How many pets would you expect to see saved in a year with a budget of over $12 million dollars?
$12 million dollars is a veritable fortune in animal welfare circles. From the tiniest rescue group working on a shoestring, through to the grandest private shelter; $12 million dollars should be able to save the lives of tens of thousands of pets, with some left over to put towards impoundment prevention and relationship building with the community. So news that the The Lost Dogs Home have released their annual report, showing that they this year, like previous years, recorded “revenue from continuing operations” of $12,375,271, should be a cause for celebration from pet lovers and homeless animals.
But unfortunately despite its enormous resources, the Lost Dogs Home continues to be a disaster for pets.
This week the Home is imploring the community to keep their ‘best friend safe’ over the holiday period, listing five things pet owners can do to ensure their pets aren’t spooked and lost during new years eve celebrations, and that…
… the best hope for lost, frightened animals is to be picked up by The Lost Dogs’ Home’s after-hours ambulances or a local council’s animal control officer… Sadly there is no guarantee that every pet can be reached in time, before the worst happens.
The ‘worst’ is obviously the pet being injured or killed on the street. But what are the ‘best’ outcomes for pets once they enter the Lost Dogs Home’s ‘care’?
The report shows over the 2010/11 year the outcomes for pets were as follows;
3,525 – adopted
7,407 – returned to owner
11,872 – killed (2,879 dogs, 8,993 cats)
This means for every single one of the pets the organisation processes, they make a whopping $536, regardless of the outcome for the pet. By these calculations, they make a staggering $6.3 million dollars for pets who are simply killed and their bodies incinerated.
But how can this be happening?
Local councils pay this organisation for pets collected during holiday celebrations. ‘Pet ambulances’ aren’t an altruistic effort to protect pets, but a money generating investment. Rather than pets being returned to owners as a public service, these ‘ambulances’ are simply glorified ranger vans impounding on behalf of councils, taking pets to the North Melbourne pound. It’s also worth noting they aren’t paid to per-pet returned to owner, but can hold and kill the pet and still be paid for their services.
Cats fare even worse than dogs in this purely profit-driven arrangement. Each year, local councils pay the Lost Dogs Home to actively trap unowned cats and bring them to the Home. Despite being perpetually at capacity with lost pet cats and friendly rehomable strays, the organisation chooses to take on the extra role of ‘cat slaughterhouse’, offering untame cats no option other than death. Untame cats, or those acting feral cat be killed immediately. Each cat-trapping council tender earns the organisation a yearly salary and keeps their intake numbers high, but the organisation does little to actually combat cat-overpopulation, offering just 100 discount desexing surgeries per year under the ‘Who’s for Cats’ program – while they kill close to 10,000 cats annually.
Along with council income, they also receive around $6 million dollars in bequests and donations annually, ($7.5m in donations and legacies this year). Pet lovers hoping their contributions will see pets saved, ironically supporting one of the largest killer of companion animals in the country.
With all this money being generated from lost and homeless pets, what incentive does the Lost Dogs Home have to reduce intakes and killing? None. Even as the solutions to shelter killing have been available to the animal sheltering community since the 80’s and in the popular media since 2009 they still continue to choose to squander the enormous fortune given to them by the pet loving community every year… and kill rather than save the lives of pets.
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What can I do?
This section has been added to address the large public outcry & requests for people asking “what can I do?”
To lend the words of Lisa, an awesome animal advocate:
The rewards for killing are obscene. That this is accepted without screaming from the rooftops is also distressing, however most in the public domain have no idea. Yes people can stop making financial contributions to LDH but this will have minimal impact. In addition to the bequests, the bulk of their revenue comes from the very lucrative pound contracts. Losing these is what will hurt. Being front page news for their kill rates will hurt. Being held to account by those who support them will hurt. Complaining on facebook may relieve people’s frustration but it makes no difference to the animals. Invest your time wisely and write to all the councils who provide “kill” work to LDH and demand they get with the times and the No Kill movement. Contact the media and demand LDH becomes front page news. If you really want change, you need to work for it and demand change.
If you are in one of the following municipalities, then it is up to you as a ratepayer to demand change. If you are an animal lover it is up to you to let the media know this is important.
The Lost Dogs Home provide pound services for 10 councils (Melbourne, Moreland, Moonee Valley, Brimbank, Maribyrnong, Wyndham, Hobson’s Bay, Darebin, Hume and Port Phillip).
They provide animal management services for the City of Greater Bendigo. The Home owns a property at Cranbourne west to service the Cities of Bayside, Casey, Cardinia, Frankston, Greater Dandenong and Kingston.
They are a leading organisation in providing animal management and pound services for councils. The Home hold more than 20 council contracts. (ref)
You could pretty much insert RSPCA SA or AWL for LDH.
On Christmas night I found a dog on a main road in Adelaide (an old, fat red heeler with a limp). I took it to an emergency vet for a scan as it had no collar. No Chip. They decided to turn her over to the council. I had to pretend to be the dogs owner the next day to get it out (Adelaide has a central lockup system before moving) as the AWL hold the contract for my area. As my vet said…. yes the AWL yould have put her down at the vet check I organised the next day.
Today I had a knock on my door from the council with animal control… after the mandatory 72 hours had expired so the dog would have been dead by then.
Luckily before the council visit her owners had come back from holiday and managed to track me down from one of the multiple places I had put her desctription.
This is what it has come to….lies and dirty tricks to save a life… her owners had no idea she would have been dead…. the council didnt care…but she certainly did appreciate her two days with me.
The moral of the story is the system is failing and there is nothing but apathy
AWDRI saved nearly a thousand (final figures not yet tallied) with less than $350K and only 3 PTS due to ailing health issues with only wonderful volunteers and no operational shelter. With additional funding even more would have been saved. NO KILL can be achieved and should be the ambition of all shelters in this country.
The animals others label dangerous we can handle and so often are dissappointed that councils will not release to any other than the RSPCA due to their undeserved labelling by unqualified people. Of course this label is nearly always a death sentence to these dogs. A pound environment is the worst possible place for a working dog so why would any inexperienced amateur attempt any sort of behavioural assessment there?
Change will come and we will continue to strive for it.
Poor voiceless animals. Greed will always be the motivator for some humans. Those who care about animals have to continue to shout, LOUDLY
Thank you for taking the time to write such a well-researched blog. I think there are not only animal welfare issues at stake here but also consumer deception issues at play.
I have noticed that the LOST DOGS HOME have changed their home page. It now says “compassion and care since 1910”. It used to say “100% commitment to re-homing savable pets” (or similar). I asked lots of questions about what “rehomable” meant on several open Facebook pages. This was around 5 weeks ago.
Rather odd that there has been this change as I recall that claim “100% commitment to re-homing savable pets” (or similar) to have been on their website for some time.
Discussions with a former staff member have revealed that the LDH watches Facebook and Internet sites regularly where critical discussions are taking place. Clearly this open discussion and questioning is having an effect.
Graeme Smith calls people who speak out Cyber bullies. I wonder what words he has for people who mislead the public into thinking they are animal welfare when really animal management and kill such high numbers of animals while at the same time venturing interstate for council contracts.
I understand that when LDH took over the council contract in QLD (Brisbane area) staff from Melbourne were sent up to Brisbane to work for them. Why not use the existing local staff (assuming this information is correct)?
The community have the power and the ability to change this – get inspired people and start questioning and advocating for these impounded Victorian ‘pets’ and keep questioning and advocating.
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.)
“Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.”
Orison Swett Marden)
We have been big supporters of the Lost dogs Home ,but are devastated to read these statistics,truly appalling ,and feel we have been misled .This needs to be addressed.We will be reviewing our support of this organization.
“This means for every single one of the pets the organisation processes, they make a whopping $536” – This is just staggering. What I couldn’t do with that much per animal that comes through my care! Thank-you so much for maintaining your blog and continuing to publish such alarming statistics. I hope it’s reaching the right people.
Shocking amount of money to be made, knowing that so many animals are killed. With this profit you would expect some serious change in how animals are rehoused. being part of many animal charities this is serious money that really should be affecting the lives of cats and dogs, not ending them.
Why would LDH spend money desexing, microchipping, and vaccinating a pet when they are getting $536 for just killing it.
Thank you, Saving Pets, for collating this information. Here’s hoping it goes viral.
Re “Sadly there is no guarantee that every pet can be reached in time, before the worst happens.”
I’d suggest that ‘the worst’ would be ending up in LDH’s hands.
James – Good on you for saving the heeler’s life and having the nouse to play the system. It’s sad that you had to go to those lengths.
Robyn – I hope that you stop supporting LDH and will switch your financial support to a no kill shelter or rescue organisation. When you do, please make it very clear to LDH why you’re jumping ship. Clearly, it’s only when they start haemorrhaging financially that they’ll change their ways.
I used to make monthly donations to LDH, before I found out about them. I’ve now cancelled all donations to kill shelters and support no kill and rescue organisations instead. When I cancelled the last one, I told them that I was switching to a no kill organisation, via email. The email exchange suggested that the person fully understood my reasons and didn’t like what the shelter was doing, either.