Welcome, divine viewers, to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Today, we’re going to the Gold Coast, a city in the state of Queensland, Australia to visit the non-profit Animal Welfare League of Queensland, a caring shelter for dogs and cats. Let us begin by speaking with the League’s Strategic Development Officer Ms. Joy Verrinder about the group’s history and activities.

The Animal Welfare League was founded in 1959 by a group of dedicated citizens. They started as a very small group of people, rattling cans on street corners with little dogs and raising awareness amongst the public. And from there, the Animal Welfare League has grown into an organization that now employs over 120 people and has about 500 volunteers, and takes in 10,000 stray and abandoned cats and dogs a year plus a number of other animals if needed like horses and sheep and goats and so on.

The League strongly believes that in working with the community to end the practice of euthanasia in pounds and shelters.

A number of years ago, we actually put a huge survey in the paper. And we actually informed people of the number of animals that were being killed on the Gold Coast alone, and we asked them did they think that was acceptable. And then we put up a whole heap of solutions that we thought would be helpful to prevent the number of animals being born that don’t end up with a home to go to. And we found that obviously 99.9% all said that it was totally unacceptable, and they would be totally supportive of bringing in de-sexing and micro-chipping prior to sale or transfer.

To minimize the birth of kittens and puppies that would end up homeless, the League has been reaching out to local governments in Queensland and working with them on solutions. We’ve been working very strongly with local governments and state governments; it takes a long time to work through these processes, but gradually people are becoming more aware that it is a problem. And we’ve been very excited in Queensland: the state governments are now funding de-sexing projects in four councils this year and next, and that’s helping.

The Animal Welfare League of Queensland provides spaying and neutering, along with other services at its clinic, and takes into consideration the caregiver’s ability to pay in charging for procedures.

We’re working on a model for the whole city, and it includes having a community vet clinic, to offer low cost de-sexing and micro-chipping to the public, as well as any veterinary services that are needed.

When they can’t afford to pay for veterinary work our community veterinary clinic actually provides the opportunity for those animals to be treated, and we bring the cost down as low as we possibly can, until we get to the point where the person can afford it, so that they don’t have to give up their animal.

So that’s the purpose of a community vet clinic, to be there like a public hospital for all animals, but mainly cats and dogs. We have many vets now employed, seven vets on at any one time, and we do thousands of de-sexings every year, but we also treat all other sorts of other illnesses and diseases in our community vet clinic.

The League depends on foster carers to help fulfill its mission. Approximately 95% of the animals in the League’s foster care program are kittens and puppies. Generally a carer will take in the baby for about eight weeks and then return them to the League. Technology is helping to facilitate the running of carer programs across Australia.

People who have computer expertise like software programmers can do a huge amount. Just recently that’s starting to appear in Australia, where software programmers offer their services to develop foster care databases, for example, so that pounds and shelters can foster out little animals that are under eight weeks of age. They can then be cared for until they’re old enough to be de-sexed and re-homed, or sick animals can be fostered out, or animals that need a bit of training because they’re too timid and don’t survive well in a pound or shelter environment.

I think foster caring is one of the most important things that people in the community can do. Even people who don’t have a lot of space or don’t want to have a full-time commitment for an animal can put in, say one month caring for a mother and her litter of little kittens, until the kittens are old enough to be de-sexed and the mother can have the milk dry and then can be de-sexed, and that’s all contributing to reducing this oversupply of kittens that are being born every year that are causing the problem for the whole community, with not being able to find enough homes for them all.

When we return, we’ll take a look around the League’s community veterinary clinic. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back, wonderful viewers, to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants on Supreme Master Television. Our show features the Animal Welfare League of Queensland, a non-profit organization that takes in 10,000 stray and surrendered cats and dogs each year and works in harmony with the community to see that the needs of local animals are met and that they are respected. The League has created a community veterinary clinic where animal companions are treated at reduced rates. Ms. Joy Verrinder, the League’s Strategic Development Officer will now show us around the facility.

This is our community vet clinic, where members of the public come for their animals to be treated.

This is purely for animals that are already in their own homes, no matter where they’ve come from. So it’s anyone who needs assistance with treatment for their animals, whether it be regular immunization or their animal has a broken leg that needs to be fixed or needs to be de-sexed and micro-chipped. At the moment it’s tick season in Australia, which means that a lot of dogs that live in rural areas in particular, end up with ticks on them that cause paralysis, which is really serious, so we get a lot of admissions because of tick fever.

We believe that every city and shire should be providing this service for its animals because why should animals miss out when humans don’t? There’s a public hospital for humans, there should be a public hospital or a community vet clinic for animals.

Besides its community veterinary clinic, the League also runs a shelter veterinary clinic where stray and abandoned animals can be treated before they go to new homes.

You need a shelter veterinary clinic, which can be in the same place, but ours is in a different spot on the one side. And that’s for treating all the animals that come in that are abandoned.

This is Shelby and she’s been through our veterinary clinic and obviously needed some work done on her face, so she’s got some stitches and she’ll be healed very shortly, and she’s available for re-homing so she’s in her re-homing pen already. And we also have Bundy walking around in this same environment and Bundy’s had her de-sexing operation and she’s raring to go. She’s only six months old so she’s very excitable and really looking for a family to give her lots of exercise and attention. Hallo, darling.

It’s so good having the vet clinic on site, which means you can treat all dogs, for all sort of things, whether it be broken legs or injuries like this dog’s obviously had to the face or it might have been a little tumor or cancer or something that the vet’s been able to remove, so that then they’re ready for re-homing.

The League is active in reaching out to the community to raise awareness on a variety of issues related to our animal companions.

We have huge community education programs. We have four trained teachers on staff, who go out into schools, but we have community education as well. So we invite the community to come in and do tours. We invite school children to come in and do activities here at the refuge, which is quite unique, I think.

There’re a lot of animal welfare organizations that have school programs where you go out to the school, but we strongly believe in bringing in the children, including high school children, to the refuge, so that they get exposed to the numbers of animals that are being abandoned. And they get to wash them and walk them and learn about their veterinary care and learn about early age de-sexing, which is absolutely essential to prevent animal from breeding, when there’s too many out there.

Our catch-cry is, “Desex, identify, train, and keep safe,” and we teach that to everybody, and encourage the community to understand that if everybody did those four things, we wouldn’t have the situation of all these animals being abandoned, and ending up being killed in pounds and shelters. So, that’s the first thing we believe: Communities are responsible for their own animals, and they should be informed of what’s happening, where they are being abandoned and how many there are and how to solve it.

And we strongly believe that every animal values its life and deserves to live. And therefore it’s our responsibility to put every effort in to make it happen because they have feelings; they value their lives just as much as we do. And it is inappropriate and totally unethical to assume that we have the right to kill animals just because we haven’t managed our animals appropriately in our communities.

We thank Ms. Joy Verrinder of the Animal Welfare League of Queensland for speaking with us about her organization’s clinics and community outreach programs. Please join us tomorrow on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants for Part 2 of our show featuring the presentation of the Shining World Compassion Award to the League and more highlights of our visit to the League’s facility.

For more details on the Animal Welfare League of Queensland, please visit

Thank you for your company today on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Up next is Enlightening Entertainment, after Noteworthy News. May Heaven’s love always be in your life.

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