New Animal Control.Org
Funding, and the Role of the Humane Societies in the New System
The humane societies are privately funded organizations dedicated to preventing the cruel and inhumane treatment of animals.
It is important to note that there is not just one Humane Society. Rather, there are a great many of them. Most nations have one, and they are also widely established on the state, province, county, and city level. if you go online and search the term humane society you'll find them listed in enormous numbers, filling seemingly endless screens.
Surely, the combined budgets of all of those private agencies must run into the billions of dollars.
The various humane societies operate shelters where stray and unwanted dogs are kept until suitable homes can be provided for them. They also provide veterinary care, including spaying and neutering, and they put their charges to death when no home can be found for them, or when it is deemed necessary for whatever reason.
Wait a minute. Go back and reread the previous paragraph. The government-run animal control system already provides all of those services. Does that seem odd to you? Why should it be necessary for us to have an enormous number of private agencies dispensing the very same services that are, supposedly, already being provided by government?
Quite simply, the humane societies must duplicate the services offered by the government because the laws, policies and procedures by which the government system operates just don't work. As a result, we have not one, but two parallel animal control systems.
The government system, which was designed by and lobbied into existence by corporate interests, is extremely dysfunctional. The parallel system, which is run by the humane societies, gets much better results because they employ a far superior, pro-active methodology that is similar to the new system proposed by this website.
As a result, the humane societies have become a sort of disaster clean-up crew that comes in after the damage is done and works to make right some of the many dog-related problems that have been created by the methodologies of the government system.
Logic indicates that we would be far better off as a society if we changed the role of the humane societies from clean-up crew to cowcatcher. In other words, let us move the humane societies up to the start of the process, where they can execute a proactive program designed to prevent problems.
The humane societies already offer excellent dog-owner education classes, the likes of which, if made mandatory for every dog license applicant, could eliminate 90% of all of our dog-related problems.
The time has come for a government-run animal control system that requires four things of all dog license applicants:
- That they be dog-knowledgeable.
- That they provide evidence that they are in a position to properly care for their dogs-to-be.
- That they make a written commitment to properly care for and socialize their dogs.
- That they guarantee their dog's behavior.
Let us move into proactive mode and reap the savings.
As a society, think how much money we spend every year attempting to correct dog-related problems after they occur. Imagine what it costs: rounding-up dogs; keeping them in shelters; trying to place them; putting them to death; providing emergency services and follow-up medical care to those bitten by dogs; processing tort cases over dog bites; processing barking dog complaints, and moving them through the courts; removing excrement from public places; and providing police services to referee rancorous disputes over barking and menacing dogs. Add to that the hours of lost productivity because barking dogs left people too exhausted to go to work or so upset that they could not perform their work-at-home jobs.
The government system of reactive, as opposed to proactive, animal control is costing us a vast fortune as it drains resources that could be more productively spent elsewhere. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that, in the U.S. alone, the medical cost of treating dog-bite victims comes to $254 million each year.
One of the basic rules of life is that it costs a lot less money to prevent a problem than to attempt to deal with one after it is in full bloom. Therefore, logic dictates that our new, highly effective animal control system should actually be able to operate for a lot less money than the ridiculously expensive, wildly ineffective, hideously cruel system that is now in place.
This page is part of the New System section of New Animal Control.Org