From my Twitter feed today…
Australian Veterinary Association South Australia (AVA SA) Division Election Platform – 2014
In 2013 the Select Committee into the Breeding and Sale of Companion Animals handed down its report to State Parliament.
The Select Committee was charged with investigating methods for the improvement of welfare of companion animals and to attempt to reduce euthanasia rates.
The AVA broadly supports the recommendations of the report and believes that they should be progressed in the next Parliament.
One key item in the recommendations was to, “Move forward the recent review into the SA Code of Practice for the Care and Management of Animals in the Pet Trade”.
And the Australian Veterinary Association South Australia (AVA SA) believes pounds, shelters (and I’m assuming rescue groups) should also be included in this classification of ‘pet trade’, or that a separate “enforceable Code of Practice for the re-homing of comparison animals be established”.
Why?
The RSPCA and AWL each have rigorous adoption processes that aim to ensure animals that are re-homed with owners that suit the specific type and temperament of the animals in question. The prospective owners also have a clear understanding of the needs of the animals that they are adopting.
Unfortunately this is not necessarily the case with all re-homing, adoption, and fostering enterprises. Members of the AVA have been confronted with the unfortunate situations of clients having adopted animals without a clear understanding of the health care costs of animals that have severe health issues.
Now I see a few enormous, head-spinning issues with this.
The first is that I’ve not seen a study into outcomes for shelter animals adopted in Australia, which shows there is a problem with people being unsatisfied with their pets. I haven’t seen it because, as far as I know, it doesn’t exist.
“Members of the AVA have been confronted with the unfortunate situations…” is what we call anecdotal evidence. The AVA SA should know better than anyone, that policy should not be developed on the he-said-she-said of ‘perceived’ problems and ‘feeling’ of what might solve them. In fact, they have in the past, gone to great lengths to condemn other organisations for doing exactly that, on the issue of mandatory desesexing (amongst others).
Were the people being who had adopted pets deterred by these reported “health issues”? Did they return their pet to the shelter from which they adopted it, or did they ask the vet for the pet to be euthanised? Or were they happy to seek support and keep their pet?
Because the reality is, while most rescue pet adopters are happy and have no problems, those that do go on to have issues are usually minor and that most people would not have rather their pet was killed in a shelter than adopted to them. Which is the reality if we start ‘turning up the filter’, to ensure only perfect pets are placed.
The second, is the danger of using the RSPCA, or the Animal Welfare League, or any other one of the major shelters, as a ‘best practice’ model. For a start, every single shelter does things differently. Even between agencies under the same brand.
Organsations also do things differently, depending on who is in charge at the time. The RSPCA SA killed a lot of healthy, treatable pets in the past. By all accounts, under its new management, the amount of killing has reduced significantly. So were they doing it ‘right’ now, or then?
Who is offering the ‘appropriate’ service? The bulk shelter with limited time to treat and rehabilitate, who does the straight-forward high-volume saves? Or the rescue group who takes their special needs pets, offers longer-term care and places them in extra compassionate homes?
And finally, despite many putting the model of the major shelters up on a pedestal, they are completely unproven. No ‘temperament test’ used by Australian animal welfare organisations has been scientifically validated. They are a poor predictor of future behaviour, throw both false positives and false negatives and vary in results on the same animals from day to day. See a full post on the topic here…
The AVA SA offers this rather dismissive view of special-needs rescuers…
The AVA understands that some organisations will re-home animals that have specific medical issues. In these cases it is essential that the new owners are made aware of the exact conditions and the additional time and funds it will take to properly care for them.
Again, is there any evidence that groups who do rehome pets special needs (which tend to be private rescuers), aren’t giving full disclosure causing people to be unsatisfied with their adoptions? Because my experience with these groups is that by the time they’ve sunk hundreds of dollars and immeasurable volunteer resources into treatment, getting the pet off them is the major obstacle for adopters, rather than them handing pets out to unprepared parties.
See what I did there? Anecdotal evidence…
I don’t know what is driving this push from the AVA SA – except for maybe a need to feel ‘hip’ as animal rehoming becomes extremely popular. But their assertion that the ‘old school’ animal sheltering models of the RSPCA and AWL should be developed into a state-wide enforceable code of practice is outdated, clunky and unhelpful.
One of the biggest strengths of modern community-based, animal rescue is that it morphs and fits to fill demand. It is really only just gaining momentum, thanks to an enormous swing towards No Kill and low kill expectations being placed on pounds and shelters by their community.
While it would be excellent for the major animal welfare organisation business model, to regulate community sheltering out of existence, what we know is it would not be good for the pets.
Currently, the biggest risk to any homeless animal isn’t being adopted – it’s being killed by a pound or shelter who has every legal right, regardless of how healthy, happy, friendly or adoptable that pet is – to refuse to save its life. If the AVA SA are truly working to improve outcomes for homeless pets, they should prioritise working to protect pets in pounds – removing the discretionary powers of council pounds to refuse access, to pets by the community and mandating they emphasise adoptions.
Right then AVA, you show us the best practice, evidence-based models which are underpinning your proposed legislation; “We are calling for a specific code of practice for the re-homing of companion animals to ensure animals are re-homed with owners that suit the specific type and temperament of the animal. The prospective owners should also have a clear understanding of the needs of the animal they are adopting.”
Because there is no evidence that any of the extant temperament tests are predictors of future behaviour and although there are several systems which propose to make it easier to match animals and humans, I’ve see no studies which do long (or even short) -term follow up to evaluate their efficacy.
And AVA, it might have escaped your notice, but your sample population upon which you are basing your premise on is already selected to be animals with health and behaviour issues, since they are the ones who will be consulting a veterinarian. The rest of the healthy, well-behaved population of pets are not turning up in vast numbers.
In fact what you are experiencing, AVA, is called an observational selection bias. “This is that effect of suddenly noticing things we didn’t notice that much before — but we wrongly assume that the frequency has increased. It’s not that these things are appearing more frequently, it’s that we’ve (for whatever reason) selected the item in our mind, and in turn, are noticing it more often.”
So as adopting rescue pets becomes more common, more of the general pets in the population are rescue pets, and because rescue pets have a higher profile, when some of those pets have issues, some vets are noticing them more. And because they are now paying attention, they are assuming that its more common than it really is.
But really AVA, a logical fallacy is not basis for constructing effective legislation.