Last Monday, quite a few St. Thomas residents spent their Valentine’s Day evening in the public gallery of City Hall. Lois Jackson was giving the first report of the recently struck Animal Welfare Advisory Committee to City Council
You may remember the committee resulted from the St. Thomas Animal Control situation with two dogs in particular. One, Bear, was dumped at a local park because the owner couldn’t or wouldn’t pay the $50 pound surrender fee but phoned ABCR to tell them what he had done. The other, renamed Bosco, was left tied to the pound fence, found by staff coming into work in the morning.
Anyway, at Monday’s meeting, Lois presented highlights of a preliminary report submitted to council by the committee. The central one is worth thinking about. The greatest success that a city’s animal control department can have is keeping animals out of the pound.
I’d like to discuss that just in term of tags and means of identification. Many dogs and cats in the pound are not strays; they are lost pets that cannot tell the staff where they live. And sometimes their people are unable to track them, at least in time.
Dog tags should get dogs back to their homes. It shouldn’t be hard, after all. The dog has the tag with an Animal Control assigned number. That number corresponds to information submitted by the owner – address, telephone number etc. That is why people buy dog tags – to get them home if they are lost.
Rabies tags are cross-referenced in vet records with owner information. Microchip tags have the animal’s identification number that is cross-referenced with owner contact information. If there isn’t a microchip tag, a quick scan with a reader will provide that information if the animal is chipped.
If there is no immediate way of identifying an animal and its owner, there’s the internet. Some pictures of animals in the St. Thomas pound are posted, but not animals that came from outside the city limits. This, despite the fact that St. Thomas pound takes animals from surrounding municipalities that do not have their own animal facility. Why aren’t they posted?
I know that if I lived in Aylmer or Belmont and lost an animal, I would concentrate my search effort in my own area. I would phone the St. Thomas pound when it was open, and I would look at their website. I would take the time out to drive to St. Thomas only when I had fully combed my own area. I would expect that my animal’s identification tags would be enough that if he or she turned up in the pound, someone would read them, check with my municipal office and phone me.
Making fullest use of municipal and other tags and an existing website seems like a simple and very cost-effective to keep many animals out of the pound. It’s something that I assumed already happened. But does it?
The dog page of the city’s Animal Control Centre website says “there are no dogs at present.” Good news for the dogs, I hope. These cats are those listed on the first page of the cats page. Cats can indeed be difficult to photograph. If the sexing of these cats is accurate, however, we’ve got some extremely rare animals in our city. Nos. 204 & 213, both three-coloured cats, are identified as male. For some genetic reason, three coloured cats are always female. There has been the occasional male born, but it’s very rare. So quite exciting if we presently have two! What are the odds???
February 22nd, 2011 - 4:55 pm
Confirming the gender, colour & breed – more reasons all shelter animals need to be examined by a vet at least once.
I have submitted found animal reports to the pound, but I have little confidence that reports were actually made when they hung up before getting my contact info! They should be doing everything they can to help lost pets.
Animal Aide told me about http://www.helpinglostpets.com, a new service trying to match up lost and found pets.
While some animals in the pound or running loose are abandoned, many are lost pets. Kat Albrecht is a former cop & bloodhound handler trained in search & rescue. She started a non-profit pet detective group, Missing Pet Partnership, http://www.missingpetpartnership.org that has professional search advice for those who’ve lost pets. She also trains others in search techniques.
She has more pet recovery tips on her blog. “House As Trap” Recovery Tip, http://katalbrecht.com/blog/?p=774, is a really good one to know, especially for those who’ve lost a fearful cat or dog. (She said she’ll be redoing the MPP website to add more recovery tips as time and money allows.)
More pets could be reunited with their families if our animal control, rescue groups & those concerned about animals in our community would let pet owners know about the information, or at least the MPP site.
The No Kill Advocacy Center lists proactive redemption as an important part of reforming animal control. They have an interesting article by Kat Albrecht called “Missing Animal Response: A Paradigm Shift to Reduce Shelter Kill Rates” http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/pdf/MAR.pdf
February 24th, 2011 - 3:05 pm
Thanks Chris for the info. I agree shelter cats should be vet-checked. But, really, with adult cats it’s not that hard to see if they’re male or female – “semi-colon” under their tail for female, “colon” for males. Unfixed males, well, pretty obvious. I’ve looked at the helpinglostpets site – my only problem with it is there’s one with a very similar name based in London, England. Was confusing for me to be sure I was on the right site, and could result in some futile postings. I’ll check out the pet detective site. I wonder if she’s who I heard on CBC Radio’s DNTO – a woman in Halifax specializing in lost pets. Her website would be on CBC’s, I just haven’t looked for it yet. It was broadcast in January I think.
March 10th, 2011 - 12:03 am
The Helping Lost Pets site is map-based; as soon as you click on “View Listings”, a map of Ontario appears. I don’t think the site is perfect, but it’s there & it’s free. [I think it may be better to describe a pet by the colour on various body parts as many people aren't familiar with breeds. Dogs & cats are often a mixture of breeds anyway; even the animal breed registries differ on what is a distinct breed or not (Himalayan cat, for example)].
I had another look at the site today & found out you can subscribe to automatic mobile & email alerts for lost/found pets within a certain radius of your location. I don’t understand all the features on the site, so I can’t give it top marks for user friendliness. It is easy to place lost & found ads with photos & print posters. It could be especially helpful for dogs who are more likely to be found far from home.
March 10th, 2011 - 10:12 pm
Hi Chris, you’re right – if the Helping Lost Pets site is there, and free, might as well be used. It’s getting its existence more widely known I guess is the trick. Our idea with creating an STDOA Facebook page was so it could also be used for lost/found animals. That’s why it’s open to all. I’ve noticed a few lost or found dogs posted on the St. Thomas Dog Park page, so it seemed like why not do the same? The more places to post the info the better.
Yes, for lost or found, the description of markings is probably best. I suppose really obvious breeds, like Siamese, work with the name as the description. The best thing with physical posters & on-line posting is photo & description. And name! I wish, reading lost & found ads, that more people would include the pet’s name. It might help with getting them to come to you if you do find them. Thanks for the info.
November 20th, 2011 - 11:10 am
Another thing Calgary does, they’ve started delivering flyers to the neighbourhood where a stray animal without ID was picked up. They also have a mobile Animal Services app so people receive Lost/Found alerts right on their phones. (Calgary is always looking to improve what they’re doing!)
For those really serious about improving return to owner rates (or Proactive Redemption), I’d suggest viewing the Best Friends Animal Society webinar with Kat Albrecht. She gets into the science and recovery techniques that she developed, based on her former career as a police detective, as well as the psychological reasons why people don’t look for lost pets.
Reasons can include previous bad experiences with animal control, they get bad advice & are told “there’s nothing we can do”, they don’t like visiting the pound, that they find it too painful and begin grieving and end up giving up too early, etc.
Fascinating recorded webinar,”Think Lost, Not Stray”, http://www.bestfriends.org/recordings/thinklostnotstray/index.html
November 21st, 2011 - 11:41 pm
Thanks for the info. Interesting points about the reasons people don’t look. Certainly the perceptions of pounds is one that can be changed. And, yes, I’d rather go for a root canal than go to any pound. The Calgary lost/found app sounds great – an instant way to let others know of a missing or found – or presumably wandering – pet. Great stuff!