‘It’s not us, it’s you’. The Lost Dogs Home discusses high kill rates

The LDH let us know exactly where they stand yesterday. In case anyone was still hanging on to the naive hope that they might evolve to become a compassionate reflection of our pet-loving community – we now know that’s not in their plans. Onwards.

Dr Graeme Smith, General Manager of the Lost Dogs Home discussed the operations at the Home yesterday, with Tom Elliott on 3AW’s Drive program.
 

Tom Elliott – Dr Smith good afternoon.

As I just mentioned, we had all this feedback on Facebook and Twitter saying all you do is kill dogs all day… what are the figures?

Dr Graeme Smith – That is absolutely not correct. The figures I have right here in front of me, the totals for January we have 1,130 dogs.

770 (or 70%) were claimed. 160 were put to sleep, and 191 were adopted.

The euthanasia rate for that month, was 14%.

Now, call me a cynic, but cherry picking a month (when there was a half-price adoption campaign running), seems a little dishonest.

The figures for dogs at the North Melbourne site for 2011/12 are;

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
*Returned to council, surrenders returned to owners, transfers to rescue groups, and DOA (0.6%)
 

Making the number of pets adopted, 564 less than the number of dogs killed. Which is what tends to gets people’s hackles up.

One for one adoptions vs killing isn’t even close to an appropriate way to manage shelter dogs. If you’re killing as many, or more, unclaimed dogs than you are saving, then you are failing in your mission to offer these animals a ‘second chance’ 50% of the time.
 

TE – Whats the difference between claimed and adopted? Claimed is when they go back to their original owner.

GS – Yes, that’s our prime role as a pound or a shelter, is to get the animals that are lost, back to their owners. That’s what we do.

TE – Because some of the emails seemed to say, you can’t include dogs who are simply reclaimed by their owners.

GS – You can say that, because that’s our prime role. Our prime role is to get them back to their owners. Our secondary role is to get new homes for the ones who are rehomable. And to have a figure of 190 adoptions in January is outstanding. It’s absolutely outstanding.

And to use their terms, the kill rate for those numbers would be about 40%.

 

As a pound, absolutely, your prime role is to get pets back to their owners. But the Lost Dogs Home doesn’t portray itself as a pound – it largely purports to donors to be an animal welfare organisation;
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“The Home would not exist without the support of our wonderful donors. It is through their ongoing generosity that we are able to continue providing essential services for unowned dogs and cats, and the community, while remaining a leader in animal welfare.

We sincerely want to thank each and every person who gave to the Home in 2011/12 to help us care for dogs and cats in need.”

– LDH Donations Pitch
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As a pound, it might be arguable that it is appropriate to kill, rather than save pets. But as an ‘animal welfare’ organisation, saving lives – all lives regardless of ownership status – must be your priority.

This fundraising pitch did not say –give money to our pound. Rather, it implied that unowned cats and dogs – that is, dogs and cats who don’t have owners – are being taken care of.

Killing half of them – sometime more than half – simply isn’t holding up their end of the ‘animal welfare’ bargain.
 

TE – Of the dogs that you don’t know the owners, the 450 odd in January, what proportion of those are unsuitable to be rehomed.

GS – Well, quite a few. The ones that are put to sleep, are put to sleep because there are reasons, temperament wise, behaviour wise, health wise, that they can’t be rehoused. They are aggressive towards other animals, or people. They have serious injuries or serious illnesses, and they can’t be rehomed.

We are rehoming as many rehomable animals as possible, and our figures at 14% euthanasia is very good. It is very good compared to a lot of other places.

 

So this is the crux of it really. The Lost Dogs Home believe they are absolutely doing all they can. While the community is calling for improvement, or even just acknowledgement that killing half of unclaimed pets is undesirable and that we should be working to implement programs to absolute improve those outcomes… the Lost Dogs Home has dug in its heels and declared – all the killing we do is totally necessary, and we should be commended.

Except the kill rate isn’t 14%. As we’ve seen above when we look at the whole year, and not just a month plucked out to suit Dr Smith’s pitch, the kill rate for dogs is 21%.

Which still sounds ok until you consider that for every 2 dogs left at the facility, one may or may not be saved, and the other will certainly die.
 

GS – And we get criticised because we say we’re not ‘No Kill’, because No Kill is a misleading statement. The public think No Kill means 0% euthanasia – that isn’t the case, No Kill even in America is 9 or 10 or 11% euthanasia. Because everyone understands that there are dogs that cannot be rehomed.

It might be better not to use the words No Kill as No Kill says no dogs get killed.

It’s a very misleading term, we won’t use it. And I just wanted to let your listeners know why we won’t use it.

 

Except, you know – he does;
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Dr Smith said he aimed for a “zero euthanasia rate, with as many animals claimed and re-housed as possible”.
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But tomato/tomatoe. No animal advocate, no No Kill advocate, no community member, is criticising the Lost Dogs Home for whether or not they use the term ‘No Kill’ in their brochures. Nope – people are more worried about, you know…. all the killing.
 

TE – The broader issue as to why there is a Lost Dogs Home in the first place, obviously there are dogs who just get lost that goes without saying, but there are dogs who get dumped, owners who just say, you know what, we don’t want the dog anymore.

GS – Exactly, and in our shelters in Cranbourne and North Melbourne, we deal with 14,000 dogs a year, incredible numbers. And what we say is, where are those owners? Why aren’t we getting all of our dogs claimed?

 

Do you know the easiest way to stop people bringing you pets? Open a bank. If you open an animal shelter – go figure – people are going to bring you animals. And if you aggressively and persistently tender for new council contracts, expanding the number of pets you have to process and the number of councils you service, then you are going to see huge numbers of animals.

If you have ‘too many’ animals – then stop taking them in. Drop North Melbourne’s council count from 16 to say, I dunno, ten. Let other groups step up and take some of these tenders, build the facilities and spread the load. Stop closing small local councils pounds – who would have happily worked with community rescue and foster groups to handle their one or two thousand strong pet intakes – and instead moving them to your ‘super pound’.

And stop complaining about ‘overpopulation’ when you CHOOSE every day to take these animals, and process them, and be paid for doing so.
 

GS – Then there’s another issue too. We get about 1,000 dogs who are surrendered by owners and in our area, these are people looking for a cheaper method of euthanasia than taking it to a local vet.

TE – So they essentially dump it with you.

GS – For us to put them to sleep.

 

So ‘abandonment’ makes up just 1,000 of your 14,000 dogs a year. You can speculate that people simply want them deaded, OR maybe – and this is revolutionary thinking I know – maybe they want to see them given a second chance?

Either way, this confirms the assertion that 90% of all pets entering these facilities are coming in, collected by the Homes own vehicles. Again – if you have ‘too many’ pets, stop taking money from local councils to collect them.
 

TE – Let’s say a dog is healthy, able to be adopted, but for whatever reason no one wants it. There are just too few people who want to become dog owners or the dog is unattractive or whatever, how long will you keep it at the Lost Dogs Home before euthanasia is the end result.

GS – The interesting thing is, and that is why our figures have changed, some of our critics are still working two or three years ago, our figures have changed now because the 28 day rule has been removed. We can now retrain animals that have behavioural problems, we keep them in a rehabilitation program, that runs from 12-14 weeks. And we retrain them, and then we put them up for adoption.

TE – Is there a time limit?

GS – No, there is no time limit any more. We are very successful in getting new homes for dogs, last year 2,500. We get new homes at the rate of 50 dogs a week.

Could you conceivably keep a dog for a year?

You could, but we don’t. We have lots of people, we are well supported by the general public, and we get lots of people coming in and adopting our animals. Most of our animals, once they go into the adoption pens, they are only there two or three days. So its a rapid turnover, and some people think you can’t be saving many because there aren’t very many in the kennels. It is simply because we are rehousing 50 dogs a week. A leading agency in this area.

 

The most accurate predictor of future behaviour, is past behaviour. If critics are working with ‘old data’ – which, to be fair, two or three years worth of data is not generally considered so old as to be irrelevant – then last years data should be to first to show the amazing improvement at the Home.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

More intakes = bad

Despite what is claimed, there is a lot a shelter can do to decrease intakes. This number should be going down, not up.

More returns to owner = good

But this has nada to do with the 28 day rule as claimed.

1,600 more dogs being returned to their owners is a good thing. However, they also had 1,900 more intakes. Is this simply a new council area being added to the books?

More adoptions = depends

250 more adoptions for the year is good. But the overall percentage didn’t improve, in fact it went down by a percent.

More dogs killed = bad

One hundred more dogs were killed than in the previous year. But the overall percentage decreased by 3%.

More dogs were killed than rehoused  in both years. This is the performance that Graeme Smith reports as making them a ‘leading agency’ for adoptions.
 

TE – Finally, as I mentioned, I got a lot of emails from various groups, that think you’re doing a terrible job, if you don’t mind me saying. What would you say to those critics – why are they so trenchant against you?

GS – I think a lot of it is personal, because I’ve been there for 27 years. And over those 27 years, we may have had issues with certain people.

We certainly have issues with pit bull terrier people as we stand up for Breed Specific Legislation and you’ll get people who are opposed to that.

We are also adamant that there should be compulsory desexing for cats and dogs, through the whole of Victoria, and through the whole of Australia, so sometimes breeders are there against us, because we’re saying we want compulsory desexing.

So, over time if you stand up for what you believe in, you get some enemies. You know, and that’s what we’ve got.

 

Yup – there’s nothing I can disagree with here. When you tell the bull breed owners that you should be allowed to kill their pets, then yes, I expect they probably don’t like you.

When you as an organisation support a mandate to desex every pet in the country, while offering no tangible evidence that it will reduce the number of pets you kill, AND while simultaneously rejecting the very desexing programs we do actually need to reduce kill rates (those who focus on semi-owned and community cats), then yes, I expect anyone with any critical reasoning skills at all, would probably not like you.

And certainly, the fact you continue to stand up for what you believe in, in the face of evidence, science, professional opinion, public opinion and while the community beg you to evolve and start to reflect their own compassionate regard for companion animals… then yes, I expect a lot of people don’t like you.

But thanks to this interview, we understand completely where you stand.

It’s not you, its us.

You are unapologetic. You believe we are the reason you kill. We now understand that you believe without any doubt that what you are doing now is the right thing and that you will be continuing to operate in the same way, into the future. This actually makes things pretty clear.

While the community had hoped that you would be happy to join us on our journey to a future where shelters are a place of safety for pets. We had even, maybe naively, believed you may be the one to lead us there.

We now understand without a shadow of a doubt, that you are a roadblock, not a friend, to our efforts. If we want pets saved, not killed, then the Lost Dogs Home must cease to be the place where these pets are processed. As the Lost Dogs Home refuse to offer them a place of safety, other, more compassionate organisations must stand up and be counted, so the community can get behind them, and change can begin.
 

Dr Graeme Smith, General Manager of the Lost Dogs Home, we really appreciate your time.