I heart Seth Godin.

If you haven’t already, tag his blog as one of your daily activities because he doesn’t just *get it* he wrote the book on *getting it* and just keeps getting better;

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In search of dolphin leather
by Seth Godin

There’s a story in the bible with very specific instructions for building an ark. Included in the instructions is a call for using tanned dolphin leather. Regardless of your feelings about the historical accuracy of the story, it’s an interesting question: why create an impossible mission like that? Why encourage people who might travel 100 miles over their entire lifetime to undertake a quest to find, capture, kill, skin and eventually tan a dolphin?

My friend Adam had an interesting take on this. He told me that the acquisition of the leather is irrelevant. It was the quest that mattered. Having a community-based quest means that there’s less room for whining, for infighting and for dissolution. Having a mission not only points everyone in the same direction, it also creates motion. And motion in any direction is often better than no motion at all.

All around you, people are telling you two things:
1. whatever you want, forget it, it’s impossible, and
2. sit still, preserve resources, lay low.

And yet, the people who are succeeding, creating change and (not coincidentally) are happier aren’t listening to either of these pieces of advice. Instead, they’re on the search for dolphin leather.

Frank Sinatra had it wrong. Your dream shouldn’t be impossible, but it sure helps if it’s improbable. Don’t choose your dreams based on what is certain to happen, choose them based on what’s likely to cause the change you want to occur around you.

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Right now I’m watching rescuers debate on a forum about the merits of spending money to rehabilitate a pet. Most say; kill the sick ones, the injured ones and the ones that have behavioural difficulties, because spending resources on them takes resources away from other perfectly healthy pets. It’s pragmatisim at it’s finest - we’re a practical bunch and since we see, day in and day out the pets coming through rescue it seems like the most sensible plan to handpick the ‘best’ pets and let the others fall through the net.

But here’s the thing; by not chasing our own ‘dolphin leather’ we’ve abandoned the ‘impossible mission’ that was keeping us all moving in the same direction. And you call tell, because rescue isn’t a community all working towards the same improved future, but a fragmented industry based on sniping, politics and turf wars – and it nearly always comes back to who is ‘worthy’ of being saved.

However, it’s not about resources as they’d have you think; there are organisations with hundreds of millions of dollars of capacity and they still pick and choose the best pets and kill the rest – and who would actively encourage others to do the same. It’s simply people believing it’s impossible and doing their best to lay low. But no one in history has been inspired to great things by a proclamation of  ‘there’s no hope – just give up’. No wonder rescue can be such a gloomy place!

Being pragmatic can only have one result – a future which looks pretty much exactly like today.  The groups who will take over and lead the new rescue world are those can see that there is a bigger picture which comes from believing that all animals are worth saving, no matter what the cost. Because if you believe that the community is compassionate and that there is a family to take every single pet, no matter what their problems, you’ll find that the reasons people adopt are as complex and varied as the animals themselves. If you recognise that the aim of rescue was never just produce a ‘perfect product for a perfect family’, but to develop an ongoing, supportive relationship with the community, you turn yourself from ‘gatekeeper’ to providing a service that sees pets have a home available to them for their whole lives.

These groups are chasing the ‘improbable dream’ and by doing so will make amazing things happen. They know it not only that can be done – but absolutely will be.

Farm animal scientists are studying a type of body language in cows that’s similar to one dog behaviourists have been using for years in assessing a dog’s mental state: the ‘whale eye’…

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A University of Guelph study, which will appear in the June issue of the Journal of Animal Science, shows that cows, bulls and steers that are easily upset will have much more white exposed in the visible part of their eyes – a finding that could have advantages for farmers.

For a cow who can calmly chew her cud in sticky situations, the white part typically makes up only 10 to 20 per cent of the exposed eyeball, says lead study author Sarah Core, who has a master’s degree in animal science from the school.

“We found that most of the most highly excitable cows had more than 50 per cent white around the eye,” says Core, 23.

The eye white size was compared to other agitation measures, such as how well the beasts tolerated restraint and the speed of their flight from handlers. Core, who looked at about 120 Angus and Piedmontese-type cattle, says that breeding only those beasts with smaller whites could produce more docile herds.
The Star

Cows – just big dogs really

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If you’ve not heard of a ‘whale eye’ it’s a body language signal a dog gives off when it’s uncomfortable. While a relaxed dog will move their whole head to look at something, a frightened dog will hold his body stiffly looking at things out of the corner of their eye. If you can see the whites of a dog’s eyes repeatedly or constantly you’re dealing with an anxious animal… and I reckon you should back up a little there, buddy.

I highly recommend checking out this blog – it has some brilliant dog behaviours caught on film for your wonder-what-happened-next? guessing pleasure.

Giving you the (whale) eye

Q: What education campaign for children are these the images for?

a) A promotion for responsible pet ownership?

b) Lessons on the appropriate care of pocket pets?

c) A drive to improve rabbit adoptions?

If you answered ‘none of the above’ and instead said this was an in-school campaign to teach kids about methods used to kill rabbits as pest animals – you’d be right! And it is likely you have already heard about RabbitScan, the new initiative of the national Rabbit Management Advisory Group (RMAG);

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RabbitScan is a nation-wide challenge for community and schools to help scientists map where rabbits are, by asking people to ‘scan’ their landscape (school, farm, parkland, roadside reserves, ovals etc) for signs of rabbits and their damage, and to load their results online – during RabbitScan Month in May 2009.

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But it’s not just about counting poo pellets and chomped bushes; this group have also put together a Teachers Project Kit for school children outlining exactly how to exterminate Bugs. But it’s ok they’re not animals…. they’re rabbits.

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Rabbit Control
“It is not the number destroyed but the number remaining that is the problem”’

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Hey, remember when those kids threw that kitten onto the train tracks and we all wrung our hands and said ‘how could kids have so little empathy for a living, breathing creature?’

While we’re trying to encourage children to be compassionate towards animals; to care for them appropriately and to treat them with kindness and all that silly stuff, the Rabbit Information teachers workbook is also spreading a message – outlining some of the more popular techniques for killing small furry mammals;

poisoning,  fumigation,  biological control
ripping (using machinery to destroy the warrens and kill the rabbits at the same time)
explosion devises (sic),  ferreting

and of course

shooting and trapping.

So remember kids – treat your pets with compassion.
Play nicely with your rabbit
unless it’s a wild rabbit
(then it’s perfectly ok to explode them).

We spent today doing a photoshoot with 9 rescue dogs getting their photos professionally taken. It went *brilliantly* with some gorgeous photos of each… however I can’t believe how tired I am now!

I’m sure this’ll be why ;)

(Aim: pup sits quietly on the spot and smiles for the camera).

From ‘A new model for media measurement’, the stages a message travels through (or not) and how you can measure its effectiveness.

Stage 1 – Exposure

Often, we think because our message is an important one, that by sharing it we’re changing peoples thoughts and behaviour. We put our message in big letters; we’re killing 200,000 pets every year in Australia! They’re killed unnecessarily! If you don’t do something RIGHT now, they’ll DIE!

But Exposure is just that, exposure – a one way broadcast that people can either listen to, or ignore. So without knowledge of what motivates the people you want to affect, your message will simply be lost amongst the millions of other messages bombarding people each day.

Stage 2 – Engagement

Engagement comes when we start a tailor our message to speak to the audience we’re trying to reach and give them a chance to begin a discussion with us. This includes the recognition that the things that motivate us don’t necessarily motivate others and that ‘lectures’ or berating people rarely makes them feel engaged or connected.

People in the Engagement stage might request more information, sign up for your updates or click on your links. They’re interested, but you’ve not necessarily convinced them change their thoughts or behaviour.

Stage 3 – Influence

In order for our message to bring about a change in behaviour or beliefs, we must aim to Influence people. Just because people have heard our message, doesn’t mean we have affected them. And until we have Influenced them, we’re no closer to Stage 4 – Action.

Stop! Or the dog gets it…

So if an effective message is one that inspires people to take action, have a look at this feedback from a member of the public when they were subjected to a ‘death row’ style campaign;

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“I have recently adopted a rescue puppy and she is amazing and when we move into our new place we will be looking to adopt a companion for her so I still regularly scan the pages. I am finding though that I am becoming increasingly reluctant to look at the dogs available now since people are posting puppies who have been put to sleep since no-one adopted them.  I know everyone has their own opinions but I just find it really upsetting and so don’t look on here as often.  If I feel that way, I am sure there are probably others who feel the same and this then decreases the number of people you can potentially reach. As I say I don’t mean to criticise as you are all doing an amazing job but there is nothing anyone can do if the poor little dogs have already been euthanised and it is quite distressing.

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Now, most people won’t take the time to write you a message like this to tell you that you’ve turned them off. And while these  ‘death row’ style campaigns are often done with the best intentions (lets expose the truth and people will change) they simply don’t work to move your message through the stages of  effective Media Measurement.

Beating people over the heads with our message, while paying little attention to how our message is making people FEEL, leaves us stuck in a one way discussion (Exposure). What’s more, if you’re trying to give people a message in a way they’re not receptive to, the overwhelming majority won’t stick around to hear it. And they certainly won’t feel inspired to take action.

Often the thing that often keeps us from being in a position to influence is that people don’t look forward to hearing from us, thanks to clumsy, heavy handed or unpleasant interactions. When we using ‘death row threats’ we’re using the worst case scenario, the thing that motivates us rescuers most; but not what necessarily what motivates the public (or as I like to call them, ‘the normals’) to action.

Just as you wouldn’t look forward to a visit from a relative who habitually says hurtful things, if your tactic is to upset your public with bad news, they won’t be receptive to your messages. They might help you, but they won’t feel good about it, they won’t look forward to hearing from you again and their support will fizzle. After all, what’s the point in trying when everythings so awful?

So how do we take people from Exposure > Engagement > Influence … to Action?

Influence on people’s thoughts and behaviour can only come if you’ve built enough trust, that they listen to your message and act on it. Positive messages with explicit detail on how supporters can help keep people motivated toward change. Use any unpleasant imagery like salt as a garnish; sparingly and with knowledge that too much is bad for the health of your relationship with your public.