Institutions

And what they do and don't do

One of the aspects of life here that I’ve found surprising as an adult is that there’s a settled sense of passivity about the way everything is done—from school to government to work—even when it’s not really meeting anyone’s need. For the most part, people don’t get up-in-arms and march down to their county government meetings to demand better services. I never thought I’d miss the endless New England Town Hall meetings I covered as a newspaper reporter in Connecticut, full of residents nit-picking every single thing, lining up at the microphones to register their opinions, but I do. That’s democracy.

I could pick any of the services in town and compare it unfavorably to those from other places I’ve lived—richer places with a more demanding populace—but it seems a little unfair to do so without explanation. I will concentrate on one: animals. When I was growing up here, there was an animal shelter run jointly by the city and county. A lot of healthy dogs were euthanized, but that was more a sign of the times than anything particular to this place. There also weren’t many laws or humane standards anywhere in the state, or, for that matter, the country, in the 80s and 90s. One of my cousins told me that cops used to deal with problem dogs by shooting them in the head, just as a matter of course. (This still happens, and yes, for the record this is way less bad that shooting people. But that was just the way these things were handled before.)

Standards have changed everywhere. In 2010, Arkansas passed a new animal welfare law that established some basics. Animal cruelty and abandonment became crimes, and there were also better regulations on how much time owners had to reclaim impounded animals. At the same time, there was a growing no-kill movement in the shelter world, and there was more pressure on shelters to adopt out every dog that was safe and healthy. What didn’t happen in this state, and many other rural states, is any concurrent change in the laws that would limit the supply of dogs: there are no rules about spaying and neutering your pets and there are no state regulations of puppy mills. The Humane Society ranks Missouri as the worst puppy mill state, but Arkansas doesn’t even have state investigators tracking or monitoring the puppy mills here: I think we could be worse, and we just don’t have any data on how bad it is.

All of that means; there are too many dogs here and not enough homes for them. But the change in laws combined with the change in norms put more pressure on shelters to get dogs out without euthanizing them, so there is a bottleneck. Most of the homeless dogs here end up transported to Northern states with better laws, where people wait in line to adopt them. But on the other side of rescue, there are still a lot of dogs I see running loose, neglected, homeless, stray, and in need of a home, and there just aren’t enough paths to new homes for them. The poorest states in the country are subsidizing dogs for the wealthiest, but even all of the people who want dogs can’t adopt them fast enough. There are also a lot of people here who care about that, but don’t know what to do. Obviously there are a lot of active, caring people who care about all of the problems here, but their numbers aren’t large, and they can end up doing everything, and wear themselves out.

By 2016, both the city I live in and county it is in had seen their revenues shrink, and to balance the finances, they warned they were going to stop running the animal shelter. It cost more than $100,000 every year, including the employees. The animal rights people were outraged. The county said it could contract with a nonprofit to run it in the city- and county-owned building for which it would not charge rent, but no one stepped up for awhile. When one finally did, I’m not sure anyone in the county looked into its finances or governance, or did any due diligence to find out whether it was prepared to run a municipal shelter program. The year before, it reported income of only $800. The person who runs it is very dedicated and loves dogs, but she’s also basically working alone. No one person can perform all of the essential functions of a nonprofit, never mind a nonprofit that is in charge of a municipal shelter program.

The shelter has limits on how many dogs it can and will take, and there are other limits on how and when dogs are picked up. If you see a dog in need of rescuing, there is an animal control officer to call, but sometimes he will come pick it up, and sometimes he won’t. A lot of dogs fall through the cracks. Right now, the shelter is closed to all non-emergency rescues because of Covid-19. Which means there are no owner-surrenders at a time when people are losing income and getting sick. As far as I know, this decision was made privately by the nonprofit, without any input from the public it’s supposed to serve. There have already been desperate people who don’t know what to do with the dogs they can’t keep any more, and so they go to Facebook and individual people pick up the pieces as they can. But no individual, no matter how well-meaning, can take the place of a well-functioning institution.

What I’m Reading:

I’m still reading American Oligarchs, by Andrea Bernstein, about the Trump’s and the Kushners. Like all of you, I’m also reading through the daily Covid-19 news, and alternating between freaking out and thinking everything will be ok. If you want an essay that is such a dose of reality that it’s almost soothing, please read Our Pandemic Summer by Ed Yong in The Atlantic.

What I’m Recommending:

Happily, we are not sick of cooking. One of the unexpected pleasures about trying to empty your pantry is that you’re pushed to try recipes you always meant to experiment with but never got around to making. That’s what I did this week with Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter. That’s it, that’s the recipe: tomato, onion, and butter. It’s better than it has any right to be. It’s remarkable, actually, but sometimes all food needs to be delectable is time to enhance its inherent deliciousness.

Cute Animal Pic of the Week:

Because there’s such a need, there are very many private rescues near here, and there are also people who are just individually trying to help. One of them is my friend, Gary. One of Gary’s dogs was adopted by a writer friend and I couldn’t be more thrilled. Here is one of her litter mates, Eddie, being derpy and silly and also looking for a home.