Last month I attended one of the largest veterinary conferences in the world, the North American Veterinary Conference in Orlando, Florida. While I was in the area, I also visited the Harmony Institute located about a half hour’s drive from the conference center. Between the two, I experienced the full spectrum of what is available for animals and animal-loving people.
Let’s begin with the conference which had an estimated attendance of 60,000 people from all over the world. As an educational experience, it was mind-boggling. Presentations were given from first thing in the morning until last thing at night on every imaginable veterinary-related topic. The subjects I remember from my veterinary education—and thought were very sophisticated at the time—have been replaced by ever more specialized ones. Alternative and holistic approaches shared equal billing with conventional ones. Dogs, cats, cattle, horses, pigs, birds, fish, ferrets, and frogs, among others, all rated sessions devoted to their specific, species-related issues. Hundreds of meetings reminded me how much more we now know about the workings of the animal body or specific animal behaviors. The hand-outs alone would overflow a carryon bag.
In the large exhibit hall, I perused row upon row of booths, many of which boasted technology that made the techno-nucleus of my brain shrink in horror. I consoled myself with the knowledge that most of those clustered around these displays were my sons’ age or younger. But even though my grasp of much of this technology’s inner workings was meager to nonexistent, I couldn’t help but be awed by the amount of it.
What the educational program and exhibitors’ booths made very clear is that “doing everything possible” relative to preventing or treating specific problems in animals has become a very sophisticated process. Although many people are aware of that relative to human health and behavior, many don’t realize that now the same also is true for animals. And even those who do realize this from watching veterinary shows on the “Animal Planet” network often don’t realize that the costs may be comparable, too.
Although it was an amazing experience to see representatives of all those products and services clustered in one place for easy comparison, I admit that I also found it a little over-whelming. I felt that way about all the educational sessions, too. My brain needs to make connections in order to remember things and as subjects get broken down into smaller and smaller increments, finding those connections becomes more difficult. Fortunately, I met old friends and made new ones in both environments and that made it much easier for me.
In terms of stimulus load, the Harmony Institute seemed like light years away from the convention center instead of a mere half-hour’s drive. Harmony is an 11,000 acre community dedicated to the integration of humans, animals, and nature. And, unlike other organizations who often take an either/or approach, the institute realizes that this can’t be done without equal concern for sustainability and energy-efficiency.
The first thing I noticed when we arrived was the quiet. Seventy percent of Harmony’s acreage, including its two 500-acre lakes, will remain open space accessible to all residents. I gotta admit that the championship golf course didn’t do too much for me because I’m not a golfer, but the walking path around it and all those birds on it—Herons! Egrets! Bitterns!—certainly did. And how cool is a Bat Tower that looks like a gazebo on legs that houses enough bats to consume over a million pesky insects a night? Or street lighting that directs all light downward so you can still see the stars at night? But for all the quiet, noninvasive technology at Harmony, what intrigued me most was its working philosophy. Not just Albert Schweitzer’s reverence for life philosophy, but also the awareness that lasting change in the quality of animal health and behavior, and thus that of the planet, on a large scale must come from the bottom up. In short, it must begin with the children.
Because of this, Harmony is above all a community for families. The regional school district has built or is building elementary, middle and high schools on land donated by the institute. All schools, like everything in Harmony, are within walking distance for those living in the community. But more importantly, all of the children who attend the schools have access to the institute’s programs and facilities. While some kids learn how to grow native landscaping plants and then sell these to earn money for their 4-H club, others learn the basics of animal husbandry or wildlife ecology. What joins these and other often highly diverse projects together is a shared goal to explore and understand the connection between humans, nature, and animals.
So there you have it. Two quite different animal-related environments. One that celebrates the science and technology of animal care and the other that celebrates the relationship between humans, animals, and the environment. One that seeks to discover more and more about less and less; another that seeks to discover more and more about more and more. One pretty much embedded in the here and now; the other taking the long view.
But it’s not a case of one being right to the other’s wrong, although I’m sure there are those who could and would passionately defend one orientation over the other. As with so many things in life, the answer isn’t either/or. It’s “and.” While those on the high-tech end of things might see themselves as guaranteeing the health and behavior of the domestic animals and wildlife in places like Harmony, I’m sure that those raised in such communities to recognize and appreciate the power of the human-animal-environment relationship have and will have a lot to teach those at the other end of the spectrum, too.
Last month I attended one of the largest veterinary conferences in the world, the North American Veterinary Conference in Orlando, Florida. While I was in the area, I also visited the Harmony Institute located about a half hour’s drive from the conference center. Between the two, I experienced the full spectrum of what is available for animals and animal-loving people.
Let’s begin with the conference which had an estimated attendance of 60,000 people from all over the world. As an educational experience, it was mind-boggling. Presentations were given from first thing in the morning until last thing at night on every imaginable veterinary-related topic. The subjects I remember from my veterinary education—and thought were very sophisticated at the time—have been replaced by ever more specialized ones. Alternative and holistic approaches shared equal billing with conventional ones. Dogs, cats, cattle, horses, pigs, birds, fish, ferrets, and frogs, among others, all rated sessions devoted to their specific, species-related issues. Hundreds of meetings reminded me how much more we now know about the workings of the animal body or specific animal behaviors. The hand-outs alone would overflow a carryon bag.
In the large exhibit hall, I perused row upon row of booths, many of which boasted technology that made the techno-nucleus of my brain shrink in horror. I consoled myself with the knowledge that most of those clustered around these displays were my sons’ age or younger. But even though my grasp of much of this technology’s inner workings was meager to nonexistent, I couldn’t help but be awed by the amount of it.
What the educational program and exhibitors’ booths made very clear is that “doing everything possible” relative to preventing or treating specific problems in animals has become a very sophisticated process. Although many people are aware of that relative to human health and behavior, many don’t realize that now the same also is true for animals. And even those who do realize this from watching veterinary shows on the “Animal Planet” network often don’t realize that the costs may be comparable, too.
Although it was an amazing experience to see representatives of all those products and services clustered in one place for easy comparison, I admit that I also found it a little over-whelming. I felt that way about all the educational sessions, too. My brain needs to make connections in order to remember things and as subjects get broken down into smaller and smaller increments, finding those connections becomes more difficult. Fortunately, I met old friends and made new ones in both environments and that made it much easier for me.
In terms of stimulus load, the Harmony Institute seemed like light years away from the convention center instead of a mere half-hour’s drive. Harmony is an 11,000 acre community dedicated to the integration of humans, animals, and nature. And, unlike other organizations who often take an either/or approach, the institute realizes that this can’t be done without equal concern for sustainability and energy-efficiency.
The first thing I noticed when we arrived was the quiet. Seventy percent of Harmony’s acreage, including its two 500-acre lakes, will remain open space accessible to all residents. I gotta admit that the championship golf course didn’t do too much for me because I’m not a golfer, but the walking path around it and all those birds on it—Herons! Egrets! Bitterns!—certainly did. And how cool is a Bat Tower that looks like a gazebo on legs that houses enough bats to consume over a million pesky insects a night? Or street lighting that directs all light downward so you can still see the stars at night? But for all the quiet, noninvasive technology at Harmony, what intrigued me most was its working philosophy. Not just Albert Schweitzer’s reverence for life philosophy, but also the awareness that lasting change in the quality of animal health and behavior, and thus that of the planet, on a large scale must come from the bottom up. In short, it must begin with the children.
Because of this, Harmony is above all a community for families. The regional school district has built or is building elementary, middle and high schools on land donated by the institute. All schools, like everything in Harmony, are within walking distance for those living in the community. But more importantly, all of the children who attend the schools have access to the institute’s programs and facilities. While some kids learn how to grow native landscaping plants and then sell these to earn money for their 4-H club, others learn the basics of animal husbandry or wildlife ecology. What joins these and other often highly diverse projects together is a shared goal to explore and understand the connection between humans, nature, and animals.
So there you have it. Two quite different animal-related environments. One that celebrates the science and technology of animal care and the other that celebrates the relationship between humans, animals, and the environment. One that seeks to discover more and more about less and less; another that seeks to discover more and more about more and more. One pretty much embedded in the here and now; the other taking the long view.
But it’s not a case of one being right to the other’s wrong, although I’m sure there are those who could and would passionately defend one orientation over the other. As with so many things in life, the answer isn’t either/or. It’s “and.” While those on the high-tech end of things might see themselves as guaranteeing the health and behavior of the domestic animals and wildlife in places like Harmony, I’m sure that those raised in such communities to recognize and appreciate the power of the human-animal-environment relationship have and will have a lot to teach those at the other end of the spectrum, too.