One of our favorite fables is the story about a group of friends having a picnic on a riverbank. They hear the sound of crying and look up, shocked to see a baby floating helplessly in the river. They immediately dive in to rescue the baby, and to their horror, see another baby floating toward them. They rush to save that baby, but no sooner is that one pulled to safety than they see another. And still more appear; the river is full of them. Again and again the people dive into the river, trying to save the seemingly endless flow of drowning babies.
One of the people gets out of the river and begins running upstream. “Where are you going?” his friends shout. “I’m going to find out who’s throwing babies in the river and make them stop!” he yells back, as he heads upstream.
The homeless animal problem is a lot like that. Animal shelters and rescue groups try hard to save the homeless animals in the river. But that will never solve the problem. Real, lasting solutions to the homeless animal problem involve stopping them from being thrown in the river in the first place.
One at a Time: A Week in an American Animal Shelter
Diane Leigh and Marilee Geyer
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I agree that, ideally, we could “run upstream” and identify and stop the source of homeless animals. But it will never be this simple, or even close. Animals are abandoned by many sources, be it a relocating family, unexpected breeding, aggression, and so on. Abandonment is happening every minute of every day somewhere in the world, for a wide range of reasons. There is not one source.
Not only is there not one source, but not all individual sources can be stopped. Few laws or natural rights allow me to enter somebody’s home or space and stop that person from abandoning their pet (or stop their pet from breeding). Abandonment will happen regardless of the laws in-place, and from many sources for many reasons. So what do we do?
Joshua Eckroth on August 4th, 2008 at 6:48 pm