I had to look up the word 'mensch'; I knew it was Yiddish but I didn't know the exact meaning. It's complimentary -- more so than I deserve. Click here to read the interview.
I had to look up the word 'mensch'; I knew it was Yiddish but I didn't know the exact meaning. It's complimentary -- more so than I deserve. Click here to read the interview.
So a few weeks ago I visited a frequent flier forum to see if any of the members knew of a way for my organization to take donations in the form of air miles, as I know a lot of people travel for work and have a ton of miles but not a lot of money. For the Sanctuary, it would be helpful to use the miles for rescue trips, and I could also take miles in lieu of a paycheck, since I don't currently get paid anything. I didn't get any replies for a few days, and then this came:
"i believe that nothing is wrong by your thoughts concerning obtaining donated airmiles for charity purposes,but if i were the owner of any airline,i would insist that any or all donated airmiles do not involve charity website only,but involve having those interested to donate via your website,but your website would direct all donors out of your website linked to that airline.
That way,the airline could track each and every aspect of any donation.
the airline could ensure all miles being donated belong to those whom are donating them
i do not know anything about the process,but merely stating how i believe the process is probally maintained for the protection of all involved.
As to your mention of your own charity getting added to some list, i would tell you to telephone each and every airline to be directed to the correct department that handles those actions.
good luck, hope my thoughts enlightened you to atleast call the airlines on the phone,since that is the 1st thing i would have done,even though i know as much about the subject as you."
I know I'm being petty, but this really pissed me off. I stopped myself from blasting this guy two or three times and ended up not responding because I think he was really trying to be helpful, albeit in a really annoying, patronizing, self-indulgent way. Seriously -- what the hell? He says he knows nothing whatsoever about the process, and then states that, based on his complete lack of knowledge on the subject, he believes things to "probally" work a certain way. Then he says I should call every airline and ask them to add my tiny charity to their lists of huge nonprofits that they partner with; I may not be an expert on air miles, but I am an expert on nonprofit management, and that's about the stupidest business advice I've ever heard. I tell you what -- you call every one of the world's 120 plus airlines with frequent flier programs and see how far you get. In fact, call one of them and get back to me.
He then has the gall to suggest that his utter lack of knowledge on the subject would be enlightening to me and that he hopes I will take his advice, because, even though he knows only as much as I do on the subject, it's the course of action he would have taken, before bothering the busy, overworked frequent flier community to see if any of them might actually know something. God forbid I would try to gather information and do research before going to the airline directly -- wouldn't want to know what the hell I was talking about ahead of time, right? He says he knows as much as I do on the subject, but as it turns out, he knows quite a bit less, and that's impressive, because I know next to nothing. "If I were the owner of any airline?" Come on out of your ass some time -- it's much nicer out here. Of course, to be fair, that's an assumption, but I think it's a safer one than the ones this guy makes about how airlines handle their charity mileage programs.
Sometimes people try so hard to be helpful they end up just being a pain in the ass. 'I don't know the answer to your question, so I'll make some shit up.' Have you ever been driving on a city street and had to slam on your brakes because the person in front of you is stopping to let someone pull out of a parking lot? In being courteous to one person, he's pissing off the ten people that nearly wrecked behind him. Or what about that friend that insists that you sleep on her lumpy-ass couch instead of checking into a hotel with a nice, big bed and free HBO? She cooks you disgusting food for dinner so you don't have to spend your money at a restaurant. Thanks to her generosity you feel like a prisoner in some creepy David Lynch movie.
A few years ago I met a guy in Bangkok, and after we talked for a few minutes, I asked him if he knew where there was an Internet cafe. He said he did, and rather than give me directions, he walked there with me. The only problem was that he had no idea where there was an Internet cafe -- he was just a really helpful guy. After wandering around for nearly an hour, I told him I was hungry and wanted lunch; he showed me to a restaurant where I had the worst meal I ate my whole time in Thailand, and he told me he'd be back in half an hour to continue 'helping' me find Internet access. He was a really nice guy, and honestly, I was a bit amazed at how hard he tried to help me even when he had no actually ability to do so. And I still sneaked out the back of the restaurant and ditched his ass.
Last year in Costa Rica my friend and I had a flat tire -- a scenario I'd dealt with plenty of times, complicated by the fact that the vehicle was parked on sand, making it tough to jack up high enough to get the spare on. I had it under control, but then another guy showed up to 'help'. He was trying to impress my friend and show that he was handy and would make her a good husband or something, so instead of getting the tire on and going home, we dicked around in the rain for an hour, it got dark, and we had to have someone else come in the morning and take care of it. Nice guy -- I thought she should have gone ahead and dated him, but I wasn't as much of a fan the first night we met.
Running a nonprofit, my whole life is about helping, so I guess that makes me somewhat of an authority on the subject. There are a lot of ways a person can help, but sometimes helping isn't helpful. Sometimes you have to let people help themselves, or get out of the way so someone who actually has something to offer can step in. A little discernment is in order. Help where you're needed, leave it alone where you're not, and learn to tell the difference.
I realize this probably makes me sound like an ungrateful jerk. I guess I'm OK with that.
In a few days I'll be heading to St. Charles, Missouri on what will probably be the last rescue trip for awhile. I thought this would be a good time to start using Twitter, so if you're interested in the play-by-play, I'm @stevemarkwell. I have no followers yet and it's embarrassing, but on the other side, I'm not following anyone. Is it bad that I don't really want to? Regardless, Twitter can be a valuable promotional tool and I felt I needed to use it, along with Facebook and blogging, to give people multiple ways to connect with my work. With the article about the Sanctuary coming out in the LA Times soon, I figured I'd better get on it quick, too. Funny about MySpace... anyone still using it?
So check me out on Twitter if you're a ... Twitterer? Tweeter? What a stupid site. But I'm still going to give it a fair chance.
It's not a typo. American culture as a whole is missing something, and those who know me are probably sick of hearing about it every Thanksgiving -- fasting. We've got the feasting part down, but what about fasting? Fasting is an exercise that helps us focus on things that really matter, and what better day of the year to be mindful of important things than Thanksgiving?
I blew it this time, because I should have written this entry a few days ago, not this morning, but next year, consider fasting for 24 hours before your Thanksgiving meal; an easy way to do it is to stop eating when it gets dark Wednesday night and make sure you don't start your family feast until after dark on Thursday. During your fast, every time you feel your hunger gnawing at you, remember the people around the world who live with that feeling every day, but who can't just walk to the refrigerator or drive to a fast food restaurant to quench it. Have you ever not known where your next meal would come from, or when? If you've ever been hungry and without money, you know that it's more than just hunger, there's also a panic that sets in, that however unpleasant, is something all of us should probably have to experience at least once to know how it feels.
I learned this principle while living in Jerusalem; Jews and Muslims alike have fasting as an integral component of their religious rituals. Think about this: if you want to be especially mindful of the things for which you're thankful, which is more conducive to that state of mind, indulging in those things, or going without them? We have so much in this country; even the poor in America live like kings compared to people in some of the places I've visited. Sure, the economy's in trouble, but you're reading this on a computer that's connected to the Internet -- over 5 billion people don't have access to this thing that we can't live without. A short fast can give us a minute insight into a fraction of their experience.
A few months ago I wrote an entry about mandatory spay/neuter laws and how I supported them, and I still support them, at least in theory, but there is one problem that deserves to be mentioned, and that is what occurs when MSN legislation is passed and there is no system in place for people to get their animals sterilized cheaply and easily. And unfortunately, that's what seems to happen in just about every instance where MSN exists.
When MSN is passed, people are less likely to license their animals, and low income families and individuals frequently have their pets confiscated and are unable to retrieve them because they can't afford the fines or the cost of the surgery. The number of animals killed in shelters increases. Clearly, while spay/neuter means fewer animals, the way we mandate it has a lot of bearing on how effective it will be.
My state has a bill on the table for spay/neuter assistance, and that's a great start, but when the state funding runs out, the nonprofit sector needs to be prepared to partner with local law enforcement to provide low-cost or even free spay/neuter in order to increase pet retention. Simply confiscating pets and destroying them in shelters isn't helping the situation; people need animals in their lives, and when you take them away, they will get more. When you return a sterilized animal to the home where you found it, people don't need to produce or purchase more pets.
So if I were writing a mandatory spay/neuter bill, this would be the gist of it:
Just some ideas. There has to be a way we can do this legislatively without forcing people to go underground. Affording it, now that's another story, but I suspect that the more money we put into spay/neuter, the more we save in the long run. It might even be worthwhile to pay people in low income areas to spay and neuter their pets.
I received an email this afternoon asking my advice on dealing with a dog who tended to be defensive around strangers. The dog, a Doberman pinscher, had jumped up and nipped a man who had approached too quickly. The sender of the email said that all of the resources she had consulted had recommended a dominance-based approach, and upon reading an article about me in today's paper, she had become curious about what I did differently. Here is my brief (brief for me, at least) response:
I guess I'll start by saying that I used to go for the alpha dog approach, and I found that a few things happened. First, the dogs were stressed, which made them defensive and more prone to fighting. Second, when a fight broke out between two dogs, a third dog would usually nail me when I was busy trying to break it up. Third, the dogs were confused about their roles with regard to me, and tended to treat me as a resource that needed to be protected, against each other and against other people. It basically made for an intense, volatile environment.
When I started working with more timid dogs, I began using a submissive approach, and found that when the dogs were at ease and didn't see me as a threat, they were less stressed. I began using the same techniques with my other dogs, and found that they fought with each other less, and I wasn't getting 'sneak attacked'. I changed my attitude as well, from 'I'm the boss' to 'I'm the guardian' -- my job is to protect the dogs, and I don't have to be a pack leader to do that. I'm not a dog, I'm a human, and my role is to protect. When that's my attitude, the dogs eventually pick up on it and begin to feel safe and secure. They also see me as an ally, not a rival. In contrast. the pack leader is the most vulnerable dog in the group, because there's always another dog looking to depose him/her. What's more, the pack dynamics that are preached with regard to dogs are wolf behaviors, not dog behaviors -- a healthy social group of dogs does not have a pack leader. Healthy dog packs are loosely organized, and dominant/submissive roles are traded back and forth. Genetically, dogs are wolves; behaviorally, they're not. When we try to force them into a wolf behavior paradigm, they become stressed and start acting like wild animals, because that's what wolves do. So ask yourself, do you want a wolf, which is a dangerous, wild animal, or do you want a dog, which is a faithful companion?
Dominance-based training uses positive punishment, which legitimate behaviorists agree is outmoded and dangerous. Unfortunately, the "Dog Whisperer" and his ilk have brought about a resurgence of these inappropriate conditioning techniques that, at best, use discomfort to control animals. Freedom from discomfort is a pillar of the western animal welfare philosophy; choking, physically dominating, and intimidating are wholly inappropriate. Instead, we need to reward the behavior we want to perpetuate, and ignore what we don't like.
Don't put yourself at risk of physical harm, but work on a couple of things: first, be the human guardian, not the pack leader. You can adopt submissive postures that tell the dog you're relaxed, not worried, and he shouldn't be worried either. Often, by lying on my back, performing play bows, and mimicking other submissive postures, I end up with the dog basically demanding that I take a more dominant role, for instance, trying to crawl under my body when I'm lying on the floor. Consider how much more powerful that role of protector is when the dog has asked you to take it on, as opposed to you demanding it. Second, in tense situations, use body language to communicate to the dog that everything's OK. The trainer Turgid Rugas is the pioneer here; she calls this body language "calming signals". For example, if I am dealing with a dog that sees me as a threat and wants to defend himself, I may turn away slightly and yawn -- this tells him I'm not interested in fighting and don't intend to challenge him. You can use calming signals directed at other people, dogs, etc., too, which will communicate to your dog that those 'scary monsters' don't have you concerned. Do a search for "Turgid Rugas" and "calming signals" for more examples of these techniques. They're great for catching shy strays, too.
Look at the dog's triggers -- what are his problem behaviors and what sets him off? 99% of the time, his problem behaviors come from him feeling threatened. Decide which triggers you can reasonably remove from his life, and which ones will have to be addressed. I am a proponent of behavior management first, behavior modification second. This means that what you're already doing, taking small steps, and not giving him more than he can handle is the most important thing. Sometimes merely the passage of time is what's needed for a dog to shrug off some of the old behaviors. For example, if you have a dog that's threatened by strangers, it's better to give him time to forget how much they scare him than to expose him to them day after day, which only further cements the defensive response into a habitual reaction. I have a small terrier here that used to go crazy when he heard children's voices; here, he doesn't hear them very often, and when he does, he has no reaction. He's forgotten how much he dislikes kids. Another example -- I have some resource guarders here that are as bad as you can imagine -- 'kill you for a bread crumb' kind of resource guarding. But by not challenging them, they get better over time; they'll probably always be resource guarders, but nowhere near the level that they used to be. Had I responded every time to that behavior and physically taken the food or toy away from them, they'd have only learned to guard even more fiercely.
Regarding the pinch collar, I'd ditch it, because it uses discomfort to control the dog. I have a very simple technique for leash training, that can be a bit tedious, but it is gentle and effective -- when the dog pulls, I simply walk in a different direction. It sometimes looks like I am walking in circles, or even like I've been drinking, but by changing my direction, varying my speed, and keeping the dog guessing, he has to pay attention to me and follow my lead. There's no choking, tugging, or punishing here -- just redirection. You can use treats to augment this if you like.
Remember to take small steps and keep your expectations realistic. If you want a dog that will play at the dog park and go into Home Depot with you, you may need to adjust your goals a bit, but if you want a dog that can go for walks when there aren't thousands of people around and isn't going to break his teeth on the car window every time a jogger runs by, your chances of success are pretty good. Remember also that his happiness, not your convenience, is what's at stake here. You're his guardian, which means your job is to protect him and do what's best for him. You belong to him, in that sense. Keep his interests at the heart of your decisions, and you should be fine.
