I have a confession. I tend to cringe when I hear people say that they got involved with animals in order to give voice to the voiceless. Dont get me wrong. In over two decades of my own involvement with animals, including a lucky 13 years of professional involvement, I have had the honor and pleasure of meeting MANY people whose vocalizations on behalf of the critters have done much good ... and whose deeds have done even more. But the phrase still bugs me, for two main reasons. Reason #1 has to do with where and from whom I first heard it, as well as WHEN. I first heard it back in the 1990s, when a LOT of people in the animal rights and animal welfare community cheerfully called for the extinction of Pit Bulls for their own good and whose general concern for animals, though real enough in some ways, always seemed abstract and ungrounded in any special rapport with individual animals. So when such people started blathering about giving voice to the voiceless, I was reminded of the old communist slogan vanguard of the proletariat, ie self-appointed guardians and spokespeople for what the masses really need. The old party bosses and their minions were, of course, every bit as cravenly ambitious, power hungry, greedy, imperialistic and violently oppressive towards anti-communists, non-communists and EACH OTHER as any ruling class in history. Yet, lots of people still bought into their legitimacy because of some blather about all this craven self-interest really being about the workers and peasants. Well, by the late 80s and early 90s, it was pretty clear that among the many NOT buying the rhetoric were the people in the communist countries whose seemingly entrenched parties couldnt move fast enough to vote themselves out of existence in one of the truly stunning sequences of events of recent history. So I openly wondered to what extent all the new fascination with animal rights among certain types was due to the fact that the proletariat hold so clearly told the old vanguard to STFU as people are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves and are not a monolithic mass in first place. Which brings us to reason #2 for my discomfort: Animals arent a monolithic mass, either, and they are, as individuals, NOT VOICELESS. No they dont speak human languages and dont post on the internet or lobby legislators or hold rallies. But I could tell from VERY early on in my involvement with animals, early meaning the first week when I was handling all sorts of dogs as a newbie volunteer that had been deemed all but unhandleable, that I could do a lot of things that a lot of others couldnt precisely because I UNDERSTOOD and PAID ATTENTION TO what the animals were telling me. Yes, I read animals, especially dogs, well. And how well and how ASSIDUOUSLY I do it can be appreciated in some ways best by what happens when things have gone kaplooie on me. Almost all of my worst handling or interactive moments came when I allowed something else to distract me and interrupt the conversation. PAY ATTENTION! ALWAYS! So yes, I read animals well. But I also read people well w/r/t how well THEY speak dog or speak cat. I can often see in mere moments who the real animal savvy person is vs the well meaning but woefully clueless activist is. Some people are better than even they seem to realize. Some people are nowhere near as good as they think they are and present themselves as being. Some do seem to have something of a natural knack for it, but it is a largely LEARNED skill that all can achieve some degree of expertise and no one cant stand to improve on. So yes, by all means speak up for the animals. They do need our advocacy. But when you are one on one with an individual animal, and individual life, dont do all the talking. Stop and LISTEN.
Posted on: Fri, 06 Jun 2014 23:53:30 +0000
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