11/02/2024
It’s a sad reality that people care to much about themselves and not realise that their own actions and self involvement can have the worst affects.
Personally, if you can’t understand that a pet relies on you for its whole existence, food, water, protection, love, exercise, companionship then you shouldn’t be allowed to own one.
When you’ve had a long day, tough day, sad or great day the one thing that never changes is your pets desire to be there for you and have a moment of your time. They are always there without fail when you need them, when you need a cuddle, when you need to laugh, when you need to just get out and walk or someone to talk too.
We should always cherish the time we are luckily enough to get with something so selfless 🩶🐾
Did you know …..?
Shoalhaven Animal Shelter currently has a 12 month waiting list for people wanting to surrender their dogs.
It seems the number of people needing to find a new home for their dog is increasing week after week, with Shelter staff taking multiple calls every day from owners wanting to rehome their dogs.
This is not just a Shoalhaven issue, with rescue groups, pounds & shelters across Australia struggling with the number of dogs in care.
We wish we could help everyone straight away, however being a small shelter and a Council impound facility we are very limited on how many dogs we can take at any one time.
As we do not have a time limit on how long our dogs stay available for adoption, the waiting time is solely dependent on how many dogs have been adopted and how many lost dogs have arrived at the shelter. Unfortunately, this means the wait until we can take your dog is going to be a long one.
We will try to offer alternatives to try until we do have room to take them.
The Shoalhaven Animal Shelter can only accept surrenders from Shoalhaven residents. We don’t have the space to take any animals from outside our area. There is a $109 surrender fee which assists us with the cost of the following (if not already done) Microchipping, desexing, vaccinating, worming, flea & tick treatments, vet health check and the food & care required while they are at the shelter.
The reason for rehoming is varied, however the below are common ones, with behavioural reasons being the most common.
TOO BIG / BOISTROUS/ STRONG – We’d like to see people spending more time training their dogs, especially if you’ve had the dog since it was a pup. We understand not everyone can afford to use professional trainers but doing the basic training yourself (perhaps with the help of Youtube) will make a huge difference to how your dog interacts with the family. All dogs should be taught the basic – sit, stay/wait and lead training. Most of the large dogs that come into the shelter are extremely strong on the lead, which we can only assume is due to not being regularly walked and trained how walk gently on the lead. This can make them harder to adopt out and they’ll spend a longer time at the shelter.
MOVING – with the rental crisis now there seems to be so many people being put in the position of surrendering their pets so they can find a new place to live. If you are in this heartbreaking position, please don’t leave it until the day prior to moving out to ask to surrender as it’s extremely rare that we can take a dog in with no notice.
TO BOISTROUS FOR OLDER DOG – If you’re thinking of adding another dog to your family the main thing to consider is whether the dog will fit into your existing family, which includes any other dogs, cats, rabbit, fowl etc. Adding a puppy to a home where there is already a senior dog may not be a great idea, but this will depend on the tolerance of your older dog. If you’re adding another adult dog to your home, you should ALWAYS introduce the dogs to each other prior to accepting ownership of the new dog. Not all dogs are going to get along and you need to determine this before adding a new dog to your home.
ESCAPING BEHAVIOUR – If your dog is escaping by either digging out or jumping over fences or gates, you should try everything possible to try and stop this behaviour first. There are several ways to prevent your dog escaping which can be tried. A google search will show some easy solutions that may have the right outcome for you.
NO TIME FOR – We all have busy lives these days and it’s not possible to spend all of our time with our dogs, however we may think our dogs need more from us than they actually do. If you don’t have time to walk your dogs daily or at least a few times per week, you can pay someone to do that for you. You can also send your dog off to a doggy day care for some socialisation and exercise. If you don’t think you are spending a lot of time with your dog, then you need to make sure the time you do spend with them in quality time – lots of attention, walks, etc.
We do understand that people’s circumstance can change but if you are adding a new dog to your family you need to think long term about what time you have available for them before committing to bringing them home.
