The RSPCA NSW took in $28 million in revenue last financial year.
In the same year, Orange local council spent more than half a million dollars on “companion animal management and activities”, contracting shelter and rehoming of unclaimed animals to the RSPCA.
Today, The Central Western Daily has today run a piece on how many pets are dying in the Orange city shelter;
The Orange RSPCA shelter found homes for 454 unwanted pets last year, but was forced to euthanise 328 cats and 170 dogs.
Only 52 adult cats and 41 adult dogs found new homes.
According to RSPCA animal care services senior manager Donna Hough, Orange RSPCA was “forced” to kill 328 cats and 170 dogs last year.
During that same time they found homes for 157 cats and 161 dogs. (killing more than they place, the shelter is putting the blame firmly back on the community;
(Ms Hough) said it was unfortunate the rate of rehoming was so low because people chose not to desex and microchip their pets.
…
The average time an animal stays at the shelter in Orange varies depending on the type of animal, with dogs staying at the centre for about 25 days, puppies about 20 days, cats about 30 days and kittens about 25 days.
Low adoption rates because testicles.
An average of nearly a month in a shelter for most pets is an extraordinarily long time for pets to be in care. Even if the shelter held lost pets as long as 8 days, that’s an extra 10-15 days before the animals are placed. Animals nearing the end of their holding period should be being advertised as ‘coming up’ as available for adoption. Exposure for these pets is vital if they are to find a new family.
Orange RSPCA currently have five cats (zero dogs) listed as available on Adopt-a-Pet and just two cats (zero dogs) listed as available on PetRescue.
So if you’re looking for a dog in Orange, seems you’re clean out of luck.
Also, for the whole month of December just 9 dogs and 5 cats had a PetRescue profile, and most didn’t include pictures.
There are 25,000 registered dogs and cats in Orange. Based on averages, 2,500 homes for dogs and cats open up in their city through natural attrition every single year. Even if just one in five of these people could be enticed to rescue, then the city’s killy-shelter problem would be solved.
However, the shelter is not setting the bar that high;
However, she said the rate of successful rehoming in Orange was better than other centres where at times the rehoming rate was as low as 1 per cent.
If you use failure as the yardstick for ‘success’, you can almost guarantee you’ll ‘succeed’. I can’t work out what this “1 per cent’ refers to, but let’s assume that for a $28 million dollar a year organisation, it’s not much to celebrate.
Staff also feel they’re being unreasonably lumped with crappy pets;
“The Orange shelter is an impound facility, which means it is contracted to the council, so that means we don’t have a lot of say about what is coming in,” she said.
“Other centres, which are not impound centres, do not have to take strays. Orange is comparable to other similar regional centres like Dubbo and the staff do their best to re-home everything that is suitable.”
I wonder how the pet lovers of Orange feel about their Council gifting the RSPCA at least several hundred thousand dollars a year to rehome homeless animals only to have that money be spent on killing more often than on placement? That the staff paid to save these animals believe they are “doing their best” even when their best includes not photographing or listing pets anywhere, but instead killing them?
Would pet lovers of Orange really feel they are getting value for money?
Orange RSPCA – pet rehoming totals for 2013
Kittens 105
Cats 52
Puppies 120
Dogs 41
Birds 8
Fowls 103
Goats 2
Guinea pigs 2
Horses 1
Rabbits 18
See also: Orange animal management hits out at their community as “appalling”
