As interim director James Rogers promised, the staff at MAS will be getting some training today from a representative of the HS of Memphis and Shelby Co. The animal shelter professionals, who earn a pretty good wage courtesy of taxpayers, will be learning advanced animal handling techniques such as instead of hanging a puppy by a metal noose, try putting a towel over him.
So I guess after today, everyone there will have learned to be compassionate. Yay.
“Advanced” handling techniques? Is that were you learn to handle animals with care and compassion as opposed to handling them like bags of trash (which I guess is the basic training that they’ve been employing so far)?
Still, this seems to be more than they’ve done before. Gotta start somewhere.
No, Pepper went to a no kill conference, didn’t he? Seems to me, all he came away with was the ability to wear a doggy costume while staff murdered the wrong dog(s).
You start by STOP KILLING. Doesn’t matter if you change your volunteer policies, build your foster program, spend more money on vet bills or hire behavior modification trainers. Nothing will matter if you KILL the animals!!! There just ain’t no fixin’ dead. (And those who really care will stop volunteering and stop fostering and stop donating when you murder the very creature they just invested their heart, soul and precious dollars in.)
I like to see ANY step forward….and as little as this is…it is one step. My concern is that the teaching and training are being wasted on people that have stood by, if not participated in ANIMAL CRUELTY, and said absolutely nothing to stop the plight of the defenseless animals…animals that are not only caged, hungry, scared, neglected and abused by human hands….but are killed, mishandled without one word from the “volunteers, the “friends,” the employees, management…NOBODY SCREAMED STOP! How can that happen year after year after year? How did so many like people get together? MAS is beyond me!!!!!!
…yay….
I wrote a e-mail to all the City Counsel Members and Mr. Rodgers and the Mayor of Memphis. I got one automated response back and I laughed when I saw at top in pink this:
This message looks suspicious to our SmartScreen filters.
I am out of the office and will return on Monday, March 26. Please contact my secretary, Judy at (901) 576-6799 if this is an emergency. Thanks. Take care. Myron
Just a giggle that even my smartscreen filters picks up on the suspicious!
I’m happy to chip-in to cover the cost of a FOIA request for the March 23 security camera videos. If the employees can’t get it right the day after training, what expectation is there that they would ever get it right.
Towel a dog? That seems, um, unproductive. I mean, I guess it could work if it is a small dog or a puppy, but that would never work for a big or even medium-sized dog. Fortunately, most dogs people come across are not going to be truly “feral” and if you do have to catch a feral animal who is completely terrified out of his mind just because you are there, good luck getting it to let you towel it. With truly feral animals, I’d say humane traps are the least stressful way to go.
Now cats, I towel them for medicating all the time. Its much easier to medicate them as quickly as possible when you wrap ’em in a towel or a blanket. Their claws are safely tucked away so that they can’t claw me in the face, and when they inevitably meow in protest *squirt* done!