Animal management can be a huge asset to its community; working to keep its public safe, offering a service that protects people and their animals and leading the way in compassion. Or it can work against its public, seeing them as an enemy that needs to be coerced with more laws, more fines and expanded powers to officers to seize and kill pets.

In 2008, there was recognition of a pet crisis in Victoria;

Reporter: There’s currently 10 times the average number of dogs looking for a new home. Staff are blaming pressure on family budgets for the increase, for some it’s just too expensive to collect their precious pooch.

Sue Conroy: If the dog’s going to cost them fines for being out with the council, or microchipping fees and desexing fees, then maybe they’ll opt not to take the dog back home again.

In 2010, despite the experience that fines are an obstacle that keep people from collecting their lost animals ensuring shelters stay perpetually full, and ignoring the global financial meltdown which has stretched families even further than two years ago – issuing larger and larger fines is still the Victorian government’s preferred approach to animal management;

Errant dog owners face harsher fines

Wandering dogs deemed an imminent threat to people could be destroyed on the spot under laws coming into effect today.

Pet owners who fail to register their dogs or cats face doubled fines of almost $2400.

New penalties include:
DOUBLING of potential fines for owners who fail to apply for or renew dog and/or cat registrations to $2389.
FINES up to $717 for dogs found wandering during the day.
FINES doubled to $4778 if a dog attacks someone.
The laws also broaden the criteria for declaring a dog menacing or dangerous.

The Herald Sun, 1st Sept 2010

Victorian groups The Lost Dogs Home and the RSPCA, both supported this move by government to strengthen laws against roaming dogs (commonly known as ‘lost dogs’). The Cat Protection Society has long called for stronger laws against ’semi-owners’, the group least likely to have their free-roaming cat registered.

Prepare for a bloodbath as people who’ve lost pets give up all hope of being able to afford their release. Prepare for the enormous increase in ‘unavoidable’ killing as dogs who’ve never caused a problem in their family or community are branded of ‘dangerous’ breed and are seized from their families. And don’t forget the thousands of cat carers now facing fines of over $2,000 if they continue to give their local stray a little bit of food.

We are witness. We should not forget who stood by and not only let this appalling action against animals and their owners happen, but encouraged it. Those groups claiming to be working to ‘protect’ pets.

According to their website, the Cooma-Monaro Shire Council is based in the country town of Cooma, New South Wales, perfectly situated only one hour from the Mountains, Canberra and the Coast, and only 4 hours to Sydney.

A regional location, it has a population of 6,587 people and a small animal pound. It would be easy for the management of this pound to kill dogs and cats while claiming they’re ‘too rural’ to run a rehoming program, and their farming-based community ‘too backward’ to care for their animals compassionately and ‘too ignorant’ to appreciate the value of rescue pets. They could even claim that country dogs were ‘less social’ than city dogs, or the breeds they dealt with were ‘not desirable’ so killing is unavoidable.

Instead, they shook off the excuses and last year they saved 97% of the dogs they impounded.

Cooma-Monaro Shire Council has achieved its highest rehousing rate of impounded stray dogs in five years.

During the 2009/2010 financial year 97 per cent of dogs impounded were successfully rehoused.

Of the 146 dogs seized 143 were released and three were euthanased, a six per cent improvement on 2005/2006 figures.

Of the 143 dogs released 20 were handed over the Cooma branch of the RSPCA.

President of the Cooma branch of the RSPCA Lil Frezza said a total of 41 dogs came into their care last year with 39 rehoused.

She believes the high rehousing rate is largely due to people who volunteer as foster carers for the animals while the RSPCA finds new homes for them.

“The number is good for a small country town,” she said.

“Council rangers are cooperative and the foster carers make a big difference.”

Mrs Frezza said initiatives such as increased advertising of abandoned pets and increased fund raising efforts had contributed to improved rehousing rates.
……

Last year, council seized a total of 17 cats and released 16 while one was destroyed.

Cooperation and marketing, not fire and brimstone. Foster care and innovation, not condemnation and killing. What’s more Cooma celebrated this fantastic achievement, by getting this positive story into their local press, further generating community goodwill.

There is no reason every regional council pound could not follow Cooma’s lead, and the lead of other shelters around the country, and implement the programs and services that make the killing of companion animals unnecessary. Many regional councils are not only still choosing to kill, but are often doing so by draconian means; shooting pets with firearms, or gassing them with car exhausts. And while defending the methods they’re using to kill as ‘humane’, they resist pressure to stop killing from their local community; the ultimate betrayal of the companion animals they are assigned with protecting.

Every council pound who refuses to work with rescue, every council pound who refuses to use foster carers, every council pound who instead looks to laws to punish their public and make it more difficult for people to keep their animals – chooses to kill instead of work with their community to save lives.

Cooma has shown that even a small population in a rural area has enough community goodwill to make their local council pound a safe place for pets, should the pound’s management choose to stop killing and instead open their doors to pet lovers. Every under-performing pound manager should now consider themselves now on notice.

See also: How to save 79 pets in a week

In the past pounds and shelter defended the killing of healthy, friendly and treatable pets by claiming they weren’t really ‘killing’ at all… instead they used words like ‘putting to sleep’ and ‘euthanasia’ to describe the acceptance that pets would die at the hands of those who claimed to be working to care for them.

Modern rescue has moved beyond the idea that it is appropriate for those in animal welfare to gloss over the killing of an animal for convenience. The term ‘putting to sleep’ is insulting to our community and ‘euthanasia’ is a misnomer when referring to an animal that is anything but untreatably sick. By reclaiming our role as life savers and recognising each and every death is a profound failure on the part of those offering a safety net for animals, we begin to innovate and find ways to save their lives.

However, while some are working to change the future for animals, some of those deemed to be our shelter ‘leaders’ disgrace our industry by continuing to defend killing and hide behind euphemisms.

“Well for starters, the kill rate is something that I don’t use, I use the euthanasia rate.

If you talk about kill rates, I think the figure, I don’t like the term.”

Dr Graeme Smith, Managing Director, Lost Dogs Home – MTR Radio

Dr Smith then outlines the following figures for February (this year);

983 dogs and puppies admitted
596 reclaimed by their owners
166 adopted
216 killed

So of the 382 dogs who need shelter and treatment in the month, over 56% of them are killed. More than one killed for every one saved. Which would be awful for any pound. Except…

The Lost Dogs Home is not a council pound. They’re acting as one certainly; picking up valuable pound contracts by tendering to councils to take over their animal services. But they are in fact a private charity organisation with absolutely no obligation at all to take on more animals than they can reasonably save.

What’s more the resources of the local community are blocked by the monopoly of the ’super pound’ in North Melbourne. By releasing these pound contracts, other community animal welfare groups could get off the ground and start to take on the responsibility for saving the lives of these pets.

The community rejects killing as a method of animal management. The Managing Director of the Lost Dogs Home is still killing and defending killing by calling it something other than killing. This discrepancy between the public’s expectations and the performance of management means something has to give. Those fighting for the animals will not be silenced.

Australia and the United States are same-same, but different. And a challenge we face in bringing No Kill programs to Australia is a pretty significant language difference between the two countries.

Much of the US documentation refers to ‘shelters’ reclaiming their lifesaving role in the community. To us ‘shelter’ generally means a local, privately managed rescue. These can be large, open admission and have pound contracts, or small and selective… or anything in between. They can be No Kill, low kill or high kill, depending on who’s in charge. And they nearly always run primarily on the donations of the public, meaning donors (the local community) can dictate the organisation be both transparent and run those programs which save lives. Shelters, by large are the focus of Australia efforts towards No Kill.

However, in the US shelter means all of these things, but is also the generic term for ‘pound’. ‘Municipal shelter’ or ‘animal control shelter’ is the equivalent to our council pound. This oh-so-subtle language difference between America and Australia, lets the largest killer of our companion animals off the hook when it comes to No Kill initiatives.

While there are few that would argue that shelters are obligated to be running programs which save the lives of pets; council pounds continue to neglect and kill companion animals and work to block relationships with the community rescue groups that could save them. What’s more, animal welfare advocates often make excuses for pounds; “it’s unrealistic to expect them to change”, even though overcoming the often regressive behaviour of pound management is undeniably the biggest hurdle to any No Kill initiative.

I urge you to pick up your copy of Redemption or Irreconcilable Differences, and read each reference to ‘shelter’ as ‘pound or shelter’, as it was intended. It puts an entirely different spin on where we as No Kill advocates are headed and the future we need to create for pets.

It is not pet overpopulation that is killing animals when shelter pound or shelter directors wilfully refuse to implement lifesaving alternatives to killing; such as a comprehensive foster care program, as is too often true in pounds and shelters across the country.

Similarily, it is not pet overpopulation to blame when adoptions are low because the pound or shelter is not doing off-site adoptions.

It is not pet overpopulation when animals are killed because working with rescue groups is downplayed, discouraged, or these groups aren’t given access to animals facing death.

It is not pet overpopulation to blame when feral cats are killed because a TNR program is not in place.

It is not pet overpopulation when people aren’t helped to overcome behaviour, medical or environmental conditions that cause them to relinquish animals because effective pet retention programs aren’t implemented.

It is not pet overpopulation to blame when animals are killed because of ineffective and passive efforts to help reunite lost pets with their families.

It is not pet overpopulation to blame when shy or scared dogs are killed because a rehabilitation program has not been integrated into the behaviour assessment process.

It is not pet overpopulation to blame when adoptions aren’t steadily increasing because an effective public relations strategy and adoption campaign isn’t being coordinated, or the pound or shelter is not effectively competing with commercial sources of animals.

It is not pet overpopulation to blame when dogs go ‘cage crazy’ because volunteers aren’t welcome or allowed to socialise them, and then ‘cage crazy’ dogs are killed because behaviour rehabilitation efforts are not in place.

It is not pet overpopulation to blame when cats get sick because pound or shelter staff are not thorough in their cleaning and thoroughly reprimanded for failure to do so.

It is not pet overpopulation to blame when these sick cats are killed because the pound or shelter does not provide medical care or treatment.

And it is especially not pet overpopulation to blame when pets are killed despite empty cages, an all too common occurrence in pounds and shelters across the country that are killing and claiming to do so because of ‘lack of space’.

In fact, we could be a No Kill nation today. But we aren’t. And we aren’t for one reason and one reason only – pound and shelter managers find killing easier than doing what is necessary to stop it. Accordingly, we must reject the term ‘euthanasia’ to describe unnecessary pound or shelter killing. We must stop using the term ‘pet overpopulation’ when it does not exist. We must stop portraying the problem as the fault of the public when pound and shelter managers fail to implement the necessary programs. And we need to stop seeking laws that empower animal control to impound and kill more animals.

Irreconcilable Differences – Nathan Winograd

So what policies would a pound or shelter director need to implement to put their organisation on a No Kill path?

• Dedication
  A formal commitment by the pound or shelter director, management and staff to lifesaving programs and dedication to ending the killing of healthy, treatable and adoptable pets in their facility.




• Desexing
  High volume, low cost desexing services for their community, either through the engagement of local veterinarians, or the development of a community desexing clinic for low income and disadvantaged owners.




• Foster care
  A comprehensive foster care program for underage, traumatised, sick, injured and other animals and the commitment to offer all pets foster before them being killed, unless their prognosis is poor.




• Adoption
  An adoption program that operates during weekends, after hours when people have finished work, and includes offsite adoption venues such as pet stores, shopping centres and pet events.




• Rehabilitation
  Medical and behavioural rehabilitation programs for pets who have a common and treatable medical and behavioural problems.




• Community Assistance
  Pet retention programs to help solve medical, environmental or behavioural problems that cause people to relinquish pets, to instead keep animals with their existing owners.




• Community Cats
  The end to the policy of trapping or accepting feral cats, or lending traps to capture animals for the purpose of removing animals to be killed. Trap, desex and release programs and outreach to community cat care groups, for cats deemed too feral for rehoming.




• Rescue Groups
  Outreach to encourage community rescue groups to access pound or shelter animals, helping to rehome pets.




• Volunteers
  Volunteer programs to socialise animals, promote adoptions and help in the operations of the pound or shelter.




• Second Chances
  An end to owner-requested killing, unless the pet is deemed to be irremediably suffering and cannot be rehabilitated.




• Getting rid of bad laws
  The repeal of unenforceable laws which drive up intakes; mandatory desexing, bans on feeding strays and bans on specific breeds.




• Returning Pets Home
  Proactive strategies to help reunite lost pets with their families including door knocking the neighbourhood where the pet was collected, taking the pet straight home rather than impounding it and post the photo of any impounded pet promptly on the internet.




• Disease Control
  Thorough protocols, including vaccination on arrival, thorough cleaning and disinfection standards, isolation of new intakes and staff washing their hands between handling animals.




• Final Checks
  The requirement that before any animal is killed, that documentation is presented showing that all efforts to save the animal have been considered, including medical and behavioural rehabilitation, foster care, rescue groups, desex and release, and adoption.




When the alternative is killing healthy, adoptable pets by the thousands, we should accept nothing less than the comprehensive implementation of these minimum basic programs by every single pound and shelter director. In every way, our animal organisations should be working to get the pets in their care out alive and they must deem the death of every healthy, treatable pet to be a profound failure in their management.

A No Kill Australia is within our reach, but this will not happen without the community demanding it. The slogan for the conference was that we need more No Kill leaders – people who are able to drive their own initiatives on behalf of animals.

If you care about pets and want to become more involved, then check out the video ‘Strayed’ for a background on the No Kill movement and start getting involved in your own community. There are also resources from the conference here:

To download the Shelter Track materials, cut and paste the following to your browser:
http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/Shelter2010.zip

To download the Legal Track materials, cut and paste the following to your browser:
http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/Legal2010.zip




The only thing standing between us and a future where no homeless pet goes without a home, is our drive to save their lives.

A case against a Sunbury man whose three dogs were accused of roaming and killing four chihuahuas and a maltese cross has been adjourned until August 17. Scott Chapman (whose appearance on A Current Affair can be seen here), had pleaded guilty to allowing his dogs to roam and kill, and Hume Council have applied for the three staffordshire crosses (Kaos, Phantom and Bean Bag) to be destroyed.

What is interesting about this case, is how human morality has been projected onto the animals involved. There is no doubt, the effect on the owner of the dogs who were killed in the attack would have been catastrophic. However, the job of the law and of animal management is to be a neutral party, looking for failures in the system that can be remedied and taking the minimum action needed to avoid the situation happening again. Instead we have anthropomorphism at its finest; dogs being held up as ‘victims’, other dogs being held up as ‘perpetrators’ and the real causes and solutions being lost in the fray.

The morality of breed

Despite the fact the dogs have been described by authorities as ’staffordshire crosses’, the Lost Dogs Home used the attack as a chance to continue their campaign against pit bulls. Though the dogs were known as dog pound “frequent flyers” and the owner has since been able to get another staffy, authorities fixated on the (incorrect) ‘breed’ as the issue.

An effective animal management system would take the opportunity to examine the failure of early intervention strategies from keeping these ‘repeat offender’ dogs from eventually getting themselves into serious trouble. Any group of large breed dogs roaming about is dangerous. However, just as we wouldn’t look to ban large breed dogs, neither does it make sense to ban an entire breed of dog, when it was the owner’s behaviour at the core of the problem.

Any owner who repeatedly fails to protect their dogs and keep them from harassing the community presents a public danger. This can be remedied by targeting those owners who do the wrong thing. By contrast breed-specific laws target dogs who’ve never caused a problem in the community, seizing them from loving owners and killing them for being the ‘wrong’ breed, and is simply an unethical, ineffective, waste of resources.

The morality of punishment

Hume City Council have applied to kill the dogs, as the owner failed to meet the deadline to build a suitable enclosure to contain them. In short – Hume City Council has applied to kill the dogs because their owner is a loser jerk.

This is simply revenge. A dog gets no say in whether they’re owned by a great owner who loves them for a lifetime, or someone who needs to be banned from owning pets altogether. But as anyone in rescue knows, a crappy owner does not immediately, a ‘bad’ dog make. Most dogs, once in compassionate hands will blossom.

These dogs don’t deserve to die because their owner let them down, once in letting them roam and then again in not complying with the directions that could have saved their lives. When dishing out ‘punishment’ we must make sure that the innocent animals aren’t dealt the retribution that should be directed at their negligent owners.

The morality of animal instincts

The dogs were saved from death row previously, when the court ruled there was insufficient DNA evidence to conclude which dog/s carried out the attack. The determination then, that these dogs should be killed as the perpetrators of a crime, raises an interesting question; if we’re going to give these animals the very human attribute of ‘evil killers’ do they also deserve the human protection of ‘innocent until proven guilty’? If we don’t know whether all of the dogs were involved, how do we know know all of them should be killed under the charge?

But this waxing lyrical about dogs who kill other animals as being beyond redemption, completely ignores the nature of dog behaviour, which is that it is circumstantial, fallible and able to be manipulated. The likelihood of a unsupervised pack of three dogs meeting a pack of five dogs, without injury is low, and with the enormous difference in size between the animals the tiny dogs stood little chance of surviving. If it were to happen in the wild we would consider it a territorial dispute. While terribly tragic, it’s certainly not ‘evil’.

Accepting dogs as dogs, faults and all

While there is no doubt that the owner of these dogs is negligent, are the dogs dangerous? Without a professional and unbiased behaviour assessment, we’ll never know. If they are untreatably aggressive, then they should be destroyed for public safety. But they aren’t criminals and we shouldn’t feel a moral obligation to kill them. We should instead recognise that they are animals, who do what animals do – and at the very least they deserve a fair evaluation and possibly a chance at a better life with a better owner.

… that cats should be indoors, that cats should be registered and desexed by law and that free-roaming cats need to be trapped for their own good; then you can’t say ‘it’s not our job’ when they ask you for help.

Sad abandoned cats cause concerns at Quakers Hill

(Cat pic) It’s hard to imagine that a face like this lives off discarded food scavenged from rubbish bins. Sadly, this is the reality for dozens of stray cats who have sought refuge around the Parkway Rd McDonald’s and the Caltex Service Station at Quakers Hill.

Resident Sarah King says Blacktown City Council and the RSPCA seemed disinclined to help so she has launched a petition urging the council to take action against the growing feral cat population.

Ms King and a group of friends plan to trap as many cats as they can and petition the council to find them new homes or destroy the animals humanely.

She said businesses, the council and the RSPCA were caught up in a game of “finger pointing”.

“The response has been pretty appalling, but something needs to be done,” Ms King said. “These cats are starving, carrying disease and living a … horrible life. They keep breeding and it’s getting worse.”

Driving through the area the Advocate saw cats in bins, kittens hiding in the hedges – even remains on the side of Parkway Rd and a carcass in a garden bed.

McDonald’s hired a private firm to remove kittens and adults but numbers are again getting out of hand and they don’t believe it’s their sole responsibility.

[...]
Two RSPCA spokeswomen told the Advocate the cats were not their responsibility and “economic pressure” prevented them taking further action.

Ms King has now lodged a formal complaint with Blacktown City Council who declined the opportunity to comment when contacted by the Advocate.

Fur flies over inaction on cats

Animal lover Chris Lyall says a cat and her four kittens could be buried alive if the bulldozing of four derelict houses on Woodland St, Balgowlah, continues.

The Manly resident said the family of strays has taken refuge under one of the houses with all efforts to rescue them so far unsuccessful.

[...]
Hoping for action to delay the demolition, Mr Lyall contacted Manly Council but claims they are yet to act.

Manly Council general manager Henry Wong said the council was aware of the situation but it was the RSPCA or other animal welfare organisations that were the appropriate bodies to assist with the matter.

The cats’ plight, however, has created confusion, with the RSPCA indicating that the welfare of the mother and her kittens was the council’s responsibility under the Companion Animals Act.

Mr Lyall said the lack of help was frustrating.

[...]
Ellen McGinness, from the Cat Protection Society, said it appeared the issue was being palmed off.

“It should be the council’s responsibility – the RSPCA only deal with owned cats. There is a huge problem with councils not taking responsibility.”

Breeders are in the spotlight in the ACT;

The territory’s 96 per cent success rate at finding homes for orphaned animals is putting more pressure on the ACT as Canberrans save dogs from NSW.

RSPCA ACT chief executive Michael Linke said, ”We’ve had a lot of people rescuing dogs on death row in Goulburn or Yass and handing them to us.

”Or people from places like Cooma will come into the ACT to surrender their dogs because they know about our re-homing rates.

”We’re dealing with 20 per cent more animals than five years ago.”

Pet owners no longer wanting to look after their dogs are waiting as long as three months to get their canines into the RSPCA, according to Ginninderra MLA Mary Porter.

Ms Porter outlined possible changes to laws this week to regulate the companion animal industry. The MLA wants laws to make it compulsory for published dog advertisements to contain the breeder’s specifics, including address and identification number.

So let me get this straight;

• We have an animal services department in the ACT (RSPCA + DAS) promoting their amazing success, getting their kill rates to a very low rate for dogs of 8%.

• People are waiting up to three months to get their dogs into care, because contrary to the idea that they’re uncaring irresponsible owners, they want their pets to be given a chance to find a new home, with a new family.

• People from Sydney are saving dogs from local pounds and bringing them to the ACT, to give them a chance to be saved.

And rather than celebrate this achievement; rather than bottle this success and demand that every pound in NSW implement the programs that have brought about these changes – we’ve again gone after the “greedy, evil breeders”?

If death row pets are being shipped across the border, the solution isn’t more laws for the community of the ACT, but for the pounds in NSW to take on board the amazing techniques being used in the ACT to save lives. If healthy, rehomable pets in NSW aren’t safe, then we need to demand that those running the pounds offer them safety.

It’s only when we stop chasing the outdated mantras of sheltering: that we need to eliminate “irresponsible owners”, eliminate puppy farms and create the perfect set of laws, before we can stop killing and instead fully implement those programs which genuinely make pounds a safe place for healthy, adoptable pets, that we will see kill rates brought down.

Targeting the community with new laws, ignores the true cause of pound killing; the behaviour of the pounds themselves. The ACT is successful because the leadership of their animal welfare organisations have decided to implement programs which save lives – there is no good reason why every single pound in NSW couldn’t be doing absolutely the same thing. The fact they aren’t should be outrageous to us all. Even more outrageous is that instead of leadership and advancement, we have more of the same empty ‘overpopulation’ rhetoric, pounds escaping criticism and more ineffective laws targeting the community.

Cat in a cage trap, QLD: Lonely Planet images

Is anyone else seeing a trend? From Queensland last year;

The Animal Management (Cats and Dogs) Act 2008 was passed on December 11 2008 and is designed to encourage responsible pet ownership by introducing compulsory registration and identification. The Act took effect throughout south-east Queensland councils on July 1 2009, with the rest of the state scheduled to come in line within two years.

And now today;

Leanne Christie fears her neighbourhood has become a street of missing moggies, after three of her much-loved cats disappeared.

The animal lover said the most recent loss was last week, when her seven-month-old kitten Cougar vanished one afternoon — but her neighbours have also complained of disappearing pets.

“I’ve had three cats disappear in a year and my neighbours say they’ve lost two cats this year,” she said. “Another lady down the street lost her cat and there’s always posters up for missing cats.”

She said she knew of about eight cats that had vanished in recent months.

Due to the large number of missing animals, Miss Christie believes they are being deliberately caught and taken away.

RSPCA Bundaberg shelter manager Vicki Beer said it was not unusual for free-roaming cats to disappear.

“Any neighbour could have a cat trap in their yard and it’s quite within their rights to trap your animal if it comes on their property,” Ms Beer said. “They should bring (trapped cats) to the RSPCA or tell the council, but that doesn’t always happen.”

See that’s bad. We should be against that. It’s not reducing shelter intakes (and killing) if people are trapping owned (and unowned!) cats and taking them to the shelter. We should be working on things that keep cats out of shelters.

Like this:”Cove officials, residents learn how to control city’s feral cat population”;

Mike Fry stressed that a lethal method to controlling cat colonies is an expensive and never-ending battle.

“Once the carrying capacity for the population is reached, for each adult that is removed, there are plenty of kittens to take its place,” he said.

The most successful method is the “TNR” process by which animals are trapped, neutered or spayed and released back into the colony. Fry said the goal is to sterilize at least 70 percent of the population — that is the key number to stop the growth of the colony.

“It’s the only solution right now that works,” he said. “And if done correctly, it can be an incredible success.”

We’re ignoring experiences like this, in preference of;

new law -> trapping increases -> blame society, come up with newer law -> empower trappers even further -> trapping increases…

Being played out time and time again. I wonder how many examples we’ll need, how many thousands of cats will need to die, before we finally acknowledge that blaming the public and dreaming up new laws is not working?

image mosippy’s photostream

Question: How do laws that make free-roaming, unowned cats a target for impoundment, reduce shelter killing?

Answer: They don’t

City’s war on cats

More than 270 cats found roaming within the City of Swan have been put down since new City bylaws were enacted.

Statistics obtained by the Community Newspaper Group confirm 273 cats have been euthanased since the City began impounding straying animals in January 2009.

Chief executive Mike Foley said under the City’s law residents are allowed to trap cats that enter their property uninvited.

Mr Foley said that from January to April this year, 82 cats had been taken in, with 46 being killed.

“Community acceptance of the City’s local law related to cats has been positive and the introduction of State legislation should add value to these existing local laws,” he said.

In 1993 the City of Perth subsidised a cat sterilisation scheme which enabled 591 cats to be sterilised at a cost to the City of around $11,500.00 (around $20 per cat).

In January 2009 the Swan council started their ‘trap and remove’ service. Residents could trap cats, the council could trap cats and they implemented a $100 fine to cat owners whose pets were impounded. Between the months of March and November 2009, council impounded 222 cats of which 183 were killed, (20 were rehomed and 19 were re-claimed). Similarily, this year the pound is also averaging 20 cats per month impounded.

The current City of Swan ’round-up and kill cats’ enforcement model has a budget of $60,000 per year.

Thats $243 PER CAT, of taxpayers money being spent on a program that is increasing intakes. Even if desexing has gone up to $50 per cat with inflation – capturing to kill is still nearly five times as expensive as a desexing program, increases killing in pounds and does little to help owners access cheap and free cat desexing.

But it doesn’t end there; cat groups are now rejecting this program stating;

(the new) proposed legislation – which would make sterilisation, micro chipping and registration compulsory – was a much better alternative than the local laws.

Ignoring that compulsory microchipping, registration and desexing is exactly the same model, but with a different name.

- It’s still based on enforcement, rather than community desexing services
- It still needs councils to invest in impounding cats that fall foul of the law
- It still is a ‘catch and destroy’ pass to animal management and cat hating community members for free-roaming, unowned animals, as a cat without an owner, isn’t going to be registered or desexed.

Except now it’s on a much grander scale, with the new proposed cat legislation mandating that every single council follow in the footsteps of Swan, invest thousands in enforcement and expanding trapping programs across the state.

No increase in the number of cats being desexed. More healthy cats being killed. Huge costs all round.

Question: How do laws that make free-roaming, unowned cats a target for impoundment, reduce shelter killing?

Answer: They don’t

From the Lilydale and Yarra Valley Leader;

‘Mt Evelyn nurse slams kill Bill proposal’

A Mt Evelyn vet nurse and dog owner says she fears that increased council powers under a proposed State Government blitz on dangerous dogs will lead to the needless killings of pets.

Tough new laws to crack down on dangerous dogs, including increased powers to immediately destroy them, were introduced to Parliament last month and are yet to be debated.

“This Bill is giving council officers with little or no dog behaviour training, knowledge or experience the authority to destroy dogs,” Ms Revell said.

Agriculture Minister Joe Helper said the laws would give council the authority to seize and destroy unregistered or unidentifiable dogs found unsupervised in public if they reasonably believed the dog was a danger to public safety.

“The proposed legislation will also empower an authorised officer to immediately destroy any dog that they believe will cause imminent serious injury or death to a person or another animal,” Mr Helper said.

Eltham canine behaviour specialist Catherine Saunders is worried.

“The name of this Bill is grossly misleading in its reference to dangerous dogs because it increases the powers of councils to destroy any dogs, whether or not they have been declared dangerous,” Mrs Saunders said.

“This act also allows for bias, personal opinions or preconceived ideas to go unquestioned, which may result in a beloved pet’s wrongful death.”

One would have to ask why a vet nurse and a dog trainer are the ones speaking out against this bill and in defence of dogs, while those in charge of managing dog welfare in Victoria, remain silent?

Well, not totally silent.

Giving animal management the power to kill roaming dogs, rather than impound them is unprecedented in Australia. The power to kill impounded dogs, without allowing them the community agreed holding time is in no way making the community safer and is simply unethical, convenience killing. With the rate of misidentification of dogs by professional animal welfare workers estimated to be around 70%, and with the new laws to be used against dogs identified with the vague description of ‘pit bull type’ – how can anyone who cares for dog welfare support such a grossly over-reaching law?;

Because it has benefits

What’s one of the biggest problems faced by animal shelters? Big black dog syndrome. Basically, a lot of the nice, friendly dogs you get in look like this;

While the dogs that are easily adopted and walk out the door, look like this;

With the huge momentum of No Kill across the world, and the community of Australia demanding groups release their kill statistics, those groups who’ve built their business on collecting valuable pound contracts, killing the majority of the pets and saving a few, can see their empires beginning to crumble. If they’re not willing to work with community rescue groups to save the lives of pets and would rather kill, than share their fortunes, then they need to find some manner in which to defend this monopoly as the animal sheltering world evolves around them.

The first effort was to change the code of practice to exclude community rescue groups. Thanks to community backlash this is now under review, but these efforts to make community foster care groups illegal, would have allowed pets to continue to be killed because there is ‘no alternative’.

This second effort is to manipulate the kill rates of these ’super pounds’ in Victoria. The idea that each and every pet should be given the chance at a fair evaluation, kept healthy and adopted into a home no matter how long it takes, is incompatible with the ‘push them out the backdoor in the bodybag then blame the irresponsible public’ business plan.

Given big, black dogs can be the hardest to rehome, simply by expanding the killing they are already doing for ‘pit bulls’, creating a new classification for killing – ‘government mandated dangerous dog’ – pets which would take up space, or take an extended time to rehome, can be killed without question.

Like ‘feral’ cats (any cat can be determined to be ‘feral’ and therefore unrehomable and excluded from annual shelter figures) ‘pit bull type’ is suitably vague, open to interpretation and hard enough to quantify that it gives pounds and shelters the ability to kill any dog that comes into care, call it ‘of pit bull type’ and not have it impact their statistics… and volia! high kill rates can be manipulated to look low again.

Expanding the killing

We must reject these laws which mandate the killing of friendly, healthy animals. This was never about ‘public safety’, but simply insulating groups from criticism of shelter killing, maintaining control of pound contracts and blocking the community from taking action on behalf of animals.