It was a typical day at Animal Care and Control in San Francisco, with lots of deserving animals needing some special attention. Among them were three adult Chihuahua mixes surrendered to the shelter by their owner.
My job was to evaluate their behavior, and all three were fearful, snappy, and generally freaked out in their new surroundings. Even after giving them five days to try to settle in to the routine, not one allowed me to touch him. I knew SF/ACC could not make these dogs available to the general public.
Maybe a rescue group would have a suitable foster home available for them, I thought. Maybe that household would include someone who had prior experience working with super fearful Chihuahuas. Maybe, with time, a forever adopter or two would fall in love and re-home the dogs. Yeah, maybe.
On days like this I went home feeling heartsick and a little angry. I blamed the pet owners for not doing or caring enough. I blamed myself for not doing more. And I felt a little hopeless that the situation would not be improving anytime soon. People surrender their pets every day for complicated reasons like: moving due to the mortgage crisis, a new baby in the home, a family member who is allergic, or because the pet has developed behavior problems. These days, more and more pets are relinquished because people simply cannot afford to care for them.
Shortly after my day with those SF/ACC Chihuahuas, I did an internship in New York with Sue Sternberg at her Roundout Valley Animals for Adoption (RVAA) shelter. There I also met Jane Kopelman, RVAA Shelter Manager and National Director for an innovative program called Training Wheels. Sue and Jane started Training Wheels in 1999 as a mobile outreach program taking shelter services into the community. Their goal was to help keep people and pets together by offering assistance with training, supplies, low-cost spay/neutering, and emergency veterinary care. By the end of my internship I was completely hooked on the concept and excited about starting a San Francisco chapter.
The truth is that a lot of pet owners do not have access to the help they need. The Chihuahuas’ owner surely didn’t. Many can’t afford training, vet services, and basic pet supplies. Jane Kopelman writes, “Training Wheels is especially important in today’s economic climate. So many people are having difficulty keeping up and we don’t want anyone to be forced to give up a pet for financial reasons. So we’re glad to be there with food, supplies, and behavior training when they’re needed.”
So last March I embarked on the very first Training Wheels SF volunteer mobile outreach run to The Haight and Golden Gate Park. My friend and Give a Dog a Bone founder, Corinne Dowling, accompanied me. We chatted ourselves silly, talking to every person we saw with a dog, most of them homeless. We handed out collars, harnesses, leashes, toys, treat bags, food, and a whole lot of flea and tick medicine. We also did some on-the-spot dog training. It was exhilarating. People loved talking about their pets and we loved listening. When we offered a little help, they gladly accepted it.
Corinne says, “What I really liked about that first visit to GGP was seeing a very different community of people with their dogs in a whole new light. They were unabashedly and unapologetically themselves. People were at ease to share stories about their beloved best friends, something we had in common. And everything else fell away.”
Through our continued outreach we have discovered that many people have an immediate need for pet food. To begin addressing this, Training Wheels SF is forming a committee to develop a free weekly food bank to help pet owners in San Francisco. We hope to launch a pilot program in time for Thanksgiving. TWSF committee member and St. Vincent de Paul Society board member Lisa Salamone says, “Food should not only be a right for every human, but for every animal as well. The goal of our group is to offer food assistance to cat and dog owners in need, with hopes of expanding to provide food for small animals, too.”
Every Tuesday we fire up the SUV and head out to help San Francisco pet owners. The people we encounter in our rounds are with and without homes, and I have learned to see them all in a different way, through a proactive rather than reactive lens. My judgment and anger have faded away and I feel immensely privileged to be doing this work. We continue to build trust with this community one person at a time..
Sue Sternberg adds, “Through Training Wheels SF, this city is benefiting from Paula’s expertise in behavior and training and her genuine compassion for people and pets. TW programs are grassroots efforts and the TWSF program needs more volunteers for mobile outreach and the food bank, donations of pet supplies and pet foods, and financial help for spay/neuter and emergency veterinary funds.” If you are inspired by reading this please become a part of the effort.
Paula Benton is the director of Training Wheels San Francisco and can be reached at paulabentonsemail@gmail.com.
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