Dogdragon

It doesn’t prove anything of the sort. All it proves is that many of the current standards lack the detail necessary to be enforceable or are simply not there in the first place. For example, terms such as ‘reasonable actions’, ‘reasonable access’ and ‘appropriate feed and water’ are not defined in legislation. What do these terms mean? They are not defined so authorities are reluctant to proceed. We must remember that the issue is much larger than a supply issue. The pet industry is worth billions of dollars a year to the Australian economy from vet services, pet insurance, grooming, pet food, pet toys and more. You can’t just shut puppy mills down without it having an effect on the economy. There has to be legislative changes to deal with this. What we are seeing now is • Serious health issues in dogs as a result of selective breeding for specific aesthetic traits. • Poor health and welfare for breeding dogs cause by high intensity commercial breeding operations and a lack of resources to ensure compliance. • High rates of impounding and euthanasia. • And more and are symptomatic of a system which allows for the treatment of companion animals as a perceived right rather than a responsibility. As identified in the NSW Companion Animals Taskforce in its 2012 report, companion animal welfare and management is a whole of community responsibility involving breeders, pet shops, pet owners, vets, law enforcers, local and state government, and animal shelters and holding facilities. No one group or entity can be looked at in isolation. There are so many things wrong with the current system and requires a holistic approach. The changes will happen eventually but it will take time and implementation of them will be gradual. For instance: • All dog breeders to be licensed • Breeder license number to be part of the microchipping information • Requirement for all pounds, shelters, vets and RSPCA facilities to report to ensure enforcement This type of reporting legislation is nothing new. It has already been implemented i n the financial services industry as part of the money laundering legislation. It covers the financial sector, gambling sector, bullion dealers and other professionals or businesses that provide services covered by the Act

This (above). Also this: Sorry - some people just down right believe some really stupid stuff. I'm all education and for a bit of nanny-state style enforcement. All dogs should be chipped before sale in NSW - anyone caught selling or owning an unchipped pet should be stung, NSW should go back to providing tags for registered dogs (or yearly rego - so you can alter the price in a few years if you do desex(??) so it's easier to visually ID a registered/non-registered dog. Vets should not be able to treat an animal which is not chipped - (ok maybe OTT) but so be it. I come from a waste & recycling education background - telling people what you can and cant put in your bins / recycling bins & why. I have seen some really amazing stuff over the years the good and the bad. You can educate people until you're blue in the face - you're still going to have people put the wrong things in the wrong bins and not give a shit. Then you're going to find the super amazing, well educated people who use re-usable items, compost, recycle & create almost zero waste - kind of similar to a lot of the DOLers. Actually - the innovation curve comes to mind: We're all on the curve - it's just a shame that we're talking real lives - not the latest iphone. You can enforce until the cows come home - you'll still find people who dump rubbish or continue to do the wrong thing - with "oh I didnt know it was illegal" "Oh I didn't know where the tip was" "oh I can't afford the tip fee to get rid of it" "oh I ran out of time" - same story - "oh I thought she knew not to have sex with her brother -cause its gross" (can't believe I just typed that LOL) - "I was going to get her desexed but ran out of time/hand no money this week" "she really wanted to be a mummy" "I couldn't cut his balls off - it was too mean" And you really will find people who genuinely dont know that what they're doing isn't the best thing for their pet. Some will be early adopters (as I have said - like a lot of DOLers) some will be laggards (like the people in the screen shot I added above). Anyhow - that's my procrastinating ramble for the day. Off to see what else I can do instead of my uni assignment and job application. Of course, nothing is absolute but your right.

Steve there are penalties for the buyer if the buyer of a dog that has not been microchipped, fails to have the dog microchipped. There are local council penalties to them directly. This is not covered in the Companion Animals Act. Ill concede that these penalties are conditional. https://www.olg.nsw.gov.au/public/dogs-and-cats/information-for-the-community/microchipping-registration https://www.olg.nsw.gov.au/content/microchips Obviously the new owner may or may not wish to report this but NOT reporting it is the issue, not whether its microchipped. Yeah, well, again the onus is on the individual to know what the law is……ignorance is no excuse. We hear that in the court room all the time…….. The VIC law provides that if you advertise a dog unless that advertisement contains the microchip number. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/daa1994163/s12a.html

Ok Steve, Im glad you edited the part of your post that say there are no penalties for the sale of unmicrochipped dogs under the age of 12 weeks. There absolutely is. For those people that have been mislead by your comments let me break it down for them. Section 8 of the Act http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/caa1998174/s8.html in its entirety. Section 2 (2) A companion animal must not be sold unless it has been identified as required by the regulations (even if it is less than 12 weeks old when it is sold). Section 4 relating to section 2 (4) A person who sells an animal in contravention of subsection (2) is guilty of an offence. Maximum penalty: (a) 8 penalty units except in the case of a dangerous, menacing or restricted dog, or (b) 50 penalty units in the case of a dangerous, menacing or restricted dog. Clearly it is an offence to sell a dog un microchipped and clearly there are penalties for the seller if they do. It surprises me that given your inference in this thread that you have some sort of role in an advisory capacity, and have full access to the entire Act that you cherry pick it and disseminate false and misleading information to others who may take this information and run with it. Absolutely, not disagreeing with anything here SG. Education should not be the only tool here as others have suggested but rather, used as a catalyst for change (legislative). This is my stance. Of course legislation doesnt change without support……..... An example: a few years back Clover Moore tried to have legislation changed to stop pet shops selling live animals. It didn't get up. Personally I think this is a positive step in reducing some of the dogs ending up in shelters. It stops impulse buying of puppies. The pet barn only sells animals from the RSPCA. This is positive in my view.

Says who? The current legislation is not working in its present form, even if the laws were enforced they are not adequate. Currently there is talk on making it an offence for landlords to refuse pet owners rental options. Actually SG whats changing the things I mentioned is legislation. Drink drive – higher penalties for doing it which includes jail, just a month ago I was in the local court where a man was sentenced to 2 years for his 3rd offence. Despite huge costs in education programs. Womens rights, too many changes in legislation to list but its all there for you to look up yourself. You can start here https://www.humanrights.gov.au/news/speeches/advancing-women-s-rights-and-gender-equality Smoking, increase taxes, increasing the cost, plain packaging and a number of other legislative changes. Despite huge costs in education programs. http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/tobacco-plain Racism – Legislation changes to the Anti Discrimination Act, Aboriginal people were not even allowed to vote until 17 December 1965, the Elections Act Amendment Act was passed and came into force on 1 February 1966. This Act extended voting rights to all Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders in Queensland. So in many cases we need to amend legislation to protect the rights of others because a lot of people are self-centered and dont give a damn about anyone/thing but themselves. That’s just it……it cant in its current form can it? Yes is is illegal, in NSW anyways, https://www.olg.nsw.gov.au/public/dogs-and-cats/information-for-the-community/microchipping-registration At the end of the day all we have in terms of stat on dogs in pounds are numbers. We really can discount the reasons why people SAY they have to surrender them………People will lie to make it sound more palatable for the receiver.

Education won’t change the puppy factory attitudes, education won’t change the view that a certain breed of dog is good for the fighting ring, education won’t change the fact that people will still buy a dog because their circumstances are good for a puppy at the moment and then 6 months down the track the landlord says you have to move because that dog is making a mess of my property, etc etc etc. The list is endless and no matter how many education programs you plow money into, not much changes…….yep, you will never change the nutters, not sure what you mean by the high achievers….. You are never going to re wire humanities impulsiveness, the best you can do is manage it to minimize the impact of the victim. Humans buy with their hearts. They impulse buy, and dump with their heads, they rationalize why they should remove that dog from their lives. That’s a fact. Education hasn’t changes drink driving, it hasn’t changes drug use, it hasn’t changed smoking, it hasn’t change racism! Why do you think an education program (with I might add, limited funding) would change the amount of dogs in shelters? Why is it that we don’t dump teenage humans? We deal with the issues and push through the problems but we dump teenage dogs. Its all to do with the rights of the entity and that is where the real issue lies. Of all the species’ we should afford rights to, it should be those who share our homes, our lives, our evolution! It wasn’t that long ago that we (humans) took other humans as slaves. We justified this by rationalizing that the colour of your skin dictated the rights you held. We do the very same thing with with women and the very same thing with the one entity that contributed to what we have became today, the dog! Legislation, TSD is the only way.

Clever :) I think you'd have to be doing a full time Phd to gather 10 - 15yrs of stats together and come out with something close to accurate, and then assume that 5yrs later all of it would need updating. It's not all that popular but quite realistic to say that certain breeds attract certain people because it's usually in the context of 'tough' bull breeds and that topic has been done to death. Attack statistics are incomplete because not everything is reported and as far as dog to human; a scratch is enough to set off a menacing dog complaint. Then where was the dog. Who did it bite. What did it bite. How serious was it. And how many of them were around at the time the study was done. Both bite and dumping have human factors that are multiple; there's the popularity thing. Paris Hilton stage saw a massive spike in pound chihuahuas, movies like Balto set off a whole lot of sibes going to inappropriate homes, pet store white fluffies bought in haste sitting impounded alongside the BYB staffy cross, pigging areas always will have a huge oversupply of bull arab. Labradors because people seem to forget that they are still a large dog who needs managing. My city area is right into oodles and frenchies at the moment. Not sure where all the large brindle pound looking crosses dogs have gone from a few years ago. Past fads have all had their turn for example cavaliers, blue anything, rottie, pomeranian. You see the numbers go up and down. Frenchy and brachy are up next. Then there's the 'dumping' aka reason for being impounded which has hundreds of factors from; mismatched homes, strays & unclaimed dogs that seem to come from nowhere, unwanted; abandoned in the yard or park, dog abandoned at vet or boarding, stolen dogs showing up years later, tying the dog to the pound gate, seizure due to attack, seizure due to cruelty/neglect, owner jailed. To the truly heartbreaking. Homelessness, family breakdown, mental collapse, spousal abuse, drug abuse, going to nursing home. Death. We're leaving out the dogs who don't get dumped but handed from home to home; having more than one in their lifetime. Point is, something so complex and nationwide can't be summed up easily. Hence the long reply :laugh: Yup............absolutely agree there........too many variables involved to base this on breed.

Well forgive me for not accepting this info outright (not a fan of the RSPCA stats) but there are many variables in why dogs are dumped and why they attack......not just the breed..... No? I don't know the protocol the RSPCA adopts; I expect they asked people why they surrender the dog? ...and if a Maltese owner states that the dog shows aggression and the dog might even show this behaviour than this is what they enter in the list. I guess they just record the status quo and don't have recourses to investigate the underlying cause of unwanted behaviour. Guessing does not contribute to the stats......advertising the studies involved and how they came to these conclusions is expected in presenting this evidence. If its simply breed based then these studies are flawed. If they don't have the recourses to investigate the undelaying causes then they are invalid....................yes? and yeah......other posters have highlighted the many variables involved in this. I do hope this thread is not taking the turn of breed specific legislation?

Well forgive me for not accepting this info outright (not a fan of the RSPCA stats) but there are many variables in why dogs are dumped and why they attack......not just the breed..... No?

You know what? I think you guys are looking at the stats on “Breeds” and forgetting that the humans circumstances(the dogs human) plays an important roll it the stats of dumping’s and attacks……Certainly not the breed. I think it’s a no brainer, certain breeds attract certain people for many reasons…. Well……maybe it’s a personal thing too…………………… I really don't think a specific breed is more likely to be dumped or more likely to attack.......Am I wrong? Dunno....but that what I think

Crap. You want inflammatory take a look at post 1. If you're worried about people being put off by the other dolers, you're looking at the wrong end of the dog. lol, love the passion in this thread :laugh:

For the most part I do actually agree with this statement. We do have to legislate for the lowest possible denominator but I do also think that the majority of pet owners are responsible and it is the minority that cause those of us who prefer not to desex (for our own personal reasons,after all its our choice ATM) to have to pay higher than those who choice to. I do agree with Willem that there has to be a better system where responsible dog owners are not penalized by higher fees. I have owned dog for more than 20 years and only desex when I need to and only had to once. Obviously some have come to me desexed but as a rule I prefer not to. I love the idea of having to obtain a license to have children and own pets…..With tests applied….. :D

This does nothing to reduce the amount of dogs in rescue… as long as there on dogs on this planet there will be dogs in rescue. Why? Because people, for the most part exploit animals for dollars and think of animals as disposable items. Change that and we just might have a chance…..Higher registration fees for undesexed animals is nothing more than revenue raising.

$52 over 10 years is only $5.20 per year, even cheaper rego.

It seems to me the puppies aren't the problem. Even in cases where a pregnant girl or a young litter comes into rescue they are in high demand by rescue groups to take and their puppies are more easily sold for a higher price. It doesn't take much energy for anyone to sell puppies to new owners who present as people who will look after their dog and be responsible for it. Its the owners who have life changing situations, who cant stand the dog because it doesn't match their expectations, or basically people who see them as they see everything else - easily replaceable. Until the real stats are available we all just guess as to where they come from and who could be held more responsible. No matter how hard a breeder or a rescue tries to screen em, educate them, or support them the final onus for responsibility of looking after a dog is on the owner . Like Willem I don't believe there should be a system that rewards people for desexing their dogs over other responsible behaviours . How many desexed dogs are dumped? All of the studies including the one via the ACT where desexing is mandatory show that it doesn't change one little dot the numbers dumped - it does change the numbers of desexed dogs dumped. A government should not take the place of educated decisions made between an owner and their vet and all responsible behaviours should be rewarded . I am aware that the registration fee applies for life even if an animal changes hands but seriously Steve, this statement does not pass the sniff test. We are not required to register our dogs until they are 6 months of age. Are you telling me you register them at 8 weeks before they go to their new homes as breeding dogs? And, what you are doing is circumventing the very system you support. Not all of these animals would be kept by their new owners for breeding purposes. How could you possibly know that? So in essence you say you support it but you don’t. No puppies are not the issue. No one will dump a puppy now will they? Wait till they get older and the human decides it too hard or not pretty enough or doesn’t fit well with the kid…..umpteen different reasons that humans find to justify a dog being disposable. An example is my Jess girl, owners bought her advertised as a rotti, no papers and wasn’t even close to a rotti. Once they realized that (12 months) they say they are taking her to the pound. Charging higher registration rates for undesexed dogs is not going to change the situation. The responsible owners pay the higher prices and the irresponsible ones find ways around that system. I personally have other issues with desexing a male dog also.

Well I have to wade in on this one as I am faced with this issue at the moment. My council have the following on their website: Animal Registration Microchip Your Pet The Companion Animals Act 1998 makes it compulsory to microchip all puppies and kittens by 12 weeks of age and registered by 6 months of age. Any dogs or cats who change owners need to be microchipped and registered. Microchipped animals are registered on the NSW Companion Animals Register. Owner information needs to be kept up to date. Contact Council if you need to change any details. How Much Does Registration Cost? Lifetime registration on the NSW Companion Animals Register is available from Blue Mountains City Council. This is a one off payment and the animal is registered for life, anywhere in New South Wales. Current Registration Fees: • $192 for undesexed dog or cat • $52 for a dog or cat owned by a registered breeder that is kept for breeding purposes • $52 for a desexed dog or cat • $21 for a desexed dog or cat owned by a pensioner • FREE for an Assitance Animal or Working Dog http://www.bmcc.nsw.gov.au/yourcommunity/animalcontrol/animalregistration/ $192 for an undesexed dog or cat......What do I get for it?.....I get that its to do with stopping unwanted litters but it doesn't stop this.......Doesn't stop it.....Puppy mills, pet shop owners don't have to outlay this cost, they keep breeding, only the pet owner has to pay. Yes it encourages pet owners to desex but it seems to me that this is simply revenue raising. What if I want to show my male dog with unlimited registration paper? I cant show a male dog that has been desexed (not sure about a bitch). Responsible pet owners are paying for the irresponsible ones. The fee structure doesn't seem to do anything for the issue of unwanted dogs and cats.

Love this, shes beautiful!

Oh they are beautiful! Looks like they had fun :)

Rupert is lovely and the fox too. Do you know of a fox rescue in the Mountains? Foxes are lovely animals.

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

This is Beyounce – 12 years old. We got her at 8 weeks old. She is slowing down now with a bit of arthritis. This is Jess – 11 years old. She is a rescue dog. She was kept in a tiny yard. Her owner was going to surrender her to the pound 9 years ago because she wasn’t full rotti. (apparently that’s what they thought they were buying)Not a purebred but a good dog non the less. This is Kate – 14 years. She is also a rescue dog. Her elderly owner died. She was in the house with him for 3 or 4 days before the police were alerted to no one being able to contact him. The police found her after chomping on his face…….She has recently had a stroke but bounced back very quickly from that. This is Butler and Poppy. Butler was 9 when we lost him to cancer. Very special boy. Poppy is 12 years old. She is also a rescue dog. We got her at 12 months old. No one wanted her because she only has one eye. We don’t know what happened to her eye, she was like this when she was brought into the pound. And this is Baldric – 5 months. We have had him for 3 weeks now. Loves the water. I am planning on starting him in tracking when he is 6 months. I have started some basic obedience with him and is a lovely boy.

Thanks everyone for the responses. He is due another vaccination in a months time. Vet says his upset tummy is due to adjusting to his new home and a slight change in diet.

Arh ok sorry my error, it was at 6 weeks then again at 12 weeks then a year after that......ok so that's right.....great...glad he hasn't missed any. Thanks for the info

I have just got a new pup (5months old) his vaccination book says he was vaccinated with C4 at 6 weeks and again with C4 at 8 weeks with the next vaccination due in 12 months from the 8 week one. Does this sound right? I am a little concerned because I have had him less than a week and his stool this morning show a little red and he is off his food. I have him in at the vet this avo but just wanted to check on the vac requirements......little worried

Hi all, I was always under the impression that puppies had 3 vaccinations before 12 months then a yearly booster shot. One at 6 weeks, one at 8 weeks and another at 12 weeks then a booster yearly starting at 12 months. Is this right? Or has this changed to only 2 C4's then a year booster?