March 26, 2008Comments are closed.attitude, shelter procedure
Australian’s love their pets. We have one of the largest rates of ownership in the world with nearly 4 million dogs and 2.5 million cats living as pets in our country.
But why have pets at all?
Well, it’s all a product of the biggest economic boom since World War II colliding with some important social changes. More women delaying having children, more singles, more gay and lesbian couples, more elderly people seeking companionship.
We love them so much that households now spend more on them than on child care. That’s $700 for every man, woman and child every year – 50% more than five years ago.
But what does this mean for rescue? Well for a starters, lots of fantastic homes!
Bernard Salt: Certainly I do think that by the end of this decade the largest social institution in Australia will be single person households, so that the family, Mum, Dad and the kids, is receding in terms of market share. So less than 28% of households are now Mum, Dad and the kids, whereas by the end of the decade you’ll find that 29% of households are single person households. Now the issue with single person households is that people are looking for companionship and as a consequence, people living singly will include increasingly, pets as their companions. So you could see in Australia, in the next decade, where the fur family, the pet family, actually becomes the dominant social institution in Australia, rather than the human family.
Anecdotally, adoption is most popular amongst people who have owned pets in the past, or currently have a pet. These experienced owners are less intimidated and more able to specify exactly what their needs are and as such make great adoptive parents.
But even great pet parents find themselves looking for a new pet every 10-15 years, as sadly no matter how much we’d like them to, they don’t live forever.
Based on 4 million dogs and 2.5 million cats over 15 years we can conservatively estimate that there will be around half a million new pet homes becoming available every single year. And thanks to changes in the family structure of Australia, this number is growing.
So how are you going to reach them?
