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.
….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)
I have a friend who recently lost his much beloved animal (compliments of a not so closed gate). He is an absolute animal lover & was completely distressed over the thought that he’d never see his beloved doggy again. He’d contacted the RSPCA here in Victoria with no luck. Thankfully he called me & I told him to try Lost Dogs Home & Lort Smith. Although he lived in the inner city, he’d never heard of either of them. Good news is that his dog was at Lost Dogs & a happy ending occurred (plus LDH got a nice cash donation from him). So this dog was definitely lost – not a stray. What this long story indicates is that even animal lovers are not sure of what to do or where to go when they inadvertently lose an animal.
I find it hard to believe that we actually have much of a stray dog population in Victoria at all. Dogs are not allowed to roam the street (its now just a childhood memory) & we’ve had plenty of regulations in place around desexing, microchipping & registration. I don’t understand how the councils/shelters can come up with a true statistic for stray dogs at all.
On a positive note, I did here about a council that wanted its animal officers to have microchip readers so that they could actually return an “at large” dog to its owner, without having to go through the shelter system….now wldnt that be a great outcome for all involved :)
A lot of people go looking too late for cats, a week or so later saying ‘they usually come back’. Kitty has either gone in and out the 3/8 day system by then. Or people give up searching way way too early. If an inside cat has got out and been startled it could slink out of locked shed/hiding place after a week, find itself in a trap and off to the pound to be assessed as ‘feral’ (as it is shitting itself). And OMG! How dare it not have a M/C. NOT everybody gets pets M/C’d after getting them off a friend or out of the trading post. It doesn’t mean they are bad or don’t love their cats, they are just doing what people do – getting a pet… People giving a lost report of cats without chips,are very aware and wish they had…until then they hadn’t realised how valuable M/Cs are. Outdoor cats may very well ‘usually turn up’ but this time it didn’t!! and people only then realise cats don’t always come back… ‘It’s probably been squashed on the road’ can cause an early out, as is ‘someone has taken it in’ ( quite often the case, until it gets out from them too, or they bring it in to a shelter 3 mths later saying ‘they can’t keep it’)
Main thing I am trying to say is DON’T GIVE UP LOOKING TOO EARLY AS BEAUTIFUL LOVED CATS ARE TURNING UP DAILY AND THEY ARE OWNED AND SCARED AND HOPING AND WAITING. Shelter workers can only search through lost reports to try and match if a good system is used. Different with every shelter I am sure.
Whilst on the subject, last time i checked, the LDH ‘don’t take lost reports’ on cats as they ‘get too many cats in’ Even on a M/C’d, desexed 15yr old registered every year of its life cat. Fancy that! Neither did the council the cat lives in – they said to call the LDH! What a irresponsible roundabout that is!! And they say the public should register pets… for what??
So other than able owners visiting everyday for a ??? period of time any un M/C’d cat is going to the LDH is potentially doomed.
And also, all AMO’s carry microchip scanners, and have all the tools necessary to take M/C’d animals home. They are either unwilling to go ‘out of their way’ or risk getting told off by management as they are told not to take anything home as people don’t deserve a ‘taxi service’. Also taking home doesn’t raise any revenue … and anything unregistered is apparently too much work to chase registration after it has been dropped it off home. Oh how I could go on….Where is all our registration money going to again…?
I’d like to mention the fact that, once again, the City of Moreland has issued cat registration invoices very late…. Giving people effectively 4 days in which to pay. The same thing happened last year. Why does this keep happening? I think it is fair to assume that this sort of nonsense actually works against people’s desire to do the right thing and register their pets.