Animal Welfare Professionals

 View Only
Expand all | Collapse all

Animal Welfare Leadership Roundup Call - Friday, 11/19/21 - Mars Central Europe: Dog Management in Romania and DC Cat Count: Collaboration & Cat Population Management

  • 1.  Animal Welfare Leadership Roundup Call - Friday, 11/19/21 - Mars Central Europe: Dog Management in Romania and DC Cat Count: Collaboration & Cat Population Management

    Posted 11-18-2021 01:39 PM

    Updated 11/19 at 1pm: Recording is now available to watch below!


    ---Original Post---
    Hello! We hope you'll join us tomorrow for our Animal Welfare Leadership Roundup Call at 8am PT. We will update this thread with the recording and chat notes if you're unable to make the live meeting. You can also use this thread to ask any questions to our presenters we didn't get to during the call or ones that you thought of after. 

    Agenda
    Session One:
    Mihaela Negrescu from Mars Central Europe will continue our international presentations. She will be sharing about animal welfare in Romania, where free-roaming dogs pose unique challenges for dog management.


    Session Two: DC Cat Count: Establishing Common Ground for Collaboration & Cat Population Management
    @Lisa LaFontaine, President and CEO, Humane Rescue Alliance
    Dr. @John Boone, Great Basin Bird Observatory, Reno, Nevada
    Dr. Tyler Flockhart, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science,  Appalachian Laboratory, Frostburg, Maryland


    Join DC Cat Count researchers to learn about the outcomes of the DC Cat Count and how you can apply them in your community. They adapted techniques from population biology and ecology studies to produce groundbreaking research quantifying outdoor, owned, and shelter cat populations in Washington, D.C., which generated the most intensive urban cat dataset ever created. The goal of this project is to develop humane, data-driven cat population management programs in communities across the nation with the DC Cat Count serving as a model.


    DC Cat Count recently launched a free Cat Counting Toolkit so other organizations and communities can undertake their own cat counting projects. The toolkit includes valid protocols, tools, and training materials for quantifying cat populations and tracking the impacts of management programs that are suitable for organizations with a wide range of needs and skill sets. By taking a science-based approach to understanding the cat population in your community, you can accurately assess your organization's impact and provide stakeholder groups with a common foundation for collaboration and data-driven decision making.

    11/26/21 - No Meeting (enjoy the Thanksgiving Holiday and Native American Heritage Day!) 

    Thank you!

    ​​​
    #CommunityCatManagement
    #CommunityPartnerships*
    #DataandTechnology
    #OrganizationalManagement

    ------------------------------
    Charlotte Otero
    Community Strategist at Maddie's Fund
    she/her
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: Animal Welfare Leadership Roundup Call - Friday, 11/19/21 - Mars Central Europe: Dog Management in Romania and DC Cat Count: Collaboration & Cat Population Management

    Posted 11-19-2021 01:08 PM
      |   view attached
    Thanks to the 155 attendees who joined us live this morning! If you missed today's call, you can watch the recording available on YouTube, read through the full agenda, national updates and resources below. Attached you'll also find a copy of the chat file. As a reminder we are not meeting next week and hope you enjoy some time off. 

    Call Recap
    • No Friday meeting on November 26th. Happy Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Day!
    • Welcome – Kristen Hassen, American Pets Alive! QOTD: What is the one thing you are most looking forward to over the holidays?
    • Mary's Motivation: Mary has been watching the PBS documentary American Veteran about the experiences of veterans across the "arc of history." Yesterday's episode was called "The Reckoning." She encouraged us to look up the definition of reckoning. A lot of the experiences the veterans shared were things that could really help her as she tries to relate, communicate and empathize with people whose experiences are so different than her own. As we try to figure out how in our field to connect with our communities – how do we get beyond the walls of the shelters – she feels there is a solution to our challenges when she tries to look outside of herself. The problem and the solution do not look anything at all alike and that can be confounding – but don't give up, let's continue to move forward.
    It is November which in her house is gratitude month. She is so grateful that we all continue to show up for each other, for our teams, for our communities, for our family and friends in spite of almost two years of unprecedented challenges. So enjoy the things you are most looking forward to over the holiday!
    • Steve Merrero of Tadsaw.org posted an article about PTSD Warriors Returning Home Face a Real Life Catch-22: https://tadsaw.org/22-suicides-a-day/

    National Updates
    • November 30 at 12n ET: Global Dog Campaign – free webinar from Wellbeing International (posted by Dr Andrew Rowan).
    Register: https://wellbeingintl.org/get-involved/webinars/?utm_source=tow&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=tow-vol3-10-web-webinar
    • ShelterLuv.com free flyer for members to boost year-end donations!
    • Dec 7-9 AAWA Looking Forward: The Future of Animal Welfare (virtual). https://theaawa.org/event/future
    • Best Friends National Conference speaker proposals due today! Please submit and share with your teams https://bestfriends.org/events/best-friends-national-conference/speaking-proposals
    • Best Friends Data Explorer Tool https://data.bestfriends.org/IntakesOutcomes/Index
    Run custom reports: https://data.bestfriends.org/IntakesOutcomes/DataSelection
    Contact: bethanyh@bestfriends.org
    • Best Friends Town Hall November 18 recording: https://network.bestfriends.org/proven-strategies/best-friends-town-halls
    • Best Friends New Spay/Neuter Resource Map: https://network.bestfriends.org/spayneuter-resource-map
    • PetCoLove - apply for FREE vaccines for owned pets, here: https://petcolove.fluxx.io/

    Today's Speakers
    • Session One: Mihaela Negrescu Portfolio Manager at Mars Central Europe continued our international presentations. She shared about animal welfare in Romania, where free-roaming dogs pose unique challenges for dog management. Contact: Mihaela.Negrescu@effem.com

    The largest dog shelter in the world is in Romania Asociaţia "Ute Langenkamp: Iubiţi Maidanezii" (AULIM) (posted by Steve Marrero) http://www.aulim.ro/wordpress/

    • Session Two: DC Cat Count: Establishing Common Ground for Collaboration & Cat Population Management
    Lisa LaFontaine, President and CEO, Humane Rescue Alliance https://www.humanerescuealliance.org/
    Dr. John Boone, Great Basin Bird Observatory, Reno, Nevada https://www.gbbo.org/
    Dr. Tyler Flockhart, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Appalachian Laboratory, Frostburg, Maryland https://www.umces.edu/

    DC Cat Count: tools and resources https://hub.dccatcount.org/

    @dccatcount on InstaGram https://www.instagram.com/dccatcount/
    We captured lots of amazing wildlife too!

    DC Cat Count Toolkit https://hub.dccatcount.org/pages/toolkit

    ------------------------------
    Charlotte Otero
    Community Strategist at Maddie's Fund
    she/her
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: Animal Welfare Leadership Roundup Call - Friday, 11/19/21 - Mars Central Europe: Dog Management in Romania and DC Cat Count: Collaboration & Cat Population Management

    Posted 11-19-2021 01:45 PM
    Food for Thought:

    I would like to see a serious rise in professional inclusiveness by the big decision makers in this industry. It is crucial to work to gain the guidance of those with boots on the ground expertise in their fields, of those who are not merely 'effective' but equally if not more importantly, anti-aversive, and who often have knowledge and skills beyond what is currently being touted as standard. This level of innovation will come not from those typically consulted, but from areas, organizations, and animal behavior professionals (such as CBCC-KAs and CDBCs) not already part of the animal welfare in-crowd, so to speak.  Pets/animals are the losers so long as knowledge sharing is only from within the established echo-chamber. Innovation requires that we seek and welcome experience, ideas, and practices developed outside our own confirmation biases.  Indicators of something innovative in truly humane animal work should include all of these, together:  1) an anti-aversive commitment, 2) lifelong animal safety/feeling safe as the priority, and 3) a long-term effectiveness that is more than surface level, that results from including the animal's emotional/mental as well as physical needs in planning and implementation.

    Too often something is judged effective based on its short term appearance of having provided human-desired results that are often not natural nor lasting but rather are suppressive, or on insider popularity/name recognition of who is claiming it effective, while ignoring other important factors.   Too often something considered innovative is actually a repackaging of previous, and not always truly humane, assumptions and practices.  Something is only innovative if it is original.  To be truly humane animal welfare professionals, our innovations be creative, courageous, self-challenging, and must support the animal's natural needs and behavioral set-ups as well as the animal's preferred versus current and lifelong habitat/conditions; this is crucial for captive animals, which in household pet cultures such as ours, pets, especially dogs, generally are.  Effective innovation must include human adaption and criteria-raising of our own overt and covert behavior.

    Effectiveness alone is not enough.  -Dr. Susan G. Friedman  (who also points out that control is a primary reinforcer -- something we should all be thinking more deeply about, regarding not just animal behavior but human behavior as well).

    --
    Rain Jordan, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, KPA CTP  
    Fearful Dogs Specialist

     

    CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email communication contains confidential information that is legally privileged. Any disclosure, copying, dissemination, distribution, or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of this email except its direct delivery to the intended recipient is strictly prohibited.  If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that your receipt of this email and/or any included attachments was not intended by the sender and that your possession, use, and/or sharing of this information is prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately by telephone at (831)239-9417 and destroy all copies of the email and any attachments.

     





  • 4.  RE: Animal Welfare Leadership Roundup Call - Friday, 11/19/21 - Mars Central Europe: Dog Management in Romania and DC Cat Count: Collaboration & Cat Population Management

    Posted 11-19-2021 01:56 PM
    My comments were not intended to be directed to any one person or organization, but rather were intended to be encouragement for all of us to reconsider what it means to be humane, effective, and innovative.   I believe that "lifesaving" can only be so if it is a lifelong practice through each saved animal's life.  And I believe that lifelong lifesaving depends on animal-centric, anti-aversives innovations that including modification of human behavior, rather than focus solely on modification of the animal's behavior.  So that's what the previous response was all about.  

    --
    Rain Jordan, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, KPA CTP  
    Fearful Dogs Specialist
     

    CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email communication contains confidential information that is legally privileged. Any disclosure, copying, dissemination, distribution, or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of this email except its direct delivery to the intended recipient is strictly prohibited.  If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that your receipt of this email and/or any included attachments was not intended by the sender and that your possession, use, and/or sharing of this information is prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately by telephone at (831)239-9417 and destroy all copies of the email and any attachments.