LEROY, Birmingham Dogs Home is a POUND. taking in the strays directly from Birmingham's Dog Warden and from the Dog Warden's of other nearby councils.
To fing out more about RESCUE in the Birmingham area I'd make Denise at Dogwatch - [email protected] my first port of call.
fifi, it works like this....
A stray dog will be taken by the Dog Warden to the Council's allocated pound. These come in many guises - For London boroughs it's Battersea Dogs Home, which most people mistakenly consider a rescue. True, Battersea homecheck and assess their dogs but they aew also known to put to sleep harder to home dogs - read Staffies, Greyhounds, older dogs, expensive to treat but curable dogs - on the basis of economy.
While Manchester and Birmingham Dogs Homes (read POUND) take in their council's strays, North Herts sends theirs to a place which is also a breeder of GSD and a boarding kennels. I'll leave it to you to guess whether their interest is humanitarian or financial! They do not homecheck and you can walk in with a babe in your arms and out with a large, unknown, unassessed dog within monutes for a set sum of money.
Cambridge City is one of a few local councils which uses Wood Green Animal Shelters - they take in from the public too, they do home check and assess, but like Battersea they will PTS a stray they consider unhomeable and they will refuse to take in a dog in need of help if, say, he's a bull breed but will instead tell the owner to take him to be put to sleep.
Before anyone says "how do you know" the examples I have given above are all as a result of personal experience as either an individual dealing with these organisations or as a rescuer dealing with them.
In law a stray dog must be kept by the council for just seven days. After that he can be put to sleep, rehomed by the pound or sent to a rescue. A dog which is handed in to the pound by an owner as unwanted can be put to sleep/rehomed/sent to rescue immediately he is handed over. The important thing to note here is that the pound only get paid by the council to keep stray dogs for 7 days. The average sum paid by the council for this, per stray dog per day, is about £7 to £10. The pound gets more if it takes in dogs out of hours etc so, say, 30 dogs to feed and do little else for a week in kennels that are otherwise just standing there is a nice little earner. After seven days when the cash cow dries up the poor buggers are at the mercy of the pound.
Some pounds, like Wood Green and Battersea, are registered charities. They fund-raise, they receive bequests and donations and they are able to keep dogs for longer although neither will by any stretch of the imagination keep a dog indefinitely. Unless the circumstances are exceptional - read it makes good newspaper copy and advertising - they will eventually PTS "unhomeable" dogs.
Those pounds which are running businesses alongside their council pound contracts need to keep the cash coming in and so if they've outstayed their 7 days welcome the dogs have to go. Add to this the fact that they have a contract to keep taking strays in when the dog warden finds them, even if their kennels are full and you'll see why some even scummier than normal pounds will kill before the dogs' legal entitlement of 7 days grace has expired.
Some of these pounds work with rescue, calling upon rescue volunteers and networkers like myself to help find rescue places for these dogs when their 7 days are up (or when they are handed in by their owners). Some volunteers have certain pounds with whom they are in daily contact and they will go in, photograph the dogs in need of rescue and do as I do, which is beg and plead our nationwide rescue contacts to offer a space. We all both send out and receive daily lists circulating of dogs who will all definitely be put to sleep within a day or two as their "times up". It is heartbreaking, utterly fucking soul destroying... and a joy to be able to save some of these poor souls, to place them in no kill rescue where they will be assessed, rehabilitated and rehomed.... if they get that lucky.
Because some pounds won't co-operate with rescue networkers and volunteers. :( IME these normally have illegal or immoral practice to hide and usually both.
Some, like Fleet Kennels, a profit making boarding kennels in West Yorkshire, who are one of the pounds which have recently taken on the West Yorks contract, definitely kill the large breeds and the bull breeds immediately after their 7 days are up. That's breeds such as two of my own dogs, German Shepherds... Christ that hurts to type.
Lets just put it this way... one of the boarding kennels which I know of and have mentioned here also knowingly had (don't know if it is still true but it definitely was last time I was there) an illegal practice of allowing cross contamination of possible illness between their pound dogs, which got treated like shit in tiny, unheated outdoor kennels, and their better cared for, more profitable boarders. Think about that sort of thing, people, before you take your dog to a boarding kennel in future or before you buy a pup from a breeder and ASK THEM IF THEY ALSO TAKE IN COUNCIL STRAYS. If they do, walk away, don't give them your money, because not only will they not have the pound dog's welfare at heart, they won't have YOUR dog's welfare at heart either.
IF we can get the pound which doesn't rehome with homechecks and assessments itself, as Battersea or Wood Green does but which just sells dogs to anyone who walks in with the right amount of cash, to agree to allow us to take the unwanted dog to safety once his 7 days are up, we then have a hell of a fight to get him a rescue place. Most rescues are full from week to week, few will offer to take Staffs or Staff crosses, which make the bulk of these appeals.
It's a bloody hard job and many a time I've been up til 3am and beyond appealling for rescue places (rescue owners keep stupid hours too, by the nature of the job!), knowing that if I fail him that dog will be dead by 10 that morning. With rescue secured we appeal for transport volunteers amongst our contacts to get the dog from pound to rescue, often involving several people doing bits of the run and then handing the dog over to someone else for the next leg of his journey as frequently rescue will be found counties and counties away from where the pound is.
Eventually, the dog will if he is lucky, arrive in the rescue, safe at last, and begin his journey to rehabilitation and towards finding a forever home.
That's the positive side,seeing something like THIS HAPPEN This boy was literally on the vet's table about to be killed when I managed to stop them from putting the needle into his leg. He came to me, semi blind, confused, filthy and urine-stained and covered in absessed cuts, all the way from a NE England pound to Cambs in East Anglia. I cleaned him up, got him medicated at the vets. had him vaccinated, assessed him, had him sleeping on my bed with my own dogs and sobbed my heart out when he went to his wonderful forever home.
Such is rescue.
But for every positive there are loads of dogs doomed to die who never meet this "Vallhala" or anyone like me but only their own Valhalla. These include the dogs in the "closed" pounds in Ireland, where the public and rescue are not allowed in and the dogs only ever come out dead, in black plastic bin liners.