I was blessed to be working as a Noah's Wish volunteer at the Kamloops Exhibition Association Grounds (KXA) and miles away from any organizational politics regarding the daily emergency service operations between Noah's Wish, Emergency Social Services (ESS), the Ministry of Agriculture and the SPCA.

There were snags between Noah's Wish and the SPCA at the KXA but these concerns were of a staffing nature and were not a result of animals being taken by the SPCA when rescue had not been requested.

When I was deployed to Kelowna I was stationed at the Parkinson Centre where my focus was on intake and placement, (Noah's Wish assisted 940 animals in Kelowna) so I had little interaction with the SPCA staff nor the time to interact with them. I reviewed documentation with Kathy (manager Kelowna SPCA) for a few hours near the end of the evacuation orders to compare all the received rescue requests and to ensure that the SPCA had the accurate information on location and need of animals that were or had been evacuated directly through a owners request.

Yes, there are rumours that the SPCA scooped animals that were not requested by their owners to be helped and that neighbours had reported to the SPCA that animals were in need of assistance so must be rescued. As I was never personally involved in any of these situations I cannot elaborate on the circumstances. I do know that the paper work trail the SPCA had on the animals was below the standards of Noah's Wish and though the SPCA used NW forms and documents many were not completed or missing information. With this said, it is almost incomprehensible what the amount of paper work during an emergency evacuation for animals looks like. For each animal there is a very specific intake process which is completed in triplicate, there were over 600 applications completed by Noah's Wish for foster homes, there are forms for rescue requests, equine descriptions, photos taken and attached to each intake for each animal received, there are follow-up notes, feeding schedules, foster parent agreement forms, tagging, vet check documents, well, lets just say the list goes on and on.

Noah's Wish, under the guidance of Terry Crisp took the "high road" as AAS has mentioned previously and this is the way it stayed. There were frustrations and conflict but my focus remained on working with the families and animals that needed Noah's Wish assistance.

There was acknowledgement of Noah's Wish in in some of the local interior papers, but most of the focus was on the animals that the SPCA saved. And to make this clear, the SPCA "saved" very few animals, nor did Noah's Wish. The majority of the animals both groups worked with were brought in by their owners for foster placement while they were evacuated. The only heroes among us are the families and animals that survived this nightmare and will now begin to re-build their lives.