Field Notes on Animal Management 

By: James Rodgers, Executive Director of Increased ACCESS

PART 1:

A child is bitten by a dog in a small community. The injury is treated, and concern spreads quickly through the community. Questions surface almost immediately. Are people safe? Are there dogs posing a risk? What options are available?

A familiar set of responses is considered. Should the dogs be shot, as a matter of public safety? Or is there an SPCA or ‘rescue’ that will come and remove the unwanted dogs?

When an SPCA-like team is contacted, their offer is often conditional. The dogs can be taken out of the community, so long as dogs will not be shot going forward. They may propose organizing a spay and neuter clinic in the community. “Humane education” materials will likely need to be distributed in the schools. For a brief period, there may be activity, relief, and reassurance.

“When upstream conditions are not addressed, downstream crises repeat.”

Then the clinic ends. The visiting team leaves. Daily life resumes. The conditions that led to the incident remain largely unchanged.

Months later, another bite occurs.

This cycle is not the result of indifference. People typically care deeply about both their neighbours and their dogs. Shooting dogs is often considered not because people are indifferent to the act, but because it is one of the few tools immediately available and within local control. Conflicts emerge not because people do not care, but because they lack regular, attainable access to resources and services.

The animal teams’ responses are often framed as both humane and effective. From the outside, the response can look comprehensive. Services are mobilized. Education is offered. Animals receive care. Reports are written. Photos are taken. The moment is marked as addressed. Yet these efforts are often episodic by necessity. Veterinary access may be intermittent or absent. Animal management bylaws may exist on paper but cannot be enforced because there is no capacity to do so. Prevention tools appear briefly, then disappear.

From a public health perspective, the outcome is predictable. When upstream conditions are not addressed, downstream crises repeat. Emergency response fills the space left by missing infrastructure.

This pattern is not unique to animal management. When primary care is inaccessible, emergency rooms become overcrowded. When housing is inadequate, shelters expand. When prevention is underfunded, crisis response becomes routine. Animal management follows the same logic, yet it is rarely understood or funded as public health and safety infrastructure.

As a result, responsibility is quietly shifted from what systems should be doing to what individuals are perceived to be failing to do. Education is expected to compensate for the absence of services. Volunteers are expected to compensate for the absence of systems. Short-term interventions are expected to produce long-term change. Over time, these substitutions become normalized, even as the same crises repeat.

“Conflicts emerge not because people do not care, but because they lack regular, attainable access to resources and services.”

A curious public health lens invites a different set of questions. Not who failed to act responsibly, but what conditions made the incident likely. Not how to respond more effectively next time, but how to reduce the likelihood that there will be a next time at all. Not how much effort was mobilized, but whether that effort built anything durable.

And if it did not, what will be different the next time?

In many Indigenous communities, these questions are inseparable from long-standing gaps in infrastructure and authority created by government policy. Communities are often expected to manage real public safety risks involving dogs without consistent access to veterinary care, animal control services, or prevention infrastructure. The absence of secure kenneling means dogs in heat cannot be safely separated, increasing the likelihood of fights. The absence of appropriate spaces for visiting veterinary teams makes clinics logistically complex and infrequent. The absence of local animal management facilities limits enforcement options and constrains community-led solutions.

These are not cultural issues. They are infrastructure gaps.

Increased ACCESS is an Indigenous-led organization working at the intersection of animal management, community safety, and public health. Our work is grounded in Indigenous leadership and a public health approach that focuses on prevention rather than crisis response. Across contexts, this perspective leads to the same conclusion. Programs alone cannot compensate for missing systems.

When animal management is approached primarily through episodic intervention, costs accumulate without resolution. Communities experience cycles of crisis and recovery without lasting change. People and animals are both caught in a system designed to respond rather than prevent.

There is another way to understand this work.

If animal management is treated as part of public health and safety infrastructure, different possibilities emerge. Consistent veterinary access reduces emergency risk. Secure kenneling allows dogs to be managed safely during high-risk periods. Purpose-built spaces for veterinary teams reduce barriers to service delivery. Local enforcement capacity enables bylaws to function as prevention tools rather than symbolic gestures.

This perspective does not dismiss education, compassion, or community-based care. It places them within systems that make success possible. It asks whether current responses are reducing risk over time or simply managing it moment to moment.

Curiosity, in this sense, is not passive. It is a disciplined way of noticing patterns that are often accepted as inevitable. For those committed to lasting change, this shift opens the door to approaches that are more effective, more humane, and better aligned with the wellbeing of both people and animals.

For more information on Increased ACCESS, you can visit their website https://www.increasedaccess.org/