Would Animal Care & Control of New York City fire someone for taking high-quality pictures of dogs waiting to be adopted?
Apparently.
At least that's the story told by The New York Times.
It seems a woman by the name of Emily Tanen was fired for taking and posting cute, high-quality photos of dogs about to be "euthanized" by her employer, Animal Care & Control of NYC.
Ms. Tanen says she hoped the high quality pictures might get more dogs adopted. The New York Times says her crime was that instead of using the crappy shelter-provided web cam, she used her own high-quality camera to take photos, and she actually put a human or two in the pictures to show the dogs interacting with people in a friendly way.
This last part was a real no-no, as the shelter claims "it looks like the animals have already been adopted" if a human is in the frame.
What??! Are these people out of their minds!??
Actually no, they are not out of the minds. They are simply dealing with the reality that they are in the dog killing business and will continue to be so long as the Pit Bull situation does not change in America.
What? How did this topic go down this road? I thought we were supposed to be getting our outrage on over the fact that Ms. Tanen was fired for taking high-quality pictures?
Well yes, and we will come to that, but first let's take a look at the numbers and the canine faces behind the problems at Animal Care & Control of NYC. This 'shelter" manages to rehome about 65 percent of the dogs that come through its doors, with 10 percent reclaimed by their owners, and about 25 percent are euthanized.
Some of the euthanized animals have serious health problems, but most are healthy Pit Bulls.
Animal Care & Control of NYC will not say it, but they are NOT opposed to high-quality photos as photos. What they are opposed to are high-quality photos being used an an indictment of the shelter.
This last point need to be stressed.
You see the world of shelters is changing, but change is a process, not at event.
One positive change is that because spay-neuter persuasion has worked so well, there are now a lot fewer dogs going to the pounds in the first place. With fewer dogs going to the pound, marketing campaigns to place dogs in homes suddenly had some hope of handling the canine "over population" problem. Thus the "No Kill" movement was born, and I am happy to say it has gained a lot of traction.
The problem is that why the spay-neuter message has generally taken hold, it has not specifically taken hold with the Pit Bull community. Pit Bull owners who say they "love" these dogs also breed these dogs, and then they sell them to other people who say they "love" these dogs.
About half the time, however, the dog is then abandoned to the shelter. Why? A variety of reasons, but the bottom line is that the dogs end up being more work and trouble than the folks on the TV shows and the Internet bulletin boards make them out to be. Whoops. My bad. Now the dog needs to die.
Critics of shelters like Animal Care & Control of NYC say these places need to do a lot more to get dogs adopted out.
I would not disagree.
That said, critics of shelters might take a few minutes to look at the math behind Pit Bulls in particular.
More Pit Bulls are being euthanized every year in this country than ALL of the dogs registered by the American Kennel Club and the United Kennel Club combined.
Read that sentence again, and you will come to the essential truth, which is that we cannot adopt our way out of the current Pit Bull mess.
Not everyone wants a medium or large dog, not everyone wants to miss the puppy experience, and not everyone can cope with adopting a dog that might prove to be canine aggressive.
And so we have a massive mis-match between what the Pit Bull community is providing the world, and what the world actually wants.
Was any part of this Emily Tanen's message? I doubt it.
Instead, Ms. Tanen appears to have taken the easy road which was to take glamour shots of the dogs which, rightly or wrongly, the management of Animal Care & Control of NYC saw as an indictment.
Rather than pay someone to build a photo book that might later be used to demonize them, Animal Care & Control of NYC decided to kick Ms. Tanen to the curb. Was that the right response? Probably not, but kicking shelters for not being able to adopt out a million and a half Pit Bulls a year is not the right response either is it?
What would the right response be? Different people will have different answers there, but silence about the sheer numbers of Pit Bulls being bred and abandoned by Pit Bull "lovers" has to be part of the program. It is, after all THE problem.
So yes, let's try to do a better job of photographing dogs at shelters, and getting those photos out to to the community.
At the same time, however, let's recognize that demonizing and indicting shelter management for America's Pit Bull problem is simply wrong and misguided. We can do better than this on both ends of the street.
.
.
Apparently.
At least that's the story told by The New York Times.
It seems a woman by the name of Emily Tanen was fired for taking and posting cute, high-quality photos of dogs about to be "euthanized" by her employer, Animal Care & Control of NYC.
Ms. Tanen says she hoped the high quality pictures might get more dogs adopted. The New York Times says her crime was that instead of using the crappy shelter-provided web cam, she used her own high-quality camera to take photos, and she actually put a human or two in the pictures to show the dogs interacting with people in a friendly way.
This last part was a real no-no, as the shelter claims "it looks like the animals have already been adopted" if a human is in the frame.
What??! Are these people out of their minds!??
Actually no, they are not out of the minds. They are simply dealing with the reality that they are in the dog killing business and will continue to be so long as the Pit Bull situation does not change in America.
What? How did this topic go down this road? I thought we were supposed to be getting our outrage on over the fact that Ms. Tanen was fired for taking high-quality pictures?
Well yes, and we will come to that, but first let's take a look at the numbers and the canine faces behind the problems at Animal Care & Control of NYC. This 'shelter" manages to rehome about 65 percent of the dogs that come through its doors, with 10 percent reclaimed by their owners, and about 25 percent are euthanized.
Some of the euthanized animals have serious health problems, but most are healthy Pit Bulls.
Animal Care & Control of NYC will not say it, but they are NOT opposed to high-quality photos as photos. What they are opposed to are high-quality photos being used an an indictment of the shelter.
This last point need to be stressed.
You see the world of shelters is changing, but change is a process, not at event.
One positive change is that because spay-neuter persuasion has worked so well, there are now a lot fewer dogs going to the pounds in the first place. With fewer dogs going to the pound, marketing campaigns to place dogs in homes suddenly had some hope of handling the canine "over population" problem. Thus the "No Kill" movement was born, and I am happy to say it has gained a lot of traction.
The problem is that why the spay-neuter message has generally taken hold, it has not specifically taken hold with the Pit Bull community. Pit Bull owners who say they "love" these dogs also breed these dogs, and then they sell them to other people who say they "love" these dogs.
About half the time, however, the dog is then abandoned to the shelter. Why? A variety of reasons, but the bottom line is that the dogs end up being more work and trouble than the folks on the TV shows and the Internet bulletin boards make them out to be. Whoops. My bad. Now the dog needs to die.
Critics of shelters like Animal Care & Control of NYC say these places need to do a lot more to get dogs adopted out.
I would not disagree.
That said, critics of shelters might take a few minutes to look at the math behind Pit Bulls in particular.
More Pit Bulls are being euthanized every year in this country than ALL of the dogs registered by the American Kennel Club and the United Kennel Club combined.
Read that sentence again, and you will come to the essential truth, which is that we cannot adopt our way out of the current Pit Bull mess.
Not everyone wants a medium or large dog, not everyone wants to miss the puppy experience, and not everyone can cope with adopting a dog that might prove to be canine aggressive.
And so we have a massive mis-match between what the Pit Bull community is providing the world, and what the world actually wants.
Was any part of this Emily Tanen's message? I doubt it.
Instead, Ms. Tanen appears to have taken the easy road which was to take glamour shots of the dogs which, rightly or wrongly, the management of Animal Care & Control of NYC saw as an indictment.
Rather than pay someone to build a photo book that might later be used to demonize them, Animal Care & Control of NYC decided to kick Ms. Tanen to the curb. Was that the right response? Probably not, but kicking shelters for not being able to adopt out a million and a half Pit Bulls a year is not the right response either is it?
What would the right response be? Different people will have different answers there, but silence about the sheer numbers of Pit Bulls being bred and abandoned by Pit Bull "lovers" has to be part of the program. It is, after all THE problem.
So yes, let's try to do a better job of photographing dogs at shelters, and getting those photos out to to the community.
At the same time, however, let's recognize that demonizing and indicting shelter management for America's Pit Bull problem is simply wrong and misguided. We can do better than this on both ends of the street.
.
.
6 comments:
Forest for the trees for the understory, friend. Obviously, this brouhaha isn't about a person attempting to apply personal talents to the problem at hand. Neither is this about larger issues, like the dismal pit bull spay and neuter rates, nor is this an indictment of animal control practices. This is a case of labor law. Unlike nearly every design and photography firm in the city, a management familiar with unions likely saw a major problem with not paying someone properly for their specialized skill. And they weren't gonna pay for it so it had to stop.
You seem to have an entirely different take on the issue, but you provide NO support for your position.
Animal Care and Control NY is NOT part of city government, even if it is unionized.
I know of no union that would object to a worker taking a picture with a better camera and I worked pretty closely with unions (employed by a host of them) for almost a decade. If this is the issue, please name the union and I will make a call and get it sorted.
From what I can tell, however, this is an invented claim.
On the Facebook page trying to reinstate Emily Tanen, there is NO mention of a union issue(see >> https://www.facebook.com/pages/Reinstate-Emily-Tanen/203889619650134?sk=info ) nor is this claim, assertion made in ANY of the articles or interviews she has given.
On the other hand, it is pretty easy to find Emily Tanen running down the shelter for killing dogs. See >> http://www.examiner.com/pet-news-in-national/former-paid-staffer-calls-nyc-animal-shelter-death-row-for-dogs
P.
(And now I'm off to start dinner, in a hurry and without a proof reader for the bit I just posted, sorry!)
Looking for PROOF not a proof reader! Looking for evidence, not typing ;-)
P
Why leave unpublished the previous apology and explaination I sent you and instead come back with a quip on a side comment made recognising my bad grammar? That's not kind.
I got no apology or explanation, hence the confusion. Please send again.
P
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