animal welfare Archives - Ed Boks Consulting

July 20, 2016January 7, 2018

Ed Boks leaves Yavapai Humane Society; carrying on his legacy

Ed Boks and Yavapai Humane Society Six years ago this month I joined the Yavapai Humane Society (YHS) team as executive director. When I joined the YHS team I found an organization operating with some challenges — from a notable deficit, high employee turnover, and low morale.

The greatest concern was the sheer number of animals dying each year. YHS was among the highest kill shelters in Arizona per capita; killing over 2,200 animals annually – six per day. The organization and our community wanted to see change.

Never one to shy away from a challenge, I made it my mission to bring a transformative vision to YHS, summed up in the term “No Kill Ethic.” I have always stood in the conviction that killing animals because of lack of space or out of convenience is immoral and it need not occur in any community.

The YHS Board of Directors rallied around this vision to help attract and establish a team aligned with our determination to end the killing. The results speak for themselves.

YHS immediately began the “steepest and fasted decline in shelter killing ever seen in any shelter anywhere” according to Animals 24/7 publisher Merritt Clifton, a 25-year watchdog of animal shelter euthanasia in the United States.

This transformation was no flash in the pan either. YHS has sustained the lowest or among the lowest kill rates of any shelter in the nation throughout my tenure—a commitment that I know the solid leadership which remains at YHS will continue to carry far out into the future. Today, YHS holds prestigious ratings from both Charity Navigator and GuideStar for fiscal responsibility and effective program management.

I am honored to have been a part of what I consider to be YHS’s greatest chapter – transforming a troubled past into a very bright future.

This was not a one man show. The YHS miracle occurred because of a committed Board of Directors, a brilliant management team, dedicated employees and volunteers, and generous donors and community partners. Together we generated an extraordinary legacy having created and sustained the safest community in the nation for pets.

It is with this recognized success that I have decided to leave YHS to continue my vision to help other communities establish their own “No Kill Ethic.”

Prescott has been my home these past six years and I have come to know many of you and I will miss you all. Thank you for the opportunity to serve you.

Ed Boks, former Executive Director of Yavapai Humane Society

A message from the Board of Directors President, Jerry Kipp:

“Ed’s vision brought YHS to a place of leadership in the animal welfare industry, and inspired our organization to create an extremely safe community for animals in need. We remain grateful for the numerous contributions Ed has made toward YHS’s lifesaving work and will continue to build on the solid foundation created during his six-year tenure. We remain committed to our No Kill Ethic, which is at the heart of all we do at our organization.”

Source: Carrying on legacy at Humane Society

June 15, 2016January 7, 2018

Foxtail season a deadly threat to your pets by Ed Boks

Ed Boks and Foxtails Your pet has a deadly enemy that comes in the form of several species of grassy weeds that grow rapidly during the winter/spring rains. When these grasses mature a seed forms at the top of the stalk resembling a fox tail.

Once foxtail grasses dry out, the seed detaches easily and sticks readily to clothing and fur. Foxtail seeds can enter a dog’s body in a variety of ways and once in they act like a fishhook burrowing inward; and because of tiny barbs, it cannot back out on its own.

It’s most common for a foxtail to enter a dog’s body through the skin, nose, ears, paws, genitals and eyes. One veterinarian reported that a foxtail found in a dog’s lung initially entered through the dog’s paw. Foxtails are tenacious and deadly.

Ed Boks and foxtails Foxtail seeds are relatively small, so detecting them after they enter a dog’s body can be difficult. Veterinarians usually rely on telltale symptoms such as head-shaking, paw licking, swellings on the body, or sudden and continuous sneezing. Foxtails in the ears, nose and eyes are serious and can ultimately be life-threatening if not treated promptly.

When a foxtail is inhaled and lodged in the nasal cavity, a dog will sneeze repeatedly and violently, sometimes even banging his nose on the floor in a futile attempt to dislodge the seed. It is often possible for a veterinarian to sedate the animal, locate the seed with an otoscope and remove it using special forceps if the animal is brought in when symptoms first appear.

If a foxtail is lodged in the paw or under the coat, a lump will usually form that is painful to touch. Depending on how deep the foxtail has traveled it can usually be removed surgically.

When a foxtail gets into a dog’s eye, the dog will paw at the eye. When you see a foxtail under the eyelid don’t try to remove it – you may not get it all. Keep your dog from pawing the eye and get him to a veterinarian immediately, preferably a veterinary ophthalmologist.

When your dog gets a foxtail in an ear, he will usually shake his head violently. Whenever you suspect a foxtail, get your dog to a veterinarian immediately. The best way to handle foxtail problems is to prevent them or treat them early.

Whenever possible avoid foxtail infested areas – especially during the dry season. But after a romp through tall, mature grass follow these steps:

Thoroughly brush and inspect your dog’s coat. Run your hands over his coat looking for foxtails. Dogs with long hair are particularly susceptible to foxtails.
Look into your dog’s ears. If your dog has floppy ears, lift each ear and inspect.
Examine your dog’s paws (in-between toes and paw pads), neck (under the collar), tail/anus, and under leg areas after walks in areas with foxtails. Remove any foxtails sitting on the fur.
If you believe your dog has a foxtail lodged somewhere in his body, get him to a veterinarian immediately. The longer you wait, the deeper the foxtail will travel and the more damage it will do, and the more difficult it will be to treat.

Learn to recognize foxtails and avoid them! Foxtail danger in our parks, yards, empty lots and alleys can be greatly reduced by simply mowing the grass regularly, especially in the late spring. Mowing cuts off the foxtail grass before the deadly seed forms.

Source: Foxtail season deadly threat to pets

June 8, 2016January 7, 2018

Mercy or Terror: Competing Priorities by Ed Boks

Ed Boks and competing priorities These are challenging times for government officials. In many communities the care of lost and homeless animals can be complicated by a host of competing priorities. When evaluating conflicting priorities it’s easy to look to the bottom line. When that happens, questions of compassion can be overlooked.

It’s easy to lose touch with the intrinsic value of animals when confronted with all the issues and problems involved with managing a city, town or county. It’s not difficult to understand how decision makers can feel human needs and wants are more important than animal needs and wants.

When this happens, it’s easy to reduce animal control to a simple equation of expense and expedience. We can fool ourselves into thinking we’re dealing with widgets rather than lives. It’s at this point that a community’s true character emerges.

Indian Prime Minister Mahatma Gandhi taught that the soul of a society is revealed by its treatment of animals. Animal control is a litmus test for determining a community’s capacity for empathy, compassion and kindness. Imagine the consequences if a community’s treatment of animals translated into how its next generation expressed love, compassion and mercy.

Matthew Scully, senior speech writer for President George W. Bush and author of the book “Dominion,” put it this way: “We are called upon to treat animals with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but because they don’t; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us. Animals are so easily overlooked, their interests so easily brushed aside. Whenever we humans enter their world, from our farms to the local animal shelter to the African savanna, we enter as lords of the earth bearing strange powers of terror and mercy.”

Terror or mercy; every community makes a choice. Our community made a choice six years ago and has since accomplished what no other community has been able to achieve and sustain – an end to killing to control pet overpopulation. This was done despite higher priorities, greater needs and many human injustices. There will always be enough injustice and human suffering in the world to make the wrongs done to animals seem small and secondary, however, we err when we think of justice or kindness as finite qualities.

A community shortchanges itself when it reasons there is only enough concern for its elderly but not for its children, or just enough love for its children but not for its mentally ill, or only enough compassion for its human population but not for its animals.

We compound wrongs within our character when we excuse the wrongs done to animals by saying more important wrongs are done to humans and we must concentrate on those alone. A wrong is a wrong, and when we shrug off little wrongs, we do grave harm to ourselves and others.

Each year municipalities renew their commitment to mercy or terror when they renew their animal control contract. These contractual partnerships helped the quad-city region of Arizona become the safest and most humane community in the United States – for six consecutive years.

This was not always the case. Our community was once called “the most inhumane” in the nation by no less than the ASPCA. Together we transformed our community into a national model. We created a true humane society for ourselves, our families and our animals. By continuing to work together, we can and we will sustain this amazing success into the future.

Source: Competing priorities

March 9, 2016January 10, 2018

Legislators challenge Arizona’s moral progress By Ed Boks

Mahatma Gandhi said it best, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” The same can be said of the states in a nation.

In fact, the greatness and moral progress of all 50 states can be traced through the years by the consistent strengthening of state laws against animal cruelty to include felony provisions. This moral and legal progress has been based on the growing understanding of the link between animal cruelty and violence against humans.

Today, academic journals and textbooks in child welfare, human-animal studies, sociology, child development, criminology, psychology, social work, veterinary medicine, and many other disciplines accept the incontrovertible link between animal abuse, domestic violence, child maltreatment and elder abuse.

Understanding this link, the FBI now requires local law enforcement to track and report animal cruelty the same way homicide, arson and assault are tracked – as a Group A felony.

So, why would any Arizona legislator want to turn back the clock on progress that has taken decades to achieve? Why would any legislator want to strip any animal of any protection provided by the law?

Why would Arizona legislators David Gowan and Brenda Barton work behind closed doors with corporate agriculture lobbyists to craft a bill (HB 2330) designed to repeal the few protections millions of animals have in Arizona?

HB 2330 is not an isolated attempt to repeal Arizona’s animal cruelty laws. Last year enough Arizona legislators supported a similar bill (HB 2150) that it would have been the law of the land today except for Governor Ducey’s veto.

Fortunately, this year’s coup against animal welfare may have died in the Agriculture, Water and Lands Committee when they wisely chose to not agendize HB 2330.

However, the bill could still be resurrected by the House Appropriations Committee this year or introduced in another permutation next year. Animal advocates must remain vigilant in a state where politicians seem strangely determined to weaken animal-cruelty laws.

Apart from some Arizona legislators, animal abuse is widely recognized and understood by law enforcement, public health officials and decent human beings everywhere to be part of a continuum of violence with serious implications for multiple victims and society as a whole.

While Gandhi drew our attention to the societal ramifications of how we treat animals, Immanuel Kant provided some insight into how we should judge politicians who deliberately put animals in harm’s way. “He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.” This maxim serves as a reliable gauge for assessing the character of politicians who have the power to impact how animals, and people, are treated on a massive scale.

Sponsors and supporters of last year’s HB 2150 and this year’s HB 2330 have telegraphed their agenda to reverse Arizona’s moral progress by revoking protections animals in Arizona have benefited from for decades. They have exposed their intent to put the welfare of millions of animals at risk without any corresponding benefit or legitimate justification. They need to know this is not going unnoticed.

Refer to my Feb. 17 column, “Lawmakers target animals again” to understand the risk of cruelty that HB 2330 posed for millions of animals.

January 16, 2013January 9, 2018

2012 paradigm shift in animal welfare by Ed Boks

Ed Boks and ape — Science acknowledges non-human sentience

The current issue of Animal People contains a noteworthy article, entitled “The most overlooked victory for animals of 2012.” The article, written by Kim Bartlett, president of Animal People, reported on a potentially earth shaking paradigm shift that sadly went largely unnoticed.

On July 7, 2012, a prominent international group of neuroscientists, biologists and physicists (including the eminent Stephen Hawking) gathered at the Francis Crick Memorial Conference on Consciousness in Human and non-Human Animals and signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness; which states:

“We declare the following: the absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviours. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess substrates.”

This declaration repudiates the 17th Century, “father of modern philosophy,” Rene Descartes’ ideas that animals are not conscious and have no interests or sense of well-being that humans need to be concerned with.

For more than 350 years, animals were believed to be incapable of thinking, and therefore incapable of “being.” Descartes labeled animals “automata” which means they lacked minds and emotions and were incapable of feeling sensations. Descartes considered compassion for animals worthy of ridicule.

Descartes, and generations of his followers, contended that when animals act as if they are suffering, it is no different than a malfunctioning machine. This philosophy gave carte blanche to the practice of vivisection, which takes living and fully conscious animals apart as if they were pocket watches. Vivisectors were encouraged to laugh as animals screamed and to make fun of the “sentimental” and “ignorant” people who protested their barbaric practices.

Descartes formulated a philosophy of mind/body dualism, similar to Greek and Asian thinkers before him. However, unlike earlier intellectuals, Descartes only granted minds to humans, designating animals as mere machines. “I think, therefore I am,” declared Descartes. However, in his system, animals were incapable of thought and therefore incapable of “being” in any meaningful way people ought to respect.

One prominent protester of Descartes’ rationale for animal cruelty was the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, who famously demanded, “You discover in the animal all the same organs of feeling that are in yourself. Answer me, mechanist, has nature arranged all the means of feeling in this animal so that it may not feel?”

Descartes’ ideological reign of terror over Western science began to crumble over the past several decades as scientists became uncomfortable with animal cruelty in laboratories and started to question “automata.” A new wave of academic philosophers, such as Tom Regan and Peter Singer, began poking holes in the Descartes doctrine in the 1970s in tandem with the birth of the modern animal rights movement. During this same time, studies of animals in their natural habitats led to an understanding that animals have more in common with humans than ever recognized before. This has all led to the culmination of a new paradigm embodied within the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, which thoroughly denounces Descartes and his philosophy.

September 26, 2012January 7, 2018

Animal shelters a bellwether for pets by Ed Boks

Ed Boks and parvo The term “bellwether” comes from the Middle English bellewether. It refers to the practice of placing a bell around the neck of a castrated ram (a wether) leading a flock of sheep. The movements of the flock can then be predicted (or followed) by hearing the bell without actually seeing the flock.

Animal shelters are a sort of bellwether when it comes to predicting or following pet disease trends in our communities. Sadly, our local bellether suggests we may see an upswing in the number of cases of parvovirus in puppies and young dogs in my community – unless we proactively use this information to protect our pets.

While the situation is contained at the local shelter, this important “bellwether” information should be used by pet owners because this disease poses a life-threatening risk to your unprotected dogs, especially puppies.

The parvovirus is highly contagious and is transmitted through dog-to-dog contact, contaminated feces, environments and people.

Any surface a dog touches can harbor the virus, including his crate, food and water bowls, collar and leash, dog toys, etc. Other animals, people and even clothing can be contaminated.

Parvo is a resilient virus able to survive temperature and humidity extremes. A minute amount of contaminated feces can infect a large area, and consequently any dogs who pass through the area.

Canine parvovirus attacks the gastrointestinal tract of infected dogs. In puppies and those still in utero, the virus is known to damage the heart muscle. Symptoms are similar in all dogs and include loss of appetite; vomiting and severe, often bloody diarrhea; fever; lethargy; weakness and dehydration.

Dehydration can come on rapidly due to the vomiting and diarrhea, and is especially dangerous in puppies.

Most deaths from parvovirus occur within 48 to 72 hours after symptoms first appear, so it is critical you take your dog to your veterinarian immediately if you suspect a Parvo infection. Diagnosis requires blood and fecal tests.

It is a good idea to hospitalize your dog until her condition has stabilized. Your dog’s chances of survival are improved the sooner aggressive treatment begins – but do not expect your veterinarian to be able to predict an outcome immediately.

Unfortunately, treatment of Parvo can be expensive, with no guarantee your beloved pet will survive despite heroic efforts to save her. In some heartbreaking cases, pet owners simply cannot afford to even try to save their dogs, and euthanasia becomes the only option.

That is why an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Please make sure your puppy receives his core vaccines and your adult dog is current on all his vaccinations.

The vaccine protocol is to give one Parvo vaccine at around 9 weeks (but before 11 weeks), and a booster at around 14 weeks. For 14 days after your pup has received his second Parvo vaccine you should avoid allowing your dog any contact with unfamiliar dogs. Places you should exercise extreme caution include dog parks; doggie daycare or boarding kennels; and grooming shops.

Also, reduce or eliminate your dog’s exposure, no matter her age, to the feces of other dogs and all animals. Clean up your own pet’s waste as well.

Keep your dog away from sick pets, and if it is your dog that is sick, do not let him expose others. If you come in contact with a sick dog, wash your hands and change clothes if necessary before you handle another dog.

As we keep a vigilant eye on our local bellwether we can more strategically protect all our community’s pets.

September 19, 2012January 7, 2018

The Sound of Music in the local animal shelter by Ed Boks

Ed Boks dog music Part of my holistic approach to healthy, humane animal shelter management includes implementation of innovative “enrichment” programs. Enrichment describes activities, protocols and amenities designed to enrich the shelter experience of rescued animals. The typical shelter experience for most animals is a traumatic and fearful ordeal. I contend every animal shelter can, and must, be committed to mitigating, if not eliminating, that distress.

One way to do that is to introduce the calming effects of music into our animal care centers. Sound is an important part of an animal’s surroundings. Sadly, most animal shelters are not built with that understanding. Concrete and block walls and cement floors echo the harsh sounds of frantic dogs barking and whining begging for attention; while other dogs fearfully huddle in the corners of their unfamiliar kennels awaiting an uncertain future.

Clinical studies have documented that specific music vibrations, sounds and tempos create a calming effect on pets. Certain musical compositions also help pets cope with common phobias such as thunderstorms, loud noises and other stressors, creating a harmonious and enriching environment that improves their health and behavior. These studies have demonstrated that the introduction of calming music in a shelter visually reduces the three key measures of discomfort: restlessness, anxiety and respiration rates.

One study explored the influence of five types of auditory stimulation (human conversation, classical music, heavy metal music, pop music, and a control) on the behavior of 50 dogs housed in an animal shelter. The dogs were exposed to each type of auditory stimulation for four hours, with an intervening period of one day between conditions. The dogs’ position in their kennels (front, back), their activity (moving, standing, sitting, resting, sleeping), and their vocalization (barking, quiet, other) were recorded over four hours at 10-minute intervals during each condition of auditory stimulation.

The study found the dogs’ activity and vocalization were significantly related to auditory stimulation. Dogs spent more time quietly resting and less time standing when classical music was played compared to the other stimuli. Heavy metal music encouraged dogs to spend significantly more time barking in an agitated state than the other stimuli. These studies suggest that the welfare of sheltered dogs can be enhanced through exposure to appropriate forms of auditory stimulation. Classical music appears particularly beneficial, resulting in activities suggestive of relaxation and behaviors considered desirable by potential adopters. This form of music may also appeal to visitors, resulting in enhanced perceptions of the shelter and an increased desire to adopt a dog.

With such programs, animal shelters are able to provide calming music designed to improve the quality of life for our rescued animals, both dogs and cats, during their shelter stays. Promoting relaxation through music will help all our animals cope with their stress and will create a more inviting atmosphere for adopters.

If you would like to help your local animal shelter with such life-saving projects, please consider a donation to assist with the purchase and installation of the required equipment. Enriching the lives our shelter animals provides for their health, welfare and ultimate placement in a loving home.