Please read the blog! But I'm going to start with the fundraising stuff first!! If you can give to my efforts to provide low cost and free veterinary care, spay and neuter, vaccines etc to people who cannot afford care for their pets - please click on the link which will take you to my 'About' Page. There you will be able to access the site of my nonprofit sponsor Brighthaven.org and make a tax deductible gift. Don't forget to specify the gift for PawFund (Pets & Wellness).
Also, below this blog is a ChipIn widget. If you don't need, or don't want the tax deduction, or if you just wanna give a few bucks from your Paypal account, you can use the ChipIn feature. I am going to keep raising money for spay and neuter this way. As soon as I raise $1500, we'll start again!!
My phone rings and someone cautiously asks whether I can help with their dog. Zeke has an ear infection and the owner has no money to take him to the vet. The referral has come from one of the major humane organisations in the East Bay. The conversation unfolds and I ask questions like how old the dog is, what breed, what city the owner lives in and whether the dog is neutered or not and what the situation is. I don't ask for any proof of income, no drivers license, SSI card, utility bill, bank statement, proof of disability, residency requirement, or whether they have asked all their family members, friends and neighbours for loans, been turned down by one of the predatory lenders, or whether they 'deserve' this help. Are you poor enough? Low income enough? Struggling enough? Embarrassed enough yet?
We don't like the poor in this society. And we really don't like them if they drive a nice car that they were able to buy when they were working. And we reserve especial disdain for people who think they can keep their animals while being poor. 'If they cant look after themselves, how can they look after an animal?' Ever heard that one? I have. Plenty. Perhaps you've come across 'If they can't afford to take them to the vet, perhaps they shouldn't have a pet.'
Yeah, why don't we just take away the one family member many people have in their lives - their cat or dog. And quite aside from the brutality and disdain evident in our moral judgement, what exactly will we do with those animals whose owners cannot afford the $250 to drain an abcess from the chin of a beloved cat, or treat the yeast infection in the ears of the companion dog? Take them to the overcrowded shelters and kill them, place them in black plastic sacks and dump them in barrels to be collected by the rendering company?
If someone is making a phone call to a complete stranger after pleading for help from a local agency, I figure they don't need to be humiliated any more and neither do they need to hear 'no' one more time. That is my guiding principle. It can be cost intensive and it is definitely labor intensive. And it is worth every penny I can raise from the rest of you, and worth every 7am morning wake up for me to go pick someone up from their home who has no transportation and whose dog must go to the vet for needed care.
Over the last month I have provided the answer 'yes' to Gloria whose cat Casanova needed to be humanely euthanised after disappearing for weeks and re-appearing so severely ill that even after weeks of treatment, Casanova's system could not rebound, to Steven whose sole companion, a chihuahua mix called Katey had a huge bladder stone and the vet estimates for surgery ranged from $1500 to $2800. I called UC Davis who did the surgery under their community surgery program for a fraction of the price, to Jennifer who could not afford the whole cost of getting her cats urinary tract infection treated, to Wade whose neighborhod cat had a terrible abcess on his leg and necrotic tissue causing a raging infection and to Darryl whose dog Zeke also got fixed microchipped and vaccinated while his ears were being treated (although his surgery was more complicated because he only had one testicle descended). I also managed to get two huge mastiff mixes belonging to residents of the Albany Bulb fixed and get their rabies vaccines.
My life has changed. Am I still a photographer with 3 major published books under my belt? Did I win an award for Best Art Book at an alternative Book Fair? Did I really take the photograph that has become an icon in feminist history of a billboard with a car advert subverted by angry feminist graffitists? Did I once think I had a career as a documentary photographer? Sometimes it is hard to let go of very deeply held self perceptions. I wanted so badly to be a visual artist with shows at the best galleries, to be seduced by academia to talk about my work, to be paid as I deserved to be, so that I could at least pay my bills. Reality is, I had those chances. But a deeper urge to redress imbalances, to fight injustice where I saw it, to put my life and my own security on the line where I saw others with no safety net, led me down a different path. And it is hard to let go sometimes. Of my dreams. Of my self image. Learning to not care when visitors to the Albany Bulb think perhaps that I too, huddle up under plastic tarps in soggy sleeping bags, when they see me there with my homeless friends - who I have come to respect for many different reasons and under the toughest of circumstances.
These things are hard. My fantasy still is of a house down a dirt road, a concrete floor and glass, lots of glass because light is the most important thing to me, and music wafting through the house carried on the aroma of a morning cup of coffee, and the dogs just letting themselves in and out onto a meadow as they choose, with cats on the woodpile and the photos strewn about and negatives being scanned and the printer chugging away and the plan for a book spread out over a long table. But my reality is the phone call from Darryl and an 8am pick up, and his hand wiping away tears as he says 'I don't know how to thank you' and my embarrassment at his gratitude, and his dog pees in the back of my car and Darryl insisting that he will detail my car later, he absolutely does insist and he does clean the stain from the backseat later.
So, this blog is both a declaration, a loss of my dream - at least temporarily, and an acceptance of the gift I have been given. Because while it is just too damn easy to condemn, to bring an attitude of self righteous moralism to our relationship to animals, it is far more productive to nurture that bond between humans and their animal companions. That's the side I'm on, and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
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