Hello animal lovers!
I know that we are all at different points in animal rescue. Just a year ago, I considered myself a hard-core animal lover!! Then I moved to Tucson and met the Founder and Director of The Center for Animal Rescue and Adoption, Cynthia Barstad, and have since been introduced to all sorts of resources for educating myself not only on ways to help more animals, but the politics (yes politics!) involved in being an animal advocate.
As a young animal lover, I volunteered at the nearby dog shelter, tried to help any animal I could, ate vegetarian, and always said my piece when in a discussion about the treatment of animals. Little did I know, there was much more to “helping” animals than I was lead to believe. By volunteering at my county’s animal shelter, I had been unknowingly supporting a kill-shelter. When I was a young girl, I found a cat and my friend helped me take it to the county shelter, which was the only shelter we knew of. I didn’t know that I was handing the cat over to be held for two days and subsequently killed for no reason. I thought I was doing the right thing. In hind sight, I feel that I was wrong in not doing more research before taking the cat in. Maybe my community wasn’t doing a very good job endorsing No Kill facilities. Maybe living in a suburb my entire life kept me from encountering more homeless animals and as a result, more shelter situations. Either way, I was completely unaware of the fact that there are two kinds of shelters or rescue groups: one kind that keeps animals until they are adopted and works hard to improve the animals’ quality of life, and one kind that needlessly kills animals in its care.
The Center is a steadfast supporter of the No Kill movement. I wanted to share with you some of the resources that helped me to understand the issues with today’s shelters. Getting educated helps to increase the power of one’s actions and words. Research your local animal rescue organizations and be aware of their stance on No Kill issues versus traditional kill-shelter philosophies. Here are some links to some of the No Kill resources that I gained access to after becoming involved in The Center for Animal Rescue and Adoption:
http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/index.html
http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?page_id=166
Nathan Winograd’s books “Redemption” and “Irreconcilable Differences”
