Tuesday, April 26, 2011

There's a lesson for Dallas waiting in Seagoville...if the committee-sitters will listen.

The folks on the Dallas Animal Shelter Commission who oppose HB 3450 have produced lots of lame-ass excuses for their belief that CAPA would not work here in Dallas. Here are a couple of their excuses:

"They (Ed: CAPA requirements) require training and resources - things we don't have right now."

"No matter how hard the employees try or how many hours they work, there won't be time to walk them all, exercise them all, play with them all, bathe them all, clean up after them all, love on them all - there will barely be time to feed them all."

(Perhaps if the committee-sitters would drag themselves down to DAS and actually DO some of this type of thing...sigh.)

However, the tiny shelter in Seagoville, Texas - one with a tiny fraction of the resources/funding that Dallas squanders on crap like HSUS reports - is doing very well in the No-Kill arena.

Here is a recent article about the Seagoville Shelter, and how they're succeeding despite the convictions of the fear-mongering, self-described "experts" in Big Kill Big D.

I visited the shelter about three months ago when they were just getting started. The HB 3450 opponents at Dallas City Hall need to visit. It is in a tiny building. It started out with no real employees, no real funding. But No-Kill is how they're running it.

During my visit, Sgt Bailey, the Seagoville policeman involved in the shelter, told me that "I am not in the business of killing animals." He's not sitting on some useless committee and quarreling about who does the paperwork. He's saving animals by dedication and a belief that it's possible. So are the unpaid volunteers at Seagoville. They've decided to reject killing. I personally think this fearless attitude deserves many props and kudos.

While in the shelter, I also noticed that the elderly gas chamber at Seagoville had been turned into a filing cabinet.

3 comments:

Rosebud said...

"Require training and resources...which we don't have now."

Hmmm...seems if the shelter was a friendly, inviting place, that many Dallas residents would rush to help. Plano doesn't seem to have a problem drawing tons of volunteer help. 8000 hours last year. AND... 50,000 people walked through the shelter, at least those that signed the book in the entry...MORE than Dallas and Ft. Worth COMBINED!!! Why is that? Plano will actually suffer the loss of a full-time employee being cut to part-time, and don't anticipate feeling the pinch too bad, because so many volunteers have stepped up, and/or recruited MORE volunteers to help fill the void. If Dallas wasn't such a little clique of know-it-alls and you can only "help" if you have "my" blessing snobs...and if volunteers were treated with dignity and as if they too have wisdom, and not have to prove their innocence of being criminals, hoarders, or gasp...breeders...and there wasn't a six-page application that immediately puts one on the defensive, and is incredibly personally invasive...methinks perhaps more citizens would offer their time. That is, if they don't have to suffer cats dying in walls, or cats being handled on catchpoles, or the myriad of other "secrets" that are conducted, kept and concealed, at DAS. Other shelters seem to find resources to help...why can't Dallas generate volunteers? No-Kill DEPENDS on volunteers for it's success. On actively looking for and bringing in volunteers, fosters, etc. Perhaps that tells us more about Dallas' half-hearted allusions to wanting to aspire to a "No-Kill" city. We all know better anyway. It's too easy to keep blaming us and killing them.

Rosebud said...

"No matter how hard the employees try or how many hours they work, there won't be time to walk them all, exercise them all, play with them all, bathe them all, clean up after them all, love on them all - there will barely be time to feed them all."

Hmmmm...seems to me that many if not ALL, of these duties could be performed by volunteers. And ARE at other shelters. So, see previous comment...

Anonymous said...

Very good Rosebud, but Dallas wants to KILL THEM ALL and CONVICT everyone of CRUELTY for having owned them (any of them) rather than praise those who did not bring them into the world but would have helped save them.

Who's cruel? Not hard to say DASC!