From the Lilydale and Yarra Valley Leader;
‘Mt Evelyn nurse slams kill Bill proposal’
A Mt Evelyn vet nurse and dog owner says she fears that increased council powers under a proposed State Government blitz on dangerous dogs will lead to the needless killings of pets.
Tough new laws to crack down on dangerous dogs, including increased powers to immediately destroy them, were introduced to Parliament last month and are yet to be debated.
“This Bill is giving council officers with little or no dog behaviour training, knowledge or experience the authority to destroy dogs,” Ms Revell said.
Agriculture Minister Joe Helper said the laws would give council the authority to seize and destroy unregistered or unidentifiable dogs found unsupervised in public if they reasonably believed the dog was a danger to public safety.
“The proposed legislation will also empower an authorised officer to immediately destroy any dog that they believe will cause imminent serious injury or death to a person or another animal,” Mr Helper said.
Eltham canine behaviour specialist Catherine Saunders is worried.
“The name of this Bill is grossly misleading in its reference to dangerous dogs because it increases the powers of councils to destroy any dogs, whether or not they have been declared dangerous,” Mrs Saunders said.
“This act also allows for bias, personal opinions or preconceived ideas to go unquestioned, which may result in a beloved pet’s wrongful death.”
One would have to ask why a vet nurse and a dog trainer are the ones speaking out against this bill and in defence of dogs, while those in charge of managing dog welfare in Victoria, remain silent?
Giving animal management the power to kill roaming dogs, rather than impound them is unprecedented in Australia. The power to kill impounded dogs, without allowing them the community agreed holding time is in no way making the community safer and is simply unethical, convenience killing. With the rate of misidentification of dogs by professional animal welfare workers estimated to be around 70%, and with the new laws to be used against dogs identified with the vague description of ‘pit bull type’ – how can anyone who cares for dog welfare support such a grossly over-reaching law?;
Because it has benefits
What’s one of the biggest problems faced by animal shelters? Big black dog syndrome. Basically, a lot of the nice, friendly dogs you get in look like this;
While the dogs that are easily adopted and walk out the door, look like this;
With the huge momentum of No Kill across the world, and the community of Australia demanding groups release their kill statistics, those groups who’ve built their business on collecting valuable pound contracts, killing the majority of the pets and saving a few, can see their empires beginning to crumble. If they’re not willing to work with community rescue groups to save the lives of pets and would rather kill, than share their fortunes, then they need to find some manner in which to defend this monopoly as the animal sheltering world evolves around them.
The first effort was to change the code of practice to exclude community rescue groups. Thanks to community backlash this is now under review, but these efforts to make community foster care groups illegal, would have allowed pets to continue to be killed because there is ‘no alternative’.
This second effort is to manipulate the kill rates of these ‘super pounds’ in Victoria. The idea that each and every pet should be given the chance at a fair evaluation, kept healthy and adopted into a home no matter how long it takes, is incompatible with the ‘push them out the backdoor in the bodybag then blame the irresponsible public’ business plan.
Given big, black dogs can be the hardest to rehome, simply by expanding the killing they are already doing for ‘pit bulls’, creating a new classification for killing – ‘government mandated dangerous dog’ – pets which would take up space, or take an extended time to rehome, can be killed without question.
Like ‘feral’ cats (any cat can be determined to be ‘feral’ and therefore unrehomable and excluded from annual shelter figures) ‘pit bull type’ is suitably vague, open to interpretation and hard enough to quantify that it gives pounds and shelters the ability to kill any dog that comes into care, call it ‘of pit bull type’ and not have it impact their statistics… and volia! high kill rates can be manipulated to look low again.
Expanding the killing
We must reject these laws which mandate the killing of friendly, healthy animals. This was never about ‘public safety’, but simply insulating groups from criticism of shelter killing, maintaining control of pound contracts and blocking the community from taking action on behalf of animals.
