Jul
31
Written by:
NAPRP Admin
7/31/2009 5:23 AM
Last weekend, I attended the Taking Action for Animals Conference that was held near Washington, D.C. If you're on Facebook, friend me, and you can check out some photos. Sadly, this year I did not have the opportunity to snag a pic with Frank the Feral (aka the guy in the huge red cat suit) from Alley Cat Allies. Frank was extremely elusive this year.
In other news, lately I've talked to a few people who seem to want me to essentially police the humane world. I'm betting that a lot of you run into this problem too. Someone comes up to you and says, "rescue XYZ charges too much." Or "I don't like that shelter's policies." They make these statements as if they expect you to rush out and do something about it.
If it's your own rescue or shelter, it's easy to get defensive and go to great lengths to explain your policies and practices. But often that just results in a long drawn out diatribe where the other person tries to convince you that everything you are doing is "wrong" along with all the reasons they think it's wrong.
The sad thing is that the complainers rarely offer solutions. They don't say exactly what they expect you to DO about anything. When you explain that your price is X, they just say, "that's too high." When you explain that you need adoption fees to help pay for dog food, you hear, "but I can't afford that."
At the show, I ended up stuck in one of these conversations and my response was "okay, what do you suggest I do?" The woman had no response. She kept whining. So I kept saying, "okay, what do you suggest?" Eventually she gave up and went away.
The key to shutting down pointless conversations is to turn it around. If people aren't just whining, they might put some thought into the problem and you could get some good suggestions. But if all they want to do is whine, they don't like being challenged, and they go away. Either result is good.
After all, it's not your job to police the humane world. And it's certainly not mine either!
As always, thank you for all you do to help the animals ;-)
~ Susan Daffron
Founder & President, NAPRP
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