October 25, 2009Comments are closed.resistance
One of the interesting things about kill rates is that they don’t correlate in any way with a shelter’s budget. While some groups do amazing things on a shoe-string, others acquire enormous wealth while supporting policies and procedures that unnecessarily cost pets their lives.
Unlike the RSPCA, which releases its intake, rehoming and kill rate each year, The Lost Dogs Home has been notoriously cagey with its kill figures. Realising the community find high kill rates abhorrent and will tend to give support to those groups with a No Kill focus, the LDH has purposely failed to offer their community the same level of transparency as other groups.
Which has actually worked pretty well for them. According to their fundraising managers Pareto, The Lost Dogs Home have acquired a massive $12 million dollars surplus, thanks to their National Pet Registry donor database of more than half a million pet lovers. Presently, they run pound contracts for 11 local councils and claim to care for over 20,000 pets every year.
However, this year Victoria implemented a requirement that all of their pounds submit a ‘Domestic Animal Plan’ for public comment. This gives an interesting insight into how pounds in different areas of Victoria are working, or in some cases, not. And shows quite clearly that the size of a group’s intake, or its bank account, effects little how effective they are in saving lives.
The Stonningham local council use the Save-a-Dog Scheme shelter (who run under a No Kill Philosophy) to care for their impounded animals. With a focus on getting lost pets back to their owners and rehoming those left, their animal impound stats look like this:
Dogs impounded: 272
Returned to owners: 237
Rehomed: 33
Killed: 3
Now for comparison, we have the Melbourne City Council. They have a similar number of impounds for dogs, but they instead use the Lost Dogs Home to run their pound:
Dogs impounded: 168
Returned to owners: 90
Rehomed: 30
Killed: 40
So while a stray dog going into to Stonningham Council pound has a 99% chance of living. A dog impounded in Melbourne council pound and processed by The Lost Dogs Home has a 1 in 4 chance of being killed.
Another council, Maroondah City, used Victorian Animal Aid to process their stray and abandoned pets during 07/08. With extensive programs in behavioural training and rehabilitation, volunteerism and pet personality matching, Animal Aid promote that they “only euthanase an animal as a last resort”. Their figures look like this:
Dogs impounded: 600
Returned to owners: 468
Rehomed: 60
Killed: 72
Compare that to a council processing a similar number of dogs, Moreland City Council, who’s impounded animals go to The Lost Dogs Home in North Melbourne.
Dogs impounded: 593
Returned to owners: 236
Rehomed: 63
Killed: 189
(Missing 105)
So of the 600 dogs Maroondah City’s impounded at Animal Aid, 88% were saved; either returned to their owners or rehomed.
While the 593 dogs of Moreland City Council, who’s animals go to The Lost Dogs Home in North Melbourne, 299 were saved, 189 were killed and 105 dogs disappeared into thin air.
These discrepancies in performance can be seen over and over again. Bendigo City Council have a pound contract with the RSPCA. The RSPCA Bendigo use ‘Adoptapet’ and their own website to advertise available animals, has a volunteer program and seems to have a good relationship with rescue groups. And while their figures certainly ain’t anything to write home about, at least they rehome as many as they kill:
Dogs impounded: 2,432
Returned to owners: 1,335
Rehomed: 554
Killed: 543
A comparably large number of impounds can be seen at the Hume City Council, but they use the Lost Dogs Home to impound their animals:
Dogs impounded 1494
Returned to owners 753
Rehomed 238
Killed 503
In both Bendigo and Hume around 50% of impounded dogs were returned to their owners. But what is revealing, is what happened to the remainder.
While at Bendigo, an equal number of dogs went to new homes as were killed, at the LDH/Hume, twice as many dogs were killed as found new homes.
According to a review of all of the available data, the Lost Dogs Home took in a little over 7,700 cats and killed nearly 6,600 of them (see breakdown below). Less than 2 in 10 cats left The LDH alive.
These figures are now freely available, for everyone in the community to make assessments of their own local councils and council pounds. There is no longer a veil of secrecy for The Lost Dogs Home, or any pound in Victoria to hide its poor performance behind.
While I fully support any group being successful and business minded, for The Lost Dogs Home to take $12 million dollars of Australia’s money under the guise of saving pets – money that could have been given to other groups with a life saving mission -Â only to use it to become Victoria’s largest killer of pets, and to do so in the face of alternatives, is intolerable.
We will not stand for it a moment longer.
| Lost Dogs Home | ||||
| The Lost Dogs Home 2 Gracie St, North Melbourne, Vic 3051 | ||||
| Council | Impounded | Returned to Owner | Rehoused | Killed |
| DOGS | ||||
| City of Melbourne | 168 | 90 | 30 | 40 |
| Yarra | 108 | 84 | 2 | 14 |
| Hume CC | 1494 | 753 | 238 | 503 |
| Maribyrnong CC | 515 | 253 | 84 | 178 |
| Moreland CC | 593 | 236 | 63 | 189 |
| Moonee Valley CC | 447 | 229 | 41 | 77 |
| Brimbank CC | 1449 | 31% (449) | 21% (304) | 48% (696) |
| Total | 4774 | 2094 | 762 | 1697 |
| CATS | ||||
| City of Melbourne | 260 | 24 | 10 | 218 |
| Yarra | 150 | 13 | 1 | 86 |
| Hume CC | 1741 | 27 | 83 | 1631 |
| Maribyrnong CC | 866 | 33 | 17 | 816 |
| Moreland CC | 2468 | 21 | 631 | 1816 |
| Moonee Valley CC | 459 | 19 | 16 | 424 |
| Brimbank CC | 1787 | 4% (71) | 4% (71) | 92% (1644) |
| Total | 7731 | 208 | 829 | 6635 |
| **Wyndham & Darebin unavailable | ||||
These figures speak for themselves….when will something be done about the killing that goes on at the Lost Dogs Home. They appear to be a law unto themselves and will only speak in vague ‘percentages’. We must push for an inquiry into this place, it has gone on long enough.
While the statistics above are very sad, I think the story is also about what socio economic group these pounds are servicing. For example you cannot possibly compare Stonnington (Save a dog scheme) that looks after the wealthiest and most educated suburbs in Melbourne to the City of Melbourne or other western suburban Councils. I wonder how many pitbulls and other aggressive breeds Stonnington Pound get or severley neglected dogs compared to LDH, in terms of percetage of admissions? I think the odds are that there are more responsible pet owners and therefore more well loved and well cared for dogs in Toorak than say Sunshine? I dont know but perhaps some of those animals in the kill figures are really nasty dogs that you cant trust? Would you want to be responsible for rehousing them and then they go bite a child? I just think it may be considered. But stills sad to see so many dogs and cats killed. Bloody irresponsible owners!
Okies here’s the thing.
Shelters exist to serve their communities. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the wealthiest suburb or the poorest, their job is to support pet owners when they own pets, and support pets if they lose their owners. That’s why shelters exist.
Lets speculate for a moment; if the LDH does have problems in its community with people being uneducated about pet care, not desexing or raising unsocialised dogs, then it needs to be working proactively to address these issues.
“Our community is full of bad owners so we kill the pets that come to us” doesn’t cut it. They need to be working with their communities to bring about change so that their pound isn’t always full.
There’s never has been, or will be, a ‘one sized fits all’ rescuing approach that works for every community everywhere. However, there are a series of programs that are the basic requirements of how a modern shelter should be operating, regardless of where they’re located simply because a) they work and b) they work.
These 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 they were doing. Now they’ve found out some organisations are nothing 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
– PR, marketing and community outreach
– Working with rescue rather than killing adoptable pets
– Volunteer programs that allow community involvement
– Proactive redemption/stray collection strategies
These are the basic programs, that need to be implemented to bring about change. The LDH have simply buckets of money given to them by people who want to see the lives of pets saved, so why aren’t they implementing these lifesaving programs with that money?
If it were an underperforming hospital, we’d want action. If it were a failing school we’d want answers as to why this has gone on unnoticed for so long. When there are innocents involved, we need accountability and transparency, and certainly so far that’s not what we’ve been getting from the LDH.
Hi Ginia,
While I do agree that lower socio economic areas generally have more dogs impounded and not claimed I will have to dissagree that they cant save as many dogs.
I started a relationship with one such pound and together (thanks to one great animal control officer) we have managed to reduce the euthanasia rate by my estimation to about 1/8 th. They dont “sell” their dogs, the only requirment is the dog is registered prior to being rehomed direct from the pound and that if the dog isnt sterilised, the new owner arranges this through a local vet of their choice, a pound officer then will drop the dog to the vet on the day it is booked in and new owner collects the dog direct from the vet and pays the fee charged by the vet for the sterilisation.
They get a large percentage of bull breeds and mixes in there compared to other pounds and guess what, the majority are saved, if not claimed by their owner, then rehomed direct from the pound and if not direct from the pound then we organise for a rescue to take them.
You only need one good pound staff member pushing for the dogs to make a big difference to how many dogs can be saved from the needle.