"The responsibility is yours" - It's not rescue and its not animal welfare if you don't take responsibility

Earlier this month Noel Tanis posted on the subject of individual animal rescuers and organizations who do not take full responsibility for the animals they rescue ("The responsibility is yours once you take the animal" at
http://animaladvocates.com/cgi-bin/newsroom.pl/read/11642 ).

In her post, Tanis wrote,

"Just recently an individual who took a dog from a "surrendering family" told me that if she couldn't find the dog a home the dog would be "put down" - killed because people had deemed her unwanted. The person making this statement is a woman that sees herself as a rescuer, a proponent of animal protection. She stated that she was "nice enough to take the dog out of a bad situation."

"How can so many people miss the connection? What, on a personal level, is one to do to change such thinking?

"Via email I communicated at great length with the woman mentioned above - nothing I said led her to believe that in alleviating someone of their responsibility she took responsibility herself. She did not see that having taken the dog, the dog was now in her care and "hers." Nothing I said led her to think that killing the dog was anything other than a viable solution."