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GAP National Conference
Early September
saw the National Championships of greyhound racing come to Perth. This allowed WA
to showcase itself to the best of the best from around Australia and NZ. For the first
time ever the national GAP Conference was held in Perth to coincide with the other
conferences that are held during the Nationals.
Coinciding the National GAP
Conference to be held at this time has a number of
important benefits for GAP programs around the country - it places GAP in
the same operating arena as AGRA (the Australian Greyhound Racing
Association - made up of the major Racing Clubs in the Nation), Greyhounds
Australasia (Made up of members of each State and NZ Greyhound Racing
Governing Bodies), the CEO's of the major clubs and various members of
their Committees and Boards from around the country.
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It gives us an opportunity to present GAP in a positive and
progressive light to the decision makers within greyhound racing and allows
GAP to illustrate the benefits of the Adoption Programs to the Racing
Industry as a whole. It also illustrates the level of commitment and
dedication of the various GAP staff members throughout Australia. Finally and most
importantly, it keeps GAP top of mind amongst the people who have the
ability to affect our funding and alter our futures!
This was the first year that the conference was held in Perth and the first year that the
conference coincided with the running of the Nationals and the other
associated conferences. We really had a huge agenda to cover over two days
and it certainly kept us chasing our tails between 9 - 5pm on each day. We
had presentations from vets, veterinarian behaviourists and the crew from
Advance on Pet Nutrition and how to accurately read labelling on various
pet foods. Further discussion surrounded topics such as assessment
protocols, vetting issues that have been experienced, Pet Insurance,
attracting Foster Carers, sponsorship and responsible breeding initiatives
throughout greyhound racing and how we can further improve our operations,
services and processes.
Once again the Conference offered a lot of collaboration between the Australian States and New Zealand GAP Programs
and despite our individual set ups and the differences in the levels of
funding that each receive, we seem to face similar issues and the willingness
to support each other was sensational.
The 2010 National Championships will be in South Australia next year and we've
already begun discussing ideas for the next agenda of the National GAP Conference that will
again be held in conjunction with the Nationals.
It was wonderful to have WA CEO David Simonette and WA Chairman
and newly appointed AGRA Chairman
Patricial Tassell join us for some of our morning session
on Friday, followed by Greyhounds
Australasia President Jan Wilson who addressed us later that
day.
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PetRescue
PetRescue have partnered with
PET Stock nationally to roll out a wonderful new concept in adoption and
that resulted in GAP being invited to attend an in-store display at PET
Stock Joondalup on 5th September. PET Stock provided space in the store to
"bring PetRescue
to the public" to try and increase the profile of rehoming groups,
increase the number of adoptions and not contribute to welfare issues by
not selling pets within a pet store.
A bunch of wonderful local GAP owners volunteered to attend and represent
GAP and all reports were that the day went wonderfully and the response
from the public was fantastic. While GAP were at the Joondalup site SAFE
were at the PET Stock Balcatta store and the PetRescue video diary of the day
can be seen here.
Pet Rescue and PET
Stock are currently working on further developing this idea on a national
basis and we will keep you all posted for our further involvement coming to
a PET Stock near you.
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Recent Publicity
Stateline
July saw a fantastic story appear on WA Stateline with Kerry Vernon interviewed by Claire Moody and a
wonderful story appear on Channel 2. Stateline offered a totally different
environment to any previous TV exposure gained by GAP and saw our message
reach into a different audience. Thanks must go to WA's Police Commissioner
Karl O'Callaghan who appeared on the segment in his overall support of the
GAP program in WA after adopting his hound Molly (Molly Warmflash) earlier
in the year, and more specifically his surprise at the current state of the
Muzzle Laws. We were really happy with content of the story and have
received some great leads as a result.
Curtin FM
Thanks to Adopter Alan Manning (Owned by Kaluah) and his links, Kerry
was interviewed on Curtin FM in August. The opportunity to reach a new
audience and discuss the many benefits of both adopting and fostering was a
wonderful opportunity for GAP to further remove a few common misconceptions
of greyhounds and reach a new audience.
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Muzzle Update
In August we
had a great meeting with the Principal Policy Advisor to the Minister for
Local Government. This was a truly pivotal meeting for Greyhounds As Pets
after 7 years of the lobbying the Department for Local Government to make
changes to the Dog Act 1976 affecting the current muzzle laws pertaining to
Greyhounds. Basically the suggestion was that there would likely be a
change but we will not know exactly what that means until the new drafted
Dog Act is put before Parliament for debate. At this stage they are hoping
that it will reach Parliament in the November 2009 sitting.
After so long lobbying this change i feel that we are "so close"
to reaching our goal here so would continue to ask you all to keep doing
the right thing by Muzzling your dogs in public. At this stage one
"incident" could jeopardise everything we've spent so long trying
to achieve and we certainly don't want that!
It truly is very exciting stuff, I've got my breath held and will certainly
let you all know how things progress as soon as we hear.
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2009 Perth
Royal Show
That time of
year again and all the plans are in place for another super year at the Royal Show. We have had a great
response from people volunteering to bring their hounds into the GAP
Marquee and tell people all about their adopting experience, greyhounds in
general, fostering and the GAP processes.
We must thank Anne Harris (adopter and Foster Carer) for donating her
exceptional artistic skills to design new look banners for our display and Ascot Sign Co for providing
wonderfully discounted production fees. We think they look fabulous. So if
you're heading to the show feel free to drop in and collect a pat or two,
check out our new look display and catch up with GAP friends.
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Interested In Fostering?
With the Royal Show almost upon us and the
impending influx of adoptions that we always receive after the Show, if
anyone has thought about trying fostering, now is truly the time we'd love
you to give it a go!! We already have 25 applications on the go and are
expecting to double this level once the show is over. While we need any
foster carers, we typically have trouble assessing the dogs for their
suitability to live as an "only" dog in a household with no other
canine companionship and for their "cat tolerance" and ability to
live in a home with cats. GAP supplies collars, leads and coats for dogs in
foster care and thanks to our National Sponsor we can supply Advance dog
food biscuits for the dogs nutritional needs.
So if you're interested in giving fostering a go, even if you only foster
over this busy time frame, please don't hesitate to email or call Tammara Olds on 0411 152 686.
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2010 GAP Calendars
The new 2010 Calendars are now available!
This year was WA's first year at producing the National GAP Calendar and we're
really pleased with it so we hope you'll all love it too.
At $22ea
they're great value, contain tons of gorgeous photos and make terrific
Christmas presents, especially if you need to post things overseas. These
will be on sale at the Royal Show stand or you can order them by sending us
an email.
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Adoption Day
Saturday 19th
September saw a whole heap of people and dogs come to the Pampered Pooch to facilitate one
big adoption day!
To achieve days like this we rely heavily on a number of things -
- Our wonderful
foster carers to be able to bring the dogs to Pampered Pooch so that
prospective adoptive families can meet the dogs
- Our lovely
adopting families being able to come along and meet the dogs (and
hopefully fall in love with them and adopt one, take them home and
live happily ever after!!)
- The never ending
generosity of the wonderful staff at Pampered Pooch for happily providing us access
to their paddock and assisting with the demonstrations of "small
dog friendly" and "cat friendly".
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Basically we're getting to a point where we have a lot of
families interested in adopting a greyhound as a pet and a lot of dogs that
we're matching up with applications and the easiest thing from a logistics
perspective was to get everyone in one place at one point in time! There
was dogs coming and going everywhere and lots of people milling around and
amongst the organized chaos we seemed to achieve a number of successful
match ups and adoptions.
Thanks to the efforts of all involved for such a successful outcome.
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