This ad campaign reveals that the policy of second-hand pet selling has not changed under the SPCA's new president and new acting CEO. The ads show that style wins over substance, just as under the old regime.
Rather than reduce the number of dogs it has in its cheap recycling depots by limiting surrender, passing laws preventing the isolation and desocializing of dogs, and by proactive spay/neuter programs, it is going to continue to make money by reselling all that free product that is dragged daily through its doors. The cycle of birth, ruin, and dump your dog will be maintained. Root causes of cruelty and abandonment will not be disturbed, at least not by this ad campaign.
Moving product is the message in these tacky, insensitive ads. Shovel them off the back of a truck if you have to.
The exposure on CTV in 2002 for killing six nice dogs (the SPCA's historic way of disposing of stale product), and its justification by saying the dogs were aggressive, forced the SPCA to prove in future that the 'aggression reason' was true. Hence it hurriedly put together CAMP, a manual of subjective tests and flexible rules, taught to inexperienced and compliant novices that could be used, not to determine which dogs should be declined because they would have to be killed, but to "scientifically" fail and kill any number of dogs. But the internet was watching and CAMP has been exposed too.
These ads show that the SPCA is now trying to kill less dogs by selling more. That policy requires further betrayal of dogs. It means the SPCA will have to move product so fast that matching and screening cannot possibly be done sincerely - not that it ever was very often, but the SPCA now claims that every 'adoption' is carefully considered. The dogs are still a means to an end, not the end itself. No real animal welfarist would hold contests to see who can move the most product (another dumbfounding SPCA brain wave) over a policy of meeting all the ethical considerations that make real animal welfare so slow and expensive such as remediation programs and medical attention.
It is well-known that a large percentage of dogs surrendered to pounds and open surrender facilities such as the SPCA's are unsellable. They are the ruined. Unlimited surrender encourages and enables a culture of get, ruin and dump. With no remediation programs, there is no choice but to kill these ruined dogs or sell them to another incapable or even abusive person.
Selling more product is not addressing root causes, in fact, it is a guarantee that pet abandonment will thrive. It is the absolutely necessary disposal half of the get and dispose evil. Without the ease of free disposal that the SPCA offers and if owners that have ruined a dog are forced to pay and kill it themselves, get and dispose would lessen.
How does real animal welfare address root causes? Education, breeding regulations, regulations and seizures of yard dogs, aggressive spay/neuter, and refusal to take an animal that it will clearly have to kill because no one will ever want it, and to incarcerate it forever is cruel. Real animal welfare will not be the disposal half of the evil of pet dumping.