Animal rescuers are always talking about opening real no-kill shelters as though somehow they won't be filled to bursting with unadoptable dogs almost immediately and either have to close their doors or start to kill. There is an idea being put around in Victoria of opening a no-kill shelter that would take SPCA orange zone dogs.

This would certainly save the SPCA a lot of money, but it would also mean that as long as people do this, the SPCA need never stop taking all surrendered dogs. In fact, the SPCA would be really foolish to stop the supply of potentially re-sellable dogs since it no longer had to dispose of the unsellable percentage of the free new stock that is delivered to its door daily.

What do these well-meaning animal-lovers think they will do when they are full of dogs that no one is ever going to want? Just keep buying more land? Or send dogs to unknown and uncontrollable "shelters" in foreign countries by the plane load? Yes, this is being done!

This "solution" is feel-good pie-in-the-sky. The real solution is to force the SPCA to confront its demons and to attack the root causes - animal overpopulation, animal abuse, and animal abandonment: unregulated breeding, unenforced PCA Act, and open intake by the SPCA.

The greatest percentage of dogs killed by pounds and SPCAs are the products of backyard breeders and the suppliers of protection/fighting breeds: purebreds and mixes of Pit bulls, German shepherds, wolf hybrids, Huskies, Rottweilers, Dobermann pinchers, and now Mastiffs and Presna canarios. The SPCA must demand regulations to control back yard breeding of the dogs it euthanizes by the thousands.

And it must use the PCA Act to stop dog abusers from ruining yard/guard dogs.

And it must stop enabling a culture of easy disposal of unwanted dogs with its open intake policy.

More shelters is just mopping up the blood, not curing the disease.