Starving, neglected pets find no safety with the RSPCA.

On Friday 30 November 2012, RSPCA NSW Inspectors and Shoalhaven Rangers attended a property in Terara in response to complaints of animal cruelty.

While on site, RSPCA inspectors seized;

- four Poodle crossbreeds
- two Poodle crossbreed pups
- four Cattle crossbreed pups
- a Silky Terrier crossbreed pup
- and a Maltese crossbreed pup

A total of 12 dogs. Inspectors also seized eight cats.

From the RSPCA NSW media release:

“Veterinary examination of the seized animals found several of them to be severely underweight and six tested positive for hookworm.”

Skinny, wormy pets entering RSPCA NSW care. Should have been a chance for some fantastic happy endings, no?



What happened next?
The pets were held, until an interim order was granted and the RSPCA took ownership of the pets in May 2013.

Another six kittens were born while in care.

During their six months in RSPCA custody, these pets clocked up $83,243 in animal care charges (this amount was awarded back to the RSPCA in Nowra Local Court this week).

Each of these dogs and cats needed vet treatment and assessment. They needed to be groomed, wormed and vaccinated. They will have been kept in kennels at the RSPCA, and maybe for the first time in their lives they will have had a warm bed and to have been given regular meals.

But what they needed most of all – as all dogs and cats from abuse, puppy farming or neglectful situations do – was the behavioural rehabilitation that would have allowed them to be placed with new families at the end of their time in care.

They could have received this from experienced foster carers specialising in dogs and cats who need extra care. They could have been passed on to a community rescue group known for rehabilitating ex-puppy farm or neglect cases. They could have even been put into a comprehensive shelter-based rehabilitation program.

Let’s face it – the RSPCA NSW had six months to take assertive, proactive action on behalf of these guys, to get them if not ready for a new family, ready for a halfway home in rescue or foster.

What actually happened after six months of RSPCA NSW ‘care’ at a cost of over $83,000 once ownership was transferred legally to the organisation?

8 of the 12 dogs, and 3 of the 8 cats were killed as ‘unadoptable’.

What the hell kind of ‘rescue’ is that?
Eight of the dogs were described in the RSPCA media release as ‘pups’ – meaning they were likely under a year old. They had their whole lives ahead of them. Most of these dogs were small and popular breeds.

Despite this, being killed was the most likely outcome of being ‘rescued’ by the RSPCA NSW.

The cats did fare a little better, with five cats adopted. The six kittens are currently still in care.



The culture of killing continues
People donate to the RSPCA because they want to see our most vulnerable animals protected. Yet time and time again, we see animals taken from places where they were not safe, to the RSPCA where they are even less safe – and that is where their lives are taken.

We must reject killing as an appropriate way to treat or manage our companion animals. We must demand better.

No surprises there then. 

It is, I feel,  their sheer hypocrisy which is so shocking, tho' no longer surprising. The money-grabbing vet who  came with R$PCA and WHW did exactly the same; he kindly obliged R$PCA and assisted them in stealing her by writing on his expensive report that he decided it was in my mare's best interests 'to move her to a place of safety'. So the R£PCA, assisted by their WHW henchmen, moved her to a field which was in fact full of poisonous ragwort...I later saw the pictures. She was my own mare for 17 years and never sustained any injury or ragwort poisoning. We worked hard every year to remove ragwort. So she was already in a place of safety, but their idea of a place of safety is the abattoir.  On the one occasion when I had to make an insurance claim for vets' fees, my own old vet wrote: 'I have been involved with this mare  for 10 years now, and management of the horse has always been of the highest standard'...unfortunately he died a year before the court case as he would have spoken up for me and nobody argued with him...he was formidable and all the insurance companies groaned when they saw he was the vet!!

So she was moved to the 'place of safety' (laughs hysterically) and Greedy Shyster RSPCA vet runs up all manner of bills for unnecessary tests (let us remember the unnecessary blood tests were normal, faecal egg count {worm count} negative, everything normal for an aged mare)...the world's most expensive farrier then put on shoes (gold-plated) which she did not need as she was not being ridden. They then took photos of her at the end of the summer looking in my opinion too fat. I also had photos of her looking quite fat which my own shyster so-called lawyer said were inadmissible as evidence...but theirs were admissible... then they sent her to WHW and she was killed. I could never work out quite why so much was spent on an aged but very fit horse if it was going to be slaughtered. OK if a mare gets to be 22 years of age and needs that much veterinary treatment, you have to be practical...sad fact of life. I spent hundreds on my old cat who had hyperthyroidism and she died three weeks later, really just of old age. But I would not have spent those hundreds on her then said, 'Sod it, let's have her put to sleep, the old bitch'.

And this is what has happened in the case of these dogs. If some were clearly unsuitable for rehoming, quite likely a big IF, it surely must have been totally obvious when they were  taken to the 'place of safety' (falls off chair laughing). So why was so much spent on them...simply to say aren't we great, we spend megabucks on abused animals...oh, PS then we kill them. So they got the money back which they spent...who coughed up that cash? Or has it been awarded but they are still waiting for the previous owner to pay up?
Gosh, I can feel another poem coming on!!