Animal management can be a huge asset to its community; working to keep its public safe, offering a service that protects people and their animals and leading the way in compassion. Or it can work against its public, seeing them as an enemy that needs to be coerced with more laws, more fines and expanded powers to officers to seize and kill pets.

In 2008, there was recognition of a pet crisis in Victoria;

Reporter: There’s currently 10 times the average number of dogs looking for a new home. Staff are blaming pressure on family budgets for the increase, for some it’s just too expensive to collect their precious pooch.

Sue Conroy: If the dog’s going to cost them fines for being out with the council, or microchipping fees and desexing fees, then maybe they’ll opt not to take the dog back home again.

In 2010, despite the experience that fines are an obstacle that keep people from collecting their lost animals ensuring shelters stay perpetually full, and ignoring the global financial meltdown which has stretched families even further than two years ago – issuing larger and larger fines is still the Victorian government’s preferred approach to animal management;

Errant dog owners face harsher fines

Wandering dogs deemed an imminent threat to people could be destroyed on the spot under laws coming into effect today.

Pet owners who fail to register their dogs or cats face doubled fines of almost $2400.

New penalties include:
DOUBLING of potential fines for owners who fail to apply for or renew dog and/or cat registrations to $2389.
FINES up to $717 for dogs found wandering during the day.
FINES doubled to $4778 if a dog attacks someone.
The laws also broaden the criteria for declaring a dog menacing or dangerous.

The Herald Sun, 1st Sept 2010

Victorian groups The Lost Dogs Home and the RSPCA, both supported this move by government to strengthen laws against roaming dogs (commonly known as ‘lost dogs’). The Cat Protection Society has long called for stronger laws against ’semi-owners’, the group least likely to have their free-roaming cat registered.

Prepare for a bloodbath as people who’ve lost pets give up all hope of being able to afford their release. Prepare for the enormous increase in ‘unavoidable’ killing as dogs who’ve never caused a problem in their family or community are branded of ‘dangerous’ breed and are seized from their families. And don’t forget the thousands of cat carers now facing fines of over $2,000 if they continue to give their local stray a little bit of food.

We are witness. We should not forget who stood by and not only let this appalling action against animals and their owners happen, but encouraged it. Those groups claiming to be working to ‘protect’ pets.

It takes a big change in mindset for an organisation to stop blaming the public and waiting in their shelter for animals to be brought in to be killed, and instead get out into their community and start working on solutions. But that’s exactly what the Wellington SPCA has chosen to do with the growing number of TNR programs they are supporting in their community.

They were recently interviewed by Wellington Access Radio about various aspects of their work, specifically an initiative which has been set up by Wellington SPCA, supported by Wellington City Council established to tackle a burgeoning stray cat population in a suburban area.

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Wellington SPCA had a crisis on its hands recently, with an overwhelming number of cats needing homes. It got so bad that several weeks again they ran a free feline friday adoption day in an effort to have the cats rehomed. But the SPCA isn’t just dealing with cats needing homes with humans. In conjunction with the Wellington City Council and their local community, they’re also helping a colony of stray cats in the Strathmore area live out their lives as strays in a managed kind of way.

Interviewed
Animal Care and Adoptions Manager, Nicolas Taylor
Clinic Supervisor for the SPCA, Jo Double

The situation in Strathmore started a year ago, almost to the day. We got a phone call from pest control at Wellington City Council. They had been getting numerous calls from members of the public in Strathmore, who were basically sick of the cat problem as they saw it. And pest control decided to give us a call and see if we wanted to help them kill all these cats. And we said, well hangon, there’s a better way we can do it.

There were a few streets that people wanted targeted, some of the streets aren’t so bad, but definitely around some flats there was quite a large population of stray cats.

What is the difference between a stray and feral cat?

In terms of their behaviour, they’re quite similar, but a true feral cat has no contact with people. It’s living in the bush, it’s having nothing to do with people, it’s not eating rubbish, it’s not eating food that’s left out for it, it’s eating animal or birds or lizards or rodents. Whereas a stray cat can be feral-like in its behaviour, but they are generally living off the rubbish, or wherever they find the resources, around humans, often supermarkets, communal rubbish sites.

From overseas studies and situations overseas, and also in New Zealand, when you do go out and trap the cats, and basically kill them, it doesn’t actually change anything and you don’t actually eradicate the problem. New cats move in, where the other cats have left. We’re confident that in 10-15 years, the unwanted and stray cat population problem of Strathmore will be solved.

How’d you do it?

The whole Strathmore area, we’re estimating 15-20 cats per street. We’ve so far desexed 30 of the cats, there’s two streets we’ve really concentrated on and we’re going to start branching out. With one colony on one street there’s 18 cats, and in the neighbouring street there are 7 cats.

It took quite a while to get them (council) on board with the idea of not killing them and keeping them safe, but making sure they’re desexed and healthy and that people can look after them. So it’s a combined effort, they’re looking at such things as dealing with any of the rubbish situations out there, which areattracting the cats.

What we did initially, another staff member and I, got out there and door knocked 250 – 300 doors in two days. Just doorknocking and asking people “do you have an undesexed cat that you want us to desex?” because the first thing is to basically get all the owned cats desexed.

And then asking, “have you been feeding a stray cat?” and at first people think they’re in trouble and say no, but then they admit that they are feeding them and we would say “that’s great! Would you want to continue doing that?” and we’d trap these cats, desex and return them and they’d just need to make sure they’re healthy and fed every day. So they’re not a problem to other people in the street.

There are a lot of people who really cared about the cats, they were concerned about the problem and they didn’t like seeing all the kittens every year, litters of kittens getting sick. We didn’t find many people who were negative about it, they just wanted to make sure something was being done.

Trapping the cats

Next we got the (commmunity cat) managers to get into a feeding regime, feeding the cats at the same time each day, basically training the cats to come to the same place each day at the same time. Then we put out flyers to the community saying ‘please keep your cat inside overnight, we’re going to start trapping the next day’. So basically, if you’ve got an owned cat, we don’t want to be trapping your cat.

We told the colony managers ‘don’t feed the cats today’ and so they’re going to be hungry. And then when it comes to the normal feeding time, we put the traps out and we were catching the cats and moving them and we got 18 cats in a really short amount of time. They were in humane traps so the animals were unharmed and they were sedated in the traps.

All these cats, we did a body condition score, all of them because they’ve been fed for a month, they were actually slightly overweight. So they were in brilliant condition, really healthy. We desexed, vaccinated wormed and fleaed them. We also ear tipped the left ear, which is an international symbol of a TNR cat: a monitored cat in a colony. And that makes it easier too, because when you’ve got cats in a colony you can tell, all these ones have been desexed and if you see another cat in there that has two pointy ears, you know there’s a cat in there that needs to be trapped and desexed.

When we opened up the traps and the cats went flying out, the crazy thing was we just thought they’d run and hide, but they turned around and were watching us. They were becoming more human friendly from interacting with the colony manager.

On environmental impact

Catching birds is a high energy, often unsuccessful enterprise for a cat. Its much easier for them to catch rodents. Cats which are fed every day are less likely to be catching wildlife. The thing is, there are always going to be cats. Trapping cats and killing them doesn’t solve the problem, more cats move in and they won’t be desexed, so they will just produce more and more kittens and the population explodes. If you desex them, that reduced the numbers; these cats keep out other cats from coming into the territory, they’re quite territorial so what you’re doing is reducing the number of cats in that area, which is only going to be a good thing for the wildlife.

We’re hoping to see a reduction in the number of unwanted kittens coming in from Strathmore as of November. Basically, there won’t be any coming from Strathmore.

Listen to the full interview here (mp3)

According to their website, the Cooma-Monaro Shire Council is based in the country town of Cooma, New South Wales, perfectly situated only one hour from the Mountains, Canberra and the Coast, and only 4 hours to Sydney.

A regional location, it has a population of 6,587 people and a small animal pound. It would be easy for the management of this pound to kill dogs and cats while claiming they’re ‘too rural’ to run a rehoming program, and their farming-based community ‘too backward’ to care for their animals compassionately and ‘too ignorant’ to appreciate the value of rescue pets. They could even claim that country dogs were ‘less social’ than city dogs, or the breeds they dealt with were ‘not desirable’ so killing is unavoidable.

Instead, they shook off the excuses and last year they saved 97% of the dogs they impounded.

Cooma-Monaro Shire Council has achieved its highest rehousing rate of impounded stray dogs in five years.

During the 2009/2010 financial year 97 per cent of dogs impounded were successfully rehoused.

Of the 146 dogs seized 143 were released and three were euthanased, a six per cent improvement on 2005/2006 figures.

Of the 143 dogs released 20 were handed over the Cooma branch of the RSPCA.

President of the Cooma branch of the RSPCA Lil Frezza said a total of 41 dogs came into their care last year with 39 rehoused.

She believes the high rehousing rate is largely due to people who volunteer as foster carers for the animals while the RSPCA finds new homes for them.

“The number is good for a small country town,” she said.

“Council rangers are cooperative and the foster carers make a big difference.”

Mrs Frezza said initiatives such as increased advertising of abandoned pets and increased fund raising efforts had contributed to improved rehousing rates.
……

Last year, council seized a total of 17 cats and released 16 while one was destroyed.

Cooperation and marketing, not fire and brimstone. Foster care and innovation, not condemnation and killing. What’s more Cooma celebrated this fantastic achievement, by getting this positive story into their local press, further generating community goodwill.

There is no reason every regional council pound could not follow Cooma’s lead, and the lead of other shelters around the country, and implement the programs and services that make the killing of companion animals unnecessary. Many regional councils are not only still choosing to kill, but are often doing so by draconian means; shooting pets with firearms, or gassing them with car exhausts. And while defending the methods they’re using to kill as ‘humane’, they resist pressure to stop killing from their local community; the ultimate betrayal of the companion animals they are assigned with protecting.

Every council pound who refuses to work with rescue, every council pound who refuses to use foster carers, every council pound who instead looks to laws to punish their public and make it more difficult for people to keep their animals – chooses to kill instead of work with their community to save lives.

Cooma has shown that even a small population in a rural area has enough community goodwill to make their local council pound a safe place for pets, should the pound’s management choose to stop killing and instead open their doors to pet lovers. Every under-performing pound manager should now consider themselves now on notice.

See also: How to save 79 pets in a week

As you may know if you follow my tweets, I’m still in the UK staying with my husband’s family. Last night on a history show we were watching, there was a reference to a Roman archaeological dig at the site of a suspected brothel;

Romans ‘killed babies at brothel’

Dozens of unwanted babies born during Roman times were murdered and buried on the site of a Roman brothel in Buckinghamshire, archaeologists suspect.

An extensive study of a mass burial at a Roman villa in the Thames Valley suggests that the 97 children all died at 40 weeks gestation, or very soon after birth.

The archaeologists believe that locals may have been killing and burying unwanted babies on the site in Hambleden, Buckinghamshire.

While it seems incredibly brutal to us that newborns would be killed as a form of ‘birth control’, historians claim early Romans believed that babies didn’t receive a soul until they were nearly a year old (a child attempting to speak was a sign that his soul had entered his body) and killing them was widely considered no more evil than slaughtering an animal. (Yes, some of the British history I’ve had over the last week or so has been pretty ick!)

But it did get me to thinking…with the near constant breakthroughs in the areas of understanding how animals think, act and feel, are our future selves going to look back at our time on earth and think it similarly ugly? Will everything we feel we know about animals now turn out to be a vast underestimation of their capacity to value their life, and that we are as a society are just unenlightened about their understanding and awareness?

If we equate ‘consciousness’ to some cognitive stage, then its very easy to see why Romans thought it ok to swiftly end the life of a newborn child through an opiate overdose (or worse). Yet few today would defend infanticide. Could our assumptions that animals don’t have ’souls’ or their lives value, because our culture says they don’t, turn out to be an equally misinformed position?

While it’s unfair to use current knowledge and societal framework to condemn those in history who simply didn’t know better, imagine for one moment what it means if we’re living today, in a similar ignorant absolution. Are we the barbarians of tomorrow?

This?

Or this?

From a WA animal shelter’s ‘Adoption Adviser’;

The great offence that these potential adopters committed? To need some support in working to getting landlord approval to have a pet.

When people willing to open their hearts and families to a rescue pet feel the only option they have is to lie to us, then we’ve failed to give them the information they need to have a successful pet ownership experience. There are dozens of resources we can provide to people having landlord issues; with some coaching, a clever pet resume and a reference from the shelter to offer to take the pet back should the adoption not work out, maybe this landlord could be swayed to allowing this pet. Simply denying and scorning people who clearly wanted to adopt badly is petty and unhelpful. Not to mention the likelihood that these potential adopters will now go to a pet shop, the one place we beg people not to go to!

If you allow festering attitudes of ‘us against them’ to live in your shelter, then you will have a team not working to make adoptions happen, but to relish in the chance to refuse them.






More info:

and here:
http://www.petfriendlyrentals.com.au/blog/2010/02/petnet-tv-series-two-part-special-on-renting-with-pets/

In the past pounds and shelter defended the killing of healthy, friendly and treatable pets by claiming they weren’t really ‘killing’ at all… instead they used words like ‘putting to sleep’ and ‘euthanasia’ to describe the acceptance that pets would die at the hands of those who claimed to be working to care for them.

Modern rescue has moved beyond the idea that it is appropriate for those in animal welfare to gloss over the killing of an animal for convenience. The term ‘putting to sleep’ is insulting to our community and ‘euthanasia’ is a misnomer when referring to an animal that is anything but untreatably sick. By reclaiming our role as life savers and recognising each and every death is a profound failure on the part of those offering a safety net for animals, we begin to innovate and find ways to save their lives.

However, while some are working to change the future for animals, some of those deemed to be our shelter ‘leaders’ disgrace our industry by continuing to defend killing and hide behind euphemisms.

“Well for starters, the kill rate is something that I don’t use, I use the euthanasia rate.

If you talk about kill rates, I think the figure, I don’t like the term.”

Dr Graeme Smith, Managing Director, Lost Dogs Home – MTR Radio

Dr Smith then outlines the following figures for February (this year);

983 dogs and puppies admitted
596 reclaimed by their owners
166 adopted
216 killed

So of the 382 dogs who need shelter and treatment in the month, over 56% of them are killed. More than one killed for every one saved. Which would be awful for any pound. Except…

The Lost Dogs Home is not a council pound. They’re acting as one certainly; picking up valuable pound contracts by tendering to councils to take over their animal services. But they are in fact a private charity organisation with absolutely no obligation at all to take on more animals than they can reasonably save.

What’s more the resources of the local community are blocked by the monopoly of the ’super pound’ in North Melbourne. By releasing these pound contracts, other community animal welfare groups could get off the ground and start to take on the responsibility for saving the lives of these pets.

The community rejects killing as a method of animal management. The Managing Director of the Lost Dogs Home is still killing and defending killing by calling it something other than killing. This discrepancy between the public’s expectations and the performance of management means something has to give. Those fighting for the animals will not be silenced.

Australia and the United States are same-same, but different. And a challenge we face in bringing No Kill programs to Australia is a pretty significant language difference between the two countries.

Much of the US documentation refers to ‘shelters’ reclaiming their lifesaving role in the community. To us ‘shelter’ generally means a local, privately managed rescue. These can be large, open admission and have pound contracts, or small and selective… or anything in between. They can be No Kill, low kill or high kill, depending on who’s in charge. And they nearly always run primarily on the donations of the public, meaning donors (the local community) can dictate the organisation be both transparent and run those programs which save lives. Shelters, by large are the focus of Australia efforts towards No Kill.

However, in the US shelter means all of these things, but is also the generic term for ‘pound’. ‘Municipal shelter’ or ‘animal control shelter’ is the equivalent to our council pound. This oh-so-subtle language difference between America and Australia, lets the largest killer of our companion animals off the hook when it comes to No Kill initiatives.

While there are few that would argue that shelters are obligated to be running programs which save the lives of pets; council pounds continue to neglect and kill companion animals and work to block relationships with the community rescue groups that could save them. What’s more, animal welfare advocates often make excuses for pounds; “it’s unrealistic to expect them to change”, even though overcoming the often regressive behaviour of pound management is undeniably the biggest hurdle to any No Kill initiative.

I urge you to pick up your copy of Redemption or Irreconcilable Differences, and read each reference to ‘shelter’ as ‘pound or shelter’, as it was intended. It puts an entirely different spin on where we as No Kill advocates are headed and the future we need to create for pets.

It is not pet overpopulation that is killing animals when shelter pound or shelter directors wilfully refuse to implement lifesaving alternatives to killing; such as a comprehensive foster care program, as is too often true in pounds and shelters across the country.

Similarily, it is not pet overpopulation to blame when adoptions are low because the pound or shelter is not doing off-site adoptions.

It is not pet overpopulation when animals are killed because working with rescue groups is downplayed, discouraged, or these groups aren’t given access to animals facing death.

It is not pet overpopulation to blame when feral cats are killed because a TNR program is not in place.

It is not pet overpopulation when people aren’t helped to overcome behaviour, medical or environmental conditions that cause them to relinquish animals because effective pet retention programs aren’t implemented.

It is not pet overpopulation to blame when animals are killed because of ineffective and passive efforts to help reunite lost pets with their families.

It is not pet overpopulation to blame when shy or scared dogs are killed because a rehabilitation program has not been integrated into the behaviour assessment process.

It is not pet overpopulation to blame when adoptions aren’t steadily increasing because an effective public relations strategy and adoption campaign isn’t being coordinated, or the pound or shelter is not effectively competing with commercial sources of animals.

It is not pet overpopulation to blame when dogs go ‘cage crazy’ because volunteers aren’t welcome or allowed to socialise them, and then ‘cage crazy’ dogs are killed because behaviour rehabilitation efforts are not in place.

It is not pet overpopulation to blame when cats get sick because pound or shelter staff are not thorough in their cleaning and thoroughly reprimanded for failure to do so.

It is not pet overpopulation to blame when these sick cats are killed because the pound or shelter does not provide medical care or treatment.

And it is especially not pet overpopulation to blame when pets are killed despite empty cages, an all too common occurrence in pounds and shelters across the country that are killing and claiming to do so because of ‘lack of space’.

In fact, we could be a No Kill nation today. But we aren’t. And we aren’t for one reason and one reason only – pound and shelter managers find killing easier than doing what is necessary to stop it. Accordingly, we must reject the term ‘euthanasia’ to describe unnecessary pound or shelter killing. We must stop using the term ‘pet overpopulation’ when it does not exist. We must stop portraying the problem as the fault of the public when pound and shelter managers fail to implement the necessary programs. And we need to stop seeking laws that empower animal control to impound and kill more animals.

Irreconcilable Differences – Nathan Winograd

So what policies would a pound or shelter director need to implement to put their organisation on a No Kill path?

• Dedication
  A formal commitment by the pound or shelter director, management and staff to lifesaving programs and dedication to ending the killing of healthy, treatable and adoptable pets in their facility.




• Desexing
  High volume, low cost desexing services for their community, either through the engagement of local veterinarians, or the development of a community desexing clinic for low income and disadvantaged owners.




• Foster care
  A comprehensive foster care program for underage, traumatised, sick, injured and other animals and the commitment to offer all pets foster before them being killed, unless their prognosis is poor.




• Adoption
  An adoption program that operates during weekends, after hours when people have finished work, and includes offsite adoption venues such as pet stores, shopping centres and pet events.




• Rehabilitation
  Medical and behavioural rehabilitation programs for pets who have a common and treatable medical and behavioural problems.




• Community Assistance
  Pet retention programs to help solve medical, environmental or behavioural problems that cause people to relinquish pets, to instead keep animals with their existing owners.




• Community Cats
  The end to the policy of trapping or accepting feral cats, or lending traps to capture animals for the purpose of removing animals to be killed. Trap, desex and release programs and outreach to community cat care groups, for cats deemed too feral for rehoming.




• Rescue Groups
  Outreach to encourage community rescue groups to access pound or shelter animals, helping to rehome pets.




• Volunteers
  Volunteer programs to socialise animals, promote adoptions and help in the operations of the pound or shelter.




• Second Chances
  An end to owner-requested killing, unless the pet is deemed to be irremediably suffering and cannot be rehabilitated.




• Getting rid of bad laws
  The repeal of unenforceable laws which drive up intakes; mandatory desexing, bans on feeding strays and bans on specific breeds.




• Returning Pets Home
  Proactive strategies to help reunite lost pets with their families including door knocking the neighbourhood where the pet was collected, taking the pet straight home rather than impounding it and post the photo of any impounded pet promptly on the internet.




• Disease Control
  Thorough protocols, including vaccination on arrival, thorough cleaning and disinfection standards, isolation of new intakes and staff washing their hands between handling animals.




• Final Checks
  The requirement that before any animal is killed, that documentation is presented showing that all efforts to save the animal have been considered, including medical and behavioural rehabilitation, foster care, rescue groups, desex and release, and adoption.




When the alternative is killing healthy, adoptable pets by the thousands, we should accept nothing less than the comprehensive implementation of these minimum basic programs by every single pound and shelter director. In every way, our animal organisations should be working to get the pets in their care out alive and they must deem the death of every healthy, treatable pet to be a profound failure in their management.

A No Kill Australia is within our reach, but this will not happen without the community demanding it. The slogan for the conference was that we need more No Kill leaders – people who are able to drive their own initiatives on behalf of animals.

If you care about pets and want to become more involved, then check out the video ‘Strayed’ for a background on the No Kill movement and start getting involved in your own community. There are also resources from the conference here:

To download the Shelter Track materials, cut and paste the following to your browser:
http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/Shelter2010.zip

To download the Legal Track materials, cut and paste the following to your browser:
http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/Legal2010.zip




The only thing standing between us and a future where no homeless pet goes without a home, is our drive to save their lives.

Saving Pets is back! After a work v blog ’situation’, I needed to take some time away from blogging. And after this wee hiatus, I honestly can’t believe how much time I have to you know… do stuff!

But that’s all sorted now and Saving Pets is back to share the 2010 No Kill Conference. I arrived yesterday after plane hopping for nearly 35 hrs….
Perth > Sydney > LA > New York > Washington (hooray for discount plane tickets!).

The blogging starts on Saturday (that’s Sunday Aussie time!). Be sure to drop by! :)

xx
:)shel