By ROBERT JUMPER
Tutiyi (Snowbird) and Clyde, N.C.
I routinely travel over Soco Mountain on my commute to and from work. It is a pretty drive during most times of the year, and it is a great time to reflect on and sometimes detoxify from what can be a frustrating, confusing, and thought-provoking workday. We all have those days from time to time where decisions and processes just don’t make a lot of sense, and sometimes it is hard to find a source to clarify policies, procedures, and actions.
Sometimes fear or anger closes portals to information that should be readily available. Sometimes lust for power keeps people from sharing what should belong to the community. As the old saying goes, knowledge is power, and no one likes to give up power. All this requires time for reflection and a long drive is typically good therapy.
The problem is that when knowledge is withheld, there is always a cost. Sometimes people don’t trust. Sometimes we become apathetic. Sometimes we become enraged. And sometimes we make mistakes that have a painful cost.
Not everyone, but a good part of the driving public, either becomes someone else or allows their true nature to take over when they get behind the wheel. When you commute roughly 90 minutes a day, 5 days a week, for over 20 years, you get to see some pretty interesting driving habits. We find ever more creative ways to display ignorance and arrogance on the highway. I have watched as tourists and locals alike exhibit new ways to skirt death on what they must feel is a stretch of test track reserved for them alone. I have also discovered that they get very offended if anyone else is in their way on what they perceive to be “their” track. Poor manners, ethics, and judgment are more on display than any driving skill. And if you react in any way to their antics, you open yourself up to the possibility of a road rage incident. So, your choices become “kill or be killed” or relegate yourself to being a doormat for the nuts who live out their fantasy of becoming Mad Max and who unconsciously believe that they own the road, at least as far as the bottom of Soco Mountain. Bumper riding, the most common sport, when you don’t know what may be coming around the next curve on a mountain, is stupid. Trust me, trying to physically push the car in front of you to go faster or move out of the way usually results in the persecuted slowing down, not speeding up. Soco Road is mostly a two-lane, with sheer rock face on one side and steep drop-off on the other side. Weaving into the oncoming lane in a blind curve on a road like that is, well, stupid. It is not something to be proud of. It is negligence that borders on criminal behavior. One last rant about local drivers: The latest new vehicular dumb move is drivers nosing their car or truck (usually an SUV) out into a lane of traffic in hopes of causing the person with the right of way to stop and let them enter the roadway. This, along with all the speeding, cutting off, stopping in the middle of the road, and driving against traffic to get to a turn-off or off-ramp. It is amazing the discourteous behavior a person sees if they spend any time driving.
And, believe it or not, that is not the point of this commentary. But it is on the Soco Road that I see many of the stray and unattended dogs as I travel to and from the Boundary. By God’s grace, I haven’t seen many dead dogs on that road in recent years, even though I routinely see them individually or in a pack daily. I can only imagine that these “rez dogs” have learned to hug tightly to the sides of the roads to avoid the test track dummies that frequent Soco Road. Wild animals, opossums, raccoons, squirrels, snakes, and skunks have not been as blessed because it is common to see wildlife pancakes on the Soco Road. Even the occasional duck or turkey meets its maker on that stretch from time to time.
Seeing these dogs who have avoided carmageddon prompted me to remind all of us that we need to take better care of our pets, and we need to be mindful of those animals without homes. Tribal statistics on dogs and other animals are hard to come by, so we will talk generally about the stray crisis that continues for dogs and other domestic animals. It is typical for tribal operations (not just ours, but all tribal nations) do not report, even in aggregate, into a regional or national database, so these numbers won’t necessarily tell the story completely for native lands.
According to bestfriends.org, there may not be such a thing as a shelter that does not euthanize. Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to take in all homeless animals (most shelters stay full, so there are few options available). Turning an animal away from a shelter will likely mean abandonment, releasing the animal to fend for itself. The term “no-kill” may be a little misleading because the designation applies even if up to 10 percent of their intake must be put down. So, it is unclear if there are any truly “no-kill” shelters operating in the U.S.
“In 2021, 4.6 million cats and dogs entered animal shelters in the U.S. Of those, about 355,000 dogs and cats were killed just because they didn’t have a safe place to call home. So why do people give up pets to animal shelters? Most people surrender their companion animals to shelters for reasons other than a pet’s behavior. In fact, three human-related reasons-housing (specifically moving), finances, and caregiver or family health/death-account for more than a third of animals entering shelters. Of the 355,000 animals euthanized, 32 percent, or 113,600, were dogs. Five states account for half of all the dogs and cats killed in shelters: Texas, California, North Carolina, Florida, and Alabama.”
While adoption seems to be an answer to the problem, there is a more obvious one for those who are pet owners. It should be your practice as a responsible pet owner to get your pet spayed or neutered. Some communities have invested in what is called the trap-neuter-vaccinate-return (TNVR) method of population control when it comes to cats. Enacting and enforcing laws that prohibit puppy mills also decrease the odds of dogs becoming strays.
Some organizations expend a significant amount of time, labor, and monetary resources to participate in adoption networks to promote the availability of dogs and cats for adoption nationwide. Locally, in neighboring municipalities, volunteers match homeless dogs and cats to willing fosters and owners and help arrange travel to get the pet to its new, hopefully forever home. All of this increases the life expectancy and quality of life of stray and abandoned animals.
I hope we all stop for a moment and give thought to the plight of homeless animals. As I said before, I have been grateful not to see a dog collar and tags among a furry, mangled body on the highway recently, and I hope that we get to a point where I never have to see it again.
Remember, you are part of the solution when you spay and neuter your pets. You may even consider contributing to a shelter so that they may help families to get that work done before the pet is adopted at a shelter. Make sure your pets are up to date on all their shots and meds. Keep in mind during these hot summer months that paw pads are easily scorched on hot concrete or asphalt, and pets won’t last long in a sealed-up car without air conditioning. Don’t leave them alone in the heat. And with holidays approach where many enjoy fireworks, please remember that most dogs and many cats are terrified and traumatized by the sudden blast of most fireworks. Protect your pets like they are family. Even a rez dog needs a little tender loving kindness.
