Recognize the Problem

I heard a story the other day about a resourceful nine-year-old boy in Florida named Zach Wilson. Zach spends his weekends playing with dogs at the local animal shelters. Noticing that the number of dogs at the shelter were increasing significantly, he asked an adult volunteer at the facility, “Why are more dogs being dropped off?”

The volunteer’s reply will not surprise you. “The economy is forcing pet owners to make awful choices. They do not have enough money, and they must choose what they don’t buy. Many of them are choosing not to buy pet food. Some of them let their pets loose. Others bring their pets here. They are very sad to give them up but hope that we can find them good homes.”

The boy thought over what the volunteer had said. The next day, he announced to his mom, “Mom, we gotta feed the dogs.”

“Our dog is fed,” she replied.

“No, I mean all the dogs. We gotta feed all the dogs.”

To do so, he and his mother created a food pantry for pets called the Central Florida Animal Pantry, the only one of its kind in the state. Those who get food from the pantry are asked to volunteer as much as they are able. The pantry has received generous donations from pet stores, schools, and community members, but the need is increasing. At the time of this story, they had given away 1800 pounds of food the prior week.

Zach is a tireless champion for the animals. He wants to go even further and help all the animals as much as he can. As his mother says, “It sounds like a lot for a little boy, but we have to try.”

I am impressed with Zach for many reasons, but I want to focus on one. He recognized the problem. As he saw more pets in the shelter, he asked, “Why? Why are there more pets?”

After receiving the answer, he thought through the situation and realized that the problem was that people needed food for their pets, not that the pets needed a new home. Once he settled on the problem, he came up with an alternative solution to abandonment: a pet food pantry.
His solution is much better for many reasons. How much cheaper is it to keep a pet in its home rather than put it in a shelter? How much easier is it on the pet to stay in a home where it is happy than to uproot it and find it a new home? How much less stress is involved for the pet owners not to give up their pets and the shelter volunteers not to receive this influx of unnecessarily abandoned pets?

Most people abandon a pet to the wild or the shelter because they can’t care for it anymore due to changes in their lives. Shelter personnel are so accustomed to taking the pets that are dropped off and caring for them that they don’t stop and think of what is at the root of this problem. Just like the rest of us, they are overwhelmed with the day-to-day tasks involved in the shelter. When the influx of pets is increasing rapidly, they have even less time to think through a new problem. I certainly don’t find fault with them. I applaud them for what they do.

I do think that we can all learn a lesson from Zach, however. In our daily crush of business, we have a tendency to handle a situation superficially as it comes and not sit back and think through the situation to uncover the real problem. What is the problem? Did we identify it correctly? How can we dig deeper to discover it?

Take time to ask yourself these questions. Think the situation through. Recognize the problem.

Once you do, your solution will be much more effective and, possibly, cheaper.