One thing to keep in mind is that charity work is often a hard, demanding, exhausting, labor of love. To be good at it, you have to really be committed to what you are doing. You become very focused on that one thing, and when a situation like Katrina happens, your first thoughts of taking action are about helping in the area you have experience in. Different people are stirred to work hard by different things. So I would guess all the people who popped up to help find homes for the stray animals didn’t do so because they didn’t care about the people in need, or felt the animals were more deserving. They just sprang to action in the area they knew they could help. They were likely not in a position to bring in a bunch of people into their homes, but they could make room for a couple of pets.
With the Katrina example, when I heard of the needs, I knew I wanted to do something to help. Now you may think it was wasteful of me, but where I directed my attention was to the horses down there. I knew there were many horse farms hit hard in the area. I knew of some generous folks around here who had horse trailers, knew of some generous folks who had land that could temporarily take on some more horses. I spent my time, energy and money working out a way to bring horses in danger down there to safety up here.
Now given the choice, I can bring 40 horses up here and have them safe, or save one person who was stuck on their roof and about to die, of course I would save the person. But for me it was never a choice about that. For me it was about doing what I could do. I have experience with relocating horses, so that is what I chose to do. I didn’t see what I was doing as preferring animals to humans. I saw it as my jumping in to help where I best could.
I guess you could look at the $1,000 or so that was spent to save some horses was bad because some people could have used that $1,000. But I don’t see it that way. The people who donated their time and money to make that happen did so because they felt passionately about helping horses. I am sure they felt bad for the people in NO, but they couldn’t do much for them. But they could do a lot for those horses. And ultimately by helping the horses, people were helped as well. The loss of the horses were one less thing for some families to deal with. Many of these horses were used to make money, so we helped helped some people keep their livelyhoods.
I spend quite a bit of time raising funds so racehorses that are just too slow, or not sound enough, or just too old to race anymore can leave the track and be retrained for another career. If they aren’t retrained, they risk being neglected or sent to slaughter. I don’t see the money I raise for the horses as being taken away from people in need. I get donations specifically from people in the horse business, or businesses who benefit from horses. And I also consider my work with the horses as benefitting people as well. Kentucky’s economy revolves around horses and racing. A lot of people have jobs because of it, and much tax money is raised from it. So by my working to improve horse racing, by making sure our horses are not neglected when their careers are over, I think I am also helping all those people working in the industry and those who benefit from state run programs.
So all that is to say that it really isn’t as simple as some of us chosing to help animals over humans. And I think it is unfair to criticize those connected to animal charities, making a judgement on me on how I could better spend my efforts. The people who are doing the criticizing are free to donate their time and energy to charities that focus on people. What I do doesn’t interfere with that, so why slam me for what I do?