Saturday, December 12, 2009

The RSPCA Care Centre

Today, mum and dad went to a new breed of adoptions centre in Australia. It is called the RSPCA Care Centre. The official opening was last night, on the 11th.



The new Care Centre was developed after research showed that some people were put off visiting shelters because they were perceived as loud and overwhelming, too emotional, or they thought there must be something wrong with the animals. It is much more like a 'pet shop'- spacious, clean and air conditioned with light colours. The difference is that the animals for adoption are all from the local RSPCA shelter. This is an artist's impression of the centre. It looks just like this.

One thing mum and dad really liked was the way the pens were set up for the animals. They had areas they could hide out from the public in, and the lighting was soft. It was a big difference from the small glass sided cages with flourescent lighting where the animals spend the day being overstimulated and tapped at by children.

As well as being a pet adoption centre and retail outlet, the Care Centre houses a veterinary out patient clinic and a pet advisory service. The staff are all RSPCA accredited and trained in animal welfare. All the animals available for adoption are desexed, microchipped, vet checked and behaviourally assessed. As well as puppies and kittens, there are older dogs and cats and other animals that the shelter may have. Today, there were guinea pigs and rabbits.



Mum was quite excited to hear it. Being in a shopping centre, it is much more accessible than shelters. The staff were great too. Mum doesn't think they will give the kind of advice she heard in a pet shop a couple of week ago- that there is no point doing any kind of training with dogs until they are older. That's when you know if they "want to learn". Craziness.

We hope that this wonderful centre has lots of success:)

8 comments:

Teddy Westlife said...

Oooh I wonder if there is one of those in Melbourne somewhere? What a great idea.

Angel, Kirby and Max said...

That is a great center. The animals that pass through there to there furever homes will be very lucky.

Anonymous said...

It looks fabulous. I hope it does well.

Cat with a Garden said...

Shelters at our place are nowhere near this. It looks great! We hope many people will adopt.

Daisy said...

It sounds fabulous! Maybe more shelters will start modeling their designs after this one!

Cory said...

What a great design! We hope this results in lots of babies getting adopted!

Tama-Chan, Benny, Vidock, Violette, Ollie, Heloise, Momo, Ryu said...

What a great facility. They will doubtless do a lot of good work.

dArtagnan Rumblepurr/Diego Hamlet Moonfur said...

YIPPEE!! What a lovely place, it'll for sure help our fellow pussycats find homes!