(VIC) Drought Dogs Program

About 12 months ago the Rescue coordinator of the Anatolian Shepherd club went to Mildura as part of a visit to country areas to search out Anatolian shepherds.

She made contact with Colin Sweet and Gary Pretty of the Council who were involved with the pound and found out the grim situation for dogs surrendered or found as a stray. Despite the best efforts of council workers only one in five dogs was reclaimed and nearly all the rest were put down.

There is no animal shelter for hundreds of kilometres. So if an elderly lady has to move out of her home and can’t take her dog with her, unless
family or friend take it, or she has it euthanased, the pound is the only other choice.

The Rescue coordinator had been involved with other dog rescue groups for a couple of years and decided to see what she could do to change the situation. She involved a fellow rescuer from the Victorian Dog Rescue Group, and together they began to bring dogs down to Mildura for rehoming and the Drought Dogs Program (DDP) began.

Mildura is more than 500kms from Melbourne and no commercial dog transporters have it on regular route. The DDP paid petrol and accommodation money for fellow dog lovers to drive there and back . They also found a willing local person to go in to the pound to help assess the dog’s suitability for rehoming.

Now in July 2007 the program is going full strength. From a slow start, more than 80 dogs have been saved to date, with increased numbers now being brought down. This wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the Supervisor, Gary Pretty, who has gone out of his way to make this program feasible. Gary also emailed local council staff to see if they were interested in helping and now there is a local foster care program involved as well. The DDP also placed an ad in the local paper.

The response has been fantastic. Even better, Gary, and another Council worker, Carolyn Dufty, are organising their own group to help rescue animals in the Mildura area – the Sunraysia Animal Rehoming Group.

Now local dogs rescued by the DDP are being kept in the community after their vet work is done until transport to Melbourne can be organised. This often takes the form of a Mildura local driving to Bendigo or Ballarat and meeting a person driving up from Melbourne.

Four or five dogs change hands, and are brought back to Melbourne where they are distributed to local foster carers. Or someone coming to Melbourne on business or for a holiday may bring a dog with them and it is collected at the airport by the DDP.

The dogs are then advertised on sites such as PetRescue. Other groups that assist are, Rigbys Rescue Melbourne Dog Rescue, Victorian Dog Rescue and Luvalab.

The DDP website will be operational within the next month to advertise all the dogs available for adoption and to show some past success stories.

We are really excited by how much the local community has supported the Drought Dogs Program,and it is quite inspirational that people so far apart can work together to save innocent dogs’ lives with absolutely no benefit to themselves, apart from the satisfaction that they have given a second chance to a dog that would otherwise be euthanased.

Original article: www.victoriandogrescue.org.au

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