Animal Talk | It takes a community

While most complaints that go to our inspectors do come from the public, we also get a number of calls from government agencies and community groups. These include ACT Policing, Child Protection, ACT Housing, as well as elderly, mental health and domestic violence support groups. They will call us if they see an animal in need, and we reciprocate when we see a human requiring their help too. This mutual relationship ensures that animals are helped and not forgotten when their owners have other issues in their lives.

Once animals are in our care, we also work with others to help in their rehabilitation and/or preparation for rehoming or release. ACT Wildlife has been a very important partner in recent years.  While RSPCA ACT used to receive almost all of the injured native animals in the past, we struggled with providing speciality care for the approximately 3000 wildlife we saw every year.  

ACT Wildlife, on the other hand, has volunteers that care for specific species. As an example, they have volunteers that focus on birds or possums or bats. This not only provides the animals with better care for their specific needs, but when flock, herd or family type animals are released back in to the wild, they can go out with animals they have already bonded with in care.  

If a native animal requires vet treatments, we can still do that at our vet clinic, but it’s nice to know that they can spend their days recovering in much better place than the shelter, where we house all of the other creatures, great and small.

For domesticated animals, we have finally reached the 90 percent rehoming rate across all species. This has been aided by our relationships with other rescue groups. Sometimes we have animals that require specific needs based on their behaviours that may be hard for us to meet in the Canberra area, or require speciality care that we aren’t able to provide. This is where we might partner with groups such as Australian Working Dog Rescue, for dogs that need more space and stimulus to keep them happy, or with Pug Rescue in Victoria for dogs that require significant medical attention so that they can live longer healthier lives.

Locally, we have also worked with groups such as ACT Rescue and Foster Care (ARF) and the Greyhound Support Network, when an animal needs specialty foster care arrangements to prepare them for a new home.

While RSPCA ACT does help thousands of animals in need every year, the identification of animals in need, our rehoming rates and the general quality of care are definitely aided by all of these partnerships. They give us options to ensure that we can concentrate on the needs of each animal individually, and for that we are truly thankful for their support to prevent cruelty to animals.