Don’t know what promotion your group should do this xmas?

My advice; doing anything is better than doing nothing. Don’t over think it, just ask yourself question; how can we get people into our shelter this holiday season?

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Pets Haven Animal Shelter in Woodend, Victoria is open until 10pm tonight. Talk about going above and beyond to get pets into new homes!

See details on their Facebook page.

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The Animal Welfare League Queensland are the masters of off-site adoption. They have joined forces with pet and pet supply shops, rehoming cats and dogs to new, loving homes.

There are currently nine stores (seven Gold Coast, two Brisbane) helping - not only making more room at the shelter, but helping spread the word about responsible pet care issues like desexing. In-store programs also give those animals who don’t cope well in a shelter environment a better chance at adoption, while also reaching more potential new owners – particularly those people who don’t like the idea of a ’shelter’.

Click here to see the full list of rehoming centres.

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RSPCA’s NSW’s New Animal Care Centre opens tomorrow! From their media release;

On Friday 11 December 2009, the RSPCA Care Centre is being officially opened. Each year thousands of animals end up at RSPCA Shelters, and in order to rehome even more, another facility needed to be built.

Rather than build another shelter, the RSPCA designed a shelter outreach facility. Called the Care Centre, it’s the first of its kind in Australia and includes:

- Animal Adoptions
- Veterinary Outpatients Clinic
- Retail Products
- A Pet Advisory Service
- Community Education and
- Events

The aim of the RSPCA Care Centre is to rehome more animals in a welfare friendly environment, decrease euthanasia rates and educate the community about responsible pet ownership. Staffed by RSPCA trained animal wellbeing attendants and vets, Rouse Hill celebrates responsible pet ownership and represents the future of the RSPCA in NSW.

A huge round of applause to the RSPCA NSW Team for such a great initiative!


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The RSPCA in Queensland are again running their ‘save a kitten from liquidation sale’. Rather than sit on their hands and wait for the rush of kitten killing, they’ve been honest with their public, stepped up and asked them for help. They’re even promoting their CATCHOO (cat flu) kittens.

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Also getting a jump on the cat rush, the Cat Haven in Perth are profiling 12 older cats to give them an extra chance of finding a new home.

Staying with the Christmas theme the cats are named Holly, Rudolf, Twinkle, Sparkle, Santa, Snowflake, Stardust, Elfie, Jingles, Bell, Tinsel and The Grinch.

But the real kicker? All cats that the Cat Haven adopt over Christmas would be sold ‘free to a good home’, but “only on the condition that owners bought an adoption package that start at $125 which includes essential services such as sterilisation that owners would need to purchase anyway to take care of the cat.”

What a great way to show exactly where the cost of an adopted pet comes from and to put value to the service they provide.

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And finally, JB from PetRescue has turned on a new social networking feature on the site, making it easier than ever to get your pets featuring on Facebook and Twitter. The new ‘Twitter a Critter’ feature, gives every animal listed on the site a Twitter and Facebook icon on their listing.

Use your social network; ‘Twitter a Critter’ your pets straight into new homes!

Take one long term cat colony, add a compassionate community already feeding and removing adoptables and you have a suburb ripe for a TNR program.

Unfortunately Parramatta Council is unable to see any other option, but to have the cats removed;

Cats have been seen around Parramatta Town Hall but the biggest problem seems to be in Telopea, exacerbated by locals feeding them.

Parramatta councillor Michael McDermott told the Advertiser that the cat problem at Telopea had reached “plague proportions”.

“About 100 feral and domestic cats are living behind the shops in Telopea,” Cr McDermott said.

“They can also be found living near a big unit block”

……

But a Telopea business owner said cats had been around the area for years without anyone worrying about them.

“But someone who doesn’t like cats has moved into the area and is making a fuss,” the business owner said.

The Advertiser understands that shop owners have been trapping cats and taking them to a local vet who desexes them and tries to find them homes.

A spokeswoman for the Cat Protection Society said her organisation “no longer had the resources to trap cats” but advised that they should be desexed. ref

What a shame council are ignoring the wishes of resident cat lovers, referring to the cats as a disease ridden plague, and cat ‘welfare’ groups are maintaining a ‘not our problem’ approach, when all this community really needs is some compassionate leadership.

Is there anyone in the Parramatta region that could help out?

There are millions of dogs living in millions of homes in Australia, most of which will never give their owners anything but pleasure. But for a handful of families who experience a dog bite, it can have a devestating effect on the family simply because those most at risk are small children.

Noah Springall (right) was playing at his aunty’s house when he went to pat their dog. The dog bit the two year old causing a cut his forehead and on his cheek. The dog was reported to be a ‘pitbull’ owned by a family friend.

18 months old Grace Woutersen was attacked in Woodcroft earlier this year by her grandmother’s german shepherd cross siberian husky. The family reported that the dog had a history of ‘jealous’ behaviour.

A 20 month old boy was bitten on the face by his family’s dog in Narre Warren. He received puncture marks on his cheek and under his chin. The dog was reported to be a german shepherd-bull mastiff cross.

Toddler Aleaha Jobe (right) was outside having a lollipop and patting the back of a dog when her father Mark Briffa began to feel the dog was acting “a little bit funny”. He asked her to come inside. Moments later the dog would turn on Aleaha and bite her on the face. The dog was reported to be a ‘pitbull’.

A three year old boy was attacked by two doberman pinschers at a farm near Bishopsbourne, south-west of Launceston. The boy was flown to Melbourne for treatment for serious lower body injuries. The dogs belonged to his grandparents.

A three year-old girl was holding fishing bait and playing in the backyard on Saturday when the family’s rottweiler set up upon her, grabbing her head with its mouth. She was left with a gash to the top of her head which was fractured just above her eye and a deep laceration on her cheek.

6 year old Isabella King was running to her mum when she was attacked by a great dane-cross. Her mother said “She knew the dog. She had played with it countless times before”. The dog ripped the crown of her head and bit her shoulder and left elbow to the bone.

A 20 month old girl was in with her father while he had a haircut. The salon owner’s dog, a husky, was also in the store. When the toddler approached the dog, it bit her on the face causing serious facial injuries.

Zoe Mills, 7, was playing with her families blue cattle dog at home when it attacked her, biting her on the forehead. Zoe’s father John Mills said aid the dog, which has lived with the family for eight years, was not aggressive. ”He’s normally such a placid dog,” he said. ”I don’t really understand how it happened. I never thought anything like this would happen. He’s a very friendly dog.”

All of these attacks occurred this year in Australian with several similarities. All of the children involved were in the ‘high risk’ under 12 age group and in all cases the dog was known to the family. In most a parents was nearby, suggesting a threat to the child hadn’t been registered. But all resulted in a child being seriously injured.

‘A Recipe for Human-Canine Disaster: When Dogs Speak “Dog” to Infants and Young Children‘ outlines the reasons why so many of these attacks involve both a dog whom the owners felt hadn’t shown signs of aggression, and a bite directed towards the childs face:

… when dogs want to communicate with other dogs, they grab them in two very specific places: by the muzzle or on the head behind the ears. So if, for example, a pup wants to communicate to a littermate that he’s superior (Image 2), he makes this point by grabbing the littermate’s muzzle. Similarly, adults who want to communicate to overly rambunctious pups that their behavior is rude and unacceptable will do the same thing. (Image 3)

Meanwhile, dogs who are playing with other dogs will also try to grab each other this way. (Image 4) However, in this case, they’ve made their playful intent clear before-the-fact.

For as horrific as this grabbing with teeth appears, dogs often use their teeth the way we use our hands. Who hasn’t seen a child using his hands to grab and/or pin a sibling to force the latter to give up a toy or secret, or an adult grabbing and holding an out-of-control child to calm her, or kids grabbing and pinning each other in make-believe games of cops and robbers or earthlings and aliens?

While the media whip into a frenzy any attack which involves a ‘pitbull type dog’ the sheer diversity of the breeds involved in incidents make it easy to see that it’s not ‘breed’ which causes a dog bite, but a series of unfortunate circumstances and a lack of dog owner knowledge which enable them to happen. Rather than these bites coming out ‘out of the blue’ most dogs give their owner plenty of precursors that they’re uncomfortable or aroused and that there is going to be a problem; but these are overlooked or ignored. By focusing on breed we’re missing the things that could actually reduce the number of children hurt by their own dogs; education on dog care and the warning signs that lead to a dog bite.

In Victoria, The Petcare Information and Advisory Service and The Royal Children’s Hospital Victoria have released an education program to help keep kids safe around dogs.

Memories of a childhood dog attack have left swimming great Matt Welsh all too aware of the need to teach kids about the right way to deal with animals.

The former world champion and his wife, Lauren Newton, lent some star power to the launch of the Royal Children’s Hospital’s Dogs ‘n’ Kids kit last week. The Dogs ‘n’ Kids kit teaches parents and children how to introduce kids and animals to each other safely.

Veterinarian and animal behaviour specialist Kersti Seskel, who was also at the launch, spoke about the need to teach both animals and kids manners.

“A lot of people don’t realise that a wagging tail doesn’t mean the dog is friendly, it means it’s willing to interact. And a lot of people don’t know that patting a dog on its head is not what most dogs like,” Dr Seskel said. ref

The dogs ‘n’ kids brochure for parents outlines the basics of dog behaviour and how to ensure safe child/dog interactions. A more comprehensive guide outlines how to introduce a dog to a new baby, the importance of socialisation and risk minimisation;

Dog ownership within a family brings with it the risk of dog bite. Around 10,440 people each year attend hospital emergency departments in Australia for dog bite injuries. Children under the age of five are most at risk of dog bite injuries and are most frequently bitten by their own family dog or by a friend’s dog, usually in or around the home. Incidents are commonly triggered by a child’s interaction with the dog such as playing or approaching the dog while it is sleeping or eating. There needs to be close supervision at all times when dogs and children are together.

All dogs can bite, but most of them do not, despite the myriad of reasons we give them to do so. I think One Bark at Time put it best when he said;

While dogs are wonderful creatures, they are not plush toys. They can bite but a bite doesn’t always mean the dog is bad. Very often, it happens because the dog knows no other way out. It sees no other way of resolving a dire situation. In those cases, it’s our job, as responsible and ethical dog owners, to put away the emotional baggage we have with dog bites and figure out how to give our dogs a way out of the corner, something that works for everyone.

As dog owners we must acknowledge that our pets aren’t perfect and take steps to ensure they are protected from those things that they can’t cope with. Parents must take the time to get educated on dog behaviour and step in the moment a situation becomes unsafe. We have been setting our dogs and our kids up to fail and we need to now set them up to succeed in their lives together.

Because every kid should have a great childhood dog.

I was asked recently to explain TNR to someone who was interested but had never heard of the term.

It’s always interesting to have to take the 10,000 word essay you could write on a topic and try and condense it into a short few paragraphs, elevator pitch style. This is my effort trying to explain modern TNR.

A lot of what is said about cats in Australia are sort of urban legends; a study by PIAS of the metropolitan cat population showed they ate less than one native animal a year, while one from Murdoch showed one in four people fed a cat they didn’t own, hence the development of the ‘Who’s for Cats’ (don’t feed a bigger problem) campaign.

So rather than be hated native animal eaters, metropolitan community cats are actually pretty harmless and not only not disliked by a significant segment of a community, but cared for by.

TNR is based around the idea that people who love cats can be given a small task (like desexing the cat they’re feeding) to bring about great change. In colony situations (in places where cats congregate because of a food supply), small non-profits can be started to manage the cats through targeted free desexing for non-compliant owners in the area, and for any stray cats living supported by the environment (usually garbage or other sources not easily removed).

There’s two ways to approach cat management really;

You can try and coerce those who’ve shown they really don’t care, have cat haters trapping maverick-style along with the few animal management officers available put on the task (knowing that any cats removed, will only be replaced soon by more, undesexed animals drawn by the newly available territory and resource)….

or, you can look to get the entire community of cat lovers desexing and protecting every cat in their neighbourhood.

In the US, TNR has become the new way of managing cat populations. As society becomes less tolerant of the idea of thousands of animals being killed, they’re being asked to act to bring about the change needed. They mop up on behalf of ‘irresponsible’ owners and by improving people’s regard for cats whether owned or orphans, cat welfare is improved.

The good news is, these programs work without new laws or enforcement. Iin fact they work better when there is less legislation.

There’s an excellent video from the HSUS on TNR here.

And some of the best resources for vets and setting up a program can be found here.

There are going to be a lot more people asking questions about TNR in the near future. If you were asked to describe TNR to a complete newbie, how would you pitch it?

It’s a shame that animal welfare groups can’t stop walking blindly into the same old mistakes again and again.

Once more with feeling; compulsory registration (and desexing and microchipping) is too expensive to actually enforce and only serves to enrage and empower cat haters into anti-cat behaviour.

Spike in traps after cat registration

Demand for cat traps has soared since the start of compulsory cat registration as residents take animal control into their own hands.

The upsurge comes as one southeast Queensland council admits it only ever expects half of all cat owners to register their pets, compared to about 80 per cent of dog owners.

Ipswich councillor Andrew Antoniolli, who is in charge of animal issues in the city west of Brisbane, said council would be hard-pressed to get more than 50 per cent of cat owners to register their cats with the council.

Local Government Association of Queensland executive director Greg Hallam said councils were relying on promoting their cat-registration schemes rather than costly enforcement activities. ref

If you’re an animal welfare advocate that thinks a law that makes a cat without an owner a target, somehow ‘protects cats’, then you’re simply wrong. These laws encourage cat abuse.

If you’re a local council representative who thinks a law that allows people to target cats they don’t own, will somehow reduce the number of cat related complaints you’re going to receive, then you’re simply wrong. Take the number of complaints you get now and double them, since now the distraught owner who finds out the local shelter killed their cat after their angry neighbour trapped it is going to be calling you too.

As cat welfare advocates we need to be championing laws designed to protect cats. From animal abusers, from vengeful neighbourhood cat vigilantes and from pounds and shelters themselves. Things are set to get much worse if we don’t.

When you have the situation that impounded cats are nearly always killed, it makes little sense to bring about legislation which increases the number of them impounded.

However, for the spittle-spewing, compulsory registration/microchipping/desexing brigade, owner-targeted legislation was never about bringing down shelter kill rates. If it were they would be heeding the ever-growing international evidence that compulsory R/MC/D has increased impounds (and therefore shelter killing) everywhere it’s been tried. And now, as one by one councils fall for the spiel of animal welfare groups, we’re seeing first hand not only the same failure to reduce killing, but an increase of shelter killing after these laws are implemented here in Australia too.

Bleak future for unwanted cats

The region’s animal welfare workers are facing the grim prospect of euthanizing hundreds of cats and kittens before Christmas as a deluge of unwanted pets hits their doors.

With the peak breeding season just started, Moreton Bay shelters are already nearing capacity.

Dakabin RSPCA shelter manager Tanya Griffin believes the introduction of mandatory cat registration in the Moreton Bay region this year had contributed to the high numbers.

“It’s made people surrender a lot more cats because people refuse to pay for registration,” Ms Griffin said.

“Ultimately every season we euthanase thousands of unwanted kittens (across Queensland) because we have too many of them.”

Certainly the logic is deliciously tempting; if the cat owner won’t pay for registration, then they’re clearly a ‘bad owner’ and shouldn’t have a cat.

However in the case of the semi-owner, these people were never the owner of these cats in the first place. They were just nice people, compassionate enough to give an unowned cat a little bit of food. But under this new legislation, they are forced to bring their ‘community cat’ in for disposal.

The result? A semi-owned cat is dead, another (undesexed) cat moving into its territory to take its place and an owner who likely will never visit a shelter again because they were treated like dirt (as surrendering owners usually are) when they did exactly what they were asked to do.

With a pet limit of two associated with this legislation, now the owner with ‘too many’ cats is forced to choose their favourite and surrender any others.

The result? A cat loving owner who will never visit a shelter again, because people rarely get their next cat, from the people who killed their last.

Add to all of this, the usual fallout from empowering cat haters to start trapping any cat without an owner, and volia! A perfect storm.

More powers to animal management departments, more surrenders, more door knocking of owners, more fines written and more impoundments… all of which push cats into shelters where they are killed.

Round and round we go. While the bodies of thousands of dead cats continue to pile up. What a shame we can’t just stop hating the public and choose to get off this roundabout.

The ONLY way to bring down shelter kill rates is stop targeting owners as criminals with more and more draconian legislation and to instead offer support services that help people and keep pets safe in their homes.

Hat tip to KC Dog blog for his great posts this week about the inefficacy of BSL around the world:

Ontario struggles with BSL

… residents have irrational fears of ‘pit bulls’, but can’t identify them, they make calls about non-problem dogs, that aren’t ‘pit bulls’, that tie up a lot of animal control resources. Yakima, WA is just one city that has struggled with this as well.

Ontario’s second largest city, Ottawa, has decided against enforcing the ban and as long as the dog is not a problem, they are leaving them alone — noting that the law was too costly and difficult to enforce.

Death in the UK highlights the failings of BSL

The reason this dog attacked is the same — regardless of what breed of dog it ends up being. But unfortunately, in the UK, they’ve chosen to focus on breeds, and throwing the educational piece out the window — and the citizens in the UK are worse off for it.

In spite of the breed ban that dates back to 1991 – -and quite likely BECAUSE of the breed ban — major attacks are becoming almost commonplace in the UK.

and a bit closer to home…

Gold Coast, Australia learns of difficulties of enforcing BSL

In 2003, a Gold Coast, Australia woman was attacked by a ‘pit bull’. The victim appeared before the city council and demanded the city do something to ban ‘pit bulls’.

Like too many cities, the hysteria of the moment was to much to overlook, and they began one of the strictest enforcements of Queensland’s state-wide ban on four breeds of dogs: Dogo Argentino, Fila Brasileiro, Japanese Tosa and American Pit Bull Terrier.

Years later,the Gold Coast City Council has discovered to its great cost, banning pit bulls is not as easy as it might seem. The city has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars (likely in the millions) on court cases pertaining to accurate breed identification — having lost at least 57 such cases in the past few years.

If you’re going to bring in programs which kill innocent dogs, cost millions in taxpayer funded dollars and are a huge drain animal management resources, then you want to be doing so based on a premise which has been shown to actually work. And BSL ain’t it.