Response to government plans to toughen dangerous dog law

The Mayhew Animal Home, an animal welfare charity working at the forefront of this issue in London, welcomes the recognition that change to the Dangerous Dogs Act is long overdue, having witnessed firsthand the horrifying consequences from the misuse of certain breeds in our capital and the ineffectiveness of present legislation to address the root causes of this escalating problem. However, it must be remembered that the dog welfare issues now prevalent in our society are not just as a result of “dangerous dogs”, but basically down to indiscriminate breeding, easy accessibility to and widespread irresponsible ownership of dogs across society as a whole.


Yes, we need to tackle the issue of anti-social behaviour with dogs, and amendments in legislation is a part of this, but it change will only happen if there is a wider overhaul of dog welfare strategy in the country, which should have as its basis prevention rather than draconian cure.

The Mayhew would welcome the opportunity to bring its wealth of experience on this issue to the debate as it was one of the first, forwarding thinking animal welfare organisations which has long been working with local authorities in London, the Metropolitan police and RSPCA to address this issue in a constructive manner.

The Mayhew believes that effective legislation must address issues of public safety, must place greater onus on the owners of these animals, not the dogs themselves. It must also primarily address the issue of where these dogs are coming from in the first place and why they are so misused and abused, otherwise nothing will change. The Mayhew would advocate a more over-reaching agenda as follows:

- A repeal of breed specific legislation

- Make compulsory micro-chipping, which alone will not address the issue, part of a registration package for responsible dog ownership, which should include animals being neutered, vaccinated, checked regularly and insured.

- Tighter regulations placed on the trade in pets from pet shops, on the Internet and other forms of media, and priority given to the stricter monitoring of both registered and “backstreet” breeders.

- Government/local councils to invest in designated and trained personnel, such as Animal Welfare Officers, who can work alongside animal welfare charities, both with local residents and pet owners to prevent the escalation of this crisis and make our communities safer for animals and people alike.

- Government to consider funding neutering programmes, which presently many animal welfare charities strive to fund themselves with extremely limited resources

Caroline Yates, CEO, The Mayhew Animal Home

Pets in need

The Mayhew Animal Home is asking for unwanted goods to help cats and dogs in need




London -The Mayhew Animal Home relies on the generosity of our supporters and there are many things that the rescue centre in Kensal Green needs to look after the animals at the Home and also carry out the day-to-day duties of a busy charity. The Home prides itself on the high standard of animal care and the kennels and cat cabins on site are always comfortable, warm and have a rotation of toys to prevent the feline and canine residents getting bored.



While they are at the Home, The Mayhew cats and dog also have access to play areas, which are stocked with different toys and activity centres.



The Mayhew Animal Care Manager, Gillian Rich, said: “We are very lucky to have kind supporters who regularly bring us toys and blankets for the animals we have here and there may be many readers who have a stock of items at home that are simply no use to them. It is great for us to have new balls and bowls for our dogs, but there are so many things that The Mayhew could make use of and all of this will help lower the overall costs for our charity.



It costs over £3400 a day just to keep The Mayhew running, so when people are having a clear out it is a great if they could spare a thought for the Home and how they can help us out.”



Here is a wish list for bits and pieces that may be collecting dust in North West London homes and could be put to good use at The Mayhew:



Towels

Blankets (not pillow cases or duvets)

New dog and cat toys

Paper towels

New Mops

Buckets

New brooms

New sponges and cloths

Agility equipment

Dog and cat new grooming brushes

Cat bowls

Dog bowls

Toilet rolls

New books

Any new and unused toiletry gift sets

Plant pots

Garden tools

Garden tables or furniture for events



Printer cartridges: Samsung ML-2240 - Samsung MLT-D1082 Toner Cartridge 1.5k



Cannon LBP -3360 - Canon 708H High Yield toner cartridge 6k



HP C7200 - hp ink no: 363 (All colours)



Stationary:



A4 plain paper

Staples



Please drop off items at the reception of The Mayhew in Trenmar Gardens, or post to:

The Mayhew Animal Home, Trenmar Gardens, Kensal Green, NW10 6BJ. Many thanks.

Homeless Valentine’s Day litter of kittens born under moon of love on 14th

Six tiny kittens were born on Valentine’s Day at The Mayhew Animal Home after the mother was found wandering heavily pregnant off busy Harlesden High Street in North West London.


Rescued by The Mayhew’s Animal Welfare Officer, the mother cat –now named Valentine Love –gave birth to six healthy kittens on the 14th to the delight of staff at the Home.

The teeny felines are now being cared for by the Cattery staff and will be looking for new homes in nine weeks time.

In keeping with the theme of love and romance under which they were born, staff at The Mayhew have given each kitten a name meaning love in various languages: Amour (French) Upendo (Swahili) Agapi (Greek) Amore (Italian) Liebe (German) Lyubov (Russian)

Mayhew Animal Welfare Officer, Claire Harper, said: “It is wonderful that this story has such a happy ending and that on the one day of the year where we all have love on our mind, these beautiful kittens were born in to a Cattery decorated with hearts and flowers for the 14th! There is a sad echo to the tale though, as the mother, Valentine Love, was extremely heavily pregnant when I found her and there probably wouldn’t have been such a happy ending had she given birth on the streets. We don’t know if this cat has an owner, but many people do let their cats outside without thinking of the consequences of them being unneutered and how they are contributing to the high numbers of unwanted kittens.”

The Mayhew Animal Home makes sure that all cats, dogs and rabbits re-homed by the charity are neutered before they are adopted. The Mayhew vets will neuter kittens from nine weeks old, so after this age they will be available for adoption.

Anyone interested in adopting any of the Valentine’s Day kittens, should call The Mayhew from the 19th April 2010 on 0208 969 0178

Animal charity staff create valentines al a carte menu for homeless kitties

Mayhew Animal Home provides a feast for their felines on the 14th and asks people to come and adopt their purrrrfect partner!


Instead of the usual work with brooms and buckets, staff from The Mayhew Animal Home are donning chef hats and wielding rolling pins in order to produce a special Valentine’s menu for the cats and kittens awaiting adoption at the rescue centre in Kensal Green.

Whilst waiting for their new owners to arrive at The Mayhew, the lucky felines will be presented with a menu of Kitty Kisses, Fabulous Flirty Fishballs and Sexy Salmon Mousse.

Deputy Animal Care Manager, Caroline Brown, said: “While we ensure all year round that our Mayhew animals get lots of care and affection, we wanted to prepare a special Valentine’s day feast for the cats and kittens and show them some extra love. I have taken tips from top recipes for the al a carte menu and while our kitties will be feasting on Flirty Fishballs, we are encouraging cat lovers to visit the Home and consider adopting their purrrrrfect partner!”

Over 12,000 animals in need helped by The Mayhew

To start off the year highlighting how many animals and pet owners in the UK capital desperately need help, we have released statistics from our veterinary database.

Our computer system means that every animal that arrives at The Mayhew can be tracked and logged into a database. This includes every stray, abandoned and unwanted pet and also any of the cats, dogs or rabbits that have come to the Community Veterinary Clinic onsite at the Animal Home since June 2006.

These figures prove that as a small charity in a capital city it is essential to provide the services we do in order to save the lives of thousands of animals and provide support and advice to pet owners facing difficulty. These statistics reflect just how many animals are in need. The Mayhew is committed to giving every animal a second chance and we have veterinary staff available every day, in addition to care staff and foster carers, in order to get every animal back on their feet, no matter how long it takes.

The Mayhew Animal Home’s neutering statistics also reflect the high demand for both a low-cost and a free service. From 2007, the clinic has carried out 4523 neutering procedures. This includes the 513 outpatient bull breed procedures carried out free of charge in their Community Veterinary Clinic in 2009 alone (1130 since 2007 when the scheme began). Working on the premise that every female dog will breed and every one of her offspring goes on to breed then that can be 20-40,000 dogs in their lifetime* meaning a total of 1,026,0000 bull breed puppies were prevented from being born into a society already flooded with unwanted puppies and dogs.

*HSUS.org

In addition to re homing cats and dogs, we offer a Pet Refuge programme and run several Community Animal Care schemes with their four Animal Welfare Officers, including Trap, Neuter and Return for feral cats, homeless community support and free micro-chipping services. The Community Veterinary Clinic at the Home offers low-cost neutering and vaccinations in addition to the Free Bull Breed Neutering scheme, which is offered to all bull breed owners, irrespective of location or financial status as a way of actively adressing the hugh problem on over population and status dogs in London.

A Halloween special for our 'longest stayers'

I am now surrounded by Halloween goodies after getting a little over-excited in the pound shop this morning for our themed-day on the 31st. We are hosting a Halloween special at the Home with a specific focus on the plight of black cats at rescue centres.

Rescue centres in the UK, and indeed in other countries too like the U.S and Canada, are all faced with the problem of the 'sticky' black and black and white cats. They are the longest stayers in rescue centres as adopters tend to favour any unique looking cats, looking for a pet who is that little bit different. Sadly, this means that when we have cabins full of black cats their chance of a quick adoption diminishes.

So for the one day of the year where they become recognised icons splashed around on posters perched on broomsticks and pumpkins, we have decided to use the day to try and give a little extra push for some of our Cattery residents. Black cats who all have fantastic loving personalities and really should have found a forever home by now.

We will be decking the Home in a Halloween theme and hosting tours throughout the day at 12, 2 and 4pm and there will be games and activities.

Halloween is such an excellent opportunity to highlight this issue, though of course we welcome adoption enquiries for any of our animals, be they cat, dog, little, large, spotty, tortoiseshell, ginger or calico!

Wall of Fluff + Kitten Season

Had the treat this morning to be introduced to the website Wall of Fluff by The Metro newspaper. There was a video featured in The Ridiculant section of a kitten eating broccoli, and for anyone familiar with that section of the paper you will know how they love their kittie videos. It seems to be that anything feline related seems to drive people crazy on YouTube and I admit I had a fair old giggle at this video titled 'Nosiy kittens waiting for dinner'.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiHXASgRTcA

We are all certainly familiar with that sound at The Mayhew, when it is near to feeding time in the kitten cabins!

We are now officially at the end of Summer (how freezing is it today?!) yet we still have a lot of kittens waiting for homes and staff are only at the end of a spate of hand rearing some of them. Every year kitten season eats up so many rescue centre resources, as our Animal Welfare Officers are called out constantly to collect stray any feral litters from gardens, sheds, inside peoples houses, and members of the public turn up left, right and centre with litters they no longer want or have found near their homes and gardens.

The Mayhew has night staff shift workers that are at the Home round the clock, which is essential over this 'season' as the very young kittens need hand fed every two hours and also need the help to be cleaned and go to the toilet, as it is their mother washing them that would otherwise do the job.

At the top of this post is a photo of two ten day old kittens that came in at the beginning of the summer after our AWOs were called out to a building site. Luckily, we had a volunteer foster carer that was able to take them into her home and hand rear them -volunteers like this are invaluable to us.

First installment! Animal rescue: The two extremes

As a relatively small animal rescue home in North London, it is always an issue for us as to how well people know just what we do outside of re homing cats and dogs, and how much they also even want to know.

Many people are happy just to hear about the happier side of our rehoming tales, and may only think that is the scope of our work, but we have four Animal Welfare Officers here who deal with the social issues daily that affect animal welfare to a large degree. Some of these issues are of the graver kind that many people may not wish to acknowledge and ones that need to be given much more attention by government and the media: Issues like dog fighting, status dogs, dog registration and pet advertising.

Our new blog will give constant updates about tales from the Home and what we see here on a day to day basis. Some of it will be addressing the more contentious issues of animal welfare and many of it the day to day unpredictability of life at a rescue home.

Only in the last week, amongst our many arrivals, we have had a peacock as a temporary guestin our kitten garden, a celebrity visit to adopt her new puppy (all to be revealed), two very obese cats arrive (or roll in!) and our impressively statuesque Neopolitan Mastiff, Louie, went to the Paul O Grady show this morning to feature in the Homeless Dog slot on the show.

To be continued.....