Knox Victoria

Knox Council Victoria loves to blame its community for its cat ‘issues’, and under the guidance of cat ‘welfare’ groups in the state, they get to continue this with enthusiasm. A recent media piece focuses on the costs associated with collecting impounded cats and whether that has any bearing on ‘the naughty, uncaring public’ picking up their cats:

Knox Council has admitted a costly release fee could be the reason behind a high number of cats being left on death row at the city’s pound.

Council figures for 2009-10 showed 87 per cent of cats picked up by council officers were left unclaimed at the RSPCA-run pound.

The RSPCA charges an $80 release fee for cats collected from the pound in the first two days after being impounded.

After that, the fee skyrockets. If a cat spends eight or more days at the pound, an owner must pay $152 to get the animal back.

If the cat is not claimed, it is euthanased. Only a limited number are found a new home.

Now no doubt $152 is a hurdle to cats being collected by owners. But 13% isn’t actually that low when it comes to cat reclaims. This is because a Victorian study of 26,000 cat intakes showed 80% of cats have never had owners, so have no hope of ever being collected.

In 2009, this fact was pretty much accepted when the council launched their Domestic Animal Management Plan, with council making traps available to residents to trap wandering feral and wild cats;

A majority of the 370-plus cats trapped each year are semi-owned or unowned. Only 14 per cent of those trapped in 2008 were released to an owner.

More than 94.14% of registered cats in Knox are already desexed, and it would be fair to assume the majority of those would be microchipped – so if the cats in the pound are unmicrochipped and undesexed, council should know they’re most likely ownerless strays.

So something has changed at Knox for them to start declaring ‘cost’ and lack of owner redemptions, as the reasons for high rates of killing. Are they simply priming their community for their upcoming compulsory desexing launch in April? Or is something more afoot?

Mr McKail said council would look at alternative options when the contract for the pound ran out in the next 12 months.

He admitted a change in management was likely to be the only way the fees would be lowered, but did not commit to altering the RSPCA model.

“That will involve a bidding process, which will be a chance for them to reduce the rates,” he said.

The council uses the RSPCA Animal Rescue Centre in East Burwood to house stray pets.

I predict there’s a shakeup happening behind the scenes and we’re about to see the Knox RSPCA tender move to the LDH. You heard it here first!

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Wyndham Victoria

I’ve written about the refreshing honesty coming from Wyndham Council previously, where council’s dawn to dusk curfew (that its had since 2006) had done little to reduce the 1200 cats impounded (781 killed) each year. The reason the honesty is refreshing, is that they’re not hiding ‘killing’ under euphemisms like “encouraging responsible pet ownership”, or “improving cat welfare” , but simply calling a spade a spade, giving traps to the public and expanding killing;

Stray cats are rife in Wyndham, the city’s deputy mayor says.

Cr Bob Fairclough said just 55 of 1100 cats impounded in 2009-10 were registered, indicating “a very large feral cat problem in our municipality”.

Alarmingly, 935 of the impounded cats were put down.

The council last week approved plans to manage the city’s cats and dogs over the next four years.

Plans to reduce stray cats include temporarily reducing the bond residents pay to hire traps to catch strays on their property and offering residents who take ownership of a stray cat a discount on having it desexed.

Cr Fairclough welcomed the plans.

He said stray cats spread diseases such as feline Aids and ringworm to domestic cats.

Cr Heather Marcus said two strays she took in last October had ringworm.

“I have ended up with ringworm in my household and it has taken me three months of very hard work to clear the animals of this dreaded fungus,” she said.

“This is one of our biggest issues and certainly is one of the biggest concerns for this council.”

Much better that community cats are all dead, than have ringworm. Got it.

See… honesty.

While Wyndham has kept their killing high by giving traps to the public, they’ve had little success in actually enforcing their cat laws and are understandably leery of committing to more;

The city’s cat control order, or curfew, expired in 2010 after 10 years, without a single fine being issued.
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Cat owners will not be forced to desex their cats under the plan.

The council has said this was not needed because 95 per cent of Wyndham’s 5415 registered cats were already desexed.

Stay tuned for more killing in Wyndham, as they continue to do what they’ve been doing, verbatim.

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Whitehorse Victoria

Mirroring Wyndham’s ’success’ in their cat curfew not being enforced against a single cat owner in 10 years, Whitehorse is also leaving their cat management up to community vigilantes;

No night cats have been nabbed during the first five months of Whitehorse Council’s controversial curfew.

The council has not issued any fines or warnings since the cat curfew came into effect last October. The new laws required cats to be locked in their homes from 8pm to 6am.

The council has employed a full-time staff member to administer the program and spent $9000 on 30 cat traps.

Much easier to outsource cat management to people who hate cats, than get those annoyingly expensive and qualified, not to mention humane council officers out of bed after hours… I mean come on people!

Cat owners are obviously nervous

Burwood East cat owner Ursula Kolecki said a blanket curfew across the entire city failed to serve the needs of the wider community.

“It’s a system that is not enforceable and there are cat owners who are anxious about there being cat nappers out there,” she said.

But cat ‘welfare’ groups are decidedly upbeat;

RSPCA animal shelters manager Allie Jalbert said the curfew promoted responsible pet ownership and positive cat welfare. “Cats are less likely to be injured, spread disease, kill wildlife, fight with other cats or breed indiscriminately if they are kept indoors at night,” she said.

Not to mention less likely to fall into the hands of crackpots with council provided, welfare group approved cat traps and grievous intent.

The cats really seem to be the losers here.

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Western Australia

Does this sound like a quote from a) a moderate, science-based animal advocate, or b) a burnt out misanthrope?

He said 90 per cent of cat owners were responsible, but he had heard “the whole gamut of excuses” from the other 10 per cent.

“Mainly they want their children to see ‘the miracle of birth’, or (say) they can’t afford (sterilisation).

“I suggest they go and watch some of the thousands of healthy but unwanted kittens that are euthanased every year and experience the ‘tragedy of death’ instead.

“Anyone who allows their cat to breed adds to the genocide.”

If you guessed neither a) nor b)… but c) a politician who’s been spending too much time with burnt out misanthropes, you’d be right!

Jandakot MLA Joe Francis said cat laws were in the final stages of drafting, and would focus on de-sexing and micro-chipping, with exemptions only for licensed breeders. “I expect a State cat act will be introduced in the near future,” he said.

Can you imagine any other instance where a politician would say;

“Mainly the small section of the public who doesn’t comply say they can’t afford to comply… so we as a government felt rather than work to help them, we thought it important to ignore their plight and bring in a universal law, in an effort to punish them.”

Yeah, no.

We know where the cats are coming from in WA. Poor suburbs. Of the 7773 cats brought to the Cat Haven, (3137 of which were adopted) in 2010, the biggest sources were Cannington, Willagee and Balga.

So what do you call a law that is used to target these vulnerable and disadvantaged people? One that effects those people living in poorer suburbs exponentially more, because they are overrepresented as to be breaking the law?

Discrimination.

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Ipswich, Queensland

Showing that enforcement and coercion is a really hard and expensive way to move the community forward, Ipswich council has a low uptake for cat registration;

Figures show only about 15percent of felines in the region have been registered despite the State Government introducing mandatory registration in 2009.

Nearly two years after the scheme began, Health and Regulation Committee chairman councillor Andrew Antoniolli (pictured) admitted only 5011 of the estimated 32,000 cats in the council area have been registered.

“The population of Ipswich reached 165,000 last year and it was estimated the combined dog and cat population of the city was around 58,085 or just over one-third of the human rate,’’ he said.

“The current registration of cats is 15.7 percent of the estimated cat population in Ipswich.’‘“The community is reminded that our animal management officers are in the field on a daily basis and may issue infringement notices on people who have unregistered cats, just the same as those who have unregistered dogs.’‘

Cats laws are tricky to enforce; even if you have the budget to go door to door, how do you prove that a cat belongs to a household? Maybe you can scan it for a microchip… if you can catch it. But are the microchipped cats even your problem? Assuming registration is to “reunite cat and owner to reduce kill rates” and not simply revenue raising or a chance to beat up on cat owners, microchipped cats are the least of your worries… it’s the unowned and unchipped cats that are the issue.

Soooo… what is a council to do? Stop with the threats. Stop with the mandatory laws. Stop with the idea that you can heavy the cat owning community into compliance. And simply offer your community a service they believe in.

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Final thought – has anyone else noticed there is an awful lot of cat killing going on in the name of ‘cat welfare’?

From the Brimbank Leader today;

Brimbank Council (VIC) says just 31 per cent of Brimbank’s impounded dogs are united with owners.

It has been a State Government law since 2007 that all dogs and cats registered for the first time must be microchipped, but in Brimbank the council estimates only 40 per cent of dogs and 15 per cent of cats are registered.

To help, the council will hold a pet microchipping day on Saturday, March 26, between 10am and 3pm.
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This year Brimbank Council is offering a two for one deal to encourage owners who have not yet registered animals, and pets being registered for the first time will have the fee for the next year waived.

We know there are things local councils can do to increase pet reclaims. The reclaim rate of a shelter without proactive programs is generally around 40-50% for dogs. A pound who offers innovative programs can drive up the reclaim rate for lost dogs up to around 65%. The advantages of doing so are obvious; more pets being collected by owners, or being returned straight home = less pets in care which reduces shelter costs. Less pets uncollected after their holding time, leads to less animals needing rehoming. And more pets being reclaimed, rather than needing to be fully processed by the shelter, often means less killing.

A study of 20,000 dogs entering Victorian shelters, showed 85% of them are entering as ’stray’, or lost dogs. With Brimbank offering their community a little over 30% in the way of reclaims, there is a remaining 55% of dog intakes that likely also have owners looking for them. The reasons for not making the connection are numerous. They may be from other councils. They may have been kept by the finder for an extended period, interfering with the process of reuniting pet and owner. They may simply be misidentified over the phone, or the owner simply gives up looking after a few visits to the pound. The pet owner has no idea about pounds or shelters and simply gives up hope. The owner may have transport difficulties, or trouble getting time off work. Whatever the reason, proactive redemption save lives.

Blaming an ‘irresponsible public’ for the high number of lost pets and low number of reclaims is part of the traditional sheltering paradigm which puts the onus on the owner. Under this approach, if someone has lost a pet, it is their responsibility to come down to the pound or shelter to look for and hopefully recover their missing companion.

It is believed that if the pet owner cared enough about their missing dog or cat, that they would make the effort to drive down to the pound daily. This thinking further assumes that if they don’t show up, then they don’t deserve the animal. The prevailing viewpoint says that under these circumstances, the pound is doing a service to the animal by finding it a different home or even killing him/her. It is a flawed paradigm which costs many animals their lives.

Beyond scanning animals for microchips, many pounds do very little to help people recover their lost pets. Worst yet, most shelter workers and pet owners have absolutely no idea how lost pets behave, the typical distances they travel and the best search techniques to recover them. The result is that people get discouraged because they are using incorrect search techniques that fail to produce results. People who are discouraged, lose hope. People without hope, give up searching. The result is that lost pets are not recovered. Instead they are absorbed into feral, stray and pound populations. The end result has been high kill rates. It is the broken system which has been dominating sheltering in our country today. And it is time for a new approach.
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What ‘Missing Animal Response’ demands is the same principal of how law enforcement, fire departments and ambulance services operate. Approaching the issue of reuniting lost pets from a public service platform will actually save the lives of more animals than shelters are currently saving. That is because expecting grieving, broken-hearted people who are untrained and unequipped to search for their missing pets and who easily give up hope (because there are no resources to help them conduct a thorough search for their lost pet) does not make sense.
Notes from: Missing Animal Response: a Paradigm Shift to Reduce Shelter Kill Rates, by Kat Albrecht (free download here!)

Thinking ‘lost’ not ‘abandoned’ can help pounds implement policies which increase the number of pets who go home, rather than working to simply impound and process them.

What shelters can do

To their credit, offering microchipping days and fee-waived registration programs are a great place to start; but there is much, much more pounds can do to promote reclaims.

Sell the benefits of pet registration
Rather than present registration as a pet owner requirement or we’ll fine you; promote registration and microchipping at a ‘pets ticket home’. Registered pets, or pets wearing ID should be delivered straight back to their owner, rather than impounded.

Improved on-site response
Recognise that a pet that has gotten out, is probably just a once-off mistake. Officers can check identification, scan for a microchip, knock on doors where the animal was found, talk to residents and return pets home rather than impound them.

Offer billing options
Holding a pet to ransom until the owner can pay in full leads to increased non-collection of pets and puts that pet at risk of being killed. Instead offer billing, backed up by a collections department. Whether the owner can or can’t pay, it doesn’t really help either way to kill the pet and the pet is better off at home.

Improved impoundment procedures
The drive from Brimbank to North Melbourne where the pets are impounded is around half an hour. Public transport means a few changes and takes more than an hour (and dogs and cats have limited access to travel on public transport). If the owner is of limited mobility getting to the shelter may be impossible. Uploading good, clear photographs to a website of lost and found animals, then becomes vital.

Expanded lost and found pet reports
Every pet reported lost, should be given a case number and detailed records kept. These have to be matched to incoming animals, not just filed away. Volunteers can also be used for the following:

- Lost pet councilors: Volunteers offer councilor, encouragement, strategy and advice to every person who reports their pet missing. Volunteers would regularly search cages for animal look-a-likes, even weeks or months later.

- Reverse searching: Volunteers respond to the neighbourhood where a stray dog or cat was picked up to knock on doors, put up posters and pass out flyers.

- Distant shelter searching: Volunteers throughout the region routinely search all nearby and distance shelters and report back with any possible matches.

- Other media: Volunteers look at notices in local newspapers, on lost pet websites, classifieds and other pet websites.

Effective pet reclaims are a team effort

It is not enough to hold pets until their ‘time is up’ and claim that any unclaimed pets have been abandoned. By shifting from passive to a more proactive approach pounds can make a significant impact on lifesaving and return a large percentage of lost animals to their families.

More information on pounds which have had success using these models;

- Calgary Canada;
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.

- Washoe County, USA
Reno (Washoe County) takes in more animals per capita than most communities, over two times the national average and roughly 35 animals per 100 people. On top of high animal intake rates, as a tourism based economy it has been very hard hit by the economic downturn and has a high foreclosure rate. Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the entire country. Luckily for the animals, Mitch Schneider, head of Washoe County Regional Animal Services, uses specific policies and practices that have brought Washoe County to having one of the highest live-release rates in the world.

More info still

Myth busters – Not all shelter pets need a new home
Missing Animal Response handout
Municipal Animal Programs That Work (Best Friends)

Dear Sir / Madam,

I need help or some advice? I work in the Coburg area and behind my work is a family of cats (dad, mum & one kitten left) living in the lane way behind a number of shops. Some of the shop owners have built a shelter (which is quite good) The mother cat is expecting again any day. I have been feeding the cats every now and then as they are also fed by a local shop keeper (given fresh meat and chicken). They don’t really belong to anyone. I am willing to pay for the female cat to be spayed once she has her new batch of kittens but I don’t know what to do with the kittens once they arrive. Previously some of the shop owners have taken the odd one or two. I have contacted the cat protection society and another similar organisation who inform me that they would just put them all down. I would appreciate any advice you may have. As I stated I am willing to pay for the female to be spayed – do you know of a vet that would do this for an alley cat? Thanks and any advice appreciated.

What you have – a compassionate person looking for help, willing to act as a cat caregiver.

What Victoria cat ‘welfare’ groups have offered her – to kill the cats.

This isn’t even close to good enough. This is the kind of person you should be grabbing and engaging and using to better the lives of cats in your state; not fobbing off by telling them you’ll kill the kittens she’s willing to help you to save.

If your state’s laws aren’t what you need, then every Victorian animal group who is killing because of this outdated legislation, should be on the streets protesting until the laws are changed. You, as the spokespeople for cats, need to be demanding that these cats are offered protection and that you are granted permission to care for these animals.

If your shelters are full in 2011, just as they were in 1970, then guess what… you’re doing it wrong. If the best you can offer a compassionate community member looking for help, is to offer to kill some cats, then guess what… you’re doing it wrong. If you’re killing kittens, when other communities have all but dried up their kitten supply through outreach desexing and community cat care, then guess what… you’re doing it wrong.

The cats of Victoria need groups who do more than claim to care, and take millions of dollars from the community in the name of ‘cat welfare’, bu then in reality do little more than act as garbage disposal for local councils, taking on trapping contracts and killing thousands of cats annually.

The cats of Victoria need groups who genuinely champion those policies that protect cats.

The cats of Victoria need a hero.

I am going to blog out some of the cool webinars and interviews I’ve heard lately. This is from a series of No Kill webinars available for a subscription fee, that is well worth the spend if you are doing any animal advocacy in your community.

‘Getting to No Kill as an animal control center’ was one of the webinars I was looking forward to most, as I found Mitch Schneider incredibly inspirational when I heard him speak last year. No really, in case I wasn’t clear – go. watch. this. webinar.

Reno (Washoe County) takes in more animals per capita than most communities, over two times the national average and roughly 35 animals per 100 people. On top of high animal intake rates, as a tourism based economy it has been very hard hit by the economic downturn and has a high foreclosure rate. Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the entire country. Washoe County has a city with the highest per capita felon rate in the US, and Reno has been named the second drunkest city in the nation. Sound like a place where a No Kill community could thrive? Luckily for the animals, Mitch Schneider, head of Washoe County Regional Animal Services, uses specific policies and practices that have brought Washoe County to having one of the highest live-release rates in the world.

“We like to think of our animal control program as a win/win approach to animal control” ~ Mitch Schneider, head of Washoe County Regional Animal Services

Washoe County Regional Animal Services, pre-No Kill; thousands of animals were euthanised each year. 2 full time staff were euthanising most of the day, they had a freezer full of dead pets (15 barrels full) which the renderers emptied each day. Staff burned out, while the environment was smelly and disgusting. Staff didn’t like to think of what they were doing as ‘killing’. While Mitch didn’t actually believe that with their high abandonment rate and lack of community affluence, that No Kill would work in their community, he wanted to try. He didn’t like the term ‘No Kill’ but didn’t feel that that was a good enough reason to reject the programs and that if they failed, that there would really be no harm done and they would likely be in a better position than they were in.

The hurdles; checking traditional and programmed thinking and re-analysing entrenched beliefs. When thinking ‘outside the box’ you have to realise you don’t have to resolve every issue before you do something (what if’s?), or nothing gets done. Thinking like a business person by becoming outcomes focused; looking to save money, reduce killing, better the image of animal control, improve staff morale (reduce burnout, retraining) and get the animals home!

The importance of Return to Owner (RTO) policies; While Mitch dislikes the term ‘No Kill’, he hates the term ‘dog catcher’. He wanted to overcome the perception in the community that people feel animal control is an enemy to be feared, rather than a resource. He encouraged staff to be proud of getting animals home, rather than impounding them and began promoting the idea that they shouldn’t be punishing people through their pets. He focused his staff on improving RTO rates as they;
- reduce facility needs
- can save millions of dollars in operating costs
- reduce risk (the less animals handled = fewer accidents)
- reduces abandonment (non-collection) by getting pets straight home
- reduces disease in the shelter/less intakes
- reduced killing and lower euthanasia costs
- lowers staff turnover and improves morale

It starts in the field; the goal should not be impoundment, but to return that pet safely home. While it can be more effort on the part of the field officer (door knocking, scanning, checking ID tags, and looking the pet up on the in-car computer), it reduces the workload at the other end of the process (no impoundment, intake exam, vaccination and you don’t have to feed the pet). It enhances customer service as owners are happy to have their pet returned. And it reduces abandonment (non-collection) which can be around 50%, as people fail to collect their animals, fearing fines, or simply not knowing where to look for their pet. There is no RTO service charge, but citations can be written for repeat offenders.

The officers responsibility when collecting a pet;
- call all numbers on ID tags
- scan for chip (have a microchip scanner on board)
- check lost animal reports (via in-car computer)
- door knock local residents
- leave a notice at the address
- return animal to yard, or leave with neighbour or relative

If the pet cannot be returned, on intake;
- rescan for chip
- photograph and list pets on online public database
- recheck ID and call any numbers
- check the address again at a later time

Other proactive programs include;
- they have a team of volunteer ‘pet detectives’ who double check all the work of the animal control officers, and check lost and found pet listings
- they will waive fees if it means reuniting pet and owner
- they offer safe holds for emergencies (owner in hospital or prison)

Benefits; lots of good PR as pets are returned home, rather than killed. This community satisfaction has even lead to bequests. A reduction in negative media saves time and stress as less effort is put into counteracting time consuming citizen’s complaints. Officers are less stressed and have more personal satisfaction, as they receive more positive feedback from the community and more public support. And because the community sees their department as an important community service, they have more compliance with local laws.

You have to market your value; they ran campaigns selling the benefits of their RTO programs (pet protection) and found that people don’t mind buying a dog licence if there is a perceived benefit – your pet will be returned straight home which is convenient, keeps them safe and saves you looking for them. If a dog licence is ‘just another tax’, they will only pay it if you catch them out. Using technology (online pet listings, in-car scanners and computers) meant the program was so successful and popular, cat owners came forward wanting the same benefits for their cats.

They had to recognise that a pet getting out is usually an accident, and while they can punish repeat offenders later with a citation if required, that they shouldn’t be punishing people through their pets as this simply increases abandonment.

Billing; the idea of holding a pet to ransom until the owner can pay in full, simply means that pet is at risk of being killed. It is not customer friendly and doesn’t generate community support. It also leads to increased non-collection of pets, driving up killing. The pet is better off at home, whether or not the owner can pay.

The shelter offers billing, backed up by a collections department. If the owner can or can’t pay, it doesn’t really help either way to kill the pet.

Overcoming resistance;

“We’ve always done it this way” – never justifies anything
“Every day I come in, something has changed” – it takes a desire to better today than yesterday to deal with change. Most resistance is simply laziness.

Trap, neuter, return (TNR) and community cats; the shelter has embraced TNR and is working collaboratively with local community cat groups. This wasn’t always the case, but now the National Animal Control Association and most other groups have moved away from trap and kill programs. Traditonal approaches of trap and kill are costly and ineffective, “it’s a fight you can’t win” as there are simply more ferals than pet cats. They believe that TNR is the humane and common sense approach.

When people inquire they are given information on community cats and the groups that work with them. They have community education programs which include how to live peacefully with community cats (including how to discourage them with sprinklers etc). 90% of people don’t want anything bad to happen to the cat, so are happy to get support and to be given alternatives. This saves the animal being impounded. For the last 10%, who don’t care about the cat or want it removed, they can impound the animal and offer ‘barn cat programs’.

Working with regulations; Mitch says, make sure your regulations support and are in harmony with your mission; have your laws reflect your philosophy. Don’t form your mission around the limitations of the laws. Mandate rescue access laws and collaborate and form partnerships with existing community groups.

Collaboration; working with rescue, which in turn saves taxpayers the money it would cost to euthanise pets. Unless the animal is dangerous, government (the temporary guardians of the animal) should never refuse access to a bona-fide rescue group, or stand in the way of an animal being rescued.

Never stop improving and have a willingness to embrace change. Play well with others and know that you don’t have to resolve every fear before trying something new. Fear, concern and objections will stifle improvement.

A German philosopher once said that all truths go through three phases (paraphrasing);
1) ridicule
2) violent opposition
3) finally acceptance as the obvious

Moving forward; You can’t fix what you don’t measure so keep accurate records. Share this information openly with the public, as the community can’t help you fix what they don’t know is broken and it will take the whole community to fix it.

Summary;
- Return to Owner policies reduce load on the shelter and improve animal outcomes.
- Embrace technology; online photos of impounded pets, scanners in the field, computers in vehicles with access to databases
- Use volunteer pet detectives as a proactive way to reunite pets and owners
- Collaborate with rescue groups and other animal welfare groups
- Provide billing for services; stop holding pets to ransom

Their hard numbers (can also be found on their website); 5,000 – 6,000 animal intakes each year. Including surrenders and community wide, animal intakes are between 15,000 – 20,000 per year. Despite these huge numbers, 91% walk out the front door alive.

About 1,400 of these pets will go straight home. If the non-collection rate averages 50%, than means 700 extra pets that may not have been collected and would need care.




For the full webinar visit; http://www.animalarkshelter.org/webinars/

For even more information on Mitch Schneider’s work visit: Compassionate animal management – how ‘the system’ can be designed to save pets

Pounds, shelters and rescue are getting more media than ever, as the public’s interest in companion animal welfare swells. Some use this new exposure for good; promoting their adoption programs, responsible pet ownership initiatives and encouraging councils and pet owners to work together on solutions which allows both public safety and recognises the importance of pets in a healthy community… aaaaand others use these media opportunities as an opportunity to bash the public. You know the kind;

• PET HORROR: One in three animals found in Monash set to die
• 3000 cats and dogs put to death
• SHOCK STATISTICS: Maroondah Council euthanises 60 per cent of impounded cats

No doubt the groups involved think they’re doing a public service; “if people know shelters and pounds are places where pets are killed, it will keep them from ‘abandoning’ their pets” the thinking goes. Forgetting that around 80% of the cats entering the shelter have never had an owner and that 85% of dogs entering shelters in Australia are entering as strays. So for this small benefit – potentially discouraging owner abandonment – what is the cost?

This week I’ve had no less than five emails that read almost word for word like this one:

Last week I found an adorable stray. She just trotted into my house. She was so friendly and well behaved that we thought she must be someones beloved pet. We were further convinced of this as when I took her home she showed us that she is house trained, loves people, including children and was immediate friends with our 38kg golden retriever!

I put up signs at my workplace and went to all the vets in that area, still hopeful of reuniting her with her owners. I also listed her as ‘found’ on several websites. No luck so far. We would love to see this little dog re-homed, she has an amazing spirit. We are happy to continue to pay for her everyday needs eg food, heartworm, flea medication etc and provide a temporary safe, loving home for her. Are you able to please help us find a home for this dog? We can’t bare the thought of her going to the pound, she has so much affection and love to give.

Across the nation pounds are telling people that they are places of death for pets. In response nice, caring people are doing what any nice, caring person would do – keeping the pet away from there! And given the whole system breaks down if owners are unable to find their lost pet within a couple of days, having people hold on to these pets and try and find the owners themselves instead of taking them straight to the pound, is a disaster in the making.

It doesn’t have to be like this – pounds playing ‘gotchya’ with their public and pet lovers seeing them as the enemy, not a resource to be trusted. There is a better way.

Compassionate animal management – how ‘the system’ can be designed to save pets

More solutions from Calgary

Taking your community to No Kill

I saw Mitch Schneider speak last year – he wasn’t a ‘rescuer’, but the upper management of animal control. He had realised that treating the community like the enemy and blocking rescue was leaving his pound full. He said “what kind of crap boss am I, if I’m forcing my staff to kill pets, be stressed out and traumatised – when there’s an alternative?”

This interview is awesome.
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This week we hear from an animal control director known for his innovative, yet very common-sense business model for animal control, Mitch Schneider of Washoe County Regional Animal Services in Nevada. His approach serves both the public safety and the welfare of animal, which the traditional model of animal control treats as incompatible.

Schneider was initially skeptical that No Kill could work in Reno, but didn’t want the initiative to fail because of him—you can’t know it won’t work if you have never even tried it. He agreed to try and Reno, Nevada now has one of the highest rates of lifesaving of any community in the United States, saving all healthy and treatable shelter pets, which turns out to be literally 95% of them. His model represents a better future for animal control—one in which animals’ lives are saved, and animal control works collaboratively with the animal rescue community and the animal-loving public, rather than treating them as adversaries. As an added bonus, this results in a cost savings to the taxpayers, better relations with the public and an improved image for animal control, all the while remaining consistent with their public safety mandate.

He is a strong believer in collaboration, but also understands that collaboration isn’t always possible. That was one of the things he sought to change when he became manager of WCRAS. In the past, leadership at animal control refused to work fully and collaboratively with the Nevada Humane Society. Sadly, that is true in many communities around the country, as traditional animal control shelters simply refuse to collaborate with rescuers and animal advocates, throwing away opportunities to save lives.

He has said, “In some ways, I see part of my job as getting out of the way of people who want to save lives.”

Mitch Schneider will be giving a webinar entitled ‘Getting to No Kill as an Animal Control Shelter’ on January 28, 2011 and will also be presenting at the No Kill Conference in Washington, D.C., July 30-31, 2011.

Animal control in Washoe County, Nevada follows a very different business model from any other animal control unit in the country. How did it come to be so different from animal control across rest of the country and what key things set it apart?

My fundamental belief is that one should try to do the right things for the right reason. With that in mind it makes sense to work with all the stakeholders in the community to achieve the best for the community. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when everyone respects one another (even differences) and works together toward a common goal (keep your eye on the ball, so to speak).

Many animal services programs and animal rescue groups focus on the difference in their primary missions; animal services’ focus is public safety and animal rescue groups’ focus is saving animals. By doing so, they often fail to recognize the commonality in their missions and resist working with each other, either intentionally or due to conflicting policies and practices. As a result, some animal services programs may be overlooking a significant opportunity to reduce costs and increase community support.

Compounding the problem, many traditional animal services programs follow an approach that parallels parking enforcement. In some parking enforcement situations, a vehicle is towed and impounded and held until the costs of the towing and impound fees are collected. This makes sense when you have a vehicle that is worth a substantial sum of money. But it doesn’t work quite as well when you’re talking about an animal that, more often than not, has little or no monetary value. This approach to recovering costs of animal services often increases the need for more shelter space and increases the abandonment and death rates, which in turn increases the cost of the program. Additionally, this approach fails to recognize that most people consider pets to be a family member and therefore, the traditional business model does little to garner public support.

To reduce the likelihood of needing a larger shelter facility in the future, at a cost in the millions of dollars, WCRAS policy directs Animal Control Officers to make every reasonable effort to return animals to their owner instead of impounding the animal. In addition to checking the pet for identification (tags or microchips), officers will check lost reports and speak with area residents in an attempt to determine if anyone knows where the animal lives. Besides reducing shelter costs, this policy also reduces animal abandonment and enhances public support. A dog license is promoted as “Your Dog’s Ticket Home”; providing a true benefit for licensing increases voluntary compliance, further reducing shelter needs and the inherent potential for abandonment. In 2009, officers returned nearly 1,000 dogs directly to their owners without impounding them, reducing shelter space needs, stress to the dogs and their owners and reduced shelter staff and supply costs. Upon returning the animal to the owner all laws are enforced and warnings or citations issued as deemed appropriate.

Another traditional practice in animal services that increases abandonment is the policy of not allowing an owner to redeem their pet if they can’t pay all of the fees at the time of redemption. Continuing to hold the animal until all of the fees are collected simply increases the redemption fees for the pet owner and increases the need for greater sheltering space, reduces public support and increases abandonment and the [kill] rate and associated costs. To address this issue, Washoe County has established a billing system, which is only used with supervisor permission to ensure that this option is offered as a last resort; unpaid bills are turned over to collections.

Disclosure of statistics is an area that requires some mention. It’s not uncommon for agencies to be reluctant to publish their statistics. However, WCRAS feels that by publishing detailed statistical information citizens can see the problems that need to be addressed within the community; this type of transparency can also help in gaining the trust of the animal rescue groups.

Rest of the article

Many cat ‘welfare’ campaigners advocate for things that are counterintuitive to improving cat welfare. For example, supporting Councils efforts to round up and kill free-roaming cats. Or advocating to punish disadvantaged pet owners and see their cats impounded, rather than the services to help them become compliant. The kinds of things which increase intakes and drive a wedge between the community and animal shelters.

These ‘welfare’ campaigners are often so caught up in a culture of killing and then blaming the public for the killing, that they’ve lost all ability to think outside those parameters. So by extension they often design and advocate for nonsensical laws which do two things, drive up intakes (killing) and give further opportunity to blame. The result is a vicious cycle that can go on for decades.

Take Nillumbik Council in Victoria. In 2008, with support from the RSPCA, the council proposed a 24hr cat curfew for the 3,000 owned and registered cats in the shire. Owned cats indoors – outdoor cats culled. One can only imagine the sheer volume of ‘unavoidable’ cat killing that would have come next. Thankfully a few months later, after a roar of disapproval from cat lovers, the proposal was scrapped.

But today an equally head-scratching proposal. After declaring that mandatory desexing would be ineffective:

Banyule Mayor Wayne Phillips: “As the bulk of desexed (sic) cats are currently those that are not registered, council has no knowledge of the owners to be able to enforce such an order.”

(I suspect this was supposed to read “undesexed cats are those that are not registered”, however, the premise remains the same; you can’t enforce the law on an unowned cat)

The council has proposed the following;

… to refuse registration for cats that have not been desexed from April next year.

So knowing that the ‘problem’ cats are those that are either unregistered, or unowned AND unregistered – Council have gone ahead and put up a hurdle to cat owners registering their pets. It’s like genius, but not.

In a state where 90%+ of the cats who enter the shelter system are killed, the smart thing would be to be getting as many cats as possible identified and registered. Because then they go home, instead of into a crematory.

So are local cat welfare groups outraged at council? Are they demanding that council offer FREE cat registration (and maybe even microchipping) to ALL cats so that the fewest number possible end up unclaimed at the pound? Nope.

A leading Greensborough animal welfare group has applauded Nillumbik Council’s decision to introduce mandatory desexing for cats.

Cat Protection Society director Dr Carole Webb said she was “absolutely delighted”…

And just like that we’re back to the counterintuitive, killing and blaming cycle.

People can’t register their cats >> cats get impounded >> cats get killed >> owners get blamed.

All to chase the holy grail of ‘mandatory desexing’ which continues to fail everywhere.

There are solutions to the cat issues in Australia. There are communities who are moving their cat impoundment and killing numbers in the right direction… down. But after decades of failure, we’re still choosing to listen to those cat advocates who want to kill and then blame us for the killing.

And the cycle of failure continues in Victoria.

We all know community foster care and rescue groups make a vital contribution to animal welfare across the country. Thousands of pets every year owe their lives to volunteer pet-lovers who give up their time to save the lives of needy animals. Rescue and foster groups involve the whole community to bring about life saving outcomes for pets, caring for them as if they were their own in healing family environments. Community rescue and foster groups are the life blood of the animal sheltering process.

Victoria however, has legislation which is hindering animal rescue and foster groups from operating. This week the internet has been awash with outrage that Victoria’s Department of Primary Industries (DPI) sent an notice to pounds across the state, advising them that to release pets to community rescue groups was in breach of the ‘Code of Practice for the management of dogs and cats in shelters’. The problem they claim, is that anyone taking pets from pounds should be registered as a domestic animal business (including individual foster carers) and that would mean complying with several group housing standards designed for shelters and pounds;

Dog Rescue Association of Victoria president Trisha Taylor said volunteers take unwanted dogs and cats into their own homes and spend time and money rehabilitating them so they can be rehomed. They did not want to have to turn their homes into animal shelters and report to the bureau.

”The rules for shelters are onerous and intended for multiple dog situations,” Ms Taylor said. ”This is no different than you taking an extra dog into your home and having to declare yourself an animal shelter, with the bureau coming to check you meet the code’s standards.”

She said volunteers did not put the rescued cats or dogs in cages, but treated them as pets until they were adopted out.

She said the bureau wanted to either gain control over rescue groups or shut them down – a move that would force up the kill rate of abandoned animals.
The Age

The situation has always been difficult for community rescue and foster groups in Victoria and this is why it hasn’t really thrived as it has in other states. The code of practice that they are referencing, has been in existence for years and if you were to interpret it in its most strict sense, rescue and foster would have always been illegal in Victoria. Some pounds have been interpreting the laws in a relaxed fashion to ‘get pets out the door’. Others have chosen not to work with rescue and use the laws as an excuse to kill animals. Depended entirely on who was in charge.

At most Victorian pounds, more animals are killed than are rehomed. Each and every day, thousands of dogs and cats are shot with firearms or given fatal overdoses of anesthetic, and their bodies discarded. All the while rescue groups stand by with safe foster homes at the ready, but are refused access to these animals. Often it is because pounds are afraid that by letting rescue groups in, they will be no longer able to hide poor performance, inhumane conditions or simply because ‘working with rescue is too much trouble’.

The groups in Victoria are doing an excellent job driving an ongoing effort to get recognition for community rescue. Taking advantage of the momentum of adoption and No Kill initiatives here and overseas, there is no doubt there is enormous community support for the awesome work that they do. The result is a clash between legislation from the nineties and the new belief system of the community about the valuable role of rescue, which is, almost unappreciatedly, only a few years old.

Politicians are promising to review the code of practice to make provision for rescue groups should they be elected. But they are doing so with a double-speak of ‘not wanting to have an unregulated rescue industry’. Even with evidence that the rescue industry is thriving in other states and that the animal outcomes are excellent, they still don’t trust the public to know how to care for pets. However, despite these unneccesary hurdles, this could be the very opportunity Victorian rescue groups have been waiting for.

If the behaviour of rescue groups in Victoria is outlined in a new Code of Practice, so should the rights of those same rescue groups be.

Community rescue and foster groups should be supported through proactive efforts to remove artibitrary rules that make it more difficult for them to operate. But if rescue groups do have to apply for a pre-determined financial status, provide certain reporting criteria and offer particular treatments and services to pets, in order to be an ‘authorised’ rescue group – pounds and shelters across the state should no longer be able to block or restrict access to death row pets. All groups should be granted a legal right to take any pet that a pound is unable to save. No pound should be able to choose to kill a pet if a rescue group is willing to take it, rehabilitate it and find it a new family.

In the case of somewhere like the Lost Dogs Home, who last year adopted 3,101 dogs, but killed 3,242 – each one these dogs should have been made available for further treatment by a rescue group. A pound management’s descretion to pick and choose whether they will work with rescue groups, when groups are willing to save and treat animals with money from their own pockets must be removed in the new legislation. Pounds must work with rescue groups and this must be made law if pets are to survive the shelter system.

If Victoria insist on standardising rescue and continuing down the restrictive path that has cost so many lives in the past, we must use it as an opportunity to gain recognition for the valuable role we play in the community.

The rights of rescue groups to save lives must be enshrined in law.

It gets worse.

From the Lost Dogs Home 2009/10 Annual Report, for the 24,426 cats and dogs impounded, the outcomes were as follows;

3,101 adopted
13,594 killed (3,242 dogs, 10,352 cats)
7,645 returned to owner

They also recorded “Revenue from continuing operations” as $11,854,916.

We will no longer stand by quietly while pets are killed unnecessarily, while this group grows rich off people’s compassion for companion animals. There will be a lot of talk of ‘intentions and outcomes’. A plea to stop being angry and to join forces. They’ll say we’re being divisive; why can’t we all just get along? But if to get along is to excuse and validate killing, then collaboration is not the answer.

The genie is out of the bottle and it’s not going back in.

One of the stated outcomes of the Hobson’s Bay Domestic Animal Management Plan is to:

Address any over-population and high euthanasia rates for dogs and cats.

From 1st September last year, council moved its animal control and after hours service in house, and its impounds to the Lost Dogs Home in North Melbourne. Their impound figures for the year released yesterday, show that 1,337 pets were impounded and their outcomes were as follows:

78 adopted
723 killed (84 dogs, 639 cats)
536 returned to owner

This is a single council. The Lost Dogs Home holds more than a dozen of these pound contracts, moving pets from the shires where they’re collected to a ’super pound’ in North Melbourne. Despite long term efforts to encourage them to work with the community, and even when they are killing many times more than they are saving, they can and do block community rescue groups from taking pets, choosing to kill them instead.

This week community rescue groups in Victoria sent a message to supporters imploring them to support the mandate that large animal welfare organisations be forced to work with them, rather than kill homeless pets. New interpretations of the animal welfare codes of practice in the state seem designed to phase out these community groups entirely, when clearly the need for them has never been greater;

Currently in Victoria – under current legislation according to the Code of Practice, it is illegal for Rescue Groups to save companion animals lives.

As responsible, registered organizations we continue to do so, for one reason. To save lives.

Based in the Community, we are self funding and promote desexing, microchipping and vaccination of all animals, responsible rehoming and pet ownership. We are often the last stand for a pet who would otherwise be killed.

We want the right to save lives. To take animals and work within the community as we have been doing for years. And we want the Government to recognize we are a vital and necessary service. Please help us by supporting the Dog Rescue Association of Victoria.

We are incorporated, with guidelines, a constitution and the knowledge of more than twenty years combined in saving animals in our state.

Please join us in spreading the word. We want the right to save lives. Join us on Facebook and tell your friends.

Victoria’s pets deserve better than a quick death at the hands of uncaring mega-pounds. To find out more about how to support the Dog Rescue Association of Victoria, please click here to visit their website.