PHODOGRAPHER

I’m kind of on a little hiatus from photography at the moment, with my attentions focused almost entirely on an event that I’m organizing, and hosting, along with flexi USA and their newest brand, Alcott Afoot. The event is a Super Adoption, and with more than 1,600 adoptable animals registered to be available at one of our numerous locations around the city, My Furry Valentine will be Greater Cincinnati’s largest companion animal adoption event and I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of it! If you follow my blog, you already know that I’m just as much an animal advocate as I am a pet photographer, and in fact, my foray into pet photography began a decade ago as a home-grown project to profile homeless animals and promote adoption.

I’ve always wanted to do something big for animals in my community and have dedicated many years as a Board Member of Cincinnati’s United Coalition for Animals - focused on the area of spay/neuter as a way to end the euthanasia of healthy, adoptable animals. For the longest time, I felt that this was the best use of my time and talents, as it got right to the root of the problem – stopping animals from reproducing and bringing more animals into a world that doesn’t want them. I saw my friends dedicating their lives working with their shelter and rescue affiliations, focused on finding homes for what was a never-ending supply of homeless animals. Every single animal they encountered deserved to be loved, cared for and to be saved. But for every animal they did save, there were countless others that they simply couldn’t. It was a depressing scenario and I chose to focus on the front end of the problem (spay/neuter), while working with those who dealt the the results of the problem, “overpopulation“. I had heard the phrase, “We’ll never adopt our way out of the problem” many times, and I believed it. I focused my photography efforts on telling stories of adopted animals, those who had been saved. Those who were no longer at risk and who’s success stories could serve as positive inspiration for more people to consider adoption. Eventually, I began helping my rescue friends photograph animals in foster, those who didn’t yet have a home, but were also no longer at risk of “euthanasia”. I just didn’t have the strength or the courage to work with the ones at risk, the ones who might not be saved, the animals on “death row”.

Over time I became more involved in the animal welfare community. While my heart still ached for the animals, I grew stronger and began to come to the realization that whether or not I had the courage to work with “death row” animals, the animals’ situations didn’t change. So I had to admit to myself that my reluctance was about me and my own feelings. It had nothing to do with the animals, and keeping myself at “arms length” from the problem didn’t change the situation for the animals one bit. Obviously. It just meant it was a problem I didn’t have to think about. Animals continued to die in our local shelters whether or not it was something top of mind for me. They died because their parents hadn’t been spayed or neutered. They died because shelters weren’t open at convenient hours and in convenient locations, and in many cases, people who had had bad experiences with a shelter in the past weren’t willing to put themselves in that situation again. They died because no one came to adopt them. And they died because not enough people got involved and did something, anything, to change the status quo. So I decided it was time and I would have to do my part to help change the outcome. The obvious choice for me was to lend my photography skill to the effort.

Early last year, I decided I was finally going to help my friends who were working with death row animals. I had already been photographing adoptables from Recycled Doggies, Stray Animal Adoption Program and other local groups. I would photograph their animals and provide those images to the groups so they could use them on their websites and Petfinder profiles. But I never before had ventured with them actually into the shelters, selecting the ones they were going to save – and looking into the eyes of the ones they couldn’t. That first experience working with my friends to pull death row dogs at a rural shelter couldn’t have been more emotionally draining. First, there was this dog we lovingly named, Chunk. And I just could not get him out of my mind. Eventually we got him out within our deadline (which was initially less than 48 hours), as we did EVERY SINGLE DOG IN THE SHELTER. Then, just a week later, tragedy struck in the way of a house fire of Recycled Doggies’ founder, Shannon DeBra, that took the lives of thirteen dogs, including two of her own, as well as Jumpin’ Jack and Trigger, who we had just pulled from the shelter. It couldn’t have been a more tragic outcome following the high of knowing we were able to save all 14 dogs a week earlier. To hear more about this story, please read this post.

What I learned in this experience, however, is that the power of a group of dedicated people, selfless and tireless working on behalf of animals, CAN SAVE LIVES. Because we did it. We proved that a collaboration of people working together toward a common goal of getting animals out of shelters and into homes, foster and rescue, can end the killing. Because for five months running, we achieved a “no kill” status*. Every week. And we did it until we were “no longer welcome at the shelter”. Because for this particular shelter, it was apparently too difficult, and too much work, to open its doors and allow rescues in to have access to the animals. To promote them far and wide. To receive incoming inquiries about animals in their care. To take a risk and have some faith, that if we just gave a dog another 12 hours, it could mean the difference of life or death. And to work toward a goal of saving lives, instead of simply being comfortable with the status quo of saving some while many others died. To learn more about this experience, please read my post, “It Takes a Village“.

While I’m still on the board of UCAN, who runs the region’s only local low-cost, high-volume spay/neuter clinic for cats and dogs, I’ve since learned more about the No-Kill Movement, and have been motivated to focus more of my attention on the adoption end of the equation. Because what I learned is this – we CAN adopt our way out of the problem. As a nation, an estimated 6-8 million animals enter our local shelters, but only half of them make it out alive. So we know that 3-4 million animals in our country are euthanized each year, while at the same time, TWENTY ONE MILLION homes will open their doors to a new pet this year*. These numbers speak volumes, and were a huge wake-up call for me. Locally, those numbers translate to our 33,000 animals that are euthanized each year. And based on national statistics, we can expect somewhere in the neighborhood of 115,000 Cincinnati area residents to welcome a new pet into their family in that same timeframe.

115,000 Cincinnatians  looking for pets while 33,000 animals in the same community die in our shelters because there is no adopter for them? It makes no sense to me.

I truly believe that if the public were better educated about adoption options, overcame the common misperception that there is something inherently wrong with an animal in a shelter (and realized instead the truth that in most cases, the animal is simply a victim of unfortunate circumstances), understood the implications of adopting and the ramifications of not adopting, rescues and shelters worked together more collaboratively to get animals out of the shelter system and into foster and rescue, and people were given better opportunities to adopt, then we would see a huge impact in the numbers of animals adopted and the numbers of animals euthanized. In fact, Maddies Fund and the Humane Society of the United States have told us, “By reaching a subset of the population uncertain about where they’ll obtain their next dog or cat and convincing them that an animal shelter is the best source, we can end the euthanasia of homeless dogs and cats in this country”.

And that is exactly why I am organizing a Super Adoption in Cincinnati. To reach those people. To give them a reason, and an opportunity, to think of adoption as their first choice when considering bringing a new pet into their lives. And in the hopes of finding homes for hundreds of animals in a single day.

Please come out to My Furry Valentine and help us promote the event. You can visit our website at www.MyFurryValentine.com, and find us on Facebook.

*No Kill is a target of saving every healthy, adoptable animal. National statistics and the No Kill Advocacy Center tell us this number is approx. 90% of shelter intake – all but the gravely ill and vicious (dangerous) dogs. To learn more about the No-Kill Equation and the programs advocated to end the euthanasia of our shelter animals, visit the No Kill Advocacy Center online, or get one of Nathan Winograd’s highly acclaimed books on the subject, “Redemption” and “Irreconcilable Differences“.