The battle for the lives of Victoria’s pets

As anyone who opens their homes to a foster pet knows, community rescue and foster groups save lives. Effective shelters and pounds recognise this, developing relationships with community rescue to manage capacity and bring down kill rates. The belief that the community can be trusted with pets, and that pets are better off in homes than killed in a shelter, is at the core of these programs. Without the belief that the community are the solution, not the problem, a pound or shelter remains an island – blaming the community for its problems, its lack of capacity, its failures… and for its killing.

With the new wave of No Kill initiatives sweeping Australia, pounds and shelters who choose not to work with rescue have a problem; how can they maintain their monopoly, stifle community discussion about policies and procedures that need improvement, keep new non-profits from ‘competing’ for donation dollars (though the No Kill movement has a belief in abundance) and maintain the status quo, when the public has heard that by opening their doors to foster groups, shelters can save every healthy, treatable pet? There is this conundrum. How can they still champion killing, in the face of alternatives?

There is only one solution; paint the alternative darker.

Only by convincing the public that foster care groups are dangerous mavericks with malicious intent, can a pound or shelter continue to kill pets while simultaneously blocking access to rescue. Only by fear mongering over the risk to a pet should it be given to a member of the public, rather then kept ‘safe’ in a shelter, can a pound or shelter kill that pet without the community asking, ‘why wasn’t it given a chance with community rescue?’ And this is exactly the approach being used in Victoria right now.

Over the weekend, while championing the new changes to the Code of Practice which effectively wipe out community rescue, Graeme Smith of the Lost Dogs Home, coined a disturbing new abstraction… ‘the backyard rescuer’ (mp4).

“Let me just say there still has to be regulation. You can’t let every backyard individual set up an animal shelter”

This is a deliberate misconstruction of what the community is asking for. Community foster groups are exactly that – foster groups made up of community members. We know an unclaimed pet is at a very high risk in a pound or shelter. We know a ‘death-row’ pet is at an extreme level of risk in an animal shelter. If a community foster care group is willing to take that pet, treat it at their own cost, give it a temporary home, rehabilitate and find it a new family, how can any risk possibly be seen as ‘more risk’ than the risk it faces of death while in the hands of the shelter?

What’s more, the experience nationally actually shows the risk to the pet of being in the community is a very low risk indeed. Thousands of pets are being cared for by foster families at this very moment. And these carers are not hoarders or abusers, or any of the other words shelters like to throw around to defend their position of killing pets rather than releasing them. In fact they’re normal people. They’re pet owners who love their pets. They’re compassionate people who want to help one extra. They’re people who learn and grow and become more capable, the more they work under the guidance of experienced groups. They’re people with skills, who get these pets out into the community and find them homes. Hundreds of thousands of people who would be willing to lend a hand, should the shelters allow it.

Despite what the shelters claim, giving absolute discretion to shelters as to the fate of animals, doesn’t protect pets. We know that because of the enormously high kill rates we’re seeing across Victoria as regressive shelter directors blame the community, block access to rescue groups and keep right on killing. While this new Code that is getting so much support from these very same pounds and shelters, seeks to further erode any rights the community have to save animals. We musn’t be hoodwinked into believing this is good for pets. We must demand access for and recognition of community foster care and rescue groups in Victoria.