LOL!

I try to take into account that many people--even those who live in the areas with practices I object to--have zero awareness of what goes on in the underbelly of their culture. For example, I was embedded in Appalachia for more than a decade, and most residents of the county I lived in, including the county supervisor, had no idea that their municipal kill shelter destroyed more than a thousand dogs every year and almost as many cats (county population less than 44,000.) People were unaware that the shelter they paid taxes to fund was one of the highest kill shelters in the state of Virginia overall and in the nation, for its size. It took five years for the term "no-kill" to be accepted in that community even though it was a proper term for modern sheltering (the commonwealth attorney told me to my face I was giving everyone in his office heartburn by using those words--true story.) It took even longer for the county to approve construction of a modern shelter and agree to let shelter employees work with private rescues to place dogs they would have otherwise simply killed. The community was completely unaware of all this and resented me greatly for pointing it out. I'm not unaccustomed to stepping on toes and being on the receiving end of abuse from people who absolutely do not want to hear the truth about where they live. I am writing a series of posts about that now.