We are actually NOT a rescue group. In fact, we are only an animal group at all by proxy. We are actually a “people” group. Our mission is to educate and empower people so that they will take better care of their dogs and the dogs living in their community, homeless or otherwise, and in doing so, better their community. We love dogs and we hate seeing the crisis that they are enduring in the Greater East End. We love rescue groups and we think there is a real need and place for them in the world. But we could scoop up every single homeless dog in the entire East End this evening and by tomorrow morning, 10 more will have been dumped and abandoned and the problem would live on through breeding of those dogs.
We believe strongly that changing the mindset of people in our community towards dogs is the only way to solve this problem. We teach spay/neuter, use of leashes and fences, no chains, proper nutrition and vaccinations. We speak about not tolerating cruelty and neglect of animals and report, report, report when you know of a situation. And we offer assistance in the form of vetting for people willing to foster homeless animals, literature for those willing to share our message and reporting resources to those who know of a cruelty situation.
We realize that because we have dogs in our program that we are adopting out, our role in the animal crisis is a bit confusing. Let’s just say that there have been cases where it was simply inhumane to pass a dog by and we felt we had to intervene. But our message is bigger than that, our focus is not on rescue work and to be frank, we don’t have funds to support that line of work.
Next - Myth #2: Barrio Dogs has a long list of people ready and wanting to foster and we just don’t have enough dogs to give them.
Indeed more and more people should be educated on how to deal with pets.
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