No Kill is an Established Brand

Despite Nathan Winograd’s books not being sold in Australian bookstores and less than half of shelter leadership having read them, we’re living in a global village where information travels freely across borders. The following table shows Australians search for ‘No Kill’ twenty times more than they search for ‘getting to zero’.

No Kill is Simple To Explain and Understand

Just like ‘No Kill’, G2Z calls for a live release rate of above 90% for animals admitted to pounds and shelters. One place it falls down is in communicating exactly how to achieve that. The No Kill Equation spells it out plain and simple.

The mandatory No Kill programs and services include:

1. TNR Program
2. High-Volume, Low-Cost Spay/Neuter
3. Rescue Groups
4. Foster Care
5. Comprehensive Adoption Programs
6. Pet Retention
7. Medical and Behavior Prevention & Rehabilitation
8. Public Relations/Community Involvement
9. Volunteers
10. Proactive Redemptions
11. A Compassionate Director

Getting to Zero or Starting from Scratch?

If you google for ‘No Kill’ you will find oodles of information including wikipedia, blogs, news reports, books and more. No Kill has been successfully achieved in many U.S. cities and has withstood attacks that include misinformation campaigns by the likes of PETA and the ASPCA.

The G2Z site suggests that No Kill shelters are not open admission. As the president of Victoria’s 3rd largest open admission animal shelter I can tell you this is not true. It goes on to state that “No Kill implies no animal should be killed” but that “Getting to Zero” somehow doesn’t. Huh? Either term could be read to mean “don’t kill pets”. Surely it would be easier to help educate people about what No Kill really means than start a new movement.

The No Kill movement is a Tribe. A global tribe with leaders who get written about in Forbes and spoken about in a TED talk by Seth Godin. We can do more by growing the No Kill movement than trying to start a new Tribe. To do so without good reason would mean lost opportunities and wasted resources.

I’d like to leave you with the talk that introduced me to No Kill in 2009 and led to me realising that we can and must do more for these animals.

Update: Melbourne City Council has dumped the Lost Dogs Home in favour of RSPCA Burwood. Community concerns over LDH’s high kill rate does make a difference.

Melbourne City Council is asking for public feedback on it’s Domestic Animal Management Plan. Part of the requirement under the Act is for them to address how they will reduce high rates of euthanasia for pets.

Submissions can be sent to animalmanagement@melbourne.vic.gov.au

here’s our submission… feel free to borrow from it!

5.2 Impounding of dogs and cats

Melbourne City Council has a live release rate of 50% for impounded animals. For every animal that goes home, either to their family or to a loving new one, one dies by lethal injection.

Industry best practice is a greater than 90% live release rate for animals entering a pound facility. The reason it’s not 100% is that animals with life threatening illness or injury that cannot be treated should be euthanased. Unfortunately there will also be some dogs who are too aggressive to be rehomed.

In June 2011 I was contacted by the ABC to give comment for a story about the Cat Protection Society of Victoria. I agreed and they sent a reporter and camera operator out to to my place on the same day. About a month later I received an email to say the story would go to air on Friday 12 Aug.

Surprised to See RSPCA Vic Alongside LDH & CPS

I expected the story to be focused on claims the CPS had been misrepresenting its statistics to the public. The story ended up focusing largely on claims that the No Kill movement were “waging a cyber war” against the RSPCA, Lost Dogs Home and Cat Protection Society of Victoria. I was surprised to hear RSPCA Vic being lumped in with LDH and CPS when they are leagues apart.

Animal Advocates are Working With RSPCA Vic

The story incorrectly stated that animal advocates have been attacking RSPCA Victoria. The exact opposite is true for the simple reason that they are working steadily toward reducing their kill rates.

• Their annual reports (including statistics) have been available on their website for many years now
• Their foster care program saved over 600 lives in 2010
• They respond promptly to all (reasonable) questions on their Facebook page
• They emptied their catteries last year with an innovative ‘adoption fee waived’ promotion
• Their ‘Twilight Adoption’ extended hours make it easier for people to adopt
• They are open all day on weekends

"I see the No Kill activists as leading the way and that's the same with any social change."

Lost Dogs Home Are In The Doghouse

The Lost Dogs Home does not have many friends in animal welfare.

• They reported a live release rate of just 14.2% for cats in 2010 (compared to 40% at RSPCA)
• They won’t tell us how many animals were fostered in 2010
• Their annual reports (including statistics) were not made available to the public till 2010
• They remove reasonable questions from their Facebook page and ban people who ask them
• They close at lunchtime on Sundays and public holidays

"They are cyber bullies because they're on the Internet trying to create controversy."

My Comments Were Not Directed At RSPCA Vic

I was interviewed about CPS, not RSPCA Vic. I have assisted them over the last couple of years and just last week attended their annual Seminar. I have no idea who told the producer that “the No Kill movement” were attacking RSPCA. Could it have been one of the other two shelters mentioned? It wouldn’t be the first time they let a reporter say something incorrect.

"The problem with allowing these people to be the public face of animal welfare is that they're holding back change and they're keeping us stuck in a 20th century kill model."

Stay Tuned For More On Cat Protection Society

There’s a lot more to this story. Out of the 166,000 viewers on Friday night, many will know someone who has worked there and may be able to shed more light on what goes on there. Expect to hear more over coming months.

It also prevents shelters from using foster carers as an alternative to killing to free up cage space during busy periods (like NYE Fireworks).

We the public have now been given 28 days to respond as part of the public consultation period.

How you can help!

• Support our new campaign, Hands Off Foster Care
• Read over the new draft and send us your thoughts in the comments section below

We must let the new Minister know that this draft would be a big step backward for companion animal welfare in Victoria.

2.8 Foster care

This section provides minimum standards for the operation of foster care conducted by establishments. The only time an animal can be placed in foster care is on the grounds of juvenile, veterinary rehabilitation or behavioural rehabilitation foster care. The animals placed in foster care must be permanently identified by microchip and they remain the property of the establishment. Animals in foster care must be returned to the establishment for rehoming as foster care must not be considered as the animal being ‘permanently removed’ from the establishment. An animal in foster care must not be sold or rehoused from the foster care premises – the animal must be returned to the establishment for the rehoming process.

If for any reason an animal has a litter whilst in foster care the animal and all of the young must be returned to the establishment for the rehoming process.

The establishment’s veterinary health management plan must identify the requirements for foster care for animals if foster care is to be completed by that establishment.

Staff conducting foster care for an establishment must:

• be trained and experienced to care for and meet the needs of the animals placed in their care
• have the permits, where required by local government, to keep the animals at their premises
• have a signed agreement with the establishment
• keep the records required by the Code and report to the operations manager on the condition of the animals as required by the Code
• meet the requirements of the Act.

Foster care must only be undertaken with the signed approval of a veterinary practitioner. The veterinary practitioner must ensure that the animal is suitable for foster care and sign the animal’s records endorsing such approval.

A health plan determined by a veterinary practitioner must be provided for each animal being placed in foster care. The health plan must provide instructions on the appropriate care, nutrition, hygiene, exercise and husbandry of the animals to be placed in foster care. Consideration must be given to any other animals in the carer’s home.

Where, in the veterinary practitioner’s opinion, the animal’s progress is such that they believe the animal may not sufficiently improve in the maximum period allowable to enable the animal to be rehoused, the animal must be returned to the establishment.

2.8.1 JUVENILE FOSTER CARE

The purpose of juvenile foster care is to allow a healthy kitten or puppy to be cared for off site in preparation for sale: to ensure the kitten or puppy is the health, age and weight required for vaccination and desexing prior to being sold by the establishment.

Kittens and puppies must be returned to the establishment when it is deemed appropriate by the veterinary practitioner to desex the animal post vaccination. The time an animal is in juvenile foster care must not exceed three months.

2.8.2 VETERINARY REHABILITATION FOSTER CARE

The purpose of veterinary rehabilitation foster care is to provide an opportunity for animals with a recoverable injury or non-infectious illness to be rehomed by the establishment. Animals that have infectious diseases must not be placed in veterinary rehabilitation foster care.

Animals that are placed in veterinary rehabilitation foster care must be microchipped, vaccinated and wormed prior to leaving the establishment and they must have completed the eight day quarantine vaccination period. A veterinary practitioner must provide in the health plan an expected date of return to the establishment for rehoming and must assess the progress of the animal for medical improvement.

Animals in veterinary rehabilitation foster care may be exercised and have behavioural enrichment provided off the foster carer’s premises during the period of rehabilitation with the approval of the authorising veterinary practitioner.

Animals placed in veterinary rehabilitation foster care must be returned to establishment for the purposes of desexing and rehoming. The maximum period allowed for an animal to be in medical rehabilitation foster care is three months.

2.8.3 BEHAVIOURAL REHABILITATION FOSTER CARE

The purpose of behavioural rehabilitation foster care is to provide an opportunity for animals be retrained to rectify a behavioural trait restricting the animal being rehomed by the establishment. Animals that have medical issues or infectious diseases must not be placed in behavioural rehabilitation foster care. Animals that fail temperament tests must only be placed in behavioural rehabilitation foster care under recommendation from an animal behavioural specialist.

Animals that are placed in behavioural rehabilitation foster care must be microchipped, vaccinated and wormed prior to leaving the establishment and they must have completed the eight day quarantine vaccination period. An animal behavioural specialist must provide a training plan and expected date for return to the establishment for rehoming and must assess the progress of the animal for behavioural improvement.

Animals placed in behavioural rehabilitation foster care may only be exercised off the foster carer’s premises with the approval of the animal behavioural specialist. During the period of behavioural rehabilitation foster care, the authorising animal behavioural specialist must assess the progress of the animal to ensure that it is making acceptable improvement.

Animals placed in behavioural rehabilitation foster care must be returned to establishment for the purposes of desexing and rehoming. The maximum period allowable for an animal to be in behavioural rehabilitation foster care is three months.

Code of Practice for the Management of Dogs and Cats in Shelters and Pounds (Revision 1)

 

The Lost Dogs Home killed 13,594 cats and dogs in 2009-2010

 

The Lost Dogs Home killed 6 out of 10 unclaimed dogs in 2009-2010

The Lost Dogs Home killed 9 out of 10 unclaimed cats in 2009-2010

Other Shelters are Achieving Better Results for Unclaimed Pets

Meanwhile other shelters have achieved dramatic reductions in kill rates for cats and dogs. AWL Queensland has been very successful increasing adoptions over the past five years.

AWL Queenland Shows What’s Possible

Why Does The Lost Dogs Home Continue To Kill In The Face Of Alternatives?

Download a PDF of this page here

Hi. My name is Boris. I was dumped because my ex wife didn’t want me anymore. I’m desperate to find a new girlfriend. I’ve been badly treated in the past but I’m sure with love and patience you will earn my trust.

It doesn’t say anything about how great life with Boris will be does it? What makes him special? How is he different to the next guy?

Foster care gives us much greater insight into the behaviour and personality of the dogs we’re trying to rehome. We can use this knowledge to better inform potential adopters and help make better matches. Lisa Ryan recently posted some examples of positive points you can mention in dog profile listings.

• in good health
• good with dogs (both sexes, big and small)
• good with cats
• good with children
• lead trained
• toilet trained
• sleeps through the night
• can entertain himself for periods of time with stimulating toys
• easy to care for coat (minimal grooming)
• good car buddy
• quiet
• handsome
• smart
• enjoys learning/training
• swimming
• social (lovely to take out visiting) etc
• anything unique about him
• handsome
• smart
• enjoys learning/training
• swimming
• social (lovely to take out visiting) etc

Pet Rescue has published some more detailed advice on how to write a great pet profile.

Can you think of any more? Leave a comment!

As a rescuers, we need to be honest with ourselves about the image we present to the public. Reader Kelly shares the difficulties and frustrations she and her housemates are having in trying to adopt a dog in 2011. After weeks of searching they considered finding a breeder instead. How many potential adopters are we losing each week?

– Mike

Girl Seeks Dog – the frustration of a wannabe dog adopter

Last year, my happy house of 3 (My boyfriend Blake, flatmate Tracey and myself) decided that what we were missing was a dog.  General consensus was that we would be much better people if we had a dog.  A scruff ball of love that looks like it has fallen off the back of a garbage truck.  After talking through the reality of having a dog, we decided that we would wait until early in the new year to adopt a rescue dog.  If the media was to be believed, post Christmas is prime puppy/dog dumping period and we would have no problem what so ever having our pick of perfect for us dogs from a shelter.  We have since learnt that this is not the case.

We put together a Mood Board to help give people an idea of what we were looking for.

6 weeks ago, we saw a medium terrier cross listed online at one of the major animal shelters.  Blake and I went there and saw that she already had two holds on her.  Who would have thought that you could put holds on animals?  It is not like they are a pair of jeans that you need to go home and think about.  We were still able to meet this scruff ball of awesomeness and there was an instant love between her, Blake and myself.  We wanted to take her then and there but as she had two holds on her already we were told to call back half an hour before closing time the following day.   We finally got through to someone the following day and were told that the dog was still available and that all of her holds had fallen through.  As it was closing time, I put her on hold to pick up he next day.  When we called on Monday, they told us that she was adopted out on the Sunday.  As disappointing as this was, we shrugged it off as a one off miscommunication.  If only this was the case.  It was the start of a very emotional process of searching for a rescue dog and dealing with organisations that are not always about what is best for the animals.

A friend at work introduced me to Mike Bailey and goodfordogs.org.  Before goodfordogs.org, I had no idea that there were so many different shelters in Melbourne.  Through goodfordogs.org I have seen many little scruff balls that look ace.  Pets Haven have had quite a few, however as we work during the week, we cannot get out there before they close as they are only open during business hours (as are most shelters).  Come the weekend, the dogs have been re-homed.

We saw another dog listed at the first shelter and when we went there on the same day again were told that he too was on hold.  The staff were very busy this day talking amongst themselves.  One of them had slept with someone hideous on the weekend and it was extremely important to giggle and gossip about it with each other before providing any kind of service to the public.  When they finished their story, we explained that we were missing out on dogs and were after advice on what to do.  The response was “if you see any dogs on line that you might even think you like, ring up and put them on hold.  It doesn’t matter how many, put them all on hold”.  I think that this is the most ridiculous process ever.

Meanwhile, I had become obsessed with searching for dogs.  Every spare minute I was searching shelter listings and petrescue.com.au.  So much that I could no longer tell if I even liked any of the dogs that I was looking at.  Blake and Tracey thought it both sad and amusing the dogs I was trying to convince them (and me) would be good choices.  Throughpetrescue.com.au I found a dog rescue group that had heaps of dogs that I was interested in meeting.  After filling in and emailing off a very detailed 4 page application form, I waited for quite some time to be told that dog I liked was best suited to living in a house with other dogs but maybe I would like to chose from an attached list.  I asked about 1 or 2 other ones and heard nothing back for quite a few days.  I did receive a phonecall from a volunteer conducting a phone interview to deem if I was suitable to be a dog owner.  Out of the 10 questions on the phone interview, 8 were exactly the same as the form I had sent earlier.  However, I did make it sound like my sole purpose for being on this earth is to own a dog.  I was told that I should have a dog within the next week as it will be a quick process.  That was over 2 weeks ago.  I keep getting asked if there are any other dogs that I interested in, yet all I want is an answer on the 2 dogs I have already asked after.  I have found that the profile information listed does not mention enough detail as to what home is acceptable for the dogs as deemed by them.  So much time is wasted going through invalid applications due to lack of initial profile knowledge of the dogs instead of actual time spent re-homing them.

I have found myself at one stage during this process almost panic buying a dog from a shelter.  Thank goodness I didn’t have access to a car.

My manic searching has been reduced to looking once at night time and once first thing in the morning.  I thought that this had paid off when when I found the ideal dog – Captain Morgan Furchild at the first shelter we went to.  We placed him on hold and was told that we were first hold and the dog was ours.  Tracey, Blake and I spent the whole day showing the picture to all of our work mates, I sent it to my family and we sent it to our friends.  Blake went out at lunchtime and purchased dog beds and toys in excitement.  Before we left, Blake called to double check that Captain Morgan Furchild was still there.  He was put on hold and transferred to a senior member of staff.  Blake was then told that they had not honored the hold and the dog had been rehomed to another family.  Apparently someone had seen Blake’s name on the paper on Captain’s cage and claimed to be him.  No one bothered to check id.  We were told that Captain did not get along with imposter Blake’s dog, and was taken off hold leaving him open to be rehomed with someone else.  We were devastated.  Not only because we had missed out, but because we had followed all of the shelters processes to be let down by staff laziness and poor/lack of procedures for the second time.  Blake let them know just how angry and upset we were.  The response from the senior staff member was that she was going to personally find us the best dog ever (shouldn’t she see all dogs as being the best dog ever?) and pleaded with Blake not to take this further.  It was a bit late by this stage for the shelter to be concerned about bad worth of mouth and negative PR.  They did offer us another dog that was not close to the brief of dog that we are after.  It felt like a band aid solution in hope to shut us up.

The option that I am now looking at is finding a dog from a shelter interstate.  My family are near the AWL shelter in Queensland so I have them on “meet and greet duty” should I see a dog online.

This process has been a real eye opener to just how hard it is to find a rescue dog.  Shelters not being open during the times that most people can actually go to them, ridiculous hold systems, lazy staff, lack of process, miscommunication, lengthy applications with no outcomes – make me see why people give up and go to pet stores or breeders.  I have a massive stubborn streak that won’t let this process beat me.

Mike also gave me the best advice  when he said “unless you met Blake when you were 16, it took some time for you to meet the right partner.  It is the same with finding the perfect dog.”

While we wait to find the perfect dog for us, we remain a happy house of 3 with a dog house, dog bowls, dog bed and dog toys ready to love our potential scruffy dog friend like crazy when we finally meet them and bring them home.

Three common ways a dog leaves an Australian pound or shelter (approx rates based on Victorian data):

1. Reclaimed by owner (~50%)
2. Adopted by a new owner (~25%)
3. Killed by pound/shelter (~25%)

At present we aren’t doing a great job of finding new homes for dogs. Claims that there are too many dogs being bred are baseless. Australians owned 3.41 million dogs in 2009 and the reality is that with an average lifespan of 10 years we need almost 1000 dogs a day just to maintain a stable population. We need to do a better job of finding new homes for these dogs.

An important part of increasing adoptions is outreach. Rather than preaching to the choir we need to find people looking to bring a new pet into their lives who may not have considered adoption. Some people have misconceptions about rescue dogs all being damaged. Some think they want a puppy. Others just don’t know where to look. We can inform them but first we have to find them. Fortunately the Internet makes that easier than it’s ever been before.

It’s unusual to see the term dogs for sale applied to shelter dogs but this is what many people looking to buy a dog type into search engines. Until recently these sorts of searches have only been bringing up breeders and online classified. Dogs for sale in Perth is designed to direct people to Perth shelters and rescue groups. The same principle has been applied to Dogs for sale in Melbourne, Dogs Tasmania, Dogs for sale in Geelong, and Dogs Canberra. The sites show images of available dogs (like the one below) that link through to the adoption pages for the shelter or rescue group.

Dogs Refuge Home, Perth

If we want to improve things for our dogs for sale we need to be creative, positive and innovative. You can help us improve our ranking in search engines by linking to Dogs for sale in Perth, Dogs for Sale in Geelong and Dogs for sale in Melbourne.