MAV'S RESCUE FRIENDS

As we have been morphing Mav’s Friends into a “charity of charities” we have spent a lot of time looking online for various animal cases and charities that we are hoping to help and work with over time. We search many different ways and are trying to learn a little more every day. We try to find organizations who are working tirelessly to help animals and need a little help, and there are tons of them. Surprisingly, we often email organizations asking them a few questions about their needs to see if we can help out and we sometimes do not get responses for weeks if at all.

Rescues are very busy of course so this should not necessarily be a disqualifying screen, but we prefer to support organizations that are very accessible because we believe they will be the most successful organization over the long term.

We saw a posting about and organization called Habitat for Paws that we think is just great: http://www.habitat4paws.org/ The basic idea behind this organization is similar to Habitat for Humanity. They raise money to build winter/summer dog houses for dogs who are not inside dogs and have no shelter outside. The intelligent design of the house gives dogs both a warm indoor place and a covered outdoor space. The idea is that by providing dogs protection from the elements that you can allow homes who do not have the space or may have other issues to keep more dogs instead of taking them to the shelter. We are definitely going to keep our eyes on this organization and think it is just a wonderful idea.

We saw this post on photographing aniamls online and thought it might be helpful for people in the rescue world: http://www.blackpearldogs.com/photographing.html. The page is very well thought out and full of great information. Some ideas include using light to make dogs look happier and more cheerful as well as to elicit emotion, in addition to using certain backgrounds to have specific effects.

We can’t say enough about how much more time and energy need to be put into rescue photographs. An individual can easily fall in love and want to rescue a dog just from a photograph, so the better the pictures the greater the chance an animal has of being rescued. Rescues spend surprisingly little time on the pictures, descriptions of the dogs, and updates relative to how much time they spend rescuing them. Most sites have one or two pictures at most. We are starting to see some rescues do more videos and as everyone gets smart phones with cameras and video cameras, the rescue community is bound to make progress.

Dog rescue/animal welfare has interestingly become a huge cause around the world. The internet continues to inspire people and put pressure on lawmakers to protect animals. This is an interesting article flagging a new law in Ireland that prevents the inhumane treatment of animals by breeders. This is a big change and will put serious pressure on puppy mills in the country. Hopefully, it will inspire more change through the world. http://www.examiner.com/dogs-in-national/country-bans-puppy-mills

We saw this article about an amazing woman in California who has a terminal illness, and after reading a story about Detroit Dog Rescue she decided to donate over $1mm to them. Detroit Dog Rescue is working to save dogs in Detroit and was helping to save a very special dog which is presumably where this nice woman heard about them. Here is a link to the story: http://www.takepart.com/blog-series/paw-and-order/2012/01/06/memory-ace-detroit-dog-rescue-gifted-15-million-help-homeless?

Words cannot describe this incredible act of generosity, and the gift will allow this rescue to do an incredible amount of good. Detroit Dog Rescue was more shocked than anyone by the selfless act.

We saw this posting on one of the better dog blog sites that we follow-YesBiscuit: http://yesbiscuit.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/a-little-more-influence/. We like reading her posts as they are not only very well informed but also contain ideas and solutions. All animal enthusiasts can agree that we should not put animals to sleep, but we need solutions to make that happen. This blog had an ingenius idea that we had not thought of before or seen posted though it surely has been.

The idea pretty simply is to take all the pet stores that make money selling dogs and cats and have them sell rescue animals instead of the animals from lower quality breeders. We use the term sell loosely but perhaps people would pay an extra $100 more than a normal rescue donation for the convenience of a store for instance. The idea makes a lot of sense because a large reason people buy from stores is the convenience, the hours, and the lack of hassle. Shelters are often poorly run, so why not let pet stores earn a small fee for housing the dogs and helping advertise them. For stores that follow the model first, would they not get a halo effect from people preferring them over other pet stores?

We have to think through this more but think it is a reasonable idea. Pet stores do not want to give up selling pets as they will lose a lot of income. Perhaps this model would earn them less money, but the world is going away from them anyway so this is a solution they should prefer over the alternative.

What we also appreciated about the post was that it does not just say all breeders are bad and people should only adopt rescue dogs. It is well reasoned and fair on both sides of the argument-it is definitely worth a read.

As we promised when setting up Mav’s Friends, we are destined to change our approach a great deal as we learn about the rescue world. We originally thought there would be tons of people who found us organically through Google and other searches. Well, this did not work, so we have morphed into searching for rescues we can help. We think this actually might be an interesting charitable model going forward.

We conduct a number of searches to find rescues who need help, and it is in many ways easier than screening people who are asking for assistance. Through various website postings and social media, we can see both who needs help and who we are in a position to help out. Thus far, we have found that dogs that get national attention or are covered in the news have a line of people looking to donate money and adopt. We do see a lot of need though from local rescues who can’t afford a treatment for a new rescue, might need to spay or neuter a group of dogs they just took in, or may need money to cover food for the next month. We have been interested to see which rescues seem to get help and what costs are involved to help with different needs.

We could see potentially changing Mav’s Friends mission to proactively finding rescue situations as opposed to allowing people to contact us. While just a thought at the moment, we have met incredible people in our initial efforts and it may be a way to maximize value of the donations we receive. For instance, beyond cases of injured dogs, we have also seen posts from individuals who have found abandoned animals that they are willing to foster but that cannot afford the veterinary treatment the dog needs-this is a great use of funds in our opinion. We want to try to help find a way to solve all these problems long term so as always we are just in the idea stage.

We saw this video and could not resist posting it. This Jack Russell may be the best trained dog ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9Fyey4D5hg and it already has 12mm hits. We trained Maverick to do a lot of tricks, but they do not include being obedient. The issue is after watching this video we cannot help but look at Maverick and be bothered that he does not open the door when we are coming in from the grocery store and close it behind us He is of course still bothered that we are his parents!

We saw this post online in which a woman complains that she wanted to adopt a dog and the process was so difficult and costly that it killed her desire to do so:  http://blogs.kansascity.com/unfettered_letters/2011/10/costly-pet-adoptions.html.

This letter discusses something we find largely true in our experience with shelters: that the service is generally awful. You often will wait over a week for a call back and because a lot of them are run by volunteers with busy lives the availability of meeting the pets is difficult to say the least. Moreover, as we have written about on this site, the information about the dogs and cats is sparse and there is often only one picture. This is not the way to do it. As most internet companies and organizations have learned, the more information you give people the less work you will have to do on the backend. If you put more information, better pics, a video, and frequent updates online, you would be able to find a faster, better match with fewer questions to answer. 

The adoption fee issue is also a problem because when people are adopting a dog or cat, they often cannot understand why there is the fee. They think they are doing something good for the world by adopting animals and agreeing to take care of them in the future. The adoption fee is a difficult issue. On the one hand, if someone wants a dog a $200 feeshould not discourage them, and psychologically speaking having someone commit money will make them tend to value the pet more. On the other hand, adopters have a difficult time understanding why they are being “charged” for doing something good.

We don’t have the answer, we just think animal rescues and organizations would do better with more effort on the front end. We have had experiences where we have tried to walk dogs or do other work for various groups and not received calls back or had emails returned. Rescuers have big hearts, but they are not always commercial so a handbook to rescuers would be a good idea.

With regard to this letter/post, I think many do not understand that a lot of rescue groups are simply volunteers doing this on the side and spending a lot of money, time, and energy to help these animals. They do not have infinite time and resources so adopters should cut them some slack.

We saw this article and actually do not disagree with it:   http://www.examiner.com/dogs-in-national/dogs-die-because-of-social-norm. The issue the author raises is why is it ok to give up dogs to shelters when they are ten because “you are moving,” ”the dog is not well potty trained,” etc. There are extenuating circumstances to be sure, but when we take an animal into our home we become their caregiver and need to do everything humanly possible to honor our commitment. We do not give up our children easily and, while their is clearly a difference between children and animals, they are both dependent on their family. Additionally, dogs and cats form strong emotional bonds with their caregivers.

We are perpetually shocked by seeing posts like: “I am moving apartments and they do not allow dogs so I have to give up my 11 year old dog.” This dog has followed you around forever and loved you faithfully and you are going to give it up now?

This article suggests it is acceptable because we live in a world where euthanasia of dogs is common and people commonly give up pets. We suspect this will not always be the case and down the road we will look back and think it was pretty crazy that millions of dogs were put to sleep every year.