50,000

Make no mistake about it, it was the biggest deception in Australian animal rescue history.

A high kill pound that portrayed itself as a sanctuary, who shut out rescue groups and turned the institutionalised killing of homeless pets into a multi-million dollar business. While other animal organisations around the country developed life affirming policies, reached out to their community and slowly worked to increase public affection for companion animals; they doggedly maintained an outdated ‘catch and kill’ mentality, driving merciless campaigns against ‘pit bull type’ dogs and orphan cats and condemning pets to death by the thousands in the face of humane alternatives.

But in 2009, when every single person can Twitter an experience, email the Director or start a Facebook group to ask the questions they can’t get the answer to directly, it’s much harder to keep this level of underperformance hidden from the public. Forced to answer the community, The Lost Dogs Home released official statistics, with its 1999 – 2004 figures now available online. However the 2005 – 2008 figures are still under wraps and The Lost Dogs Home facebook fan page has been turned off in response to ongoing online criticism from its members. Fail.

Now might be the time that people start to feel a little sorry for the staff of The Lost Dogs Home. It would certainly be difficult to be put in the position to ‘kill because its your job’. But everybody in this life gets to choose whether to follow directions or stand up for what they believe in. At any time, any staff member could have found the situation intolerable, stood up, walked out and taken the truth to the public. But they didn’t. They failed in their pledge to work for the benefit of animals, failed to change the direction of this organisation and failed in their duty to protect pets, and as such are culpable. Even now as the truth comes out, not one has condemned the killing.

There are no heroes at The Lost Dogs Home, only the complacent, the defeated and the greedy. While they now might have to weather the stings of criticism for their failures, that’s nothing compared to the fate of the pets entrusted to their care, who over these ‘missing’ five years, were slaughtered in the face of alternatives 50,000 times over.

The killers at The Lost Dogs Home will not only not be brought to justice, but worse; your money, the money you donated to save the lives of pets, is going to be used to defend them. They will now work to educate their public; pour money, not into saving lives, but convincing the next generation to accept their philosophy, and groom them as future donors. They will build a bigger shelter to allow them more capacity to impound and spend money on a PR campaign to undo the damage this tussle with their public has caused.

Throughout this next phase of spin, justification and rebranding, the pets who failed to leave The Lost Dogs Home alive must not be forgotten. The treatable, the elderly, the very young. The individuals, the dozens and the hundreds of pets who died the hands of The Lost Dogs Home, all while they stockpiled millions of dollars in donations.

We must not forget, forgive lightly or trust too easily… they simply do not deserve it.