From the BC SPCA justification for ads over action:

"Shelters have more animals than ever as SPCA policy changes in March of 2002 are such that we do not euthanize animals for lack of space. Currently no healthy, adoptable animals are euthanized."

'Adoptable' is decided by SPCA insiders who have an interest in running the SPCA smoothly and profitably. 'Adoptable' is anything that the SPCA wants to say it is. 'Adoptable' is the weasel word. 'Adoptable' is the wiggle-room word.

AAS began warning in 1998 about the word 'adoptable' when the Vancouver City Pound falsely claimed it was no-kill, saying, "We kill no 'adoptable' dogs". But they decided who was 'adoptable' and who wasn't. So dogs could still be killed for the same reasons they always were: for being old, sick, fearful, big, black, ugly, unlovable. All these things made them not very sellable, so they would be labelled 'unadoptable' and killed, making them at fault for their own deaths - the final heartless irony of their sad lives.

Why do animal control agencies, pounds and SPCAs, need such misleading catch words like 'no-kill' and 'adoptable'?

Pounds must dispose of unclaimed stray dog and dangerous dogs. The SPCA is the contracted pound in many places in BC, maybe as many as one hundred places, it won't say how many, for obvious reasons. The SPCA disposes of unclaimed and dangerous dogs where it has these contracts. Those contracts require it to kill many dogs a year, but not nearly as many as its unlimited surrender policy does.

Unlimited surrender means that thousands of pets must be got rid of somehow and if they aren't sold they must be killed. It's as simple as that.

The SPCA is attempting to kill fewer by selling more. If we knew that the SPCA vigorously screened for suitability, did home checks, and demanded dogs back when it discovered that the dog they sold is now chained in a yard, we would applaud the SPCA's efforts to find more homes for dogs. But we know that it is not doing any of those things, or at least almost never. (By the way, spending money on ads is an SPCA first as far as we can tell. A hundred years of killing dogs rather than spending a cent on ads is finally ended. While AAS spent thousands a year on ads to find the very best homes for its dogs, the SPCA just killed theirs. See more: http://www.animaladvocates.com/spca-ads.htm).

The SPCA cannot slow down the disposal process with time-consuming humane standards if it does not slow down the flood of new dumped animals being dragged through its doors daily. To do that it must replace its lucrative policy of unlimited surrender with a policy of limited surrender.

Limited surrender means the SPCA will step out of the dirty animal disposal business. Limited surrender means the SPCA will stop being the disposing half of the 'dump and dispose' culture that it historically has encouraged, entrenched, and enabled - to great effect. The SPCA waxed fat on unlimited surrender for more than one hundred years.

Unlimited surrender is going the way of the dodo, and so will the SPCA if it doesn't hurry up and realize this. It is losing its market to real animal welfarists at a rate that could ruin it if it doesn't get 'rid of' its directors that cannot see the writing on the wall.

Slick p.r. will only delay the disaster that is coming.