“250,000 pets are killed each year in shelters, therefore we have overpopulation”
And others who would repeat the popular mantra ‘don’t breed or buy while shelter pets die’, which implies at its core that all the while shelter pets are being killed in shelters, that there is a supply-driven, not-enough-homes type of overpopulation.
The truth, as always, is slightly more complicated.
Let’s say you have an island, and on that island lives a population of cats.
The island has a small human city, but no formal animal management program. Does that island have cat overpopulation?
Nope. The island has the exact number of cats that the resources of the island can support. Cats are born, some live to breed again, and then they die. The island has the exactly right amount of cats, if we’re measuring them simply by cat biology. This is the baseline for any animal population in any environment, in the world.
Let’s say now, the people on the island decide that they don’t like the cats. Do we have overpopulation now?
While the population of cats has remained exactly the same, it could be argued that yes, we do now have human-preference overpopulation. The people don’t like the cats, or they feel they shouldn’t be there, or they feel sorry for them and believe they are suffering. Therefore there is ‘too many’.
Human-preference overpopulation can be seen whenever humans and animals are forced to share space and the humans decide that either through a distaste for the animals, or a belief that they shouldn’t exist, that there is ‘too many’.
This has nothing to do with biology or even actual numbers, but is purely driven by human preference.
In this instance we’re using the example of cats, but human-preference overpopulation can extend to other non-useful animals who humans determine to be non-native. While an enormous population of sheep in Australia hardly rates a mention (because they’re useful), Indian Mynas tend receive a lot of hatred (because they’re non-native).
Sometimes human-preference overpopulation occurs for native animals too; galahs and other flocking parrots, snakes, crocodiles, spiders and dingoes etc. have all been targeted for destruction, under the banner of human-preference overpopulation.
You are not useful and may even be annoying or dangerous… you are overpopulated.
Now let’s say an animal shelter opens up on the island and people start taking cats they don’t want to the shelter. A city ranger also begins trapping cats and impounding cats.
So now we likely have shelter overpopulation. Even though the original population of cats has potentially remained the same, the number of cats trapped and brought to the shelter is now a way of measuring and concluding that there is ‘too many’ cats.
Shelter overpopulation is what most people are referring to, when they talk about overpopulation. It asserts that there are more pets entering shelters and being made available for adoption, than there are homes available to those pets.
Shelter overpopulation (and the wish to reduce shelter killing), is generally at the core of most initiatives to manage pets more effectively. The supporting evidence of shelter overpopulation is nearly always pets being killed. This is an especially powerful method of proclaiming overpopulation as the community generally doesn’t want to see dogs and cats killed.
Shelter overpopulation depends on there being more pets entering shelters and becoming available for adoption, than homes being available to them. Unfortunately for its supporters, this does not stand up to even the most basic scrutiny;
When we actually look at the national figures they also put doubt on the claim of shelter overpopulation.
There are currently 3.41 million owned dogs and 2.35 million owned cats (5.8 million) in Australia. The oft quoted ‘250,000 pets killed’… is therefore 4.3% of the total pet population. A very low number by any measure.
Rather than shelters being a bad things for pets, they are actually a community service that will always need to exist. In any imperfect society, there will be a population of disadvantaged people, some people who meet some misfortune over the year, and even some people who are just ‘irresponsible’…. and these groups of people may need to part with their pets.
These situations will always exist and while we can make great improvements for pets in shelters at the grassroots level, there will always be a population of pets who will need help.
Additional issues with using shelter overpopulation as the metric, is that there are several things which the shelters themselves can do artificially inflate this number;
What we’ve seen with the growth of the No Kill movement is that the key to the elimination of shelter killing begins within the shelter itself.
When a shelter markets their pets effectively, communicates positively with their community and implement programs which keep pets out of shelters – rather than working to impound them – then the killing is eliminated.
Overpopulation can also be a kind of measure of a particular person’s ethical position.
The existence of puppy farms is due to a demand for puppies outside that which the hobby breeders and backyard breeders had been supplying. Puppy farms tend to produce the popular breeds of the day, and distribute them through retail channels. In short, the market existed and puppy farmers filled it.
The problem isn’t one of demand – 450,000 dogs and 165,000 cats are sold every year – the problem is the out-of-control supply through puppy mills, backyard breeders and irresponsible pet owners who refuse to desex their animals.
The proper value of a pet’s life – The Herald Sun
At the same time, many, many people (including myself) feel that large scale farming of companion animals is unethical. Hundreds of dogs, producing thousands of puppies is, in our opinion, ethical overpopulation. Valid concerns about the welfare of companion animals dictate that large-scale farming is detrimental to their welfare. However, this doesn’t lead to the automatic proof of a general overpopulation of pets.
Sometimes ethical overpopulation is driven by a more insidious belief that pet ownership should be restricted to certain segments of the community. This kind of profiling in any other industry would probably be illegal – there is no set of societal criteria that determine a person to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
Ethical overpopulation can be driven either by valid concern about the welfare of companion animals, or a misguided desire to restrict pet ownership.
Again ethical overpopulation is not about actual numbers. If there were true overpopulation there would be no market for these mass-produced puppies, they wouldn’t sell, and the puppy farmers would go out of business. Sadly that is not the case.
It makes sense that over the year there will be fluctuations in the number of pets available through retail sources, community sources and shelters.
Seasonal overpopulation describes the fluctuation of pets entering shelters because of regular external events.
For example, most states cats have a breeding season from November to March (depending on location). With hundreds of thousands of semi-tame, undesexed cats living in close proximity to humans, there will be a rush of kittens and mother cats becoming available during these times.
Shelters who don’t make provisions for this influx (offering desexing to community cats pre-breeding season, supplying resources to the community to allow them to hold and tame any found kittens, and generating large numbers of foster homes), will find that they probably do have more cats and kittens than they can reasonably home.
Another time of seasonal overpopulation includes the Easter and Christmas holiday periods, and after fireworks events when spooked pets are collected.
Again, provisions can be made to prepare for the influx periods; taking found pets home rather than impounding them, photographing lost pets and putting their details online, running well-publicised adoption specials up to the date to reduce the existing shelter population and using rescue groups and foster carers to share the load.
While seasonal overpopulation exists, they are generally regular and expected events, often occurring every single year. It isn’t overpopulation in a general sense, but simply times of increased need as seen by many industries (police, hospitals and human shelters).
Examining grassroots populations is important when considering the existence of overpopulation. Geographic overpopulation can be a very real experience of some shelters, thanks to their unique situations. This does not mean the issue of overpopulation is insurmountable, but simply that each community has different challenges.
Geographic overpopulation is most commonly associated with rural areas, but also usually only refers to small numbers of pets. If the market for pets doesn’t exist locally, then it becomes the shelters’ responsibility to develop relationships with other shelters and rescue groups to move pets to more populated locations.
Online adoption services like PetRescue can also help reduce the effects of geographical overpopulation by breaking down location as a hurdle to adoption.
Laws which target owners for arbitrary reasons – those reasons other than cruelty or neglect – often have the unintended consequence of increasing shelter populations.
Backfiring-law overpopulation occurs when laws are introduced which result directly in more pets entering shelters.
With the current trend towards restricting pet ownership at every opportunity, ‘backfiring-law’ overpopulation is currently one of the biggest contributors to Australian shelter populations.
Ironically, by either deliberately or unintentionally misusing overpopulation to support certain laws, animal welfare groups can drive for laws which see an increased number of pets entering shelters.
Throughout the nineties and 00’s the trend was for local councils to close their own pounds, and for private charities (RSPCA, Lost Dogs Home), to build large, centralised warehouse-type, facilities and collect multiple council animal management tenders.
A single shelter could take the pound contracts for ten, fifteen or twenty local council areas. Pets could be brought by ranger vans to this centralised location, from an enormous physical area. Single shelters can and do service literally millions of human residents and hundreds of thousands of registered pets.
The results of these changes were unsurprising – single shelters with enormous intake rates and an artificially created ‘super pound’ overpopulation.
With no requirement for animal charities to prove they had the ability to reasonably process and rehome the numbers of pets they were contracting themselves to take; ‘choosing a few, killing the rest’ became the primary tool for population management. Killing was to become the norm.
Overpopulation being a valid reason for killing pets is the biggest and most damaging animal welfare fabrication in Australia.
That’s not to say that at times shelters don’t get busy, adoptive homes don’t take effort to find or that there isn’t a Christmas rush – but that a general, community-to-blame, measurable and currently insurmountable overpopulation simply doesn’t exist.
One of the greatest developments of modern animals welfare, is the ability to discuss and compare our experiences with people locally, nationally and internationally with only the minimum of effort. We know based on the experiences of hundreds of other communities and thousands of shelters, rescue groups and volunteers is that animal population obstacles can be overcome with the right shelter management. As more and more shelters reach out to their communities for support here in Australia too, less and less pets will die.
But eliminating overpopulation as a scapegoat for killing will not happen without outside pressure.
Unfortunately however, the status quo of ‘undeniable, indisputable, unexaminable overpopulation’ suits the agenda of an underperforming animal welfare industry.
Overpopulation gives cover to shelters who want to continue to kill pets, rather than introduce the programs needed to stop killing. Overpopulation and ‘human irresponsibility’ forms the basis of the most successful fundraising drives. In short, there is a lot of personal reputation and financial resources dependent on overpopulation being a truth, meaning there is little drive within the industry to examine it further.
It does not serve the pets well because the term overpopulation tends to be used inaccurately and the notion is completely open to misuse. In its current form, overpopulation is not so much an actual measurement of the issues at hand, but a blunt instrument often used to gain enormous latitude in welfare policy without any effort to understand underlying factors.
By understanding where the nuances of the overpopulation argument, we can arrest it as a blanket reason to kill. Overpopulation becomes vital to animal advocates looking to bring about genuine change for pets.
If someone tells you that Australia has pet overpopulation, you now know to ask them; ‘tell me by which metric you are determining your belief in overpopulation?’
This is fantastic – an excellent expose.
How many homeless cats and dogs does Australia have…in the streets or in shelters?
Oops…I meant in the streets AND the shelters…
The numbers that tend to be thrown around are ‘squishy’ at best. However, I’ve written about stats here;
http://www.savingpets.com.au/2012/11/a-year-in-nsw-pounds/
http://www.savingpets.com.au/2012/07/the-missing-100000/
Thanks…squishy is right…same here.
What about pets loose on the streets?
Any idea of that number?
Denying there is an overpopulation of domestic animals placates breeders and does not assist shelter animals.. so why bother trying to.
Last time I checked, rescue’s mission wasn’t to play gotchya with ‘breeders’, but to stop shelter killing.
While there are a lot of good reasons to work to abolish breeding and breeding practices that have been shown to harm pets (ie. puppy farms & retail sales); the existence of puppy farms and breeders is irrelevant to the cause to eliminate shelter killing.
No Kill communities have been created in places where large scale breeding exists. No Kill communities have been created in places where there are backyard breeders and hobby breeders. No Kill communities have even been created in places where there are few to no laws restricting breeding.
The only thing that ACTUALLY assists shelter animals, is to remove the political and public-relations cover of ‘overpopulation’ as a valid reason for shelters to kill pets.
– Allowing shelters to still cry ‘overpopulation’ as they fail to implement No Kill programs isn’t helping pets – it’s hurting them.
– Allowing shelters to still blame ‘overpopulation’ as they encourage the passage of laws which drive unowned cats & ‘pit bull type’ dogs into shelters isn’t helping pets – it’s hurting them.
– Allowing shelters to use ‘overpopulation’ as cover to kill treatable pets, rather than care for them isn’t helping pets – it’s hurting them.
– Allowing shelters to use ‘overpopulation’ as an excuse for wholesale slaughter during predicatable, annual busy times, rather than work with rescue or truly embrace adoptions, isn’t helping pets – it’s hurting them.
The myth of ‘overpopulation’
the excuse of ‘overpopulation’
and the cover of ‘overpopulation’
protects underperforming shelters and hurts pets
That is why I’m bothering.
Wonder what the shelter animals would say to those like yourself who choose to focus on the final phase of their lives instead of addressing the other major contributors including indiscriminate breeding, irresponsible human companions & the fact that too many people do not want to adopt an animal because they are breed or age specific.
Problem solving requires a focus on the root causes, not the application of verbal acrobatics intended to deny the obvious. A little equation which adds up how many people have animals, how many homes are available and the number of animals entering shelters neatly and dangerously eliminates that the masses are not keen on adopting animals. The frantic, desperate, ad hoc pleas of rescuers for foster homes, permanent homes, any?? homes validates these sad truths. These poor shelter animals are being marketed to a shallow society at a great disadvantage to their younger, shinier cousins who are often of more impressive lineage. How can you make the disconnect between shelter animals and those who breed them? More importantly, why do you make this disconnect?
The no kill philosophy is actually supported by a recognition that overpopulation exists. Make it easier for the animals to be rehomed by limiting the litters; by mass, low-cost desexing; by indiscriminately placing a responsibility on ALL breeders (not differentiating between puppy factories/backyard and registered).
Research into ‘no-kill’ shelters in the USA reveals intake restrictions hiding behind open door policies; hoarding; giving animals away or for a negligible fee with inadequate checks on the adoptees, and a reliance on TNR despite this approach absolutely undermining responsible animal care. The best results for no-kill are apparently to be found in wealthy gated US communities.
It is astounding when people make claims based on a lack of evidence. As you acknowledge, there are no accurate statistics so denying overpopulation is a long call. Certainly overpopulation must never be used as an excuse to kill, but to side-step this issue is to compound the problem of people who commodify animals as disposable items. And the lack of accurate statistics dictates we consider the complexity of the domestic animal situation; simplification is antithetical to resolving such complexity.
How can you state that 4.3% of animals killed (250k) is ‘a low number by any measure’? Particularly when this is an unreliable and almost certainly a conservative figure. Living in a rural area I have seen the bodies of wild dogs hanging on fences; am aware that the DSE conducts deliberate wild dog baiting programs and that farmers do not tend to desex their dogs and cats. The dogs and cats killed by farmers, those living wild after being dumped in National Parks or other rural areas are not counted. Are the healthy animals killed in vet clinics? Or the animals also killed by vets when humans cannot afford their healthcare? If ever there was a topic where the cliché ‘erring on the side of caution’ is appropriate, it is this one.
Certainly, until (if ever) other animals are granted legal rights, it is an impossible task to mandate all animals remain in the homes of those who originally take them. And there will always be sad circumstances where illness/death leave an animal homeless. However your comment ending in “… and even some people who are just ‘irresponsible’…. and these groups of people may need to part with their pets” reads as that of an apologist for the very people who regard sentient beings as disposable items. The breeders, abandoners and all who commodify domestic animals need to be made accountable, not excused.
By denying overpopulation, it is necessary for you to state that “rather than shelters being a bad thing for pets, they are actually a community service which will always need to exist”. Contrastingly, those who campaign for a regulation of breeders, and a ban on puppy farms recognise that it is a traumatic experience for dogs and cats to enter a shelter and everything possible should be done to avoid this. Whilst accepting there will always be a valid reason, such as illness/death, for relinquishing an animal, the endless stream of dogs and cats currently abandoned and dumped into the many shelters and pounds must not be tolerated.
True advocacy for domestic animals means that we recognise that overpopulation is not the sole aspect of the domestic animal issue, but neither should it be dismissed and negated as you have done.
Yours is just an expanded version of the same tired platitude that kill-apologists have trotted out for decades;
“There are simply too many pets and not enough good homes. The public can’t be trusted with pets. No Kill is impossible/hoarding. This is why we kill.”
Fortunately – you’re wrong.
Unfortunately, we have to work against your wrong-thinking to be able to save lives.
I will continue fight for the rights of pets to be safe in shelters. I will fight for homeless pets. I will fight the kill-apologists.
I will continue to fight for a No Kill future.
Please apply a little lateral thinking to discern what is motivating you to trust the masses: the unidentified abandoners, the greedy breeders the commodifiers of the vulnerable; yet simultaneously choose to label me as a supporter of killing. It is important you do this for this distorted approach is consistent with your desire to placate the people who are one of the contributors to the shocking situation.
If a person does not agree with the tactics applied to solve a problem, it is skewed logic to then accuse that person of condoning the problem. This response seems to validate that flaw(s)exist in the accuser’s argument.
If you’re going to assert that something is bad for pets, then the burden of proof is on you, to demonstrate that it actually IS.
While you’ve been quick to dismiss the metrics I have used to question the existence of pet overpopulation in Australia (pound data, pet population data, Australian university studies on shelter intakes), you’ve not provided an alternative metric for your belief that;
– overpopulation exists
– there aren’t enough homes for the pets entering shelters in Australia
– ‘breeders’ are why dogs and cats are entering shelters
There are now 87 No Kill communities in the US, made up of thousands of pounds, shelters, rescue groups, foster carers and volunteers. (http://www.no-killnews.com/?p=6122).
Organisations who are implementing No Kill programs here in Australia (RSPCA ACT, AWL QLD, Sydney Dogs & Cats Home, Geelong Animal Welfare Society), are re-writing what is considered possible in adoptions, increasing reclaims and reducing intakes.
None. Not a single one of these successful organisations created their success stories, by mistrusting the public, blaming ‘breeders’ and killing pets citing ‘overpopulation’. They have all done it by embracing their communities and being overwhelmingly supported in return.
That is how I know ‘trusting the masses is good for pets.
PetRescue has driven up the popularity of adoptions several-fold, with over 60,000 pets to be adopted in 2013 alone. We do this, not by mistrusting the public, blaming ‘breeders’ and supporting the killing of pets citing ‘overpopulation’. We have done it by singing the praises of rescue pets, celebrating the benefits of adoption and asking people to help.
That is how I know ‘trusting the masses’ is good for pets.
We can keep supporting the wrong-thinking which has driven us into the ditch (an overwhelming belief that the end to shelter killing is away in some mythical future when there are no more breeders and everybody is responsible) – or we can embrace those organisations who have found a way to stop the killing today.
The choice is ours.
Being my fathers daughter I try to get at the core of an issue in order to understand it more clearly.
if I am correct, ‘the myth of overpopulation’ is defined as such:
Myth > Fiction
Overpopulation> the number of (Cats,Dogs) exceeds the number their environment can sustain
Meaning:
For every homeless cat and dog there is a committed person (or family)
Simply illustrated:
The number of animals (A) is equal to the number of homes (B)
A=B.
Simple math formula.
To arrive at the formula A equals B, one must know the finite number of either A or B.
So what is “A’?
What is the number of homeless cats and dogs in Australia?
“What is the number of homeless cats and dogs in Australia?”
According to the pound survey in NSW 10/11
25,089 cats
and 27,774 dogs are left unclaimed in NSW pounds
27,152 ‘pets’ are left unclaimed at the RSPCA NSW (no breakdown available)
and about
8,000 dogs and
2,000 cats are listed on PetRescue by rescue groups
This = about 90,000 pets
(note: Some of these pets will actually be counted twice; ie. pets who’ve been counted at the pound, but been listed on PetRescue, or shown up at the RSPCA).
About 30% of the population of Australia reside in NSW, giving them by far the biggest pet population, the biggest pound system and the most impounded animals.
Victoria has about 25% of the population, so they’d be similar. (90,000)
Leaving the rest of Australia (again about 90,000)
So about 270,000 pets are entering pounds and not being claimed by owners.
Now not all these guys actually need new homes.
It is estimated that 80% of cats entering shelters have never had owners. They don’t need adoption – they need options other than being killed in a shelter.
So excluding the majority of cat intakes, we’ve got 135,000 ish pets needing homes.
About 10% will be genuinely sick and untreatably suffering.
Leaving us 120,000 or so, pets needing adoption in Australia each year.
**********
But you need both sides of this equation
There are 3.41 million dogs and 2.35 million cats (5.8 millions pets) living in homes in Australia.
If each one was to live 12 years, we need around 700,000 pets just to replace the pets who plonk off of natural causes each year.
This doesn’t include homes moving from one pet to two, or new people getting pets.
So on purely a pound figures basis; we’ve got to convince just one person in seven who is considering adding a new pet to their families, to choose rescue pet adoption, and the pound pet problem is solved.
**********
But what you’ll find is that despite claims to the contrary, kill-apologists who advocate that there are ‘too many’ pets aren’t interested in actual figures.
They see pounds killing pets, then do a kind of backwards calculation.
If pounds are killing pets, then there must be too many of them
This kind of faulty logic is how the myth of ‘overpopulation’ kills pets and give an under-performing industry an ongoing scapegoat for the unnecessary killing.
Thank you.
” about 270,000 pets are entering pounds and not being claimed by owners.”
Being the child of a mathematician, this is the closest thing to a hard number…
My dad was allergic to what he called ‘speculation’, which he perceived as ‘deduction by magic’.
(Yes, it was a bit weird)
So..
1. Is this an ‘end of year’ estimate made up of hard data collected from shelters and rescues?
2. If so, does the data represent numbers from ALL shelters and rescues?
3. Does this 270,000 include dumped dogs and cats posted on Craigslist/Oodle/ebay?
(which,here in the states, amounts to hundreds of thousands in every community in the country. From a quick look at Craigslist on your end the numbers are equally staggering)
4. How many breeders puppies are available to the public for the same time-period?
(Here, also an additional staggering number…recent estimate is 750,000 breeder’s dogs available every day on puppy-peddling sites)
No I don’t find this weird – I find it refreshing. Talking about hard figures tends to be frowned upon in Oz rescue.
1. Yes. This is based on the 2010/11 year
2. Yes. RSPCA is our major shelter contributor + PetRescue figs (where I’d say about 80% of rescue pets get a listing at some point – plus there’d be some ‘doubles’ as mentioned)
…..
3. Craigslist isn’t terribly popular in oz (they get around 2 ads for pets a day). Our most popular online website is probably ‘Trading Post’ with about 4,000 dogs and between 500 – 2000 cats listed (depending on the time of year). Then there’d be weekend newspapers (less than hundred, times 6 or so).
So, at any given time there’s probably in the region 10,000 pets available to ‘purchase’ from sources other than rescue (allowing for multiples in litters etc), in a country of 20 million people)
(Your 750,000 pets would obviously be servicing a much larger population in the states).
Just for calculations sake, that 10,000 wouldn’t be ‘per-day becoming available’ number. It would be a ‘reservoir’ number – it’s much harder to work out exactly how many flow into it each day, but I’d suggest somewhere around a quarter of that? Each pet ad probably takes, three – four days to sell the pet involved? (if that make sense?)
Certainly more should be done to encourage people to adopt the abandoned.
SP’s: Have you ever bred from a domestic animal? If not, why not? We have never done so (from our numerous rescued animals) on the principle that a litter of cute puppies and kittens are sure to divert potential human companions away from their consideration to adopt a shelter animal. My children did not have a puppy until their late teens and the puppy was also a rescue. Instead we took in (more than permitted) of older animals rejected by the society you consider reliable.
And of course, believing that overpopulation is NOT a myth naturally prevents us from ever adding to a population whose lives are so fragile, who hold no legal rights and who are at the mercy of the cruellest animal on the planet.
Speciesism results in a lack of reliable records available on other animals. It is dishonest to refute overpopulation when you cannot present reliable data. However we know the animals entering shelters, the numbers dumped outside of shelters and killed in private vet clinic reflects poorly on our society & homeless animals (& foster homes are really an extension of the shelters and are generally impermanent) evidences there are not enough homes for these animals.
If Rescue Groups do not campaign to control breeding practices, nor are proactive in addressing the other factors contributing to the shelter population, then these rescue groups are also commodifying animals.
When accepting that homeless animals are just a natural progression from the endless litters of domestic animals entering our society, this complacent attitude does nothing to help the fragile and unstable nature of domestic animals’ lives. The vast majority of people do not choose to adopt an animal (they want to bond with a pup/kitten; want a particular pedigree from a particular breeder; ‘shelter/pound animals have issues’; my kids need a pup/kitten to grow with’ etc )and there is no way of determining how many will ever do so.
Given there is no register of people who abandon or abuse their animals and given the reasonable $$value applied to shelter animals; these animals are at risk of being adopted by unreliable, even cruel individuals. Hasn’t 20% been nominated as the number of shelter animals returned after adoption? Time is the enemy and when shelters urgently plead for adoptees, fosterers and end up charging no fee or very little, the animals are at a greater risk of entering fragile home environments.
If genuinely concerned about the quality of life of these vulnerable, voiceless beings: we will simultaneously strive to encourage reliable people to adopt and seek to reduce the numbers of animals entering shelters. Please do not be duped by the myth of the ‘overpopulation myth’.
@Jo – Ah, I see. So ‘overpopulation’ isn’t so much measure of the numbers of supply and demand (as you haven’t been able to provide any, nor reasonably refute the ones I have provided), but a necessary fable to keep people behaving appropriately (ie. hating breeders and breeding).
So we’re not to interact with our public as you know, thinking, logical adults… but more like toddlers who should be fed fairy tales and misinformation to ensure appropriate behaviour.
Not only that, we’re to expect them to be too stupid and cruel to understand the importance of desexing for a healthy pet population… and simply too selfish to adopt a rescue pet.
(And we shouldn’t look too hard at adoptions anyway, as people are simply too inept to look after any animal reasonably, and those who look to adopt are probably just animal abusers).
All of these people – the pet owners of Australia – they’re nothing like us. With our compassion, our own well-cared for pets… (and our holier-than-thou attitudes).
That is why we must kill and continue to blame overpopulation. To do otherwise would be simply giving the public too much credit.
………….
To this, I’ll bust out a Dr Phil favourite;
“How’s that working out for you?”
Currently in this country we’re killing between 40%-70% of unclaimed dogs and up to 90% of unclaimed cats.
We’ve been waggling our fingers for several decades. We’ve been clutching our bosoms and crying why won’t people stop treating their pets as disposable as we killed healthy animals and literally disposed of their bodies in landfill.
We’ve blamed breeders. We’ve blamed the economy. We’ve blamed Christmas. We’ve blamed a lack of desexing. We’ve blamed global warming. We’ve blamed pet shops. We’ve blamed the people for not adopting. But we’ve primarily blamed overpopulation, even though we’ve not measured it. Even though we actually have no idea of the market or market potential.
(And now people have come along and tried to measure ‘overpopulation’, we dismiss them saying overpopulation as ‘immeasurable’)
How’s that worked out for us? Well, it’s ensured that hundreds of thousands – millions of healthy, treatable pets have been put to to death.
Now communities have come along – dozens of them – and said – hey! If we just let go of the blame – stop hiding behind ‘overpopulation’ and work to put pets in homes… we don’t have to kill!
How can that be anything but a good thing?
How can that be anything but a cause for celebration? We don’t have to kill pets to keep them safe – we can simply put them in new homes!
To hold on to killing – the idea that we have to kill – in the face of evidence to the contrary is at best, misguided. At worst, some kind of perversion.
A pet is never better off dead, than in a new home.
So if we disregard the notion of supply-driven over-population and therefore ignore the saying ‘don’t breed or buy while homeless pets die’, how many litters of puppies or kittens will it take until over-population IS reached?
Or are you saying that over-population could never exist, no matter how many companion animals there were in Australia? I struggle to believe that you would deny over-population if the pet population reached a certain level. E.g. let us hypothetically imagine that the estimated population of 2.35 million cats increased tenfold while the human population remained relatively static.
Assuming that you would recognise that some number of dogs and cats was too high for the welfare of those animals to be optimal, where would you set that bar and how would you identify the problem?
@Liz I’m not 100% on what you’re asking/saying, but it seems to be based on two largely strawman arguments. However, I’ll answer the premise behind them anyway;
1. Do I believe killing pets, blaming overpopulation and the finger-waggling of those shelters doing the killing, is the only thing keeping the ‘irresponsible masses’ from all recklessly breeding their pets?
No. In fact, I could not disagree more.
Certainly, there was a time in the past where there was a lack of awareness of the importance of desexing (probably around the same time desexing was becoming popular). But overwhelmingly, pet owners ARE aware of ALL the benefits of desexing now (not just unwanted litters, but behaviour and health).
We can stop killing pets to ‘teach people a lesson’ now.
Instead we can teach them other lessons about compassion and the value of second chances. We can teach them lessons about the benefits of rescue pets. And we can communicate honestly with them about the challenges we face in the animal management industry and how they can help us.
2. Is there a point in the hypothetical future, where (I) would happily proclaim that it is ok to kill pets because of ‘overpopulation’, because the pet population has reached a particular number?
No. It is never ok to kill a healthy-treatable pet because it is convenient for us to do so.
If we have ‘too many’ pets a shelter, then it becomes our job to find options for them, OTHER than them being promptly dispatched for our convenience. It becomes our job to get out into the public domain and find them homes (or TNR them, or whatever they need).
The unhelpful and outdated saying – “don’t breed or buy while homeless pets die” – needs to be retired. The saying in 2013 should be;
“Stop killing the community’s homeless pets, while failing to compete with other thriving sources of animals”
It would be interesting to read your answers to the above questions instead of you substituting them with your own.
Have you ever bred domestic animals? If not, why not?
I notice Liz has also asked questions which are unanswered.
Thank you.
I am trying to answer the questions here as best as I honestly can. I take no pleasure from a game of ‘gotchya’ with people who read my blog. What I want to achieve is a bit more clarity of thought and evidence in our industry and a bit less huffing and puffing.
So where I’ve missed a question, I do apologise. If I’ve not answered it to you satisfaction, then I can only assure you I did try.
“Have you ever bred domestic animals? If not, why not?
No. Because I’ve always been an urban dog owner, with limited space. I have no interest in breeding dogs, nor do I believe that I’d add anything to their kind by doing so. And I’ve also always wanted my dogs to enjoy the health benefits of being desexed.
I hope this is a suitable answer.
Please understand that to acknowledge there is a domestic animal overpopulation does not equate with justifying the killing. It is disingenuous to reveal you trust the general public including the commodifiers of other animals more than those who are directly advocating for domestic animals.
Encouraging breeders is dangerous.
This article is worth a read:
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/animal-rights/los-angeles-animal-services-no-kill-december-precedent-or-deception
I hate responding in this fashion (I feel it comes across as rude), but I also don’t want to be accused of missing anything, so here goes;
Please understand that to acknowledge there is a domestic animal overpopulation does not equate with justifying the killing.
I don’t dispute ‘overpopulation’ for any reason, except that by every single mathematical and pet-population-dynamic research measure, it has been shown not to exist.
The only measure that has ever been put forward that ‘proves’ it – is the high level of killing in shelters.
If you have evidence to the contrary, you’ve yet to present it.
“It is disingenuous to reveal you trust the general public including the commodifiers of other animals more than those who are directly advocating for domestic animals.”
The ‘direct advocates’ for animal you speak of, are the very same people who have for decades supported and defended shelter killing.
Either because it suited their business model (high-volume, high-kill, wealthy shelters).
or because it suited their own personal and misogynistic view that pet owners are all inherently irresponsible, that pet ownership should be restricted to a select ‘chosen’ group of owners (usually exactly just like them, which is why it can be so hard to adopt from these ‘old-school’ groups).
Neither of these positions were based on evidence, or even turned out to be particularly good for pets. Restrictive pet-adoption criteria has cost lives. Killing nearly everything that walks through the door because it’s easier, or because of a belief that ‘no one wants to adopt’ has cost lives.
Neither of these approaches have eliminated shelter killing, so I reject them as a failure.
“Encouraging breeders is dangerous.”
I am not an advocate for breeders.
“This article is worth a read:
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/animal-rights/los-angeles-animal-services-no-kill-december-precedent-or-deception“
It is an excellent article examining some of the issues associated with high-kill shelters using the No Kill brand for personal gain. Some of the groups mentioned in the article (the ASPCA & Ed Boks for example) have long fought No Kill iniatiaves, but are now using the idea for financial gain.
They are getting caught out of course; part of the new animal advocate movement is actually critically examining the claims of shelters. Ironically – sort of like I’m doing here.
But No Kill isn’t just ‘not killing pets’. No Kill is 11 programs and services that must be comprehensively implemented, not the least of which is community engagement, removing arbitrary hurdles to adoption, and a compassionate leader who wants to save lives.
If we can put a man on the moon; we can find homes for pets. As they say, it’s not rocket science.