Lucky for me, when I added my first dog to my household I was great friends with an amazing behavioural trainer, my mate Vix. Along with many other fantastic tricks of the trade (crate training, clickers and The Other End of the Leash), she also taught me the value of teaching dogs not to snatch things dropped on the floor, to protect them from butterfingered friends and relatives and paracetamol and the like. But it’s only now I have three dogs, that I realise the competitive urge to gobble is huge and it’s an absolute blessing to have trained in a bit of restraint (if you’ve ever banged heads with a golden retriever you’ll know where I’m coming from).


A similar thing developed quite naturally; if you (dog) have something you’re not meant to, I’ll take it from you and give you a treat. Which quickly became; if you have something you’re not meant to, bring it to me and I’ll get you a treat. Which has been great, like the time when Cisco was about 5 months old and he found a flatmates acupuncture needles and he delicately brought them to me rather than crunch up the packet. And when any of them find loose socks rather than quietly chewing the toes out, they bring them and drop them on my lap; ‘Here mum, I’m not meant to have this – where’s my treat?’. Pretty clever, eh?


But it seems my LOL (little old lady) has gotten crafty in her dotage. Today I’m thinking ‘weird that was on the floor, I thought it was on the cupboard’ as she brings me a button , then a clothes peg, then a battery. Then a pen lid. Then a bracelet.


Hangon a minute! I follow her. Turns out she’s sneaking about looking on counters for things she can nick and then bring me all, wasn’t it lucky I found this!

What?

Read this

It’s fascinating.

Saving Pets blog turns 1 today!

Looking back to that very first post (WA) Cat, cats everywhere!! (two exclamations, not just one :) it was easy to see that I was needing some sort of an outlet. Now, I see that starting to blog was about getting the jumble of information I had in my head organised into some sort useful personal reference… I had no idea that I’d still be here a year later!

Then along came Redemption and I found myself nodding along yes! yes! yes! It’s the first book I’ve ever actually highlighted paragraphs of, and by the time I was finished it was full of those little sticky notes. That much thumbed copy has now gone to a new home, because I was lucky enough to b given a lovely new one with Nathan’s signature and the words;

Never doubt we’ll succeed.

And you know what? I don’t doubt we’ll succeed. No Kill isn’t just about shelters – it’s about whole communities. I’ve always believed the answer was to remove this enormous chasm of ‘us’ and ‘them’ between us and our public and instead see ourselves as a resource for pet lovers.

No Kill isn’t just about whether or not to kill an animal that we have in a shelter – it’s about implementing programs that stop pets becoming homeless in the first place. It’s about making desexing free to everyone who can’t afford it. It’s about respecting feral cats rights to live as part of the environment. It’s about giving up on stupid laws that pit good pet owners against animal agencies and realise compliance comes with education and support. And its about realising that we’ll always need shelters to care for the animals of people in trouble and those who genuinely don’t care and no amount of legislation will ever change that and that that’s ok – that’s what shelters are for.

No Kill is about proactive rehoming; getting pets where the people are and removing arbitrary hurdles to adoption. It’s about advertising pets in clever ways. It’s about realising that the people who want a pet will get a pet and since we have skills and experience that can help them chose the right pet and be better pet people… so we should want them to get their pet from us.

But mostly, it’s about treating the public like a valuable resource and not like some sort of an inconvenience, opening our minds to their innovations and asking them for support. With the help of our communities there is no limit to what we can achieve. My favourite post of the year; How to start a fan club, was really about embracing the idea that the public was a resource that we could be tapping into. While it focussed on donations, it’s just as relevant for adoptions, volunteers and creating a team of evangelists to help us spread our message of compassion and responsible pet ownership. The most powerful tool for change we have is our supporters.

No Kills is a lot of things that are putting us on the path to a future where pets aren’t killed for population control. And it’s very exciting that it’s just around the corner… never doubt we’ll succeed.

Thanks for reading and for all the comments and emails of support. It’s really appreciated :)

xx

:)shel

Debra Tranter, angel of Australian puppy farm dogs, has had the case brought against her by ACA Breeders Kennels dismissed;

An Animal Liberation Victoria activist has vowed to continue her campaign against puppy farms, after several charges against her were dismissed in court yesterday.

Deborah Tranter, 43, was part of a raid on the ACA Breeders Kennel Farm, at Stradbroke, last April.

The prosecution alleged that Ms Tranter had driven into one of the owners, Matthew Hams, after a confrontation.

She was charged with assault with a weapon, reckless conduct endangering life, and causing injury.

But magistrate Mornane dismissed the charges, saying it was impossible to rule that Mr Hams was standing in front of the vehicle, or that Miss Tranter meant to run into him.

Miss Tranter pleaded guilty to trespass, and received a two-year good behaviour bond without conviction, preventing her from entering the farm again.

More than 30 supporters of the Hams family and Ms Tranter packed the Sale Magistrates Court. ref

It’s hard to imagine how such a tiny woman finds the strength to keep standing up to these mouthbreathers, but we all owe her an enormous debt of gratitude for having the courage and conviction to keep working to expose the truth.


Congratulations Debra!

When the first settlers arrived in Australia in 1788 they began craft their surroundings to suit their needs. Massive areas of land were cleared for agriculture, and animal and plants were introduced to allow the settlement to become self sufficient.

At this time, according to the History of Cats in Australia, either Dutch or British explorers brought cats to the country as working companions, who then escaped into the Australian wilderness. These cats found an environment that suited them very well and by the 1850’s there were many cats established in the wild. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, more cats were released to control the plague numbers of another introduced species, the  rabbit. And so the cat was cemented as part of the Australian landscape, even adapting to suit the environment;

Black and grey feral cats are most commonly found in scrub or where wood cover is denser. Ginger coloured feral cats are more likely to be found on the desert plains and the red-soiled grasslands. ‘Tabby’ coloured feral cats are more common on rocky slopes. This is due to the feral cat being able to camouflage into its surroundings. If a feral cat cannot blend, then the animals it stalks will see it and the cat will go hungry, this is referred to as ‘natural selection’. The result of this is that you get an area that has similar coloured feral cats. ref

So, for over 200 years cats have been living in Australia alongside our ancestors doing what cats (and essentially all wild animals) do; eating and breeding.

Fast forward to today and our environment is in crisis. The expansion of housing, the loss of habitat due to clearing for roads and grazing animals, road accidents and severe weather caused by climate change, sees many native animals endangered. Cats are obviously playing a part and they’re much easier to target than some of these other things so it seems like a good idea to eliminate them doesn’t it?

Not on Maquarie Island;

Removing cats to protect birds backfires on island

It seemed like a good idea at the time: Remove all the feral cats (around 400-500) from a famous Australian island to save the native seabirds.

But the decision to eradicate the felines from Macquarie island allowed the rabbit population to explode and, in turn, destroy much of its fragile vegetation that birds depend on for cover, researchers said Tuesday.

Removing the cats from Macquarie “caused environmental devastation” that will cost authorities 24 million Australian dollars ($16.2 million) to remedy, Dana Bergstrom of the Australian Antarctic Division and her colleagues wrote in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology.

“Our study shows that between 2000 and 2007, there has been widespread ecosystem devastation and decades of conservation effort compromised,” Bergstrom said in a statement.

The unintended consequences of the cat-removal project show the dangers of meddling with an ecosystem ‘even with the best of intentions’ without thinking long and hard, the study said. ref

So what’s a government department whose meddling has caused an enormous upheaval in the ecosystem to do? Meddle some more obviously! But this time more intensively with bigger and better poisons! There was an old lady who swallowed a fly…

Liz Wren, a spokeswoman for the Parks and Wildlife Service of Tasmania, said authorities were aware from the beginning that removing the feral cats would increase the rabbit population. But at the time, researchers argued it was worth the risk considering the damage the cats were doing to the seabird populations.

The parks service now has a new plan to use technology and poisons that were not available a decade ago to eradicate rabbits, rats and mice from the island.

The project to be launched in 2010 will use helicopters with global positioning systems to drop poisonous bait that targets all three pests. Later, teams will shoot, fumigate and trap the remaining rabbits, Wren said.

Now, obviously we should be doing things to help the wild birds on this island. But this persistent and ham-fisted idea that ‘eradication’ is always the way forward,  is really just us jamming our fingers in our ears and singing; ‘la la la… we know better than nature’.

Seriously, given the history of our success in meddling so far *cough*canetoads*cough*, you’d think we’d have learnt by now that we can’t carve up the environment to suit our whims (no matter how well meaning) without unintended consequences. If only simply because we humans can never outsmart mother nature.

No matter what our personal feelings are about cats in our environment, after 200 years, they’re not only here to stay but are contributing to the ecosystem in millions of ways we cannot even begin to fathom. They are very much an Australia animal.

News today that NSW’s pounds killed 33,116 pets last financial year, up from 24,003 in 2006-07. That’s an increase of 9113 in a single year… Go Sydney!

But seriously, what the hell is going on?

Studies have shown time and time again that access to subsidised high-volume desexing programs increase people’s compliance in having their pets desexed and reduces the number of unwanted pets.

But the idea of ‘helping’ the community is overlooked in favour of mandatory desexing laws with fines and the push to have unregistered and undesexed dogs and cats seized and promptly killed.

Volunteer foster care programs allow shelters to move animals off-site for the purpose of rehabilitation and to increase shelter capacity.

However often volunteers are considered ‘more effort than they’re worth’ and killing the pets is far and away the easier option.

Around the country half a million dogs are being purchased from pet shops and even more are sold through newspapers, internet sites, and breeders.

So there ARE homes available – its just no one is giving priority to finding and attracting them.

Showcasing adoptable animals off-site = an increase in adoptions.

But instead the public are expected to bring their families to concrete kennels out of town that smell like shit and piss, then choose a ‘family pet’ while the dogs pogo up and down attack each other through wire cages, and the decibels levels reach that of ‘ear bleed’ and the kids begin to ask, what happens to the ones that don’t get adopted?

A well publicised, customer focussed ‘pet matching’ program in a welcoming environment sees the community open their hearts to rescue pets and fall over themselves in a rush to ’save a life’.

Instead frustrated and overworked staff work with substandard infrastructure, thanks to the poverty-level funding so common to pounds. But with those in the industry so keen to repeat mantra’s about ‘the public being to blame’ and there being ‘no other way’ that there’s zero drive for towards improvement.

Why are we still accepting council resources being used for little more than a community funded dog and cat killing machine?

This isn’t about pet overpopulation or irresponsible owners – this is about an acceptance that it’s ok for pounds to kill rather than rehome the majority of pets they take in, with no accountability except for the occasional critical media piece.

And it truly is a slaughter.

Today’s Courier Mail includes an article in response to the recent death of a child in Whitton, NSW. And while this could have been used as an opportunity to suggest sensible behaviour when interacting with dogs, it is instead a sensationalised piece by someone who is clearly desperately afraid of dogs and keen to inspire a similar level of hysteria in others;

Dog attack: When’s good dogs go bad

YOU should never be complacent around other people’s dogs. They are not always our best friends, despite all the training you cannot predict their behaviour.

… regardless of how responsible the owner, or the breed of dog, it is extremely difficult to determine whether or not a canine friend is a potential risk to others, especially it seems, if the animal is big.

Inevitably the issue of responsibility and where it lay arose. They responded that you wouldn’t allow your child to play with a time bomb in someone else’s house and so it follows you should never be complacent around other people’s dogs.

So there’s the rub. Even responsible dog owners know that regardless of all the training in the world they cannot confidently predict the behaviour of their animals.

While I am not advocating a blanket restriction on dog ownership, it does seem obvious that the size of a dog’s jaw and teeth must directly correspond to the damage inflicted in an attack and that this factor alone should surely influence the choice of breed and size.

There’s no doubt it’s always traumatic for all involved when someone is bitten. But just as someone who is injured in a plane crash doesn’t instantly qualify as an expert on air safety, a person who gets bitten by a strange dog is not transformed into a dog behaviour expert. It’s a huge disservice to the community that this newspaper has presented the emotional feelings of a victim as though she is some sort of authority on the topic, and without the inclusion any factual or scientific information from real dog behaviourists.


Certainly, dogs in society pose a risk. As do cars, electricity, swimming pools, fresh chicken, ladders, and kitchen chemicals. The management of risk is about knowledge and safe decisions – not driving irrational fear.

I guess I’m happy to take responsibility and keep away from large dogs even if it means not visiting some of my family and friends. Oh, and when I’m out on my daily walk and an unleashed four-legged friend leaps enthusiastically in my direction please forgive me if I ignore the owner’s platitude, “It’s OK, he won’t bite” and run.

Avril, if you see me and my large breed please do us both a favour and do what a dog behaviouralist would advise you to do; don’t run.

Two powerful posts; first read this – why we kill

It explains why millions of dogs are still being killed annually in North American public shelters despite the fact that there could be alternatives for many of them. It’s because people are told it’s the right thing to do. People are told there is no other way. People are told it’s for the best and so they blindly without question continue to kill dogs.

Then read this – the law that will stop the killing

Every successful social movement results in legal protections that codify expected conduct and provide protection against future conduct that violates normative values. We need to regulate shelters in the same way we regulate hospitals and other agencies which hold the power over life and death. The desire of the community for No Kill, the expectation of government for use of tax money to save, rather than end the lives of animals, and the rights of animals who seek refuge in shelters to their very lives must be codified in law.

Check out this video of Ian Dunbar on TED, speaking on changing behaviour with positive feedback and not the often preferred manner… a good old fashion nag;

There’s some shardenfreuder there, that we actually take delight in people getting things wrong so that then we can moan and groan and bitch at them. And this I would say is the biggest human foible we have.

We take the good for granted and we moan and groan at the bad.

If it’s foreseeable, then it’s preventable; goes the saying in the industrial sector, where the creation of a ‘safety culture’ has become big business for big business.


Late last year I was invited along to a lovely meal and night out for the WA Work Safety Awards as part of my hubby’s work. Surprisingly, the topic of developing a ‘safety culture’ seemed to have much relevance to, and paralleled in many ways, the behavioural change we’re trying to achieve in the pet owning community.


For example, ‘safety’ was once something people assigned little importance to. Workplace safety was practically unheard of and someone pointing out dangers would have either been ignored, or worse, heckled for doing so. Stuff just happened. And people got hurt and others died.


Part of establishing mature, modern work practices began with the development of  ‘police’ style safety programs; “you will have a safe work environment, or we (the government) will prosecute you”.  But it was quickly realised if everyone resumed their old behaviours the minute the ‘policeman’ left the scene then these programs would only have limited effectiveness.


Safety professionals now acknowledge that the key to the success of any safety program is developing peoples’ willingness to change their behaviour. Whether actively or passively resisting your initiative, no change will take place without people being ‘on board’ with the new behaviour and then actually doing it. And that’s not achieved by building the fear that they’ll get in trouble if  they don’t (policing), or pushing them to agree with your beliefs (evangelising), but by simply demonstrating that there is personal benefit in them doing things in the new ‘safe’  manner and then rewarding them when they do.


From author of ‘Safety Culture and Risk’,  Professor Andrew Hopkins;

Unfortunately the people at the top tend to go around giving lectures and saying how important safety is, and how no accident is acceptable and we must all pull together here. Unfortunately no amount of pep talk is going to alter the way things are done. If you want to alter the way things are done, you have to go down to the grass roots level and find out how things are actually being done, and why they are being done, and why are these operators violating rules, as they often are. And there are always good reasons why they are violating rules. In this way you can find out what is needed to have them do the right thing. It’s about changing systems and changing procedures. It is not about getting people to believe that safety is important, which is, unfortunately, so often the message that is conveyed.

In short – just because we believe that there is a safer way to do things and we have a procedure for a safer way to do things, doesn’t mean anyone has to listen. Unless we stop trying to punish and lecture our way to compliance, and instead work to build a trusting relationship, find out why they do what they do, and show the benefits of a change of behaviour… we’re not going to influence, squat.


Which brings me to the recent tragedy of Ruby-Lea Bourke, 3, and her 16-month-old sister Lilly.

With this terrible attack comes the usual media beat up, calling for restrictions on so called ‘dangerous breeds’ (with a little help from ‘animal welfare advocate’, the RSPCA’s Hugh Wirth);

Bull mastiffs, like the dogs involved in the shocking mauling of two little sisters yesterday, are one of the most dangerous canine breeds.

RSPCA president Hugh Wirth said they were bred to bring down large animals such as wild boar.

“Feral pigs are one of the most aggressive and most lethal feral animals we’ve got in Australia, and they need an equally aggressive dog to handle them,” he said.

“A bull mastiff is a very big dog with plenty of weight, and is easily stirred into a rage. Once it is stirred up, the rest (of its hunting pack) are stirred up and they won’t stop the attack until the attack is over.”

Dr Wirth said yesterday’s tragedy in Whitton, 40km southeast of Griffith, could have been prevented.

“I blame the owner for the way in which those dogs were kept,” Dr Wirth said.

“Those animals should have been held in secure lock-ups.

“If those dogs were held as a pack of hunting dogs, one has to ask why the children were involved.”

While it is tempting to argue that the people involved allowed a bad situation to escalate, we can almost certainly assume that if the parents had suspected their children were in any sort of danger, they probably would have done things differently. The real problem here is a lack of knowledge about dog behaviour… especially when it comes to dogs and kids.

There is a hazard in this picture; can you spot it?


If you can’t foresee then you’ve no hope of preventing, so having the knowledge to identify the danger is crucial. While it’s a ‘bull mastiff’ today, it’ll be a ‘labrador’ tomorrow and a ‘great dane’ or ‘GSD’ or ‘pitbull’ the day after. It’s simply that when we keep dogs we take a risk and we can either minimise or maximise that risk depending on how much knowledge we have and whether our behaviour is conducive to us living with them safely.

In recent incidents, a nine-year-old girl was attacked by a large dog at Umina beach on November 10 last year. The dog bit her on the face, cutting part of her lip. The child had to undergo facial reconstruction.

In June two Staffordshire bull terriers mauled a year-old boy in Hobartville, near Richmond. The boy was taken to Westmead Children’s Hospital suffering head, chest and leg injuries. And in 2006, Tyra Kuehne, four, was killed in an attack by three cross-breed dogs at Warren in the state’s far west. ref

All dogs can do damage, but imparting knowledge about dog safety to the people who are most at risk will be a hell of a lot harder if we’ve just condemned their loved family pets to death for being of a certain breed. And they certainly won’t come looking to us for support and solutions if they think when they do, that their pet might be at risk. Like safety in a workplace, we must build an environment of trust which allows people to report problems without fear of reprisals, and demonstrate to them why safe behaviour is over overwhelming benefit, rather than just assigning blame to certain breeds of dog.

Communication is the key – not heavy handed, reactionary breed specific legislation. It’s identifying where the problems lay, and what can be done about them. In this case, the only way to have prevented this tradegy was to have reached out to an owner with several large breed dogs to ensure they were fully aware of how to manage kids and dog safely.