I’ve blogged about Bill Bruce and the City of Calgary before, but this video although nearly two hours long, is a must see, as every word of it is pure genuis.

Bill Bruce is the Director of Animal and Bylaw Services at the City of Calgary, whose animal control department has achieved a +90% level of dog licencing compliance. Using the revenue from pet registrations they are able to run an open admission, self-funding shelter which saves 82% of cats and 94% of dogs… and they’ve done it without mandatory desexing, without breed specific legislation and without pet number limit laws.

Recognising that animal management’s core business is “returning pets to owners” and calling its dog licences ‘a ticket home’, if a pet is found wandering in Calgary and is registered, it will be taken home without being impounded. Calgary’s phenomenal success comes from offering a high level of service to pet owners who in turn see licensing as something of value to them and their pets.

However, it didn’t start off this way. Originally the city adopted the popular ‘heavy-handed, enforcement’ model. With extensive policing they were able to get dog licencing compliance up to around 80% but, forced to hammer people each renewal year to get them to comply, it was expensive and hard to maintain.

Understanding people

Calgary now works with it community, rather than trying to punish it into compliance. They key, says Bill Bruce, is studying people;

90% of people, sometimes 95%, will comply with things they agree with, understand and feel consulted on.

Less than 30% of us ‘do what we’re told’

The goal is to achieve that level of voluntary compliance where people willingly licencing their dog. You’re not chasing it, you’re becoming more efficient, your revenue is up and then you can invest those dollars back into service that ads value, not investing in chasing people down.

By engaging pet owners whose pet has escaped in a dialogue about why it happened, future problems can be avoided. And with dogs going straight home rather than be impounded, shelter overcrowding is reduced.

Making it easy for people

The advantages to near universally registered dog population are obvious;

- Enables animal services to quickly reunite missing pets with their owners
- Identifies that a lost animal has a caregiver
- A licenced animal is only one phone call away from going home.

Without pet limit laws, breed specific laws and mandatory desexing Calgary removed hurdles to compliance with licencing and the need for people to ‘hide’ their dogs and cats from the city. They also make it easy to register a pet and keep it registered – renewals sent out annually and can be paid online, in person or through a 24hr payment telephone hotline. They also follow up on non-payments with a friendly phonecall from their office.

Supporting responsible ownership

They have 138 off-leash areas, patrolled by animal management officers on bikes spruiking responsible pet ownership – even giving out free dog pooh bags! Through this positive dialogue with owners, they are able to take on the role of educator; correcting myths and removing misconceptions about animal control. This engagement has helped develop ’social capital’ which sees the whole community care about animal welfare, helped them develop into knowledgeable pet owners and become “partners in compliance”.

Positivity and positive re-enforcement

Instead of putting money from licencing into government coffers (just another tax) it is spent on caring for pets in the community. The revenue stream from dog licences covers the $4.2 million dollar operating budget of the shelter. While funds from their new cat licencing program (which deliberately excludes unowned cats, allowing for TNR), are being put towards a community vet clinic which will offer free pet desexing for those who can’t afford the surgery (an estimated 8,000 – 10,000 surgeries per year). People like the idea that their money is going to help less fortunate pets and want to support the program and they are at 45% compliance without any enforcement of the cat licencing program (they simply can’t process any more applications).

They use positive media to tell their community that they are doing a great job “you guys are the most responsible guys anywhere!”, focusing on the excellent statistics the community have achieved.

The staff in the animal control department at the City of Calgary are happy and enjoy coming to work because they’re having success. The change in public perception from ‘dog catcher’ to ‘community support’ has removed barriers between the department and their community. Instead of stray animals being killed (and compassionate people keeping lost pets, rather than dropping them at the shelter) Calgary proudly promotes the fact their shelter is low kill, because so many animals go home.

The animal control process

If the pet can’t be taken straight home it will be delivered to the shelter. A photo of the pet is up on the website 15 mins after arrival, helping owners to locate their lost pet. Convenient opening hours help owners collect their animals

Having a good income stream from pet registrations, means great resources in the shelter. Excellent ventilation and individual cat kennels ensure flu isn’t spread and a high tech waste management system has meant no parvo outbreaks. Calgary boasts that the shelter has no smell, is very quiet and the animals are relaxed. Dangerous dog management kennels allow dogs to be moved without poles.

If an animal is not collected, its desexed vaccinated and moved out of the shelter to an off-site adoption centre.

Dogs with issues (slight dog aggression, food aggression or whom need to recover from surgery), go to specially trained foster homes who help rehabilitate the pet. They have 220 of these homes.

Feral cats are managed by a group who has ’secret’ colonies and carers. Dogs who are aggressive go to a sanctuary. The breeders of purebred animals are contacted to see if they can take the pet for rehoming.

Calgary also work with all stakeholders in the community, including local humane societies and cat rescue/TNR groups. By sharing the load, focusing on each groups strengths and sharing the successes, a truly compassionate animal control system has been created, with an emphasis on saving every life.

How can your community have the same level of success?

You must watch this video

Even with a machine gun question and answer session at the end of his talk, not once does Bill Bruce lose his passion for the positive. He believes he has the answer. And judging by his results, he may just be right.





More about Calgary

A gem from Dr Kersti Seksel at the Cat Alliance of Australia’s yearly symposium – as always astoundingly fascinating and genuinely entertaining:

At the end is the full video, but here are some snippets of goodness:

Mandatory cat desexing

We talk about cat overpopulation, I think that’s a misnomer. It’s shelter overpopulation. I’ll show you some figures that show there is no pet overpopulation in Australia at all. But while we figure on that pet overpopulation we’re not going to be getting to the bottom of where the problem really is.

…

There is a need to reduce the number of unwanted, stray and feral cats. Everybody agrees with that. However on the surface there seems like an obvious solution. Make it compulsory for every cat to be desexed, prior to reaching breeding age. From the surface that looks like the obvious solution to the problem. But it’s just not that simple.

It’s the unowned cat population that is the problem, and compulsory desexing will do nothing to reduce the unowned cats in our community. Because if you don’t own them, who’s going to take them to the vet to get them desexed?

But what it will do is increase the cost of animal management and local government. And its going to increase non-compliance in areas such as licencing and microchipping and vaccination. And this has been shown by lots of studies overseas.

If we want to look after the welfare of the cat, we have to look at it from all perspectives.

…

So lets look at the facts;

- Owned cats are not the problem – the vast majority of owned cats, well over 90% are desexed and are a valued part of the household. Voluntary desexing of owned cats is occurring at rates which cause 0% population growth within these groups of animals.

- 95% of owned cats and dogs never enter the animal welfare system – they never go to shelters.

- 79% of cats entering three of Victoria’s largest shelters were unowned. Studies in Victoria and Queensland suggest that owner relinquished cats represent less than 20% of all cat admissions to shelters. And that 80% of cats entering shelters had never had an owner.

- Statistics gathered in counties in the USA, show when mandatory desexing has been introduced there has been a decline in compliance with pet licencing requirements of up to 50%. There has also been an increase in animal management costs of 56% against a revenue increase of only 43% and as a result, some counties have repealled their mandatory desexing legislation because it wasn’t going where they wanted it to go.

- In 2001 the ACT government made it compulsory for all cats and dogs to be desexed by 6 months of age. Statistics have been collated for the five years prior to 2001, and six years since, and they show there has been no positive impact from the introduction of compulsory desexing. And the sad thing is, significantly more cats were euthanased in 2006, than in 2001, when compulsory desexing was introduced.

- The unowned cat population is self-sustaining, because very few are desexed. So no matter what we do about the owned population, the unowned population will just keep on doing what they’re doing.

…

Compulsory legislation from a scientific perspective is flawed.

The solution is multifaceted and it really must include several things. Targeting the stray and feral cat population with new programs which are acceptable to the community and effective in reducing overall numbers is the number one thing we should be doing.

The owned cat population is being capped by very high rates of desexing. We know the owned cat population has been in decline for the last 20 years. Non-owned cats are a self-sustaining population, the rates of desexing are extremely low.

There’s no evidence that owned cats replenish the unowned population. It is more likely that the net movement is in the other direction, due to the differential desexing rates – in fact we’re getting them moving from the unowned, into the owned population.

Mandatory desexing has been unsuccessful as a method to reduce shelter euthanasia.

If you are interested in an educated approach to cat management, then I can’t recommend this video enough!

When animal welfare groups lobby for cat welfare, we generally campaign to enact a host of cat control measures; compulsory registration, microchipping, desexing and confinement laws. These we say, are the key to reducing cat euthanasia and neglect.

But what happens in a community when everything we wish for… comes true?

One council in Victoria could be considered a nirvana for cat-law junkies. The City of Casey falls under the 1994 Victorian Domestic Animals Act, which requires the owner of any cat over 3 months of age to be registered with the Council.

And since 2007, all cats in the City of Casey must be microchipped and desexed prior to being registered, effectively bringing about compulsory desexing surreptitiously.

Also in Casey since 1999, has been a 24-hour cat curfew requiring cats be contained to their owner’s property at all times. Residents can use free, council provided cages to trap nuisance, unowned or feral cats in their neighbourhood, the council promotes the “Who’s for Cats” program and go door to door annually checking cat registrations.

So are the community supportive? A 2008 survey of households revealed an extremely high level of compliance, with 99.0% of dogs and 95.4% of cats reported as registered. Over 9,000 cats are registered with the Council.

Every trick in the book

Registration, microchipping, desexing, 24hr cat confinement, and council door knocks to check compliance – The City of Casey have every single cat control law there is, plus huge community support. Have cat euthanasia rates plummeted? Is the City of Casey being lauded by animal welfare groups as the single most successful shire council in the whole of Australia? Can shelter workers pack up their bags and establish new careers as bus drivers and baristas?

Not so much.

From the City of Casey Animal Management Plan 2008 – 2011

Number of Impoundments (Cats) – 783
Cats returned to owner – 102
Cats rehomed – 47
Cats euthanased – 589

Of the 634 cats who weren’t returned or rehomed, 589 were killed. Or over 92%

92%! I’ll just let you have a moment to consider that number.

But it gets worse.

The report goes on to state:

- The number of cat impoundments is 40% higher than the Outer Metropolitan Council Averages.

- Casey has a higher euthanasia rate and lower rehousing rate for cats than Outer Metropolitan Council Averages

Fail.

In fact, when we compare it to another Victorian council, Melton, who without this regressive legislation also kill 92% of their (536) unclaimed/unrehomed cats, there seems to be absolutely no advantage to the cats who fall under The City of Casey’s legislation. Nevertheless, Melton is considering following in Casey’s footsteps in 2010.

And as for the claimed reduction in cat impoundments (and therefore euthanasia), even with compulsory legislation up the wazoo Casey’s impounds are not decreasing.

Dogs and cats impounded
2001/02 – 1,799
2002/03 – 1,074
2003/04 – 2,016
2004/05 – 2,017
2005/06 – 2,230
2006/07 – 2,444
2007/08 – 2,670
2008/09 – 3,317

Instead, it seems impounds are increasing at the constant rate you’d expect from any growing community.

The fantasy of legal solution

If you’re someone that argues that ‘compulsory legislation will bring down impounds’, then you need to spend some time looking closer at the dozens of local examples to find the truth. Even with every single piece of owner targeted legislation ever invented; registration, microchipping, desexing, 24hr cat confinement, and council door knocks to check compliance, the City of Casey has been unable to solve their cat problem.

Draconian legislation targeting owners was never about actual effectiveness, an improvement in cat welfare, or even saving lives. These laws have never worked to reduce the cat euthanasia rate, ever. Worse, stray and semi-owned animals are targeted, driving up pound killing. We need to stop rolling out programs of this kind that have never produced a successful outcome and start listening to the experience of those groups who are doing things that actually work.

Free cat desexing for disadvantaged owners, community cat support and initiatives which help keep pets in their homes, rather than target them for removal.

I’m just more and more impressed with the WA Rangers’ Association’s approach to dangerous dog management.

First, they came out as vocal opponents to WA’s proposed pit bull targeting legislation earlier in the year. Now they’ve drawn attention to a dangerous dog incident that involved two large breed dogs in country WA.

The owner of two dogs that attacked a woman and her child in Dalyellup last year has been fined more than $4000.

The magistrate in the Busselton Court said that although neither the woman nor the infant were physically hurt , the aggressive nature of the incident was sufficient to warrant the heavy fine.

A Capel Shire spokesperson Dean Freeman said the shire hoped the fine would demonstrate that uncontrolled or aggressive dogs would not be tolerated by the community, and that the owners of such dogs would be dealt with severely.

The dogs involved were boxers, which are not listed as a dangerous dog breed in Western Australia.

“You don’t think of boxers as being aggressive, but it just goes to show that all dogs can be dangerous if not under the owner’s control,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter what you own, you still have that responsibility to make sure your dog is on your property or under your control.”

The Bunbury Mail

While no one was hurt in this incident, they absolutely could have been, and congratulations to Capel Shire for taking action. A big fat, fine sends a strong message to other owners who have roaming dogs, and speaks a message of fairness, not descrimination. By targeting all owners in an even-handed manner regardless of the breed they own, this state is encouraging the community to take on responsibility for their own safety, rather than look to the goverment to ‘get rid of all the pit bulls’ as some kind of magic bullet.

Meanwhile in Victoria…

… December was a terrible month for dog attacks:

A Doreen man suffered extensive bite wounds to his hands and arms from a ‘pit bull-cross’ that approached from a neighbour’s porch and began to attack his Australian terrier. The man was treated for deep bites, while his dog suffered fractured ribs and punctures.

…

Two roaming dogs identified as ‘pit bulls’ attacked a Jack Russell being walked by their owner in Albanvale. A passerby was injured trying to help, and another claimed to have had to climb a tree to avoid the roaming dogs. The owner is reported to have four other unregistered dogs on the property.

…

The day after xmas a 70 year old lady was followed into her home in Dromana by two staffordshire terriers who injured her when she tried to stop them killing her miniature poodle.

My heart goes out to all of these owners – watching a beloved pet be mauled would be an incredibly traumatic experience. But what is happening with animal control in Victoria when loose animals are roaming around attacking each other (and anyone who intervenes), not one hour out of Melbourne?

While Hugh Wirth (RSPCA) and Graeme Smith (The Lost Dogs Home) are whipping up hysteria about pit bulls, trying to increase the powers of animal management officers to target owners of restricted breeds, their breed specific approach is failing. By focusing on breed and not dangerous behaviour, the community is actually less safe. In all of these cases dogs were roaming who shouldn’t been and regardless of breed, were a danger to society. The owners of these dogs could all be managed under the current animal management laws, but preventative contact and support could have avoided the problems entirely. The problem here isn’t the need for more laws, but simply the proper enforcement of the ones already in existence.

Enforcing existing leash and roaming laws, targeting owners who have a history of irresponsible behaviour and treating owners fairly regardless of their chosen breed, is the only way to keep people and their animals safe from street dog attacks.

One of the arguments used by groups who resist TNR programs, is that managed colonies will not get smaller over time – the irony being that doing nothing about these colonies guarantees cat numbers will stay constant.

Demonstrating the effectiveness of a well managed TNR program, is news of the sad passing of “Zorro”, the last remaining cat of the Newburyport waterfront colony in Massachusetts.

Around 300 cats lived along the Merrimack River. An exterminator was brought in to remove a group of 30 after compliants from restauranteurs in the tourist hub, but within two years they had been replaced by 30 more. It was only when Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society started a TNR program in 1992, that the numbers began to decline.

Free-roaming cats were trapped, vaccinated, and desexed before being returned to the streets. Volunteers of the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Societ set up eight feeding stations and became care takers of the cats. Ten years into the project, the original colony cats were aged between 11 and 14 years, challenging the notion that colony cats can’t be kept healthy and safe.

Empowered to take action

… individuals from all walks of life are getting involved in TNVR efforts. “People were ready for it,” asserts Becky Robinson, director of Alley Cat Allies, a leading TNVR advocacy group. “There are so many programs, we can’t keep track of them all.” Often things start small, with someone feeding the cats, then trapping them, treating them, putting them back out, and providing food and shelter. Subsequent arrivals are dealt with in similar fashion, although often the cats in an established colony keep newcomers away. And the endeavor spreads from there.

From Pet Connection blog talking about the project in early 2008:

We have twelve feral cats living on the waterfront right now that are fed out of four feeding stations by thirty-five devoted volunteers who are there twice a day feeding and caring for the kitties. The volunteers are all between twelve to fifteen years of age.

Newburyport’s “feral cat problem” transformed itself into a popular and humane program that became a role model for other neighbourhoods struggling with homeless cat populations. And now with the passing of the last cat of the colony, the power of a community solution is apparent.

Individuals of all ages can save and improve the lives less-than-domestic community cats. Motivated grassroots activists can care for the cat groups in their communities, and in turn push for reform of council animal management policies and procedures.

Amazing accomplishments are at our fingertips – we’ve just got to start trusting in compassion and empowering animal lovers to help us,

Read more on the history of the colony here (pdf here)

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, pets are now twice as common as children in Australian households, with 63% of homes having a pet.

More than ever before people are treating their pets as their children, lobbying for their right to take them to the beach, to cafes, to the movies and no longer content to just ‘drop them at kennels’, are demanding hotel style accommodation for their furry family members.

We love them so much that households now spend more on them than on child care. That’s $700 for every man, woman and child every year – 50% more than five years ago. There is a $4.2 billion dollar pet industry in Australia that is growing, even during our tough economic times.

Why then do we have so much trouble trusting that our public are capable of caring for their pets? Are we still pushing old wisdom, against what is undeniably a new swing toward compassion?