Mentoring vs tattling

[Lif Strand <fasterhorses@gilanet.com>]

I agree so strongly with Michelle, when she wrote "If the person who had
turned her in had taken an hour to sit down and talk to her about what
she needed to do differently, she would have learned much more than she
did by what ended up happening."!  Sometimes people who have good
intentions get bad results by reporting to authorities.  I may have
written this before, but the best example I have come across of this is
what nearly happened to me.  Came across a ribby Arab so starving (I
thought) that it was not even able to walk normally.  I was horrified.
But something (thank goodness) made me talk to the owner rather than
just call the authorities first.  Turned out that the colt was a wobbler
and he was under veterinary supervised nutritional care to see if he
could be saved.  The program was for very high nutrition and very low
calories.  The owner said that the colt had actually improved, but that
he, the owner, was getting tired of the complaints.

The moral of the story is that it's easy to complain, but might be hard
to act responsibly but we should still try to be responsible about what
we do.  Talking to the person before tattling is the harder way, but I
think it's better for all.  Lif

--
                                     ____________
Lif & Paul Strand   STRAND ENTERPRISES   http://www.fasterhorses.com
           Arabian Horses for Distance Riding
         Internet Research * WebArt * Fine Art
                     Quemado, NM  USA



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