Damage Control: Will the SPCA reseize the Chilliwack puppy mill dogs?

On May 13th the SPCA made a media-friendly seizure of ten dogs that were severely suffering both physically from diseases and painfully rotten teeth, and mentally from being isolated in cages in a barn. The dogs were sent to the Sechelt SPCA and then given to foster families, who nursed the dogs back to health, both physical health and mental health, by giving them fun, exercise, socializing, and most of all, all the unconditional and forgiving love only soft-hearted dog-lovers can give. The dogs blossomed. The long nightmare they endured in their vile conditions of imprisonment, some for many years, was over. Or so the women who fostered these dogs believed.

On July 25th the SPCA forced the foster families to return the dogs, saying the breeder had paid the SPCA as much as $11,000 in "seizure costs", and the dog were being returned to her. On that day, AAS began posting this story here.

On July 27, AAS and four of the foster women appeared on BCTV telling this story. The SPCA, usually only too happy to charm the media, could not be reached.

In reaction to the horror and outrage from the public and its donors the SPCA went into spin mode by using the old tried-and-true excuse that it was all the fault of bad law, not its fault at all.

Craig Daniell actually said, "We do not want to return animals we have seized. Occasionally, however, they are returned. They are returned because the legislation that we use to seize them in the first place, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, provides a mechanism for owners to claim return of their animals."

AAS proved where the fault lies long ago - it is the misuse of the PCA Act by the SPCA that is the problem, not the Act.

What Daniell did not say is that the Act also provides a mechanism that permits the SPCA to refuse to return animals, if the conditions they came from were bad enough. The SPCA said at the time that the dogs' conditions, both their health and the environment they were kept in, were terrible. This has been confirmed by people who have told AAS that they saw the severe distress the dogs were suffering from.

The SPCA also told the media that it will keep a close watch on the dogs. The SPCA has given animals back to neglectors in the past and the neglect has gone on, sometimes for decades. But that was before the internet and AAS.

The SPCA has intimated that it can reseize the dogs. That would be major damage control. Just think of all the media attention. The SPCA will look like heroes, claiming it only returned the dogs because the law made it do it, but now it is going back for them because the breeder did not keep her promise to "improve", and the SPCA is keeping its promise to keep a watch on the dogs.

Brilliant! "The Promise Keepers". But will an increasingly informed public buy it? And where would the dogs go if they are seized again? It would be even more brilliant for them to be given back to the angry and very vocal women in Sechelt. Think of the "reunion" on TV. Tears, hugs, and a beaming SPCA, modestly accepting credit and congratulations.

What a tough call the SPCA will have to make. Look like heroes and give the dogs back to these women, or play it safe and hide them? And hide them where? Thanks to the internet, the SPCA is finding it increasingly difficult to hide anything.