Dogs 'euthanized' by shooting in a New South Wales pound

NEWS AND COMMENT: It appears to me that shooting dogs in publicly funded pounds in New South Wales is quietly accepted. They are shot as a form of euthanasia. The news is shocking and yet unsurprising because Australians do like to shoot 'things' particularly feral cats and kangaroos!

Dogs in a pound. Images: PA.

On this occasion several dogs were impounded within a publicly funded facility but they were due to be transferred to a rescue shelter but before that happened, they were shot by officials of Bourke Shire Council. The excuse given is that they didn't want to expose volunteers who are coming to pick up the dogs to the Covid-19 virus.

The incident is being investigated because it may be a criminal act. It should be a criminal act because you can't euthanised a dog with a bullet in my honest opinion and therefore it's animal cruelty and it falls under the animal cruelty laws of that state. But no doubt nothing will happen.

Volunteers who were asked to pick up the dogs are obviously distressed. The Minister for Local Government, Shelley Hancock, has not commented. Lisa Ryan an animal liberation campaigner has asked for an urgent investigation. She was deeply distressed and appalled by the incident. She rejects the justification for the shooting.

Hancock claimed that she wasn't aware of the euthanasia of pound animals by shooting. She said that if was a practice she'd been concerned. 

Apparently, councils are not required to reveal how they euthanise animals in their care. It also encourages me to believe that shooting dogs and cats in pounds happens. We don't know how often. I hope rarely but I have a feeling that it is not that rare.

Abigail Boyd, a Greens MP and animal welfare spokeswoman said that the government had still not taken any action despite the issue being raised in Parliament. She said: "Council pounds are paid for by local communities, and it is clear that shooting lost and unclaimed dogs housed in these publicly-funded facilities falls far short of community expectations."

That too implies that shooting dogs in pounds is not uncommon. A spokesperson for the office of local government said that they'd issued new guidance during the pandemic about keeping staff and volunteers safe through altered procedures while ensuring that their services continued. Perhaps it is this directive which is being utilised to justify the shooting of these dogs. If so, it's a feeble reason. It is a cruel act. I hope someone pays for it.

But the fact that the matter is that there seems to be a disconnect among a large segment of Australian society between their desire to eradicate feral cats by shooting or in any other way (poisoning) and the morality of that act. And I think that when you engage in mass slaughter of any animal as is the case with feral cats in Australia, you blunt your sensitivity towards animal sentience and this leads to the sort of event described in this article.

Source: Unilad.co.uk.

My cat brings a magpie into the home and there is bird poo and pee everywhere

My cat is a great hunter. Recently, he caught two mice within 60 minutes and devoured them under my bed in the dead of night. I heard it all. He has caught pigeons and now he has brought a magpie into the home. The reason why he is able to catch a magpie is partly my fault. I feed squirrels. Squirrels chuck a lot of squirrel feed onto the ground. Pigeons and magpies eat this food from the ground. My cat stalks the birds and he has regrettably on occasions caught them. I can't do much about it and I don't want to stop feeding squirrels. Although I do warn them when he goes out so I do my bit to stop him attacking birds.

My cat brings a magpie into the home and there is bird poo and pee everywhere

On this occasion I was watching television and I heard a commotion. It was noisy and it sounded disturbing. I got up and immediately saw that a magpie was flying around my kitchen banging into walls, windows and the bifold doors that lead out to the garden. While the bird was doing this it was pooing and peeing over everything.

I frantically opened the bifold doors. The magpie was constantly charging against them and suddenly there was air and no glass and so he passed through into the back garden where he clung onto a fence for a while, looking over his shoulder at my charging cat. He then flew to another part of the fence and eventually flew out of the garden looking unwell but he made it.

I am sure that he was injured to a certain extent but I would hope that he recovered and is now all right. It took me 20 minutes to clean up while my cat looked on completely nonplussed by all the events. It is just another little episode in the life of a cat caregiver. I even found a scratch on the hardwood floor that wasn't there before. I'm sure it was caused by the magpie as it panicked desperately to get out in complete terror.

When a bird charges against a glass window that hard and does it over and over again with loud thumps it has to be desperately frightened. I'm surprised that they don't knock themselves out. Sometimes they do.

When peace returned to the home, I thought that it might have been a good idea to have filmed the whole thing but that is not my style. I'm not a natural video maker. My first thought is not to exploit the situation and make a video. My first thought is animal welfare; on this occasion to get the bird out of there. This is instinctive and therefore there is no video record of this minor but disturbing event.

Pets overwhelm vets in the UK?

NEWS AND COMMENT: There is a report in The Sunday Times about the coming together of three events which has resulted in vets being overwhelmed in some parts of the country because there are too many pets to deal with.

Pets overwhelm vets in the UK? Photo: Pixabay.

Brexit

It appears that Brexit - the UK leaving the European Union - has resulted in a smaller number of qualified veterinarians coming over from the continent to practice their veterinary skills in UK clinics. One of the problems is that continental veterinarians who want to practice veterinary medicine in the UK have to pass a language test which apparently is quite difficult. This is restricting the number of immigrant veterinarians into the UK. This in turn is causing a shortage of veterinarians at a time when there has been a surge in the number of pets adopted in the UK.

Covid

Another factor is that a lot of employees are being told to stay in isolation as they have been in contact with a person suffering from Covid-19.

Surge in adoptions

The newspaper tells me that the UK has 3.2 million more pets than 18 months ago due to Covid social isolation but there has not been a similar increase in terms of percentages of veterinarians to treat these companion animals. A senior veterinary surgeon in Scotland said that a lot of their veterinary practices have closed their books and restricted opening hours because of severe staff shortages.

The surge in pet adoptions is remarkable because it represents something in the order of a 30% increase in pet ownership in the UK over a period of about 18 months. My gut feeling is that a lot of these companion animals are going to be relinquished to shelters once there new and sometimes inexpert owners have decided that they can no longer cope on their return to normal office work.

Normally more than 50% of veterinarians registering to practice in the UK each year are qualified in the European Union. However, between January and May 2021 Britain welcomed only 155 EU vets, down from 533 in 2019 (Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons).

James Russell, the President of the BVA, said that there is an increasing number of veterinary clinics saying that they are currently unable to take new patients. He remarked that this is very unusual. But he encouraged anyone thinking about adopting a companion animal to be aware of these potential shortages in veterinary care.

The Sunday Times states that the veterinary training schools can produce about 900 vets a year but Charles Hartwell, chief executive of Eville & Jones, a provider of veterinary surgeons, said that the country typically requires about 2,000.

Cool way to get up close and personal with wild lions

NEWS AND COMMENT - HARRISMITH, SOUTH AFRICA: The Glen Garriff (GG) lion sanctuary is a non-profit organisation in South Africa which currently takes care of 77 lions which opened for business in 2002. The lions live their lives in safety and security at the sanctuary. The non-profit has social media accounts through which they raise most of their money. Their stated mission is to "love, protect and preserve the magnificent lions in our care."

Lion experience cube at GG lion sanctuary. Photo: Suzanne Scott (presumed) via Caters News.

The director (and a photographer) of this non-profit company, Suzanne Scott, 53, has a cage which she uses to get up close and personal with lions when she photographs them. She is using this cage to allow paying customers to her sanctuary to do exactly the same thing. And she's photographed the lions and humans interacting. 

They are interesting photographs and my immediate reaction is that this is a good idea. How else do you get so close, in safety, to a genuine wild lion? And the bars are wide enough to allow a camera to be used to photograph these fabulous cats at very close range. It would be a great opportunity for an amateur photographer to get some interesting photographs. I am sure that there are strict rules though. There is still a potential for harm.

It seems social media has spread this idea to the world rather late in the day because Suzanne Scott said: "We have been offering this experience almost 2 years now and the safety of both our guests and big cats is the top priority. "

The cage originally came from a German photographer who visited regularly. They adapted the cage for customer use by making it into a "lion experience cube". A German TV company had used a plexiglass cube to film the lions and I guess they got the idea from them.

The cube is regularly checked to make sure that it is safe and that it can carry the weight of a lion or lions who jump on top of it which they appear to enjoy doing as it provides a nice vantage point.

The GG lion sanctuary is in the process of rescuing lions from a closed down zoo in the Middle East and are expected to bring another 17 lions into the sanctuary soon.

The cube is another nice source of income for them. It looks like it is an excellent idea because it benefits both the customer and the lions who are stimulated by its presence. It adds a bit of colour into their lives. It's called environmental enrichment in the domestic cat world.

Pygmy goats becoming popular because they are cheaper to buy than pedigree dogs

The high price of puppies during Covid-19 lockdowns because of high demand has led some people to adopt a pygmy goat instead as they are, relatively speaking, incredibly cheap at £150 for a castrated male and around £250 for a female ready for breeding compared to a few thousand for some dog breeds. I don't know what a spayed female costs, but probably a price similar to a castrated male. It seems that celebs and influencers are pushing this market.

Bella Hadid and a couple of pygmy goats. Photo: News Scans.

They are the size of a small-to-medium-sized dog but they do need to be adopted in pairs, at least, because they are a herd animal. And it seems to me that you need to have acres of land around your home to allow them to enjoy the outside. Therefore, they won't suit everybody but clearly they appeal to a lot of people because adoptions have risen fivefold during the Covid pandemic.

Like all companion animals they need to be weaned properly. They need to suckle from their mothers for the first 12-14 weeks of their lives. The same basic rules apply to cats and dogs. If you wean a kitten too early, they can develop behavioural problems such as sucking on people's earlobes or arms, as an example. And they'll do that as adults for their entire adulthood, at least potentially. Some people believe that pica (eating non-food items) is due to early weaning.

Another issue with pygmy goats is that they are considered by Defra (in the UK) to be "agricultural holdings". They need to be formally registered with this government agency.

Also, their calls can be quite loud which might disturb neighbours and the RSPCA warns that they are likely to cause damage to fences.

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Comment: it is incredible how distorted the pet market has become in the UK thanks to the pandemic. The dog market went mad and I am not the only one who has noticed it very distinctly in the local park where I go for walks. There are many more French bulldogs for example and I see lots of Dachshunds. All, it seems, recently adopted. This has fuelled illegal importation of puppies into the country and the government is taking steps to curb that by banning all imports of puppies below six months of age. Some breeders import pregnant females and there will be a ban on that as I understand it.

Sadly, commercial market forces result almost inevitably in animal welfare issues. It is humankind's way. The problem with pygmy goats is that you are likely to get some people becoming fascinated with the idea of adopting one without having the facilities to become a proper caregiver. That, too, will potentially lead to abandonments just as it happened with many of the dogs impulsively adopted during Covid.

Pygmy goats are much cheaper to buy than purebred dogs but are they cheaper over their lifetime when factoring in maintenance? That's the key.