WHY DID THE SURREY SPCA KILL TITAN?
WHY DID IT "TERMINATE" THE VOLUNTEERS WHO TRIED TO SAVE HIM?

The answer is below Titan's story. Scroll further down to read volunteer Hazel Smith's letter.

Rest in Peace Titan

 

I want to tell you about my experience with the Surrey BCSPCA....
 
The SPCA kills for space, if there aren't enough volunteers, and to save money

I had been a consistent volunteer with the Surrey SPCA  for 6 years.  I started in the catroom every Monday morning for a year until my work schedule changed... I was there when they took about 10-12 cats to be euthanized due to space.  They took ALL the little rodents that were in the catroom at that time to be euthanized... due to me just saying I needed more help in there with the rabbits and rodents.. there wasn't enough time with only 2 of us in there to clean all the cats which ranged up to 40s at times in there plus the rabbits, birds, rodents before noon and do a proper job...

 
Life could be hell for the dogs if it weren't for the volunteers
I was also walking dogs on the Thursday of each week.  After I had finished  volunteering in the catroom... I continued with the dog walking... going on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday, and at times Friday and if free on Saturdays.. when I started there, they had only 3 days of dog walking.  Monday, Thursday and Sunday.  I would go on the days that weren't scheduled with walking because the dogs did not go out.. so that was hell for any who were housebroken.  At times.. it was me and 20 dogs to walk in 2 and a half hours in the morning.  It was emotionally and physically stressful...
 
I was certain during all my years in growing up that the SPCA loved animals
When the Thursday volunteer Dog Walking Coordinator quit she gave my name to the manager to be a dog walking coordinator because I loved animals and I was certain during all my years in growing up that the SPCA loved animals as well.  As the years went on volunteering there.. it seemed that this organization lacked so much in caring about animals.
 
Volunteers and I built a superior dog volunteer program
We built up the Dog Walking Program at the Surrey Shelter to 7 days of walking. I found 2 coordinators for each day to back each other up on the days that had no scheduled walk.  I continued with setting up a dog report to go out for each day to ALL the dog walking volunteers, staff and management involved.. so that we could finally have true communication amongst ourselves.  This was a true delight for management.. they seemed to boast about their 7 day walking program now and the great dog reports that were used for communication.. everything was running smoothly.  People loved to get the reports, etc... I would even spend hours at night getting a dog list ready for the next walk day so that the volunteers for that day would know what dogs to expect to walk in the morning without coming in blind, and all the dogs would get out.
 
Many of us have been in tears knowing and seeing dogs being 'euthanized'.  The dogs could be great with all of us volunteers.. and the next thing we know they have been put down for some reason. 
 
Titan's story
On Friday, October 15, 2010, a 4 year old healthy male Dogo Argentino was euthanized at 8:20 a.m. in the burn room of the Surrey SPCA.  This big and intimidating looking dog was great with people, and many times didn't bother with other dogs... in the shelter environment the kennel is their home, so they become protective over it when other dogs pass by.. this happens with many of the dogs there.  Usually it would be other dogs when outside walking that would be reactive to him first. 
 
Searching for a way to save Titan
Surrey SPCA manager, Valerie Sigler, had him on Global Noon Hour News.. Adopt-A-Pet.  Eleven dog walking volunteers and one staff member were trying to find a rescue group for him.  Eleven volunteers all wanted to pay his flight out to a Dogo Rescue that the one staff had contacted.  Shelley McElravey (Animal Welfare person) said she had tried to contact the BCSPCA accepted Dogo Rescue a couple of times, but they never got back to her, but the other staff person was able to contact it with no difficulty.  After that... during a walk with a volunteer, Titan started to growl which freaked out this new volunteer.

 

None of us were experienced with Dogos, but all were allowed to walk Titan
None of us are breed-experienced and some not even dog experienced, but ALL of us were permitted to walk, cuddle and train these dogs that we were to walk.  We were told to do clicker training with them, and whatever management wanted us to do.  Titan also had growled when I had him out in the wooded walk path.. it was due to some noise from some trucks.. nothing else.  Management also said he would need breed experienced owners to deal with him if adopted... which all us dog walking volunteers were not, but were allowed to walk him and train him.. hmmmmmm...

 
The end begins
After this Titan was taken off the adopt list there.  Two of the staff had found the perfect home for him they believed and were stunned to find that he had been taken off the list, so they called Shelley McElravey to ask what happened and tell her that they had found the perfect home.. she said 'NO'. 

The contradictions begin
Some staff had told  a few of us that they had Titan with them in the front reception area with them (not tied), and one of the strays got loose and was running around all over the place there, but Titan did not even budge an inch...if this dog was dog aggressive like they said he was.. he would have tried to go after the dog... and he was at the shelter for over a month with no incidences.   

Some win, some lose
They had also adopted out two very dog aggressive dogs out a few days before... one named Nikki and the other Carter... they even forgot to mention to the person who adopted Nikki that she did not like other dogs.... I met up with her and she had asked me about her and I mentioned that to her which she had already found out when she got her to meet her other dog... she said she would try to deal with that...

 
There it is again - the contractual liability risk death sentence
When all of us found that Titan was due for euthanization... there was quite an emotional uproar so they called management to get someone out to calm us down... that was Thursday, October 14th 2010. They brought in right away Melissa Major (head coordinator of volunteers-management). Even then we all pretty much supervised ourselves.   We were told that Patricia Pryor, a renowned animal behaviouralist who had been hired a short while before, was the one who made the final decision to put Titan down after Shelley McElravey mentioned to her that he should be put down due to being a liability risk for them. 
 
I watched Titan being led into the burn room
The next morning I watched him be taken by two staff to the burn room to be murdered.  I said to them that was it for me.. I had had enough of all the murders there.  People were crying in the morning when they came in to find out that he was dead.  One volunteer actually came in (not her day) to see if she could adopt him. 

Tears and anger
The staff person who had Dogo Rescue ready to take him was devastated.  He was in tears and slamming doors and kicking in things when he found the dog dead in the freezer of the burn room.. I said.. why don't you tell management how you feel.. he said.. 'Why? They never listen'.  Which all of us realize.   They want all of us volunteers to do everything they ask, but do not taken into consideration that we are the ones that know the animals that are in our charge.  Two of us were called in to a meeting with Melissa Major and her boss, Brian Houlihan. I lost total composure and started yelling at them and making sure they knew exactly what I and everyone else thought about them and other management.  I had the door wide open to the main office so staff and anyone else could hear the whole meeting.. they wanted me to sit down and close the door or they would call the police.. so I said go ahead and also call the media.. so we can discuss everything with them as well... as I left the meeting.. one of the staff put her hand on my shoulder and said... "just so you know.. we are with you and not them"..

 
Standing up and speaking gets me fired
The next morning... I received a phone call from the Manager, Valerie Sigler indicating that she and Melissa Major had just gone over the minutes of our meeting, and had decided that I would be terminated effective immediately and asked when I would be handing in my keys, etc...
 
The rage hits the fan
I notified all the volunteers that I and the other volunteer had been terminated, and that's when everything started to move.... alot of people knew about Titan and the other dogs that had gone down, etc... enough was enough for many of us.  With 2 of us terminated... 4 other volunteers cancelled their monthly SPCA donations, and 4 others resigned from their volunteer posts making it clear in their emails to management that they were disappointed and very upset with Titan and us being terminated.  By the beginning of December we had 2 terminated, 4 or more monthly donations pulled and 11 volunteer resignations. 

Terrorism works
The last resignation wasn't even a dog walking volunteer but one of the Little Critters Coordinator.. she had started around the same time as myself and had witnessed the same things... but with many there... silence and fear was what we kept.. most were afraid to say anything about any animal for fear they would put it down..
The very probable reason the Surrey SPCA killed Titan was because it had a contract with the City of Surrey to be its paid animal controller, its dog-catcher/impounder/disposer. The City of Surrey has a duty to protect the public from dogs, and the SPCA takes money to do that.

That the SPCA takes money to protect people from dogs when its mandate is to protect dogs from people, is a blatant conflict of interest, but one that pays well.

The City of Surrey also has a duty to protect Surrey taxpayers from the expense of litigation should a dog, sold by its animal control agency, bite a person.  So the SPCA assesses and fails and kills dogs like Titan under the terms of its contract.  Even dogs like Tyson who was gentle, submissive, docile and manageable with everyone but SPCA employees.  The SPCA was more concerned with its contract than with a dog. It wouldn't even let Tyson live his life with  someone like Robert, who had proved that Tyson was not a public menace.

Its contract is probably why the SPCA killed Picasso.

 

 

 

But would the staff at City Hall, who are so worried about liability, have insisted that the SPCA kill 10lb Munchkin, especially given that a well-respected small dog rescue society begged to be allowed to save him which even had a lawyer write a letter releasing the SPCA from liability? Or was that some perversion of the SPCA's understanding of what the City expects from it?

And how to explain why the SPCA killed little old Oreo? He was killed because his family didn't have $500.  AAS would have paid the $500, but the SPCA didn't give the family any information about other groups who may have paid to keep happy little Oreo alive, just as the SPCA didn't tell the owner of Howling Dogs the names of any other groups who would have taken his dogs.

Did you know? The BCSPCA has contracts with many BC municipalities worth over $3 million dollars a year, to enforce animal control bylaws, to impound, and to dispose, which it does by selling or killing the animals. It is also paid to seize dogs which it deems dangerous, applying for  court orders to have the dogs destroyed (by the SPCA) if the owner doesn't buckle under to threats of huge fines and lawsuits.

The probable reason that the SPCA was bent on killing Cheech was that it was the dog-catcher for Delta.  But thanks to savvy staff and a volunteer, Cheech was stolen from the Delta SPCA before they could kill him.
Ed Chase is one person, who though penniless, took on the SPCA and after a year of misery for his dog Raymond in a bleak SPCA cell, got him back.
Video, photos, story
Why do so many animals have to be saved from the SPCA by so many rescuers? Tippi is just one of thousands of animals saved from the $28 million dollar a year BCSPCA.
Read the SPCA's 56 justifications for killing while the CEO told the media and the public  it only kills,

"to end the suffering of an animal that is beyond medical help.'

Look at the list that the SPCA could choose from when inputting a reason for destruction and decide for yourself if this is a real animal welfare organization. Although the SPCA has made changes in reaction to bad publicity there is still something inherently wrong with it, as we believe these few stories show.

I would like to share my experiences with volunteering at the Surrey SPCA
By:Hazel Smith
Date: 3/28/2011, 12:32 pm
I volunteered in the dog walking program for over 2 years. I started off at first with one day a week but then went on to 2 days a week. Walking these dogs gave me so much pleasure but I was always worried about them because there were many dogs euthanized during my time there, and in many cases the volunteers were shocked at these euthanizations because they seemed like great dogs to us.

Many times during this period I thought about stopping volunteering because I was so upset at these deaths. Two of these deaths particularly upset me. I had got attached to a labradoodle called Gracie. She was very timid and had nipped one of the staff members but had been great with me. Shelley McElvrey, the Animal Welfare Manager, asked me if I wanted to come in and work one-on-one with her - this was the Thursday. I said I would come in on the weekend and do that. I went in on the Sunday morning, to find out that they had euthanized her the day before. Nobody had even thought to inform me. I almost resigned at that point, but thinking of the dogs, decided to keep going.

Things came to a head in the middle of October with the euthanization of Titan, a beautiful Dogo Argentino, who everyone had fallen in love with. We knew his time was almost up so all the volunteers decided that they would be willing to pay for his fare to go down the States to a Dogo rescue as we had approached SPCA management to send him down there and they had informed us that they didn't have the funding. A Dogo rescue accepted him but we were told by the SPCA that they weren't on their approved list. A staff member found a Dogo experienced couple who were interested in adopting him but that never happened either.

When the volunteers found out that he was due to be euthanized the next day, we were all crying and head office was contacted and Pat Pryor was sent out to talk to us. (Titan had been on Global on the Tuesday as adoptable and this was 2 days later.) Pat Pryor came out and mentioned that Titan was dog aggressive which none of us had witnessed. The only thing we can think is that he was very vocal when dogs went by his kennel but doesn't mean they are dog aggressive.

I decided at that time to resign as I couldn't volunteer for a place that seemed to put such little value on dogs' lives and who care more about covering their own skins. Karen Boan, our coordinator who was fired over this, was one of the most dedicated individuals I have ever met. She went way beyond walking dogs and was forever dropping in with extras for the animals. She was the main reason that the dogs got walked seven days a week because when I started volunteering there they were only walked 3 or 4 days, that is if the volunteers showed up. That in itself is cruelty to animals as many of the dogs are house-trained and try to hold it forever which is very bad for them. If volunteers never showed up the poor dogs are cooped up in their kennel and feces all day.

When Titan was killed, many of us sent letters of complaint to management, but to my knowledge none of us even received an acknowledgement. This shows how little they care about the volunteers, even though they rely on them so heavily to get the dogs walked.

I think about the poor dogs at that shelter all the time and wonder how many more have been killed. The only one good thing that has come out of this for me is that I'm sleeping a lot better because I'm not up half the night worrying about who'll be next.

I have now signed up for the Delta Shelter and feel just such a different atmosphere there. They only euthanize in extreme cases, thank goodness - less than 4%. In fact they have a lovely lab mix Tucker who has been there for over 4 months. They have a trainer working with him to be less aggressive when people approach his cage - he's just lovely outside but doesn't put on a very good first impression. Tucker is very lucky to have ended up in Delta because he would certainly have been euthanized at the Surrey SPCA.

I just wanted to share my SPCA experiences with you. Read more >>

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