About Us

Greater Western Sydney is a registered sole trader business that is owned and operated by Sabeen Syed. ABN: 38459028286

Sabeen has been rescuing companion animals since September 2020. What started as a search for her lost cat via a Facebook lost and found pet group led to a deep dive into the world of roaming and lost pets. She became aware of the roaming dog issue in Greater Western Sydney where dogs were seen roaming daily across multiple suburbs, some of those dogs had been roaming for weeks/months/years .

Unnerved that this was occurring in Sydney, tackling this issue became a priority as she had seen this issue overseas (where her parents were born) when she was much younger where she had witnessed stray dogs being disregarded, overlooked and looked upon with fear or as a nuisance with widespread apathy/indifference.

Sabeen has loved animals from a young age and she wanted to be proactive rather than be an apathetic and indifferent bystander to the plight of animals.

Sabeen started responding to posts on Facebook lost & found pet pages that were put up by local community members asking for help with all kinds of rescue situations such as situations involving dogs, cats, pocket pets such as rabbits, guinea along with large animals such as ponies, cows and goats.

Sabeen started regularly taking injured and sick animals to vets and also scan/transport deceased pets to vets or to their owners.

She was invited to become an administrator of a major local lost and found pet group on Facebook within 2 months of her journey into stray companion animal rescue.

Sabeen specifically focused on secured roaming dogs every day at all hours in multiple LGA’s especially Penrith/Blacktown LGA’s to reduce pet related road fatalities, to prevent dog attacks, to reduce pet homelessness and to ensure the wellbeing of these dogs.

She often encountered terrified, timid or skittish stray dogs. Sabeen aimed to gain their trust with patience, being non threatening in her body language and by adopting humane capture methods which focused on dogs exercising their own free will to approach, accept and allow her to secure them.

The aim being to socialise these dogs, rehabilitate them and set them up for success in passing behavioural assessments at council run animal shelters.

This was achieved by Sabeen adopting force-free hand capture methods and taking as long as it needed with each individual dog to build trust, rapport, adopting an empathetic approach to a dog’s fear/visible signs of trauma responses/hesitation and by being patient.

The aim was never to rescue a traumatised/fearful dog as soon as possible but to secure them when they were ready for transition, to trust people, ready to be removed from the streets and be taken to the safety of a shelter.

Allowing these dogs to have a choice and by respecting their space whenever possible. This approach led to all of these stray dogs entering into shelters and go on to be adopted via shelter adoptions or rescues ( some dogs were sent to rescues by shelters if they still needed additional time in care for rehabilitation). She networked with other animal rescuers to hold dogs and other found pets overnight as after hours facilities were insufficient or minimal. The goal was to bring the number of known long term roaming dogs to zero which was achieved via persistent hard work, the contribution of other rescuers who held dogs in their kennels after council hours and by Sabeen transporting these dogs to vets/Police Stations/shelters daily.

Sabeen chose to advocate for change and strongly condemn irresponsible pet ownership, unethical backyard breeding, pet dumpings and raise awareness about animal cruelty/neglect that she encountered.

Sabeen also spoke out against incidents that she was witnessing of bullying, poor behaviour, defamation, unethical behaviour, racism and unethical practices utilised by rescuers to discredit other rescuers, shelters and animal welfare agencies.

This led to a considerable backlash/bullying and as a result, she created her own Facebook Group/non rehoming rescue platform via which she could assist animals without hindrance and built her platform via answering daily requests from local community members asking for assistance with animals.

This rescue platform/group was registered as Greater Western Sydney Lost & Found Pets in 2021 which has now been renamed to Greater Western Sydney Lost & Roaming Pet Capture Services.

She witnessed many people in local communities prefer to leave stray dogs to roam on the streets rather than take them to shelters due to the misconception that “all stray dogs taken to the Shelter are put down”.

Sabeen sought to encourage people to take stray dogs that they encountered to Shelters if they were not microchipped or registered by documenting the events surrounding each dog that she took to the shelter, following their journey in the shelter often by visiting them, advocating for those same dogs to be adopted once they had completed their impound period and showing their positive rehoming outcomes.

This was done for all stray dogs that she took to the shelters when they remained unclaimed by their owners.

Slowly, the tide turned and more people started taking stray dogs to shelters. She also worked on securing sighted roaming animals and scanning found pets on a daily basis.

Then came the COVID lockdowns which caused shelters to shut down so she persisted in ensuring that stray dogs had somewhere safe to go and stay off the streets until shelters reopened. A very high number of animals have been assisted till date in coordination with local communities. Too many to count but every rescue has been meticulously documented. Animal Rescue led to new opportunities for Sabeen where she fulfilled her lifelong dream to study to become qualified to work with animals professionally by becoming a zookeeper where she utilised her experience that she had gained from daily animal rescues to gain entry into TAFE.

Sabeen went onto complete Certificate II in Animal Studies in 2022 and Certificate III in Wildlife and Exhibited Animal Care in 2023 from TAFE NSW which covered all aspects of animal husbandry/care, capture/restraint, safety, standard operating procedures, WHS and regulations/legislation

Sabeen went on to volunteer and cared for companion animals and wildlife: primates, exotic birds, native Australian wildlife including reptiles and dingoes at multiple animal care facilities while studying at TAFE NSW.