"All we want are the facts, ma'am."

The quote above is from Dragnet's Sgt. Joe Friday and it's relevant to our discussion today.

We approach the spay/neuter cause with purpose and passion that sometimes borders on evangelism. In most cases we assume we are preaching to the "faithful", who are more than willing to forgive any and all exaggerations. But, to be successful, our mission must go beyond the "faithful". We must change the minds and hearts of those who may be disinterested, skeptical or even cynical.

Therefore we must make sure we stick to the facts. Others must come to know that we have an unshakable allegiance to the facts.

Case in point. We received the following feedback from our March 30 "Fixing the Future" meeting.

We made the following statement during the meeting: "In order to solve the homeless pet problem, every person would have to adopt 6 dogs and 9 cats". While this statement is quietly acknowledged by the "faithful", it sends the skeptics to their calculators. The skeptics say "There are 11.3 million people in the state of Ohio. Are you telling me that there are 67.8 million homeless dogs and 101.7million homeless cats in the state of Ohio?"  While we had sourced our quote, we hadn't given it the "reasonableness test". Score 1 for the folks with calculators.

Even one of our state Senators yielded to the temptation: "We can't adopt our way of the homeless animal problem. We'd each have to adopt 15 dogs and 45 cats to deal with the crisis and that's just not going to happen." I'm glad we didn't source from the Senator.

I think you get my point, i.e. every cause has its share of hyperbole.

We are better served as a movement and as a cause to stick to the facts. And the facts as we know them today, are that we euthanize 33,000 animals in the "Greater Cincinnati Area". I can tell you, we are hard at work validating both the number (i.e. 33,000) and what "Greater Cincinnati Area" means in terms of geography and population. We will report those numbers when we have them.

When we are finished with our research, our purpose is to come up with a single number both to quantify the current problem and to measure our progress in solving the problem. That single number is nationally referred to as E-Metric or "the number of euthanasias per 1000 in human population." The national average is 16. In New Hampshire it's 2.5. In the "Greater Cincinnati Area" it's 18+ --- based on our current numbers of 33,000 euthanasias and 1.8 million in human population within a 40-mile radius.

But we received other feedback from our March 30 "Fixing the Future" meeting and it was in the category of "That's just too good to be true."

During the meeting, Karla Brestle DVM of Humane Alliance was asked the "mortality rate" for Humane Alliance, Asheville, i.e. how many deaths. Karla's answer was .08% --- not .08 but .08%. Again the "faithful" nodded their approval while others scrambled for their calculators. "That can't be! .08% is only 17 mortalities in 21,226 surgeries. That's simply not believable."

Well, it may not be believable, but it's true, i.e. 17 mortalities in 21,226 surgeries is the number. So, unlike the first example where we're probably guilty of exuberance and need to change the number, here our challenge is to explain how the Humane Alliance medical protocol and the associated quality control can produce such an "unbelievable" result.

So our challenge is twofold. First, get good with the facts. Second, accept any and all challenges to those facts as opportunities to educate and persuade.

-steve-

"Spaying pets. Educating people. Saving lives."

Comments

[Amber Beane]

Very well said Steve. As you stated quite eloquently, we are truly the faithful, but we must also be the "factual'. That being said, we simply do not have enough hard "facts" to calculate exact numbers. The best source for statistically defining pet overpopulation is www.petpopulation.org. Fortunately, as we move into the future, we now realize the importance of this information. I think the bottom line is euthanizing one animal due to lack of space is simply unacceptable.