For over 100 year the animal welfare community has been approaching animal welfare as if it was the disease itself, and not merely a symptom of something else.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t be the first time people have done that. Ulcers were thought to be caused by stress by the entire medical community until they were proved mostly be caused by the Helicobacter bacteria.\u00a0 A similar misdiagnosis was made for cervical cancer, which is now recognized to be overwhelmingly the result of an Human Papillomavirus infection.\u00a0 What if we\u2019ve been similarly misdiagnosing animal cruelty?\u00a0 Humane Pennsylvania (HPA) believes this is now largely the case.\u00a0 We think that the cures for the underlying causes of much of the animal cruelty and suffering we see have already been discovered.\u00a0 In fact, much of the cure has been utilized, but without a clear understanding of how the cure should be applied, what the proper dose may be, and what the curative mechanism is.<\/p>\n For over a decade HPA has worked to change the approach to saving animals and we\u2019ve danced around three core ideas…<\/p>\n This final statement is important because for over a century, even as recently as 26 years ago when I started professionally in animal welfare, the assumption was that the problems facing animals were insurmountable and broadly untreatable.<\/p>\n Humane Pennsylvania has been developing a model of attacking animal suffering as a disease, one with underlying causes we could address and overcome.\u00a0 We\u2019ve compared it to fighting a Polio or a Typhoid outbreak.\u00a0 Our newest approaches have been modeled in community and world health interventions.\u00a0 These approaches have been effective, but not fully curative.\u00a0 That\u2019s because we didn\u2019t quite have it right.\u00a0 Animal suffering isn\u2019t usually a disease like Polio or Typhoid.\u00a0 It\u2019s more akin to lung cancer or diabetes.\u00a0 It is a disease which presents as an acute illness but is the result of a constellation of underlying factors, factors which are often controllable.<\/p>\n Some people spontaneously present with lung cancer or type 2 diabetes.\u00a0 Nothing they have done or no way they have lived can explain why they got the disease.\u00a0 But we also know that 80%-90% of lung cancer is related to smoking.\u00a0 Lung cancer is very definitely a disease, but in 9 out of 10 cases the real \u201cdisease\u201d is smoking cigarettes.\u00a0 Just as most type 2 diabetes is the result of issues in diet, weight, and exercise, factors which can be changed and negative impacts can be reversed.<\/p>\n So, too, is the case with most companion animal suffering.<\/strong>\u00a0 A small number are truly out of the blue, acute cruelty issues.\u00a0 It is hard to plan for a budding psychopath torturing his first dog.\u00a0 But most cases of animal suffering are not the result of things that are out of our community control.\u00a0 Most animal suffering is more akin to the slow progression to type 2 diabetes as a result of a build-up of the negative impacts of lifestyle, until one day the person is diabetic.\u00a0 Worse, like the \u201cchoice\u201d to smoke, \u201cchoices\u201d made for animals lead to acute danger for animals when they face life and death in a shelter or on the streets because of the actions of their caretaker.<\/p>\n What if we could offset these dangers to animals based on the choices and actions of people?\u00a0 Could we wipe out the life threatening animal welfare equivalent of diabetes or cancer by changing how people choose to live with and care for their animals?\u00a0 Yes, we can.\u00a0<\/strong> Not the way animal shelters have been trying to do it for years, but we can.<\/p>\n For years, animal shelters have been trying to make people do things out of our control.\u00a0 You should love your dog.\u00a0 You should keep your cat inside.\u00a0 You should adopt, sterilize your pet, feed them well, see a veterinarian, you should, should, should\u2026. For people who were naturally inclined, this message took, and to great effect.\u00a0 Death in our shelters is down 80% in the past 40 years.\u00a0 Sometimes it took because the message resonated and sometimes because people just opted for the best path.\u00a0 Why do these messages and the cajoling we do work with some people and populations and not with others?\u00a0 Why do some people \u201cchoose\u201d to care for their pets properly and others care for them in such a way that their animals end up languishing or dying in shelters?<\/p>\n For the same reason some people still get diabetes, or lung cancer, or become addicts, despite all the messaging out there telling them not to smoke, be sedentary, or take drugs.\u00a0 Simply telling someone what they should or shouldn\u2019t do isn\u2019t enough to change behavior, even behavior that may prove profoundly dangerous or damaging.\u00a0 Chronic disease or behaviorally caused acute disease can\u2019t be lectured into remission.\u00a0 Treatment is needed.<\/p>\n Humane Pennsylvania believes that the animals entering shelters overwhelmingly do so because the humans they are attached to lack one or more of the following:<\/p>\n Why are these three points significant and what can they tell us about how to achieve rapid positive impacts?<\/strong><\/p>\n First, many people lack the skills or knowledge required to properly care for a pet.\u00a0 This is not necessarily willful ignorance but can be a factor of socioeconomic factors.\u00a0 At Humane Pennsylvania’s veterinary hospitals we routinely treat the pets of people who do not have the experience many others do when it comes to navigating the animal healthcare network, let alone a clear understanding of exactly why successfully navigating that pet healthcare network is fundamentally good for animals.\u00a0 Let\u2019s focus on just the veterinary piece of the puzzle.<\/p>\n Often these are people are at an educational or economic strata that has resulted in being ill equipped and inexperienced.\u00a0 Many of these people use the emergency room as their primary care health provider.\u00a0 They use school resources or the local free clinic as their pediatric resources.\u00a0 They\u2019ve never experienced what so many take for granted, such as a long-term relationship with any healthcare provider, at a well-staffed and equipped office, and receiving reminder cards and texts.\u00a0 Let alone a modicum of respect.\u00a0 If people haven\u2019t experienced this in their own family\u2019s healthcare, why would we think they\u2019d have experienced it with their pets?\u00a0 This lack of basic skills acquisition is a major hurdle for many, who do not even know what they don\u2019t know about caring for a pet.<\/p>\n Second, let\u2019s assume that our lecturing has worked and these folks who lack skills try to access resources.\u00a0 Where will they find them?\u00a0 Will they be able to afford them?\u00a0 Poverty is an enormous barrier to providing proper care to a pet.\u00a0 Simple distance and transportation is often enough to prove an insurmountable barrier.\u00a0 The City of Reading has about 90,000 people and it had only one veterinary hospital until HPA opened its hospital.\u00a0 By comparison, the rest of Berks County is home to no fewer than 20 veterinary practices for the remaining 320,000 odd people in Berks.\u00a0 That\u2019s a one vet to 45,000 people in the Reading City and one vet to 16,000 people or less everywhere else.\u00a0 Some people simply have less access to good veterinary resources and all of the benefits they bring.\u00a0 Even those who do may not have the financial resources to afford the level and quality of care you and I may take for granted.\u00a0 That results in delayed care, sub-standard care, or potentially no care provided by even some of those who have the knowledge and skills to seek proper care out.<\/p>\n If we want at risk communities to have those good habits, we need to be the people to help create them.\u00a0 We can\u2019t fault people for not knowing what they need to do, how to do it, and then complain they don\u2019t figure it out on their own.\u00a0 We need to not just educate them (we\u2019ve been doing that for decades), not just provide generic access (we\u2019ve been doing that for years), we need to actually help them<\/em> to put that knowledge to use, in the places where it will help their pet, in a way that will stick, be repeated, become a generational expectation and habit.\u00a0 Does that mean reminding people to show up more than you or I might need?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Does that mean driving some people to their appointments?\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 Does it mean possibly even bribing people to show up with incentives?\u00a0 Possibly.<\/p>\n And before anyone gets all high and mighty about helping bad pet owners:\u00a0 We aren\u2019t helping them, we are helping their pets.\u00a0 Come to grips with that.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t like people but you like animals you still need to work with the people<\/em>.<\/p>\n Now, I just came at this from the angle of basic veterinary healthcare.\u00a0 Extend this to proper nutrition, behavioral counseling and training, general good care and husbandry, or what to do in emergencies.\u00a0 There are so many things that so many people don\u2019t know how to do, don\u2019t know how to access, and don\u2019t have good habits for doing.\u00a0 We intend to try a new approach to change all that.<\/p>\n Just as the causes of diseases have sometimes gone undiagnosed, sometimes the treatments for them go unrecognized.\u00a0 Sometimes these treatments were used for some other disease or in some other way but it turns out to be useful in new and novel ways.\u00a0 This is often the case for cancer or anti-viral drugs, which may be effective in treating new diseases or are even more effective against old ones when used in combination or in different doses.<\/p>\n That\u2019s what we are doing in our Healthy Pets, Healthy Lives initiative.\u00a0 The pieces are very familiar.\u00a0 But we\u2019ve recognized the puzzle has changes.\u00a0 So, what are the pieces of the puzzle?<\/p>\n These may all sound familiar.\u00a0 That\u2019s because they are.\u00a0 The difference is the scope, scale, timing, and duration.\u00a0 HPA has identified a specific population to serve – Reading and Reading adjacent municipalities – to provide a focus of services.\u00a0 We are targeting and leveling the services – delivering differentiated services to the financially capable, the financially at risk, and the financially destitute – to deliver the right services in the right way to suit the needs of specific populations.\u00a0 And we have picked a time frame<\/i>\u00a0to deliver these services.\u00a0 This duration aspect is critical.<\/p>\n We seek to achieve this service delivery in just three years.<\/strong>\u00a0 We want the biggest bang for the buck and to deliver all these needed services all at once<\/em> in a short time span.\u00a0 To follow the disease model, we are seeking to identify those suffering and deliver treatment, identify those as risk and deliver inoculation against disease, and to identify and combat any outbreaks as the happen.\u00a0 Whose animals are suffering now, whose animals are at risk for suffering, and whose animals might begin to suffer?\u00a0 By attempting to reach 100% of the need in a short span, we can then ramp down the need for ongoing high level efforts and costs.<\/p>\n We picked this above list of services because we think these are the key services which will drastically cut the number of animals entering shelters for preventable reasons, or allow animals to leave shelters faster.\u00a0 Our hope is a 50% decrease in intake from the service area.\u00a0 This reduction has been targeted because we know a 50% reduction allows shelters to suddenly make huge strides in life saving because they are no longer constrained by space and time to help the neediest of the truly homeless pets.\u00a0 Reaching this goal community wide – we\u2019ve already done in in our own shelters – is what leads to reaching no kill community save rates of 90% or better.\u00a0 We also picked these services because they are largely veterinary based and we know, and research shows, that veterinary interventions and relationships are among the single biggest positive factors in a pet\u2019s life and are most likely to keep them out of shelters as either surrenders or<\/em> strays.\u00a0 There is a great deal of planning, thought, and research that went into this list and I\u2019ve already gone on too long in this post to address them each now.\u00a0 However, in future posts I will be returning to each one to provide detailed explanations for why we believe these are the keys to successful implementation and outcomes of this initiative.\u00a0 And why we are betting $3 million dollars on this approach.<\/p>\n After 2,300 words, I\u2019ll put this in a nutshell and give you the elevator speech (the explanation you can share with someone in the amount of time it takes you to ride with them in an elevator).<\/p>\n Animal shelters have done a lot in the last 50 years but we still have animals dying in shelters and suffering in our communities.\u00a0 We think that the right combination of existing approaches, used in new ways<\/strong>, scope<\/strong>, and scale<\/strong> can change that and make a big enough change that any<\/em> community can reach true no kill lifesaving outcomes in an extremely short period of time.\u00a0 We are spending $3 million dollars in three years to deliver targeted services; spay\/neuter, vaccination, microchipping, and pet food supports to people and pets who need it, to 100% of community need.\u00a0 We believe that this will decrease shelter intake from the target community by 50% and that will allow save rates in our local shelters to sky rocket.\u00a0 Berks County will become a no kill county, not because we get them all adopted, but because we keep most pets from ever entering a shelter in the first place.\u00a0Berks will become the first No Suffering <\/em>County.*<\/strong><\/p>\n Will it work?\u00a0 Beats me, but we really think it will and we are basing that optimism on data, research, and experience.\u00a0 The Giorgi Family Foundation, and many other lead donors on this project have enough confidence in our vision and plan to support it with their hard earned money.\u00a0 Hundreds of staff and volunteers trust it enough to give us their valuable time and talent. I hope you will consider giving us some of each.<\/p>\n This is the start of the effort and the conversation. Be a part of it and be a part of our attempt to achieve something new and wonderful.\u00a0 And save lots and lots of animals from needless suffering and death.<\/p>\n *P.S.\u00a0 Lancaster County, don\u2019t feel left out! Many of the models that the Giorgi Grant will help create will be rolled out in Lancaster for pets and people there, too.\u00a0 Of course, what we need is some visionary donor leadership in Lancaster County like the Giorgi\u2019s provided in Berks.\u00a0 If you\u2019re that visionary donor, call me\u2026.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Karel Minor, Humane Pennsylvania CEO A Thesis For over 100 year the animal welfare community has been approaching animal welfare as if it was the disease itself, and not merely a symptom of something else.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t be the first time people have done that. Ulcers were thought to be caused by stress by the …![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.humanepa.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/jametlene-reskp-642910-unsplash.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nHumane Pennsylvania, with the help of The Giorgi Family Foundation and its staggering $3.1 million dollar gift to HPA, is intend to change that. The Healthy Pets, Healthy Lives initiative is the vehicle by which HPA will test a new thesis on how we can end nearly all companion animal suffering in our community.<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Circles of Control and Limits of Capability<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/a>Finally, good choices must become habitual. Cognitive behavioral changes are crucial. For the same reason people don\u2019t keep New Year\u2019s resolutions, it\u2019s easy to not remember to take your pet to the vet every year.\u00a0 That\u2019s why we get reminders.\u00a0 I\u2019d never remember to go to the dentist let alone the vet if it wasn\u2019t for text and mail reminders.\u00a0 But what if you move around a lot because you\u2019re poor and reminder cards can\u2019t reach you? What if you don\u2019t use \u201cregular\u201d services that even provide these reminders because they are inconsistently offered?\u00a0 You never build up that habit, that \u201cmuscle memory.\u201d<\/p>\nSame Pieces, Different Puzzle<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nIn A Nutshell<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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