Support the (animal) troops

Dear Mike:

 

What you and Debbie do (and have been doing for a long time) via Zoi's Animal Rescue is nothing short of heroic. SPCA, HSUS and all the larger animal rescue organizations are essential to get help to a bulk of animals in distress. Even with generous donors and massive outreach programs, however, they may assist 20% of animals in need ... perhaps I'm being optimistic. The rest depend on organizations like Zoi's --  countless smaller organizations and anonymous individuals who, at the local level, do what they can with scarce means ... often depriving themselves to be able to feed another animal or pay a fraction of a mounting veterinary tab. In my, again optimistic estimation, smaller organizations and individuals bring relief to 30% of the totality of animals who suffer. And so, the quest is never-ending to bring succor to half the animals (in ever swelling numbers) society cruelly treats and neglects.

 

The debt civilized society owes animal rescuers, large and small, goes totally ignored when laurels for this or that (cancer research, reforestation, world peace, Boy Scouting, etc) are liberally distributed. It was my mother, at the verge of losing her life to cancer, who on watching some award or another on TV, pensively commented: "There sure are plenty of awards given ... but none to people who help animals." This statement was as profound as it was unexpected from a woman facing imminent mortality and who never claimed to be an animal lover.

 

Long before Mama's keen observation, I had already resolved that animal welfare would be the exclusive beneficiary of my meager charity allowance, because, as with recognition, donations always fall short of what the endeavor needs and deserves. Should someone (like Leona H.) bequeaths millions to help animals, it never fails that everyone from the family to the government rob the animals. Sadly, non-humans cannot fight for their own rights and interests, and those who try to do it for them lack the resources to carry on endless legal battles. Ergo, the status quo of animal organizations or individual rescuers remains: Perpetually overwhelmed by the needs, underfunded, and unappreciated.

 

Imagine a United States devoid of an animal welfare network including single men and women who get veterinary help for an injured dog they picked on the road, or trap-spay-and-release feral cats, or report clandestine animal fighting, or in any way help helpless animals ... Well, picture the streets of Kabul or Mogadishu and you get the idea. If it weren't for animal advocates we might be controlling the stray population as they do in China, clubbing them in the streets. We simply don't recognize with all the force and reiteration it deserves that a life devoid, inasmuch as we have it, of disease, savagery, ugliness, and such is owed to people who care, and work, and fight for animal welfare. And for Zoi's Animal Rescue role in making this a better world, Chris and I are sending you a check with our regrets that it can't be a larger amount.

 

All the best wishes to you and Debbie in your commendable endeavor, and in your personal lives all the happiness you so richly deserve. -- Dolores and Chris