The Lost Dogs Home still stuck in a brutal past

 

One of the basic tenets of animal ‘sheltering’ is to offer pets shelter. If something goes wrong with the pet/owner relationship, shelters are the ones the community expects – and pays handsomely – to step in and protect the animals. Sometimes this will be because a pet is lost. Sometimes it is because the pet is no longer wanted. And sometimes it is because the pet belongs to a vulnerable owner who needs help.

This is very often the case with elderly owners. Their pets are at great risk if they go missing, not only if the owner has limited mobility, but because often they have no idea how to formulate a plan to find their pets. Sometimes elderly owners will make the ‘wrong’ pet ownership decisions. And both they, and the pets they keep, need extra support from animal agencies. However, this should be where animal shelters shine, because old people + pets should be a good news story. That is what we are paying for.

 

 

This is Scruffy. The Lost Dogs Home killed Scruffy last month (December).

Scruffy’s elderly owner had dementia and felt one day the right thing to do was to take his best friend to the Lost Dogs Home. Scruffy was accepted as a surrender and as such, there was no holding period required for him.

For more than two days, the man’s family called and searched for Scruffy at the Lost Dogs Home. A dog of his description was not there they were told. Eventually they got the answers they didn’t want to hear. Scruffy had been killed, and the reason given was ‘skin allergies’.

Scruffy wasn’t ‘aggressive’, he wasn’t ‘unadoptable’ – he was a nice 5 year old little boy – killed for a treatable condition.

His mentally frail owner thought he was doing the right thing when he took Scruffy to them. He thought that Scruffy would be protected. That The Lost Dogs Home was a safe place for him. Unfortunately for Scruffy, he was wrong.

 

 

This is Fonzie. The Lost Dogs Home killed Fonzie this week.

Fonzie went missing in a storm. Unfortunately his elderly owner didn’t know how to begin a search for him. When his owner’s grandchildren returned from their Christmas holidays, he’d already been missing a week. They frantically posted his picture across social media and visited the Lost Dogs Home, where they were told no dog meeting his description had been brought in.

A photo on a Council lost and found website indicated he indeed was delivered to the LDH facility. However by the time the family found out this out – and just hours before the family would arrive to collect him – Fonzie was killed.

This family and Fonzie’s owner, a grandmother who loved her little dog dearly, are devastated.

 

* * * * *

I know you’re asking yourself – how could this happen? Twice?

When I first started blogging, it was because I was outraged by the poor performance of the Lost Dogs Home. They killed pets with impunity. I wrote in 2009;

Make no mistake about it, it was the biggest deception in Australian animal rescue history.

A high kill pound that portrayed itself as a sanctuary, who shut out rescue groups and turned the institutionalised killing of homeless pets into a multi-million dollar business. While other animal organisations around the country developed life affirming policies, reached out to their community and slowly worked to increase public affection for companion animals; they doggedly maintained an outdated ‘catch and kill’ mentality, driving merciless campaigns against ‘pit bull type’ dogs and orphan cats and condemning pets to death by the thousands in the face of humane alternatives.

 

When I wrote that piece, the organisation was killing twice as many dogs as it was placing for adoption. You read that right – they killed two dogs for every one who went into a new home. They killed nearly 90% of all cat intakes. It was truly awful and equalled more than 10,000 pets in a single year, in a single shelter. Can you even imagine?

I’d kind of taken my foot off the gas in the last couple of years, because I had mistakenly thought our job was done. Rescues were getting a pet out here and there. They seemed to have improved their adoption promotions (the ‘Human Walking Program’ was one of the most successful animal welfare campaigns I’d seen) and I think we were all a little bit fooled that genuine change had taken place. But we forgot one crucial detail – the proverbial leopard rarely changes its spots.

The three primary management roles at the Lost Dogs Home, have been held by the staff members for a combined total of a staggering 76 years. These three were overseeing the shelter when horrific numbers of animals were unnecessarily killed – and they are still overseeing the unnecessary killing of pets today. They may have flexed a little bit in response to overwhelming public pressure, but essentially the thinking and the processes are the same as they always were. Because they are still in charge.

Both these little dogs should still be alive today. The Lost Dogs Home could have rung practically any rescue group in the country and they would have collected them within hours. But instead they chose to kill – not once, but twice. And because of that, two of our most vulnerable, senior pet owners are heartbroken.

I’m so sorry Scruffy and Fonzie. Our animal sheltering system – the one that was supposed to protect you – became the one who did you the ultimate harm.

* * * * *

We only know about the existence of these dogs thanks to social media. Previously – under the leadership of these three truly evil agents – pets were killed with no oversight whatsoever, and the public wouldn’t have been any the wiser. We were told all the dogs were unadoptable and needed to be killed and there was no other way. Now we know that to be 100% a lie. There were a myriad of options other than killing available to these two dogs.

The only way The Lost Dogs Home will ever be a safe place for pets, is with a massive clean-out of the staff who are failing to do the job we as a community are paying them to do. Starting with this defective management team. There is no future for The Lost Dogs Home, while figures from a brutal history are still setting the direction, the tone and the standards for the organisation.

It is time to go Tribe, Smith and Conroy. Get out. Our pets deserve better than you.

 

* * * * *

A lot of people have written me this morning to ask what they can do.

If you want to get involved and start some change in your local community, the Pound Reform Alliance Australia is intended to do just that. The last two years they have had a protest rally outside the LDH. Get involved. It’s one thing to sit at your keyboard and be outraged, but change will depend on enough people getting involved to make local councils and the LDH see that the community are not happy with the status quo.

The reason the LDH gets away with what they do, is because the councils who give them the animal management contracts don’t care. The only thing at this stage, likely to make change at the LDH, is if they start losing council contracts. If you live in a council area who use the LDH for animal management, you can do something about it. You can lobby your council for change, you can bring together other local people who feel the same to lobby the council. Most Domestic Animal Management Plans (DAMPs) are coming up for renewal in the 16/17, which gives you time to get your lobby group into action. If councils start calling the LDH to account and making live release rates a performance indicator, the LDH will have to change.

All DAMPs have a section with impound and euthanasia statistics for the last couple of years. Most of them are available on council websites, so you can grab the DAMP for your local area and see their figures.

Change is in the hands of the community if they have the will. The City of Melbourne awarded their animal pound contract to the RSPCA last time around, in part as a response to the LDH’s kill rate. It is possible if the community want it to happen.

(Thanks K for this awesome pep talk!)

* * * * *