Yesterday I came out of a three-year hiatus from writing to share my concerns over the direction Dogs Victoria seems to be taking regarding the protection of paying members over the welfare of the animals. Thanks to all the registered breeders who came out in support.
In my opinion it is absolutely essential that the balance of members interests versus animal welfare needs to be heavily weighted towards welfare, otherwise what exactly is it that Dogs Victoria stand for? And with approximately $800,000 annually being made in litter registrations and title certificates, I think these dogs bring in more than enough money for Dogs Victoria to at least be concerned for their welfare.
My article gave examples from our own investigations and included photographs I took myself during these investigations.
My concerns were that it was seemingly taking an eternity for welfare concerns to be addressed with emails appearing to be ignored for approximately a year on some issues I have raised.
After seeing an advertisement for a Field Officer position being advertised by Dogs Victoria I decided to vent my frustration. The advertisement featured a two-page job description that mentioned animal welfare once. The entire role seemed to be based on protecting Dogs Victoria’s image and the paying member from any negative exposure or “Collateral Damage” as it was inappropriately referred to.
As it turned out I didn’t need to wait long for confirmation of my concerns from Dogs Victoria.
Within a few hours of my article being published a staff member of Dogs Victoria was on the Oscar’s Law Facebook page and on the case.
So you would be expecting that this person from Dogs Victoria would have been concerned for the dogs involved, their living conditions, their alleged mistreatment, and the overall welfare of the animals. Perhaps you might also expect that there would have been some concern regarding the amount of time it had taken to investigate these complaints and a promise to escalate the matter and see it looked into immediately.
Your expectations would be in vain.
Instead the staff member launched into full “collateral damage protection” mode, claiming that my article may be defamatory in nature.
Despite the article stating that I had taken the photo’s involved on the site, the Dogs Victoria staff member then proceeded to claim that the photos may have been digitally altered, set up or taken somewhere else. … limiting collateral damage….
Dog’s Victoria’s customer service officer then went on to talk about bias and getting all of the facts and even referred to me and others as “keyboard warriors”.
Again no mention of the animal’s welfare.
I agree with Kestrel in regards to getting all of the facts, which is exactly why I used my own photographs and only discussed what I had personally investigated without being behind that keyboard Kestrel seems to arm herself with.
Some facts that perhaps Kestrel should have mentioned when she was online attacking my work and labelling me biased and one sided, would have been, her bias as an employee of Dogs Victoria.
At least now I know how to go about getting a response out of Dogs Victoria.
It’s no wonder I was so concerned.
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