Through my work with SDSA & conversations with rescue orgs I have noticed something that deserves our attention.

Increasingly, members of the public are scrutinising animal welfare orgs work, which is no bad thing. Look at what happened recently with Miranda’s in USA. Citizens Jennifer Raymond and Jenna Moore played a key role on the ground in uncovering…

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There is a form of online behaviour affecting animal welfare organisations that we need to start talking about. Sometimes it begins with a genuine concern, sometimes with a disagreement or an accusation, and sometimes there appears to be no meaningful concern about the organisation’s work at all. The organisation, or somebody within it, simply becomes t…

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How we portray animals in public communications says something about our relationship with them, and perhaps something about ourselves.

There is something deeply uncomfortable about watching a real tragedy become entertainment.

On 10 October, 23-year-old William Chapman lost his life following an encounter with an Amur tiger n…

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When a dog enters a public shelter, decisions about treatment, adoption and euthanasia should be made according to that animal’s circumstances. A new South Korean law has brought an uncomfortable question into focus: what happens when a shelter can also supply that animal’s body to a university or research institution?

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Sky was a five-year-old Belgian Malinois who had served the South African Police Service as an arson-detection dog. She had been trained to work, deployed to work and depended entirely on SAPS for her care. When her operational career ended, she was taken to the SAPS Veterinary Hospital at Roodeplaat, Pre…

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Rio was not an unidentified street dog. He was seven and a half years old, he had a family and he was microchipped. Yet on 4 September 2026, according to his owner Elanur Gürel, Rio was picked up in Çanakkale by a Kepez Municipality animal collection team, immobilised using a tranquilliser dart and taken away.

She says there was no veterinarian physical…

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Today is International Dog Day and we could fill this page with photographs of the dogs we love and tell you why they matter to us, but if you have followed Dog Desk Animal Action for any length of time you already know that. Instead, I thought today was a good opportunity to talk about something we rarely stop to explain. How we actually work for dogs …

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On 29 July 2026, an X account calling itself Corral Sanctuary published footage of a small, visibly unsteady dog named Scruff and claimed:

“I rescued this sweet stray puppy this past Monday.”

The account said it had never owned a dog, described its operator as a cat lady who’s gone completely rogue and promised daily updates about Scruf…

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In Chennai a serious accusation came to light in March 2026, namely that some of the community dogs caught as part of the city’s Animal Birth Control programme had been sent to the Madras Veterinary College for veterinary training.

This claim at once led to a question: were the dogs being given the sterilisation treatment they neede…

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There are moments in animal welfare that pass almost unnoticed, quietly overshadowed by the endless stream of cruelty, neglect and suffering that fills the headlines. Then there are moments that deserve to be paused over because they represent something genuinely different. The permanent closure of a dog slaughterhouse …

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Spend a few minutes online and it quickly becomes clear that we live in an era where people are increasingly comfortable supporting individuals directly. Whether through subscriptions, memberships, tips or donations, there is now a widely accepted belief that people who provide something others enjoy, value or find useful should be able to receive finan…

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The Evolving Pressures Facing Animal Rescues

Animal rescue has always been challenging. There have never been enough homes, enough funding, enough volunteers, enough veterinary resources, or enough hours in the day to meet every need. For as long as animal welfare organisations have existed, they have been forced to make difficult decisions about where l…

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Animal welfare has a movement-building problem. For decades, the sector has largely been structured around organisations, with success often measured through fundraising totals, supporter numbers, social media reach, media coverage and organisational growth. These metrics are understandable. Every organisation needs resources, visibility and public supp…

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Animal welfare is often measured through numbers. We count how many dogs were rescued, how many were sterilised, how many received treatment, how many found homes and how many passed through shelters. These figures are important because they help us understand the scale of the work being undertaken, but they can also create the impression that bigger nu…

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Animal welfare has always attracted strong opinions. People disagree about sterilisation programmes, sheltering, adoption, public safety, municipal responsibilities and the role animals should play in society. Healthy debate is both inevitable and necessary.

What should not be inevitable is the belief that those involved in animal welfare can be subjecte…

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There comes a point where you have to decide what kind of organisation you want to be.

For me, that decision has become clearer over the last year than it has ever been before. I’ve found myself watching more and more animal welfare videos that leave me feeling uncomfortable, not because I don’t care about the animals, but because I come away with the fe…

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One of the questions we are occasionally asked is why Dog Desk Animal Action spends time promoting the work of other animal welfare organisations.

From a purely organisational perspective, it would be easy to focus exclusively on our own work. We have dogs in need of treatment, community programmes requiring support, advocacy campaigns demanding attentio…

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Nobody prepared me for the fact that one day I would spend hours reading hatred in order to protect a community built on compassion.

When I first started working in animal welfare, I understood that there would be days I would never forget. I knew there would be dogs whose stories would stay with me long after I had switched off the computer. I accepted …

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Animal welfare has never existed in isolation from the wider world.

The lives of animals have always been shaped by human decisions, human priorities, and human societies. What has changed is the scale and complexity of those influences. Increasingly, the challenges facing animals are no longer confined to questions of rescue, sheltering, veterinary care…

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When discussions about dogs become heated, it is often tempting to focus entirely on the animals.

The debate revolves around dog numbers, dog behaviour, dog attacks, dog welfare, dog ownership, dog abandonment, or dog management. Solutions are proposed. Arguments are made. Policies are introduced. Yet in many cases, the dogs themselves are only the most …

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