Breeder clampdown in the ACT, misses the point

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It’s only when we stop chasing the outdated mantras of sheltering: that we need to eliminate “irresponsible owners”, eliminate puppy farms and create the perfect set of laws, before we can stop killing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.