could get to know one another in the fresh air, outside the shelter environment, in a way that would all but obliterate any ingrained ideas about the dogs and let them be seen as the happy, friendly pups they had always been inside their enclosures, where most of the people would have never seen them at all, or might have assumed there was something wrong with them.
“Their negative stereotype still exists, in our experience, because people do not realize that cats and dogs largely end up at shelters as a consequence of a human circumstance,” says Martha Coro, a spokeswoman for The Lost Dogs Home. “The Human Walking Program was first and foremost a creative campaign that challenged people’s intrinsic beliefs about lost and abandoned animals, [and] that also engaged a real-life event to tie it all together.”
After the three-hour walk, amazing things happened. Every one of the dogs got adopted. Hits on the shelter’s online adoption pages spiked 42 percent. A fund-raising appeal one month later became the shelter’s highest-grossing in nearly a decade. Barrow says it was one of the most satisfying days of his life—and even he failed to predict the impact his idea would have next.
“We did the event and the campaign, and whenever we do something more unusual than a television commercial, we create a case study, and we did that with this event and how successful it was,” he says. “Somehow, the website Upworthy got hold of the case study, and the next thing you know, we had half a million hits on this case-study video, and we’re getting calls from all over the world wanting to do a Human Walking Program in their own cities. We ended up saying we can’t ignore it, so we set up a website that lets people create their own Human Walking Program. People can download all the ads and localize them to their area. It’s a step-by-step guide. I know someone did one all the way over in the U.S. The calls were coming from everywhere.”
What’s so great about thehumanwalkingprogram.org— in addition to the fact that it hands over, for free to the world, what Barrow estimates as an $80,000 to $100,000 creative campaign—is that it also makes clear how to copy the strategy as much as the actual walk.
“The creative rebranding of adoption dogs came first,” Coro says, “which in a way [was] just as influential as the event.” And she’s right. What sets the Human Walking Program apart on a crucial level is its professional marketing approach. It was developed by seasoned pros, as an advertising initiative that helped people get to know the product—great dogs— instead of making a desperate plea for money to save their tragic little lives. Beliefs about homeless pooches are often so deep-seated that it takes a physical change of space or a professional advertising campaign to knock biases out of people’s thought process, much like getting them to buy generic-brand foods at the supermarket or new-brand cars off the lot.
“The ads with the sad dogs, I guess there was a time and a place for it, but as far as the general public goes, it gets squashed over now,” Barrow says. “We need something else to wake us up and pay attention.”
More and more shelters around the globe are coming to the same conclusion and partnering their efforts accordingly. Instead of begging people to see the wonderful pooches they know are inside the enclosures, they are looking to leaders in everything from creative design to architecture to retail sales to make new messaging work. It just might be the beginning of an unprecedented rebranding effort, potentially on the scale of what breeders did starting in the mid-1800s when convincing dog lovers that purebreds were the ideal pets in the first place.
The signs of change are worldwide. In Berlin, Germany, the animal-protection society turned to the renowned architect and cat lover Dietrich Bangert to design its multimilliondollar facility, one of Europe’s largest at 163,000 square feet (more than 15,000 square meters, about the size of the largest Target retail store on the U.S. East Coast). The Berlin shelter holds about 1,400 animals at a time and cares for about 12,000 animals a year. Bangert has serious drafting chops and is perhaps best known for his work on an art museum in Bonn and the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven; the result at the Berlin facility was a far different environment than most people imagine as an animal shelter, a modern study in concrete and water so futuristic that it was used as a set for the 2005 Charlize Theron film Aeon Flux, set in the year 2415.
Creating the architecturally inviting space gave potential dog owners a chance to breathe a bit easier when walking inside, so their brains would take precedence over any bad feelings created by more typical shelter buildings. They looked up instead of feeling down. They intuited that it was okay to relax, because nothing they were about to see would depress them. The professionally designed atmosphere allowed people’s minds to focus not on what they thought a shelter might be like, but instead on what was actually before them: friendly, healthy dogs the volunteers had gone so far as to house-train prior to sending them home, in the hopes of making each pairing more likely to stick.
Underlying Dietrich Bangert’s futuristic, geometric design for Tierheim Berlin is the architect’s commitment to creating maximum physical and emotional comfort for the approximately 1,400 animals it shelters, as well as its workers and visitors. A 163,000- square-foot, glass-andconcrete facility, its circular pavilions, with their cantilevered overhangs and splayed walls, incorporate fresh air and natural light. Each pavilion consists of three spherical structures arranged around an enclosed open space, rather like petals on a daisy.
Yet another example is in Costa Rica, where the Territorio de Zaguates shelter had nearly all mixed-breed dogs while adopters primarily wanted purebreds, so it worked with the San Jose–based creative agency Garnier BBDO to launch a marketing campaign around the idea of “unique breeds.” Instead of calling the dogs mutts, they followed the same branding convention long used by breeders, labeling the dogs as things that sounded surprisingly like kennel club– recognized Dandle Dinmont Terriers and Finnish Laphunds: Chubby-Tailed German Dobernauzers, Fire-Tailed Border Cockers, Alaskan Collie Fluffyterriers, White-Chested Dachweilers, and Brown-Eyed Australian Dalmapointers. (Is it really any different from inventing a German Blabrador?)
Watercolor artists painted renderings that mimicked the design of the purebred standard drawings, then added the unique breed names in a highfalutin, royal wedding–worthy typeface. The posters created a visual way for people to process the message that breed names, when it comes to choosing a pet, are often no more than a line of marketing copy.
By the end of the Territorio de Zaguates campaign— “When You Adopt a Mutt, You Adopt a Unique Breed”—the shelter’s dogs had received more than $450,000 in news and public-relations coverage. More than a half-million people had discussed and shared the dogs on Facebook. Adoptions went up 1,400 percent, and the shelter got sponsors who now cover the whole of its operating expenses.
All in all, the teams in Costa Rica and Germany experienced the same thing organizers of the Human Walking Program saw in Australia: Working with professional marketers and designers made a huge impact on people’s perceptions about the dogs, who were suddenly in demand and welcomed into people’s homes en masse—even though the pooches themselves hadn’t changed at all.
“We have been inundated with interest from shelters from South Africa to the USA, which leads us to believe that shelters across the world generally share the same priority of changing the public’s perception of shelter pets,” Coro says from Melbourne, “and now there is a tried and tested plan that can help us all do that.”
Mike Arms is a business-minded advocate who saves dogs without making any excuses for raising their value along with the professional value of the people working with them. Since 1999, he has been president of the Helen Woodward Animal Center in California, where he tripled adoption rates while charging some of the highest dog-adoption fees in America and recruiting employees for their business and marketing savvy. (As of 2013, according to an independent auditor’s report, the center’s management salaries and benefits totaled $373,420. Arms’ pay was not itemized.) Nobody can buy a dog from the center for less than $399. A couple of Labrador puppies sold recently for $500 apiece, and a six-month-old Goldendoodle went for $1,000 not long ago. Arms has no problem telling adopters they should pay fair market value because his dogs have just as much intrinsic value, and make just as fabulous pets, as the purebreds going for similar prices from breeders. “Why is it,” he asks, “that somebody can go out and spend $2,000 or $3,000 on a pet and after thirty days realize it’s not for them, and they take it to their local facility, and the minute it crosses that threshold, the value is gone?”
His approach leaves many shelter operators with mouths agape, especially the ones who can’t even give their dogs away for free. Arms believes that their failure has nothing to do with the quality of the dogs, but instead with the quality of the dogs in people’s minds, which he sees as the job of shelter directors to manage. The problem isn’t the dogs. The problem is the marketing.
“I’m getting more and more frustrated with my peers as I get older,” he says. “It just seems like they’re going backwards in time now. They think the way to increase adoptions is to lower fees and come up with gimmicks. That doesn’t increase adoptions at all. All that does is devalue the pets. How in the world can we change the public’s perception of these beautiful pets if we’re the one doing this?”
The root of the problem with homeless dogs and pricing, he says, goes back to the way many rescue organizations got started. It’s usually a woman who finds a puppy in the street and gets him into a loving home. The woman likes the feeling of having done right by the pup, so she helps more dogs, and then more dogs, until she decides to form an organization along the lines of a humane society. “They weren’t getting paid for it,” Arms says. “They just liked doing it as a hobby. So they felt, ‘If I’m not doing it for pay, nobody else should be doing it for pay.’”
Try telling a breeder he should care for all the dogs for free and give them away out of the goodness of his heart. Rescuers often have a completely different mentality, Arms says, one that devalues their own worth as well as the worth of the dogs.
Arms regularly finds himself standing on stage in front of a room filled with rescuers who fit that mold, most of them women, even today. He tells a particular story again and again, one that seems to make the message clear. It starts when he asks them what they would do if they were invited to a formal dinner banquet at a high-end restaurant. What is the very next thing you’d do, he asks, after you accepted the invitation?
To a person, they answer that they’d go out and buy a new dress. “Now, human nature is that a lot of people will put a budget on what they’re going to spend on that outfit,” he tells them. “You go out in the department store and start trying on outfits and none of them fit you right. The color’s not right. You get depressed and you’re going to walk out, and then on your way out you see a dress that’s a hundred dollars more. And it fits. And you buy it. You’re willing to spend three hundred or four hundred dollars on that dress that you’re going to wear three or four times, but you’re not willing to spend it on a dog. What are we teaching the public about value?”
Arms loves dogs just as much as the rescuers in the audience do, but he treats the pooches far more like products than most of his colleagues might—because he believes that’s what gets them into homes. He’s had courtesy shoppers from the department store Macy’s come through his shelter to tell him what he can do better in terms of staffing and displays. He brought in BMW salesmen to train his staff. (“Nobody is a better salesman than a car salesman,” he says.) As of this writing, Bruce Nordstrom, former chairman of the upscale retailer Nordstrom Inc., was scheduled to do training at the center, all because Arms believes the sales techniques in the dog-rescue business need a swift reboot into the modern era of retail sales. He wants to be the BMW of the used-pooch industry, the place where buyers can go and know they’re getting a top-quality product worth every penny of the extra money, not unlike a pre-owned luxury sedan.
“They can call it adoptions or rehoming or whatever they want,” Arms says of rescuers, “but they’re in the business of selling used dogs. And they’d better be good at it, because those lives are on the line.”
Arms has been invited to speak to shelter directors everywhere from British Columbia in Canada to multiple cities in New Zealand, preaching the philosophy that shelters should be run by the savviest marketing and sales people, raising their prices and preaching the overall value of every great pup. Shelter directors should have a heart for dogs, but first and foremost, a mind for business—because that’s the only thing that breaks through stereotypes and helps dog lovers understand what they’re really getting for their money.
“We have to change the public’s perception,” he says. “The public believes the pets in pet facilities are there because there’s something wrong with the pet. We have to teach them that the pet is there because there’s something wrong with the person who had the pet. That’s the reality.”
Dog's Life: Humane
Sanctuaries are stressed and animals are in danger.
The direwolves who bound through HBO’s Game of Thrones sprang from the imagination of author George R. R. Martin, who wrote the bestselling books on which the popular program is based. (Real-world dire wolves —Canis dirus, or “fearsome dog”—became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene and are not considered to be the direct ancestor of any modern canine species.)
In early 2015, media sources began to blame Game of Thrones for nurturing wolfdog ownership. Apparently, people trying to replicate a fictional experience at home were seeking out dogs with wolf content. Too late, many of these people learned that caring for a wolfdog, as the type is called, is nothing like living with a domesticated dog.
A wolfdog is defi ned as the result of the mating of any domestic dog with one of the four wolf subspecies: gray, eastern timber, red, and Ethiopian; gray wolf is the most common. While many states, such as California, have banned fi rst-generation wolfdog ownership, others, such as Maine, allow it as long as the owner obtains proper wildlife permits. Regardless of its legality, many new owners are finding wolfdogs to be Allison Kern/Courtesy of Howling Woods Farm too much work and responsibility to handle. As a result, the number of wolfdogs being abandoned or forced into shelters and sanctuaries is on the rise.
Nicole Wilde, who holds Certified Professional Dog Trainer credentials, has been working with and caring for wolves and wolfdogs for nearly 20 years. Author of Living with Wolfdogs and several other helpful texts detailing dog ownership and training, Wilde says she understands the enthusiast’s attraction to these animals. “For some, it’s a pure love of wolves; they simply want to be close to these magnificent animals. For others, it’s the lure of owning something wild or exotic,” Wilde said.
Christie Guidry, manager of Saint Francis Wolf Sanctuary in Montgomery, Texas, said she hesitates to believe that wolfdog adopters are simply seeking a family animal. “We find that the idea of having exotic wild animals as pets is usually about someone wanting to be able to claim that they have tamed the wild, or because a domestic dog is too mainstream for them. It is often about ego, status or because it’s cool,” said Guidry.
In reality, caring for a wolfdog often has little to do with building family relationships. Cindy Matthews of Virginia has owned wolfdogs for nearly 10 years and knows the toll this responsibility can take on a family. “My sons, who were raised with them, will never [have] a wolfdog when they get older, as they’ve seen how much hard work it is to care for one,” Matthews said. “These are not the type of animals that can be kept like an indoor dog.”
Unlike a domestic dog, a wolfdog cannot simply be taken to a kennel. Few kennels have the capacity to contain them, since they require eight-foot-high fences as well as dig guards along the base of their enclosures to prevent escape. And because they’re naturally wary of strangers, it’s unlikely that friends or neighbors would be able to look after the animal in the owner’s absence. “Don’t plan on taking any vacations,” said Matthews.
With the rise in popularity of wolfdog ownership comes the inevitable rise in abandonment and returns as those who buy them realize that they either cannot or do not want to provide the resources and attention the canines require.
While breeding facilities profit from mating and selling wolfdogs, sanctuaries suffer from a lack of resources, which prevents them from accepting the large number of hybrids who are surrendered. Most sanctuaries, which are usually operated as nonprofits, are almost entirely funded by private donations. Guidry works tirelessly to ensure care for all of the abandoned wolfdogs who come to Saint Francis Wolf Sanctuary, but there is only so much space available.
“On average, we get about three requests a week to rescue wolves and wolfdogs from pet situations,” Guidry said. “Since wolves are born in the spring, we do not get as many requests that time of year. People keep them when they are cute, cuddly pups [but] as soon as they reach adulthood, they can no longer handle them.”
Michael Hodanish, president of the Howling Woods Farm sanctuary, has noticed the same upward trend at his facility, which is located in Jackson, N.J. He cites funding as the reason he cannot accept all the animals for whom he receives rescue requests, and says it’s the biggest challenge facing Howling Woods Farm today.
Hodanish, who is devoted to helping animals and owners get out of bad living situations, has had to go beyond relying on donations to find ways to fund his services. “I have a full-time job that pays for a significant amount of rescue costs,” he said.
Hodanish also remarked that an increase in breeding practices is the main reason for the increasing numbers of rescue requests. “We do not support wolfdog breeding [at Howling Woods Farm],” Hodanish said.
Wilde agreed. “Wolfdog rescue centers are perpetually full, and an unwanted wolfdog’s options are extremely limited.”
Howling Woods Farm attempts to rehome its rescued wolfdogs whenever possible, but the adoption application process is rigorous. Hodanish said the sanctuary hopes that more vigorous screening and stricter home requirements will help prevent the cycle of animals being surrendered to shelters.
“We have rehomed approximately 150 animals over the last 10 years. Some have taken over a year to place,” Hodanish said.
With rescue requests increasing and rehoming processes taking as long as they do, not every wolfdog will be given a second chance.
“Wolfdog rescues all over this country are full most of the time, so we see countless wolfdogs euthanized in shelters. Shelters will not adopt them out due to liability issues. It’s a heartbreaking problem,” Guidry said.
Besides taking in abandoned wolfdogs, sanctuaries also play a large role in providing education to the public. “We feel there are no benefits to ‘owning’ a wolfdog over a conventional dog breed,” Guidry said. “The most rewarding part of my job is educating the public on the challenges of exotic pet ownership.”
Sanctuaries often provide facility tours as well as off-site visits to schools and other organizations so that individuals can learn how wolves differ from domestic dogs.
“Wild wolves are the epitome of what it means to be wild and free. They have a right to live that life. The fact that people try to numb out their wild instincts by breeding dog into them just to make them pets is terribly sad,” Guidry said. Wilde said it is not the wolves, but rather, the owners who are the most challenging aspect in her role as an educator and trainer. “So many people have unrealistic expectations of what living with a wolfdog will be like …Wolf lovers would do well to support organizations that are helping wolves in the wild,” she said.
In providing information, sanctuaries hope to convince those who love wolves that the best way to respect and show dedication to these animals is to let them remain wild and decrease the number of wolfdogs being bred for profit. Only then can these animals live out the lives that they were meant to have, free from containment.
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