Playing the blame game

From a pound worker from the outer regions of NSW (about 7hrs out of Sydney).

 

“The work I mainly do now is 90% full time impounding dogs and trapping cats. So far since 1st June 2007, 1024 dogs and cats have passed through the small animal shelter, all bar 17 have been destroyed. You ask what can be done, I feel all companion animals should be desexed unless the owners are registered breeders of these animals”

See that? See how blame was shifted from a department failing to save animals and instead was put onto the “evil nasty public who won’t desex”.


If saving a pet is a success and killing a pet is a failure, these guys are failing 99.8% of the time. I don’t know of any other industry that would be happy with a 17 in 1,024 success rate – certainly nothing in the private sector where failure that extraordinary would make the papers.


Yet this group is allowed to blame and feel helpless, go in to work day in day and fail, while avoiding doing the one thing that could actually save these animals – taking a good hard look at their operations and asking “what are we doing wrong?”

• are we doing enough to work with rescue groups or could we find people to help us start one?




• do we offer enough in the way of discount microchipping and awareness of it’s importance?




• do we make it easy for low income earner to have access to desexing? Do we desex all the animal we release ourselves?




• can we promote our animals better? Use newspapers, internet or local media to let people know about us?




• do our location, opening hours and procedures make it easy for people to reclaim their lost animals?




• do we welcome people who want to adopt from us? Do we make it easy for them to do so?




• could we be moving animals to another location to keep from killing for space?




• are we working enough with our community? Are we involving them in solutions? Are our messages getting through? If not, why not?




• could we be doing more?

Blaming the public is a cop out; 17 pets saved out of 1,024 isn’t a desexing issue… thats an impotent animal control department.