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Healthy pets reflect healthy
community
November 15, 2007
The Louisiana SPCA recently hosted Peter Chandler, a Winston Churchill
Fellowship recipient from Australia. He is currently touring the United
States, London and Singapore, studying animal control and animal welfare
issues and practices.
In his professional life in Australia, Chandler serves as his city's
regulatory service manager. His office handles animal control issues,
education, traffic management, public places, abandoned vehicles,
entertainment and signage. This combination of duties shows that animal
issues are an integral component of a community.
In New Orleans and across the United States, a day in the life of an
animal humane officer is often a day of witnessing the dynamics of a
community: the good, the bad and the ugly. An officer may respond to a
"stray" dog call and walk into a long-simmering neighbors' dispute.
This dispatch officer may receive a complaint call about a dog
constantly barking, and as the conversation progresses may hear the
complainant say that the barking wouldn't be so distressing if he didn't
have to hold down two jobs in this post-Katrina landscape, making
undisturbed sleep crucial.
Often, the constantly barking dog is undersocialized or not socialized
at all because the owner is unwilling or unable to properly care for the
dog. The reasons why the animal is improperly cared for can result from
an owner's lack of education, financial instability or even physical or
mental instability. Diminished quality of life is not a lone woe; it
likes to bring others along for the ride.
One of the ugly calls that every humane officer has experienced is
cruelty to animals. Nothing is more disturbing, especially in cases
where the cruelty is intentional. In almost every instance, the violence
against animals is directly linked to other types of crime, including
violence against people.
In fact, the December 2006 issue of the Journal of Interpersonal
Violence reported that in a study of 355 Cincinnati dog owners whose
dogs had been cited for aggression, all had other criminal citations,
ranging from traffic violations to serious criminal convictions. Owners
of vicious dogs (often vicious due to little or no socialization, not
due to the breed) who have been cited for failure to keep a dog licensed
or leashed are more than 9 times as likely to have been convicted for a
crime involving children, 3 times as likely to have been convicted of
domestic violence, and nearly 8 times as likely to have been charged
with drug crimes.
When you see the big picture, you quickly realize that it's not just
about a dog. It's about life in the total community.
- Gloria
Dauphin
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