At the end of 2011, the City of Ipswich had a problem.
Council statistics revealed 720 dogs and 888 cats were put down in the last financial year.
Cr Antoniolli said currently if a dog or cat was not claimed within three working days it was euthanised.
“It is criminal we put down so many pets,” Cr Antoniolli said.
“Ninety per cent of surrendered or abandoned cats are put down in Ipswich.
“That is a terrible social statistic and society should not accept that.
“It is about the community owning the problem. When the AWL takes over we will see a marked improvement. It is the biggest step we’ve taken for animal welfare management.
Killing practically everything that comes through your doors tends to be hugely unpopular when the public find out. And when the killing extends to people’s owned pets, things tend to hit the proverbial fan.
Ipswich found an ingenious way to take the public attention away from their terrible effort at managing the community’s pets. They engaged the AWL Queensland to take over running their crapped out, 90% killing pound.
Ipswich City Council officers would still do all the impounding, but the actual control and operation of the pound would be run by the AWL. This was rumoured to be costing council about $250,000 a year.
From November 18 2011, the Animal Welfare League then got to doing what they did best – saving lives. Regardless of the old facilities and the lack of any council initiated programs already in place, they got in, rolled up their sleeves and the results were dramatic;
“The AWLQ have a commitment to the animals of the Ipswich community and will continue to do so. In just 18 months we have already accomplished zero euthanasia of healthy and sociable animals, set up education programs and subsidised desexing programs which resulted in 500 cats being desexed.
“We feel that if we weren’t working in the community it would be a major step backwards for the animals in the community.”
AWLQ’s Ipswich Rehoming Centre has found families for 1903 animals since its takeover in 2011.
Now, you’d think the Ipswich Council would be celebrating the fantastic success. However, never underestimate the ineptitude of local government.
Animal Welfare League Queensland’s contract to operate the Ipswich pound has been suspended amid allegations of animal neglect.
Ipswich City Council issued the AWLQ Ipswich shelter with a suspension notice on Monday after several complaints were made about the alleged conditions animals were exposed to.
One former volunteer claimed the centre, who has a contract with council to manage the city’s pound at West Ipswich, breached the Animal Care and Protection Act by not meeting standards of basic care.
Council’s Health and Regulation Committee chairman Andrew Antoniolli said an inquiry was under way to investigate the allegations.
“There have been issues raised about the welfare of animals, non-compliance and management issues,” Cr Antoniolli said.
“The council has had a meeting with the management of the Animal Welfare League regarding their unsatisfactory response to a show-cause notice.
“As a result of fresh allegations made by three individuals associated with the AWLQ regarding mismanagement and concern for animals kept there, council has initiated an inquiry into the claims and have served them with a notice effective Monday, March 26.
“The allegations are serious enough to warrant such action.
“That suspension will stand pending the outcome of the inquiry.”
…Cr Antoniolli said council would step in and take back control of the pound in the interim of pending investigations and the pound would remain open.
Obviously, if there are operational problems at the pound, the smart thing for the Ipswich Council to do is to ask the AWL what they need in the way of support. Decades of neglect, aren’t remedied in 18 months.
Do the pound facilities need updating? Could could contribute more into promoting long-termers? Is there segments of the community contributing more pets than others, and could they be helped? What can we DO – should have been the response.
Instead, putting the AWL contract on notice and frogmarching everyone out of the facility poisons the relationship. And I suspect council believe that they can recoup $25ok a year by taking pound management back in house.
Which of course would be a disaster for the pets.
You can check out the current council facilities in a video here.
Don’t let Ipswich go back to killing.
The AWL look like they have done a brilliant job with the facilities thay have been provided with.
How will the council shutting them down and then taking over the same facilities make any difference to the quality of life for those animals kept there???
Are you going to go back to killing everyting that comes through the door when as proved by the rehoming figures provided by the AWL these animals stand a good chance of finding good loving homes.
This is a man made problem we should take responsibility for it and fix it in the right way, they AWL were on the right path in terms of desexing clinics and educating the community.
I really hope you are going to follow in their footsteps or better still let them get on with the great job they were alreday doing!!!
If its so “unpopular” to kill so many pets, how about blaming the people who surrender them for stupid, unnecessary reasons, rather than blaming the pounds or shelters who are dealing with the problem. Yes, it’s possible to improve the kill rate, but its the people surrendering the pets who are to blame for the amount of pets put to sleep.
… its the people surrendering the pets who are to blame for the amount of pets put to sleep.
I could not disagree with you more.
Certainly, there are irresponsible people in the community. Certainly, some irresponsible people are the reason some pets end up in shelters.
But a person off-the-street can no more be blamed for how a shelter is run, than a patient can be blamed for how a hospital is performing. The community can’t ‘take the blame’ if the hospital’s management cuts corners and directly harm patients.
Sure, if the community was perfect and no one ever got sick or injured – then we wouldn’t need hospitals. Maybe we should all be advocating towards a day when hospitals aren’t needed at all!
The proposal is ridiculous. Hospitals exist because the community isn’t perfect. Because sometimes they need help. Sometimes they even bring the injury or disease on themselves – but that is why hospitals are provided, funded by the government – to act as a safety net for the community. Whether they ‘deserve’ help or not.
Shelters and pounds exist to act as a safety net for the community’s pets. To continue to notion that killing pets is the fault of the individual – or the ‘stupid, irresponsible person’ – is to blame them for a complete failure of the system which is designed to protect pets, and a failure that is much larger than a single pet owner.
The model – blame the public, kill pets – has been a complete and abject failure. It’s time to let it go.
Comparing pounds and shelters to a hospital is ridiculous. People can’t help getting sick. People can help surrendering their animals. Sure, some people have legitimate reasons for giving up their animals, but most don’t. Most animals are given up because people didn’t research the animal/breed they were getting and were in over their head, or they though their dog would train itself and when it didn’t it was too much trouble to keep it or too expensive to sort out some training, or they treat the dog like a garden ornament and expect it to be happy doing absolutely nothing day out and day in its whole life, then give it up when it digs up the yard and pulls washing off the line. Or they get a dog and give no thought to what will happen when they have a baby, then they decide a baby and a dog is too much work so the dog has to go. Or they already have a dog and then decided to get a new puppy and then realise 2 dogs is too much so the older dog has to go.
You don’t have to look through many classifieds or hear many shelter stories before you realise how many people give up their pets for stupid reasons. Or people decide to let their dog have puppies to make some money, but can’t sell them all so they drop them off at the shelter. Or they don’t desex their cat because kittens are cute. THAT’s where the problem lies.
Irresponsible owners are the problem here. They are the reason there are so many pets in the shelters in the first place. Yes, shelters should be run in a way that reduces the kill rate as much as possible, but pounds and shelters are not the problem here, they are only meeting a demand that’s caused by irresponsible owners.
We’re not going into this blind. There has been extensive studies done on the pet populations in pounds and shelters. And they simply don’t back up your assertions.
– The majority of cats in shelters (and the animal who is most likely to die there overall) is untame/unowned cats.
– Only 10 – 20% of the shelter population for dogs are surrenders. Many pounds don’t accept surrenders at all.
– 50% of stray dogs are collected by the owners. There are various reasons why the others are not collected, not the least being the fees and charges associated with collecting a stray.
– Less than 5% of dogs and cats ever need the services of a pound or shelter.
Regurgitating the tired cliche’s of ‘rampant irresponsibility’ and ‘the poor, high-kill facility doing the public’s dirty work’ does two things, both of which are unhelpful to shelter reform:
1) It allows under performing shelters the cover they need to continue to kill, rather than implement the programs and services needed to stop it.
and
2) It disempowers the public to act on behalf of pets, encouraging them to think of the problem as insurmountable and to see killing as an unavoidable conclusion.
But even if it were true. Even if the studies didn’t show that the public is largely responsible, the answer to shelter killing is still the same.
Adoptions. Getting pets out of these facilities and into new homes.
It really doesn’t matter how they got there – what we know is that when shelters implement proactive adoptions, and work with rescue to rehab and rehome… the killing ends.
Defending a shelter who kills, by asking us to instead feel sorry for them because it’s not THEIR fault pets need care, is unhelpful. And unless you have some actual evidence, it is also untrue.
So I struggle to understand why anyone would continue to do it.
I adopted a puppy from AWLQ Ipswich in August last year. He is now 10 months old and the most beautiful dog. Unfortunately he got parvo and I hate to think what happened to the rest of his litter who were still there when we adopted him. The quarantine they had there was questionable, but given the facilities available it was the best AWLQ could do. I believe this is council’s fault far more than it is AWLQ’s fault. They can’t help the disgraceful facilities they have been given to house the dogs. In fact he came down with parvo when we had him a week and AWLQ honoured their 10 day health warranty and nursed him back to health free of charge in their Ipswich vet. I had spoken to our family vet about our puppy and he said this would have been very costly had we had to pay for it.