2009 Oregon Legislative Session Rant

The 2009 Legislative Session is probably the darkest hour for the animals of Oregon in my lifetime.  Several of the most harmful bills I have ever seen are likely to pass.

I apologize for the tone of this post, but we must do better!!! 

First of all, we are too disorganized.  We did not get together and plan strategy, we did not rehearse our presentations together, very few of the people in the community spent much time meeting individually with their legislators.  Almost every day that I was there I ran into HSUS people meeting with the legislators. Only a few times did I encounter people from our side. One-on-one meetings with legislators are one of our most effective tools. HSUS scheduled meetings with every legislator and sent their members to go persuade them with pictures and sad stories. Some of the people on our side who should have been most effective advocates and leaders accomplished too little.

We need to show them that we are 200,000 strong. We need to show up at the beginning of the session and show them our strength.  We should have a huge event and fill the quad with agility and Frisbee and obedience and CERF and TTouch; booths educating them about proper dog care—what crates are, raw feeding, they need to see the magnitude of our industry and our passion, and they need to know the depths of our love for our animals. We need to have web-pages showing who has voted which way on animal votes so that voting the wrong way on animal bills will cost them votes.  We need to have stronger relations with all the other animal groups in the state and we need to stand together.  We need to have pictures and videos showing just how well multiple animal homes can care for their animals.

Most importantly, we are failing to communicate effectively to liberal animal lovers who believe that these bills are “for the animals.”  I cannot stress this enough—anti-animal laws are being voted into effect by people who genuinely believe that they are helping animals.  Throughout this session, it was unmistakably clear that our legislators do not know the current animal laws, do not know what is best for animals, and have no idea that they are attacking are the very best animal owners in the state while supporting groups that actively want to eradicate pet ownership. They just love animals and want to help them, and they have been persuaded that these bills are the way to help animals. We know that we love animals more than anyone, that we bring more knowledge, passion, and everyday hard work to improving the lives of animals than anyone. We need to bring them into that world and share it with them.  They need to see through our eyes.

I am going to repeat myself here, but it is worth it: the people who voted for 2470 today were the animal lovers in the room. And many of the people there arguing for these bills were not bad people—they were also animal lovers who believe they are heroes—fighting to save animals in need. They voted because they want to stop puppy mills and did not really care about the current law or the details of the bill or the fact that it will not help and will in fact hurt.  They genuinely did not understand that we want to stop abuse more than anyone and that we would be happy to help them create statutes that would work for every animal in the state based on quality of animal care, but that this bill is moving Oregon in the wrong direction by ignoring quality and focusing on numbers.

While it may be in our best interest to argue for property rights in legal venues, when it comes to persuading people, we need to find ways to get them to understand that we are NOT fighting for our privacy or our rights, we are fighting for the animals.  Liberals will sacrifice your right to do what you want with your property if they believe doing so will protect puppies.  As long as they believe that we are fighting for our rights, they believe that AR bills are defending the animals against our perceived “right” to harm the animals in pursuit of our selfish greedy desire to do what we want. We must find ways to show them that we are the ones protecting animals, not the AR people who are seizing and killing animals every day while we spend every moment making animals’ lives better…