It’s launched! Where Do Puppies Come From? highlights the issues surrounding dog farms in Australia in a simple and non-confronting manner.


Basically we think the information speaks for itself, so have compiled a dog farm information portal to make it easy to see why, as pet lovers we should demand more for our companion animals. However, rather than focus on the negatives, we’ve made it easy for people to take a stand by including simple steps to avoid supporting puppy millers.


If you have had difficulties explaining the puppy farm issue to others in ten words or less (I know I have!), this is a great resource to point them to.


Where Do Puppies Come From? Where indeed…

After two days at the vet to have a lumpy bumpy cut off him, Ajax is now on bed rest.


Rather than have a day off, I asked my boss if it’d be ok to bring him to work today and being the cool cats that they are, they’ve said yes!


Now for a temperamentally challenged poppit like Ajie, this could have gone a couple of ways; either really badly, noisily and chucked out in disgrace OR as it has been going so far… bl00dy brilliantly!


58 pats before 10am, some bickie treats (strangers rock!) and a wee morning nap.


The charmed life of rescue pet, eh?

What would you do if found out Kevin Rudd was coming to adopt from you this week?


Would you change the way you answered the phone? Spruce up the way you met visitors? Have your best staff on deck? Wear matching uniforms?


If you thought there might be media in tow, would you tidy up? Sweep your carpark? Mow your lawns?


Yes?


Now why would you do any of these things for Mr Rudd, but not for your next adopter? Aren’t they just as important?

It’s a weird world. Most shelters have a sign that say ‘please don’t take photos of our pets’, strict policies about who can take photos and put them on the web and when Michael Mountain came to Australia filming his experience, he wasn’t allowed to take cameras in.

What is everyone so afraid of?

For many I think it’s getting phone calls about pets that are already adopted. The problem in this case is not that people are phoning – it’s that you’re wasting their time when they do. Fix that.

I think the other reason is a fear of losing control. Here’s the really scary thing – you already have. People are talking about you already, so you better be empowering your fans to step up and talk about you too.

Share the good stuff

You want people to support your group, but friendship is a two way street. You wouldn’t care terribly for a friend that only called you twice a year and asked for money, so you’re going to need to offer more than that to your ‘friends’.

News, pictures and updates of your progress are a great way to your supporters “feel the love’ and that they’re a part of and involved in your group.

But! I hear you say; you don’t have the resources to constantly put information together letting people know about what you’re up to and you don’t have enough people in your organisation to spread the word. So what you gonna do?

Stop hiding

You can’t control what people say about you, but you can make it easy for them to share the good stuff. Now’s the time to call on your Fan Club.

I would be asking anyone who’s willing to come down to film and photograph the activities at the shelter. I might even just start giving visitors cameras at the door. Invite people to be ‘official’ photographers for events and staff functions. Get them excited about sharing your story.

I’d then set up a Flickr group and encourage people to post their photos there. For video, set up a You Tube account and ask people to send through videos they’ve taken.

People love contributing, but if you have to give people a reason to want to. Give them some resources and then take a step back. It’s scary to give away control and you might find they do things differently to how you would, but if you want people to genuinely care about you, then you have to start being authentic.

Of course a plan like this sets the bar high, but you can’t expect amazing support, amazing results and amazing success, if you aren’t amazing.

Dare to show people how amazing you are.

An inspired effort by the RSPCA Yagoona…

A seven-year-old Himalayan cat missing since Friday, August 13, 2005, was reunited with his owner almost three years later – with the help of Facebook.

An RSPCA inspector found Jacob the cat in Claymore, south-western Sydney, recently and took him to the Yagoona animal shelter. A microchip scan revealed the owner’s name, Maria Zissis, but her phone had since been disconnected.

RSPCA staff then spoke to the other contact listed on the chip, who told them she hadn’t spoken to or seen the owner in years but thought Ms Zissis might have a Facebook page.

Staff found the site and sent her a message.

Ms Zissis said: “I logged on to my Facebook page and saw I had a message from the RSPCA.

“I couldn’t believe it when they told me they found Jacob.
SMH.com.au

Not only is this a great show of going above and beyond for the benefit of their pets, it’s a brilliant example of smart interaction with the media.


Internet based news websites churn through content (most are updated hourly) so a snappy, interesting feel-good story with a modern hook such as “facebook” is pure genius.


(Note the lack of death, lack of resources or abused pets).


Whomever is caring for the public relations at this RSPCA should be wagging their tail today.

“Too many pets and not enough homes” is a catchy little ditty heard often in rescue, but while the death toll and suffering are obvious to us, the idea that there are a “lack of homes” makes little sense when compared to the figures of pets acquired from sources other than rescue.


Today Tonight’s story on puppy mills revealed a startling fact; over a half a million dogs are bought from pet shops every year. Add to that, those bought from professional and backyard breeders and you have huge number of pets being purchased… from everyone but us!


Whether we like it or not, the mass production of pets is big business in Australia. For a long time rescue has taken on the responsibility cleaning up the mess left and have pressured the pet industry to change their policies to incorporate a more humane attitude towards our companion animals. It’s unrealistic however, to expect a profit motivated industry that makes its money by freely releasing pets into the community to implement any change that would in any way stem this flow of pets – it’s simply not good business.


We must also understand that people who want pets, get pets. While sentiments such as “a pet is a privilege, not a right” is romantic, it’s unrealistic as anyone is able to go out and get themselves a pet.


Since a lack of owner education, desexing, ongoing support and an options for returning the pet should the relationship fail are the largest factors for pet relinquishment, it seems logical that we’d be trying to replace every “sold” pet with one of ours. We do offer these services and can help owners be better pet-people.

The only way to keep profit motivated sellers from selling is to instead have the pet buying public, adopt from us.

When we fail to provide an adopter with a pet, either directly (a refused adoption application) or indirectly (through bad customer service, unnecessarily complicated adoption procedures or arbitrary rules) we can be quite sure that we have no hope whatsoever in helping that person to ever become a responsible pet guardian… and that they will shortly have a pet regardless.


While it might be reassuring to think “at least they didn’t get a pet from me”, with the multitude of pet purchase options, we must know that when we reject a potential adopter, we have only served to push them back out into the market – to the very places we beg people to avoid because they don’t offer the support that could save the pet from abandonment!


By focusing on saving the individuals animals in our care, we’ve concluded that the only power we have is to prevent uneducated people from acquiring pets, not helping them. But every pet that ends up in the hands of an owner we’ve turned away – who then suffers from their owner being uneducated, is also a pet we’ve failed.


We’ve forgotten we’re not in the business of finding nice people to adopt our pets, rather to create responsible pet guardians. Maybe we should even let the “nice, responsible, good, pet-people” go get their pets from the sources of pets that provide no support at all – after all good pet owners don’t need help!


We rescuers should be loath to send a person away empty handed, when we have the perfect opportunity to educate when dealing with a potential adopter. Rather than trying to find the already perfect, let’s instead lure the uneducated owners to our rescues, find them a pet and use all our resources to make that person a responsible pet guardian.

If you work in rescue it’s likely that you own a pet that, should something unfortunate happen to you, wouldn’t pass the very same tests you put potential adoptees through. Their temperaments mean they’re not safe to be given to the public - or they have health issues that require more care than most people would be willing to commit to.


I have Ajax; my “problem child”, but despite his issues with the world,  he’s a good dog, loving, and I wouldn’t be without him for anything.


So why then, when we hear about animal sanctuaries that hold disabled or unrehomable animals, do we automatically jump to the conclusion that something is desperately wrong? That these animals must be so “messed up” that they should be put to death for their own benefit?


That when considering the options for these pets, we assume unrehomable automatically means “unable to live any life at all”?

No one wants hopelessly ill or injured dogs and cats kept alive while irremediably suffering, because that is cruel. No one wants truly vicious dogs adopted into the community, because that is dangerous. And while over 90 percent of dogs and cats entering shelters are neither hopelessly suffering nor vicious, we shouldn’t be satisfied with killing the remainder.
Nathan Winograd

So what to do with the unrehomable pet – introducing the third door as detailed by Nathan Winograd in his blog today. It’s the door or option between rehoming and euthanasia – the sanctuary.


Now often you hear that it’s unethical to spend hundreds or thousands one pet, when that money could be used to save many other more rehomable pets, or desexing programs or something more “worthy”. But how much would you spend on your own un-rehomable furchild? Or any of your pets? This argument is flawed because money is not a finite thing. Money spent on one, does not directly take from another; money spent in my household doesn’t take from yours. The 4 billion a year spent on pet care in Australia each year, is in no way unethical because it’s not being spent on “saving” pets – if it’s your money, or resource then it’s up to your personal descretion how you use it. This is true for the people who choose to donate to support these sancturaries and the decisions made by those who run them.


As long as we’re are aware of, and can meet the behavioural and emotional needs of individual animals, then we flatter ourselves to think these pets can’t be happy living in anything but a house with a nuclear family (the dogs in my Vanuatu post would beg to differ). We have to start getting past our predujice that a life spent in a sanctuary is no life at all.

In a delightful example of responsiveness, Walmart in the US bowed to community pressure to remove pet ads from their new online classifieds website;

Just days after the Wal-Mart Classifieds launched, people began contacting the corporate office with their concerns about the “pet for sale” ads. By last Friday, just days after the site launched, Wal-Mart had removed all the pet ads from their website.
bestfriends.com

The response from Wal-Mart reads, in part:

Given the current “beta” status of Walmart.com classifieds, we will continue to make changes to the service over the coming months. Based on the feedback you and others provided, we have removed the pets category while we evaluate how to improve pet listings in ways that serve our local communities along with the well being of animals.

In 2008 with consumerism rapidly being replaced by conservation and awareness, a humane company is a respected company. Walmart should be congratulated for putting their corporate foot down, recognising and changing outdated policies and making a positive contribution to animal welfare.

Sometimes when you start picking at a scab you find that it’s actually more puss-filled and poisonous than you had anticipated – such is the tale of the Clover Moore bill.


Since the mainstream media has picked up on the puppy mill issue, instead of heeding the advice of all Australian animal welfare organisations and getting pets out of stores, pet shops have sided with the puppy millers and turned blame to both rescue and owners for the sorry state of pets in Australian society.

We make it way too easy for them. Councils don’t want to have to pets dumped in the wild and offer an ‘easy’ drop-off service at the Pound.

Other groups like the Animal Welfare League also give an implied approval to the idea that surrendering is ok when they hold such things as “Surrender your pet day – no questions asked” – such as the surrender day at Moree held on 17th Feb 2008.

They then re-home many of these surrendered animals – without necessarily having any idea of the behavioural problems which may have prompted their owners to dump them.

So this whole animal welfare business – and it is VERY big business – for some worth millions of dollars a year – this whole animal welfare business and all the emotions that go with it is pointing its many fingers at the wrong people.
Pet Talk Radio – Who Created Death Row?

The great irony is that seeing first hand the futility of blaming surrendering owners, is what drives rescue to make it “easy” for these people to hand over their pets. More often than not, rather than being “irresponsible”, these owners are devastated… overwhelmed. And disillusioned by a pet ownership experience that was completely contrary to their expectations.

“There appears to be a discrepancy between what they would have liked their pet to be like, and what their pet was actually like.“
Tamzin Barber University of QLD study on surrenderment

Through a lack of experience and knowledge, an under-estimation of the extensive commitment of time required in owning a pet, or being out and out mislead by the sellers of animals who purport them as “perfect family pets” (without so much as a mention of training and ongoing costs), new owners struggle to integrate these animals into their lives… and often fail.


Rescue groups overcome this “pet bounce” by screening and educating adopters, desexing pets and offering a lifetime returns policy – fully believing we have a responsibility to help all owners for the life of their pet.


Rather than stepping up and accepting their part in a system that is failing 400,000 times every year - the pet industry continue to blames unsupecting owners for ending up in strife, and now, rescue groups for making surrenderment as untraumatic as possible; all while taking the largest share of the profits (an estimated $4 billion annually).


This continuing unwillingness to put animal welfare above profits demonstrates exactly why we need these new laws to flush the puss and clean up an industry that refuses to take responsibility for itself.

As a fur parent I spend a lot of time trying to provide the best life for my dogs.


When it came to choosing each of them I researched a suitable breed. I spent a lot of time choosing friends for them to socialise with and I give them an interesting toy-filled environment. Having worked in rescue for the last six or so years, I was sure I knew the best way to raise a dog.


Imagine then, how perturbed I’ve been by the recent discovery that my dogs’ life compares less favourably to dogs living in a country that doesn’t even consider dogs… pets?


My recent trip to the outer islands of Vanuatu was a total eye opener. In a place where they had no electricity, phone or running water, my host family had the happiest and most well socialised dog I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet.


However, they found the concept of treating dogs “like children” completely unbelievable. Putting clothes on a dog? They looked at me like I’d told them we had flown in by flapping our arms – are you mad, friend?


Dogs live outside with the other animals and serve their families by keeping watch and discouraging wild animals and vermin. But unlike dogs in other developing countries that have to live the “big city life” the dogs of the islands of Vanuatu, get to live the simple life of their semi-owners. Sleep, wake up, meet some peeps, eat something and sleep again. Repeat.  


All the time I spend trying to exercise and socialise my terrible three seemed disfunctional when you watched the effortless language-dance between island dogs;


“Hi, who are you! Oh! This is your patch, eh? Cool? Yeah, we’re cool. See-ya next time!”


Dominant. Submissive. Perfectly practiced body language. No sweat! Why fight when you can just say “Alo” and move on…


They follow their family (although leashes and collars are unheard of) and meet and greet everyone on the way. They came hiking with us tourists. They avoid cars and cows. They live an exciting life of dirt and stink in their giant, never ending backyard.


Then there’s the chickens and the children. A dog who bothered the family’s valuable farm animals wouldn’t last, so the foul and piglets walk with confidence. Dogs who aren’t good at living with people don’t live long enough to breed, so while the human babies play on mats and eat fistfuls of food, “dog” wouldn’t dare be so presumptuous as to try and share – he waits submissively on the outer hoping that when everyone leaves he might be able to step in and vacuum.


Now I’m not so naive as to think that life is all rosy for a dog living in a society where dogs aren’t family members. Vet care is non-existent, dog food absent from even the biggest stores and the expats speak of terrible animal abuse (although I never saw any). But these dogs have their own kind to meet, jungle to explore and the family that they’ve chosen to adopt.


Seeing first hand what happens when a good temperament is the only criteria for a dogs’ success made it painfully obvious that we humans are to blame for the dysfunction and sorry life expectancy of the modern pet. Sure without our meddling all the dogs looked exactly the same (plain, medium and short haired). But the life of these un-owned, semi-wild dogs sure make the a modern dogs’ existence look very sad indeed.