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Idea that Rescues Might Wish to Consider

Snouter

Mama Doe
I have had some ideas that might contribute to resolving rescues' endless and pressing need to find additional suitable "forever homes" for their buns and to ease pressure on rescue places.

This is idea is offered respectfully and for rescues' consideration. If I have overlooked a critical fact, my apologies.

If it has a "grain" of value then it might merit further consideration. If not, it can simply be dismissed out of hand.

The idea does involve pet shops. However, I do not wish to initiate a "Rescue v Pet Shops" rant leading to the dreaded locked thread syndrome.

I have divided this post into two sections, "Context and "Ideas".

Context
There are numerous threads on RU stating that rescues are overflowing with rabbits and are desperate to secure suitable forever homes for their buns. Beautiful buns that are fully vacc'd and ready to go.Yet the rescues often get little, or no, interest from potential adopters.

In contrast, there are numerous RU threads stating that pet shops are selling an endless stream of buns to customers. Often "unsuitabe" customers that have not thought through the true impact of owning rabbits and often become a rescue "depositor" within months.

However, some of these pet shop customers have done their research, evaluated the impact, would provide "forever homes" and would make ideal customers for rescues and their rabbits. For some reason, these customers don't go to rescues to source their rabbits.

So pet shops have loads of customers interested in rabbits but rescues have few interested customers for rabbits.

Rescues, quite rightly, have strict criteria for potential adopters. These criteria are designed to secure suitable "forever homes" and avoid "rabbit returns" that then have to enter the "rescue cycle" yet again.

In terms of pet shops I am now going to consider P@H. They have been selected simply because their Head of Pets (HoP) (Maeve Moorcroft MVB MRCVS) made a number of claims regarding P@H's policies and procedures in the following thread.

http://forums.rabbitrehome.org.uk/showthread.php?t=220405&highlight=moorcroft&page=33

Specifically, Post #327 (et seq).

The P@H HoP made a number of claims/points. The following is an extract/summary of these claims/points:

  • I joined Pets at Home last year (i.e. 2009) as their Head of Pets and I have to say I have been very impressed by the lengths they go to in order to train their staff, the policies and procedures in place to look after their pets while in their care and the aftercare provided.
  • P@H ensure that they obtain regularly-updated knowledge of the best practice in their welfare for each type of animal that they sell. In the particular case of rabbits, knowledge of the best practice set out by, inter alia, the RWA and like organisations.
  • The HoP communicates his/her expertise and good practice via the training of P@H staff.
  • In the HoP's opinion, the training at P@H far exceeds anything she has seen elsewhere in the pet trade in the UK.
  • The P@H pet suppliers are visited every month by one of the following: the Hop themself or one of their pet team, their own vet, or an independent vet. A report is written and any issues discussed. They are also visited annually by the Local Authority (this is at P@H's insistence, it is not a legal requirement)
  • P@H’s advice to a customer is that “when purchasing a rabbit with hutch to bear in mind that a larger hutch would be needed once the rabbit was fully grown and that a run is essential from the first purchase”.
  • In response to a question regarding P@H’s recognition of the needs of rabbits as set out in the ‘Five Freedoms’, the HoP responded, "Rabbits should not be kept in a hutch all the time, they should be taken out daily and let run around in a run, or in the house. They need to be interacted with and played with. I kept rabbits all my youth and they were in a small hutch at night time, but spent all day free in the large, enclosed garden, coming into the house in the evening and sitting on my lap. A small hutch was perfectly adequate in this situation as it was only ever a bedroom. P@H always encourage a run so rabbits can have a larger area.
  • P@H staff are are empowered to refuse a sale if they are not happy about anything when they go through the questions they have been trained to ask with the prospective pet buyer. These include finding out if it is the right type of pet for the owner’s situation, housing, feeding, time and money commitment, etc.
  • The HoP noted that some of the most vociferous complaints to P@H's customer services are when a member of P@H's staff refuses to sell a pet to someone, and the HoP is always pleased to hear about it.
  • P@H has a commitment to take back any pet it has sold no matter how long after it has been sold if it does not work out, and try to find it a good home through our Support Adoption centres in store.
  • P@H will take in any small pet (of species P@H sells) into its "Support Adoption" units in store, subject to there being space. The store pays for their keep and any treatment needed, but the donation that is made when someone adopts them is given to animal charities and rescues around the UK.
  • The HoP was "amazed" by the training given to staff, from basic through to external courses. There are several steps in the training, each book being hundreds of pages long.
  • P@H Staff are not allowed to sell pets until they have completed a certain level of training.
  • Most P@H training is done in-house and completed during their shift in store and with the help of the manager and/or experienced colleague; this is so that they can put into practise the skills they learn with supervision before they are signed off. This training covers all areas of pet care/animal husbandry including feeding, sexing, health checks, enrichment, environment required etc.Then staff can do more advanced training, such as OATA courses, which involve distance learning, or reptile courses at Reaseheath College.
  • In respect of how the care of the pets in store is assured, members of the HoP's pet team perform an audit on a regular basis and any issues are addressed. Stores are also visited by the EHO every year to obtain their Pet licence and P@H has an independent vet visit every year. P@H recently trialled the new PCT standards in their East region, which involved an independent audit by SAI Global and P@H are looking to extend that across the country, leading the way on pet retail standards.
  • P@H staff can refuse a sale if they unhappy about any aspect of the pet's future environment or care or have any doubts as to the customers commitment or ability to care for the pet.

I will leave it to RU'ers to evaluate all of the above P@H commitments and to compare them with their actual experiences in P@H's stores.


Ideas
Assuming that the P@H HoP's claims are actually being implemented in practice, they would appear to include and be very similar to the criteria that I imagine the rescues would apply to potential adopters (with the exception of the essential home check). I am sure that the rescues could comment on this aspect.

In which case, perhaps the rescues could consider approaching their local P@H store and seek a deal to replace their existing rabbit supplier.

The rescue would need to provide a member of their team to be present in the store to provide prospective purchasers with advice and to apply all of the rescue's own criteria prior to sale/adoption. As, based on the HoP's claims, these should already be substantially in place, this should not cause a major policy problem for P@H. In addition, this member of the rescue's staff could train and mentor the P@H staff.

In terms of the purchase transaction, several issues would need to be considered:
  • P@H would no longer incur the purchase cost of "stock" from their existing pet supplier.
  • P@H will still incur the everyday costs of maintaning the rabbits in the store.
  • The price to be charged would need to be agreed betwen P@H/rescue.
  • Allocation of the income from the purchase between P@H and the rescue would need to be decided.

This arrangement would appear to be a possible method by which the rescues could gain access to P@H's rabbit-buying customers in order to find suitable "adopters/purchasers" of their rescue rabbits after applying their usual criteria to maximise the probability of these being "forever homes".

Its viability would depend on whether rescues think it's a good idea and whether their local P@H would go for it. P@H has said lots of "nice words" about rescues, this would be a chance to put them into practical action.
 
I can see where you're coming from. Assuming that PAH say "yes!" I suspect that from the rescue side, the big problem will be with providing someone to permanently 'man' the rabbit section. Regardless of their rhetoric I would not trust or wish a PAH employee to make final decisions as to homes, so someone from the rescue would have to be there all the time. Most rescues consist of one person (who often works elsewhere to pay the bills!) and other volunteers who also often work elsewhere, so having someone volunteer to permanently be at PAH all its opening hours would be pretty tricky if not impossible.

Also it is all very well having the same criteria, but most rescues will want to check and not just take the customer's word for it...whether that be homechecks directly, getting someone else to do it remotely, or in some circumstances via photographs/video etc. That doesn't make shop purchase very straightforward.

Many rescues also 'service' people who want to bond a rabbit with their existing one, and some rescues will insist on doing the bonding and not letting them go home until this is done. Pretty difficult to do in a shop, or finding the time to do if you're manning the shop all day.

Finally, many rescues may have 10, 20, 50, 100 bunnies. Pet shops have many babies in one pen, it would not be possible to put all the rescue bunnies together, so you would either have to select a few or completely change the configuration of the shop. Also many rescue bunnies have had a bad start and having them live or be brought to a shop might not be in their best interests.

Conceptually though it's interesting - any thoughts on 'work-arounds' for the pitfalls?
 
Sorry I'm in the middle of cooking dinner so haven't had time to think much through, but the first few things that pop into my head are....

PAH prob pay about £5 for a baby rabbit, but get around £30 for it, so a litter could bring them in around £150., so that would be lost profit (and they are a business so only in it dor the £'s)

Most rescue's don't have "staff", but unpaid volunteers who have jobs and lives, so are unable to give the level of input required here

ETA

As a rescue I know we wouldn't be happy to work with a retailer that sells unsuitable housing, or any livestock

Our rabbit adoption fee is £40, so that doesn't even cover the cost of neutering and vaccs etc, so unless the price was increased substantially, spliiting the fee with PAH would reduce even further the income for the rescue.
 
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I think it's an interesting idea but, as has already been mentioned, there are parts that just wouldn't work.

I think it would be good if pet shops had an area that meets the minimum recommendations with a little sign that says like "can you give your rabbits this much space?" or something.
And in that pen you could have a pair of rabbits from a rescue, and a sign saying "these rabbits are available for adoption from xxxxxx rescue. Please ask for contact details if you're interested in rehoming them."

I know it sounds bad but the thing rescues lack are the 'impulse buy' factor, and I think that would bridge the gap a little while retaining the rescues control.

Obviously the tricky part comes when you try to work out what the pet shop gets from it. I guess they could just do it when they're 'out of stock' as it were.
 
love the idea.
Do you think the shops would be interested in selling anything other than baby rabbits though?
Maybe an intermediate step could be to see if they would be prepared to 'advertise' bunnies at a local rescue in their adoption section, for a small percentage of the adoption fee? They wouldn't have to buy (or feed) the 'stock' that way, so it would be 100 % profit for them.

I didn't know rescues existed when we bought ours, and they are from P@H. If I had been made aware in this way, I would definitely have got rescue buns instead.

Also like BattleKat's idea of having a display housing area - it would probably serve well to educate the staff as well as prospective owners.
 
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