When pet lovers heard about a tortured puppy whose ears and tail were cut off with scissors in a brutal attack, they were horrified. The public outcry created a media storm across Victoria, Australia and then the world. And people flocked with donations and supplies to help ‘Buckley’ get a second chance at a happy life.
Without a shadow of a doubt, Buckley’s story has been the biggest story that The Lost Dogs’ Home has been involved in over the past 25 years. It was covered by all the TV stations, the Herald Sun, The Age and Leader press and shook hundreds of thousands of people around the world to the very core.
Our phones rang off the hook; we were receiving hundreds of emails a day and the number of visits to our web site, dogshome.com, crashed the server. People who had never had contact with us before were driving from the other side of Melbourne to donate money or blankets, coats or food for Buckley.
The public condemnation of this abuse and the unprecedented flood of support should have heralded a ‘new dawn’ at The Lost Dogs Home; after all, if the saving of one small life could engage such enormous community compassion and see the nation opening their hearts and wallets, surely this was a clear message that pet lovers want to see pets saved, not killed.
But not even a month later, The Lost Dogs Home called for “pit bull type” dogs to be declared dangerous. Advocating that while a little black and white puppy like Buckley should get a second chance, the little black and white puppy in the image above (and all those like him), should be killed without question as a restricted breed x.
While his own organisation kills in excess of 10,000 pets annually, The Lost Dogs Home Director Graeme Smith, championed to expand the bureaucracy powers of animal services to impound and kill dogs, reduce the accountability of animal services (allowing them to kill lost pets on sight) and reducing owners rights to protect their pets through normal legal appeal channels. A drive which has put every blocky-headed and bully breed in Victoria in jeopardy, regardless of whether the animal had ever displayed aggression in its life.
Cats have fared little better; of the nearly 8,500 unclaimed cats The Lost Dogs Home processes annually, over 7,500 are killed (nearly 90%). Despite this systematic killing and the almost guaranteed death of any cat entering the pound system, The Lost Dogs Home advocated that all ownerless cats be rounded up and impounded, leading them almost without fail to their deaths. The resulting 40% increase in cat impoundments was deemed a program success, while the increase in killing was blamed on global warming.
It’s worth noting, that The Lost Dogs Home are not legally required to take in more pets than they can rehome – but they choose to.
With pets entering the shelter and not leaving alive, it would be assumed that any other community groups, private rescue or breed rescue would be welcomed with open arms. But the opposite is true. The Lost Dogs Home chooses to kill pets, rather than transfer them to any of the dozens of groups standing by with capacity. In addition, by taking on the major pound contracts and shutting out private rescue, they have made it impossible for the community of local rescue groups that are seen in other major capital cities to grow.
Without a foster care program for sick, injured or infant animals at the LDH, those pets who need extra TLC have no chance; euthanased for being infant or untreatable. By comparison, if these animals were lucky enough to enter most of the other shelters in Australia, they would be transferred to a caring foster home environment until they were strong enough to be rehomed and then placed with new, loving families. Again, they choose to kill in the face of alternatives.
LDH_New_Stats – The Lost Dogs Home Intake Statistics 2008
It’s not hard to see the hypocrisy of an organisation who take public funds given by a compassionate community who want to see animals lives saved, to lobby for legislation that, not only doesn’t serve the pets they claim to protect, but actually seeks to increase their capacity to kill them. An organisation who fails to implement the community based programs that could save lives, or offer their supporters the kind of transparency they deserve.
The supporters of The Lost Dogs Home, the same people who wanted Buckley to have a second chance, want each and every healthy, friendly, adoptable pet to be given the same chance. People expect their local shelter to reflect their values, and every single person who donates to The Lost Dogs Home, does so with the intention that their money is being used to save the lives of animals. But even now as these same animal lovers who have donated millions of dollars ask for an explanation as to why these funds sit untouched in bank accounts, the group has chosen to shut down communications, banning anyone from social networking sites who dares to question their policies.
The leaders of this organisation must now recognise the enormous outrage felt by a community who has had its trust broken. This is not the time to put out positive spin or try and quell discontent, but open their gates and give the community access to this service they helped to build. And we as pet lovers and supporters of The Lost Dogs Home must now demand it; we are in a position to dictate the direction of this organisation and we will not settle for anything less than a lifesaving focus.
What we’re asking for aren’t unreasonable requests; they’re not complicated or magic. They’re what shelters were created to do. In fact, this is what they community have always thought The Lost Dogs Home were doing. Now they’ve found out this organisation is hardly more than a ‘garbage’ processing plant – pets go in – dead bodies come out in barrels. And the pet loving public won’t stand for it.
Mandatory programs. No ifs or buts
– A compassionate director with a focus on saving lives
– High volume, low cost (free) desexing programs
– A comprehensive fostering program for infant, elderly and rehabilitation
– Offsite adoption programs, with a focus on promoting cats as great pets
– PR, marketing and community outreach
– Working with rescue rather than killing adoptable pets
– Volunteer programs that allow community involvement
– Transparent reporting of performance including; intakes, rehoming stats and kill rates/reasons
– An ongoing call to the community to help with ‘at risk’ pets (notification of which adoptable pets will be killed and when – fostering, rescue and adoption options).
– Proactive redemption/stray collection strategies including a website which allow people who’ve lost a pet to search for their pet online
These are the basic programs, that need to be implemented to bring about change. The Lost Dogs Home have enormous resources and unimaginable potential to act as a safety net for animals. However, each day they delay implementing programs that save lives, they move further out of touch with public sentiment. Each time they promote antiquated and regressive policies seeking even more powers to kill, they become more despised by those who truly love animals. We will no longer accept the systematic killing of companion animals because it’s easier than putting in the programs required to stop it.
Enough is enough.
