A fantastic piece from Christie @ PetConnection blog;

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As long as we define “success” as the literal end of a need for animal shelters, and insist that goal must be met before we stop killing healthy, treatable pets instead of finding them homes, or before we stop insisting that breeding is evil and that pets should be required by law to be sterilized, then we’re dooming ourselves to abject failure. That day will never come. Never.

We have to replace the paradigm of “people are bad and evil so we have to prevent them from having pets in the first place so we no longer have to mop up after them” with one of, “Sometimes animals need our help, and that’s why we’re here.”

Of course we should have programs to help people cope with behavior problems, so they know they have alternatives to surrendering their cat or dog. Of course we must provide accessible, low-cost, free, or incentivized spay/neuter. Of course we should provide counseling, dog training, and whatever other services we can to help people and their pets be happy together. Those services are for people who aren’t “irresponsible,” but rather people who need resources and assistance to do what they want to do in the first place: keep their pets and have it be fun, rewarding, and joyful instead of stressful, difficult, and unpleasant.

And of course we should provide sheltering, medical care, and rehoming services for the animals of people facing economic hard times, illness or disability, or other challenges. Those things, too, are inevitable, and their animals will sometimes need more help than they can give them.

But equally “of course” is that some people just don’t want to keep their animals. The bond isn’t that deep, and they’ll get rid of them for flimsy reasons. Reality check: that’s none of our business and we can’t change it, because it’s not about animals, but about those people, their values and personality type. We should BEG them to give up those pets to a shelter that will find them a new home with someone who really wants them. We shouldn’t be lecturing those people; we should be smiling and nodding and pushing the surrender papers and a pen into their hands as fast as we can.

What are animal shelters for?
(I can’t recommend you read this post enough!)

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An equally smart piece from KC Dog Blog;

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In the conversations about “overpopulation” and “overcrowded” shelters, and the desperate attempt to end the killing in our shelters, we have (rightfully so) put a LOT of emphasis on spay/neuter.

However, spay/neuter is NOT the end goal.  Spay/neuter is a tool that will help us not kill animals in shelters. Ending the killing is the end goal, not spay/neuter.

Somehow that has been forgotten.

Check the rest of the article out here…

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Wow. This blogging thing is easy, huh?

A huge thanks to Tim from i-Pet Blog for flagging this report;

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• 33% of households had one or more cats
• of the cat owning households, 76% had only one cat, and 19% had two cats
• there were more female cats (55%) than male cats (45%)
• the average age for a cat was 7 years
• 97.3% of cats were desexed
• Crossbred cats (moggies) outnumbered pedigree cats by a ratio of 3.3:1
• The Burmese was the most common pure-bred breed, followed by the Persian
• Only 5.8% of cats had never visited a veterinarian

More detailed statistics are available in the article, published in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery (2009). Click this link to go to the article: doi:10.1016/j.jfms.2008.06.010

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The next time you hear some rescue group blathering on about needing to ‘legislate against irresponsible owners to reduce cat overpopulation’ realise that they’re spouting complete and utter bulldust. 9.7 out of every 10 owned cats are desexed. Instead we need to work on the thousands of other breeding cats, who will never have a real owner, and no ‘people punishment’ in the universe is a solution for them – we just gotta get desexing.

This report also shows an opportunity; why do all these people have only one cat? What can we do to get them to adopt another?

… just when we thought it couldn’t get any more depressing. It does.

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After fire such as we have experienced in Victoria, people ask will they need vets. This is unlikely due to the very low survival rate of stock and wildlife. ref

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Sad days indeed.

Ahead of Queensland’s draconian compulsory cat registration legislation coming into force in July, one local council is reaching out to the disadvantaged cat owners in their community by offering desexing and microchipping for $10;

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Moreton Bay Regional Council is conducting a heavily-subsidised desexing and microchipping program, which may help reduce registration costs.

Under the council’s Catsmart program, owners could have their cats desexed and microchipped for $10 a potential saving of more than $150.

(More information on the program can be found here)

The council will team up with the RSPCA’s mobile desexing unit to roll out the Catsmart program from March 30.

Council will be microchipping and de-sexing cats at Caboolture, Deception Bay, Wamuran, Kallangur and Bribie Island.

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Moreton Bay last year received $86,000 to create a program working with local vets and the RSPCA’s mobile unit, to help all pet owners in their community have access to affordable desexing. Congratulations to them for taking such a compassionate stance and working with their community instead of in spite of them, as time and time again it’s been proven that access to low cost desexing is an effective tool to generate compliance in the community. So why are great programs like this not always the first choice?

In other Queensland cat news, the Gympie regional council are finding that although they’ve had compulsory registrations for over 8 years, it’s not made a fluffy tabbies worth of difference to impound rates.

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The number of cats caught by the Gympie pound remains constant, although the former Cooloola Shire Council started to enforce cat registrations in 2001.

Gympie Regional Council Deputy Mayor Tony Perrett said about 500 cats were caught every year and the figure had remained the same for a number of years.

While the number didn’t decline, RSPCA Media and Community Relations manager Michael Beatty said he wanted other councils to follow in GRC footsteps and introduce cat registration while providing incentives to get cats microchipped and desexed – to reduce the number of cats being euthanased every year.

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So despite a complete and utter failure of compulsory registration we just forge on – traumatising the elderly, restricting TNR programs and killing! killing! killing!

Just how many times does this idea have to fail before we look to other solutions?

Until all local councils, shelters and rescues stop trying to punish and coerce and start serving their communities, we’ll keep seeing ineffective legislation that makes it harder to be a pet owner, harder to save the lives of pets and even harder to reach those people in the community who need our help.

Nathan Winograd’s latest blog post examines the problems created when animal rescue groups use their private, charitable dollars to perform animal control services for local councils. It also includes an excellent background on why this ‘merging’ of rescues and pounds occurred and how it has lead to high kill pounds running under the banner of  ‘homes’ or ‘sanctuaries’ or other misleading titles;

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Humane societies and SPCAs are so synonymous in people’s minds with animal control shelters, it is often hard for the public to separate the two functions. But animal control—protecting people from the perceived public health and safety threats caused by animals—is not why SPCAs were founded. That mandate ultimately belongs to government, not a private, not-for-profit.

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Rescue groups in Australia who use donations to run kill pounds, do so because they choose to. It’s worth noting that these organisations are under no obligation to take in more pets than they can rehome, as the responsibility for impoundment lay with their local council. Also, in many cases by taking over these pound contracts these organisations were granted exclusive rights to all impounded animals, effectively shutting out other private rescue and breed rescue groups (or working with them in a limited capacity ‘at their discretion’) leading to more animals being killed for space.

While Nathan isn’t suggesting that animal welfare organisations abandon pound programs overnight (often this would lead to an increase in neglect and killing) he does suggest that the aim of modern animal rescues should be moving towards lifesaving and away from law enforcement.

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After a century of having humane societies perform the pound work for their municipalities, we live in a nation where the organizations founded to save animals are, in fact, the ones killing them. We live in a nation where the very institutions who should be attacking that paradigm are instead defending it. We live in a nation of anti-animal laws which are being enforced by the very institutions who should be legally challenging them. And we live in a nation where the SPCAs and humane societies which should be unequivocal advocates for lifesaving are instead fighting those who are.

So we must always be pragmatic in our strategy, assessing the political landscape of each community independently to determine a course of action which will result in the greatest lifesaving in the shortest amount of time or which will preserve the achievement of such. But we must also always keep in mind what should be the ultimate goal of the No Kill movement—building the necessary paradigm to allow for the redirecting of our nation’s private SPCAs and humane societies away from animal control and back to the philosophy which motivated the movement’s founders: a commitment to furthering the welfare and rights of animals, fighting animal cruelty, and saving their lives.

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So how does splitting the roles of  ‘animal control’ and ‘animal rescue’ help the pets and the community? Well, by handing responsibility of animal impoundment and registration back to local councils, we allows animal rescue organisations the freedom to specialise in the services they perform best; high volume adoption, feral cat colony management, low-cost desexing programs and lifetime care for pets.

Presently, resources that should be being used to promote rescue pet adoption are being used for tasks that aren’t about saving lives, but punishing the community. The sooner we hand those responsibilities back to our government and start using our resources for what people donated them for, the sooner we can move towards a future where we’re adopting, not killing, homeless pets.

The final element of the No Kill equation is the most important of all, without which all other elements are thwarted—a hard working, compassionate animal control or shelter director not content to regurgitate tired clichés or hide behind the myth of “too many animals, not enough homes.” Unfortunately, this one is also often times the hardest one to demand and find.
The No Kill Advocacy Center

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So what’s the secret to saving the lives of homeless pets? Simply, you just put in the hard yards and do it. Even if that means a serious spring clean in order to keep your animals healthy. From the RSPCA ACT’s website;

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RSPCA ACT wishes to advise our customers and supporters that our cattery will be closed on Wednesday 4th and Thursday 5th February for summer maintenance and cleaning.

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CEO Michael Linke, proud of his reputation as one of Australia’s most effective animals rescuers tells Saving Pets why he made the decision to temporarily close his shelter;

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Since December 2008 we have had more than 700 cats through our cattery, many of them with serious and contagious illness.  This combined with extreme temperatures put infrastructural pressure on our facilities and these facilities become fatigued and harbour disease.  Rather than maintaining our normal cleaning regime we decided to take a more proactive and broad brush approach.

We moved all of our cats to a temporary facility, a large bird aviary in fact, and completely cleaned the cattery with a combination of bleach and specific disinfectants.  With no cats in the cattery we were able to be very aggressive in the use of the disinfectants as well as remove shelving and move cages around to ensure complete coverage.  We also undertook some running repairs to some cages and shelving.

All in all in was a very successful exercise, the cats were all moved back in within 36 hours and we now have a cattery free of disease and our ongoing commitment to animal welfare again shines through.

With regard to cat homing, we have homed 325 cats in the last eight weeks – we continue to find homes for all of our healthy domestic cats.

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Here’s a shelter that values the lives of its animals and who makes keeping them healthy while in care a top priority. Add to that it’s 92% rehoming rate for dogs and you have one inpirational organisation.

We are a very progressive, modern animal care centre that believes every companion animal deserves a chance at finding that ‘forever’ home.

At RSPCA ACT every healthy companion animal stays with us for as long as it takes to find a home. There are no time limits and no animal is ever put to sleep because they have been with us too long or we have no space.
RSPCA ACT website
Listen to how they do it here (mp3)

“There is always a better way.”
Thomas Edison

I wasn’t going to blog about this, as it’s US centric and just desperately sad, but I’ve reconsidered because I think it’s important.

This poor lady has the job of animal euthanasia. No one wants to pick on a fragile individual but there is a particular internal dialogue that she is living by, which sees her keep doing what she does…

I have to be in pain to take the pain away from these animals. I am simply doing the dirty work of irresponsible people. Feel sorry for me because I need to do this horrible thing because I’m more compassionate than society. I have to do this. The system is why I put animals to sleep. I am hurting and angry because I am powerless in the face of such an uncaring public.

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The problem is – it’s not about her. Or her hurt. It’s about that dog. And what that dog needs isn’t a person caught in a cycle of helplessness, but someone who says; righto dog. I’m empowered and believe I have the power to save you. I’m going to try this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and everything else in my power and then if we can’t save you, we’re going to look to other shelters who might be able to take you. Because his life depends on it.

This isn’t about becoming engulfed by very strong feelings - it’s about putting them aside and finding solutions.

Although they tried to turn it into a scare piece with a nasty dog photo and threatening headline, the latest A Current Affair story on restricted dog breeds was actually a pretty good representation of why there isn’t really a ‘dangerous dog’ problem at all…

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There’s about 2,000 restricted dogs being kept as pets in WA.

There aren’t overall statistics for the number of dogs that have been destroyed for attacking people or other animals, so A Current Affair surveyed all 141 Local Governments in Western Australia.

Of the local governments that replied, five councils reported destroying a total of 23 dogs.

Five of those were restricted breeds.

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Five! So 18 times out of 23, the problem dog wasn’t a ‘restricted breed’ at all but just simply a regular-ol-dog. And with an estimated 338,000 dogs being kept in Western Australia, aggressive ‘restricted breeds’ are being destroyed at a rate of about o.oo15% of the entire dog population.

But what now for the 2,000 dogs who, thanks to this legislation, aren’t able to be socialised, well rounded members of the community as they are now kept under lock, key and muzzle for simply being the ‘wrong’ breed? Tell me again how we can have social, well raised, animals and responsible owners with legislation which actively discourages bull breed owners from participating in ordinary, responsible pet ownership activities?

Legislation which extends to the hundreds of thousands of ‘iffy’ cross breeds whose paranoid owners are now avoiding social contact lest they see the wrong side of a dangerous dog order. And that’s any bull breed (or that which looks like one) since we simply can’t tell them apart. From The West Australian;

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WA Rangers’ Association president Samantha Tarling said identification had emerged as a fundamental problem, with WA’s chief veterinarian refusing to “testify to the DNA of a dog.

“I once challenged some owners that their dog was a pit bull,” she said. “They showed me the parents with the paperwork. It was a cross between a boxer and a labrador. I could have sworn it was a pit bull.”

She said some pit bulls looked like bull mastiffs, a breed that is not restricted.

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KC Dog Blog nails beautifully Australia’s ineffective approach to dog regulation;

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The message that is sent to the people?  Pit bulls are dangerous. Other dogs are not.  The problem is, there will always be a “different” breed that will be a problem.  The people who have no idea how to properly train/socialized/care for their dogs, will continue to own SOMETHING.

Until we focus on the owners, the way dogs are raised and socialized, and cared for, we will fail at improving public safety. The situations that lead up to attacks like this all follow a common pattern — the breed of dog is irrelevant. We MUST focus on these issues, because focusing on breeds of dogs is proving repeatedly to be a failed endeavor.

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Zactly.

I *love* this guy.

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It took Jonathan Rosenberg 51 years and one wildly successful dot-com career to find his true calling.

“It’s this world that’s so much more satisfying,”

Rosenberg gave up computers for … cats.

Advertising is expensive. Media is free. And is often in front of more eyes than any paid ad campaign. So how do you get the media to feature your group and get your share of this publicity?

First, recognise people (both the public and the media) don’t care about you, or your problems. It’s harsh, but it’s the truth. People are interested in information that’s useful to them. So you have to give them something. The media want a good story, about something interesting or topical. The public want information that is relevant to them or can help them in some way. You are the expert – if you’re willing to share some of your knowledge, people will be glad to hear from you.

Second, realise that you are a walking, talking advertisement for your group. If you are depressed or negative people aren’t going to think highly of you or your organisation. Your job at this moment is to sell! sell! sell! Tell us why your pets will make great family members. Tell us why you’re the best at what you do. Tell us what a great difference you’ve made and how many pets you’ve saved.

Sell yourself unashamedly and without modesty. Chances are the majority of what you actually say will end up on the editing room floor, so make ever single sentence an advertisement for your group and your fantastic pets.

Ten story ideas you could launch this week;

- Animal shelter offers advice to struggling pet owners: hints and tips for budget pet care, resources for owners

- Local shelter goes online: promote your relationship with PetRescue.com.au, Facebook or your own site and get the internet ‘hook’

- Half price desexing available: make next month discount desexing/microchipping/dental check month

- Found dog needs good home: feature a pet that has been unclaimed to show how rescues are just normal family pets without a home

- Animals win when people volunteer/ Shelter invites residents to show their love for animals: are you ready for a flood of volunteers? (Don’t forget to specify exactly who you’re looking for!)

- Strategies for finding lost animals: an information piece on how to best search for a missing pet

- They’re ready to make loving pets / Family softy with a ruff reputation: bull breed adoption (dog knows they need some good publicity!)

- Shelter dogs learn new tricks: dog personality and adopter/animal matching programs

- Are we Australia’s best animal shelter?: go on – talk up your achievements!

- Training builds bonds: Owners who train pets more likely to keep them: offer some training advice and resources available in your area. Better yet, get a local school to offer a training discount to your group.

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There’s a very good reason they call it ‘public relations’ not ‘bitch about how horrible people are’. Effective media isn’t one off shock campaigns, negative horror abuse stories or the chance to lament the latest reason djour for abandonment. Its about reaching out to the public and positioning yourself as a community resource and an expert that the media can call on for a great story.