AAS has been saying for ten years that no real animal welfare agency would take more animals than it can assure a good outcome for, and that every real animal welfare agency ought to only take animals that it feels sure it would not have to kill. Most animal lovers just don't understand that the evils they hate - pet abandonment and killing the unsellable - can only end if it is not so easy. Animals have to be screened before being accepted so that the "humane agency" is not just a disposal business.

One of the reasons the BC SPCA's Companion Animal Management Program (CAMP) is so perverted is that it protects the business of unlimited surrender and killing instead of preventing it. At BC SPCAs all dogs are accepted and then CAMP provides the justification for killing those with any behaviour that makes them less than quickly sellable. CAMP has been further perverted by its policy of killing dogs that are only somewhat unsellable to make room for the quickly sellable.

Dogs should be pre-screened before being accepted so that an agency is not the easy killer of ruined dogs. Imagine this - a person whose yard dog is so ruined that even they don't want it anymore, going from one pound and SPCA after another and being told to take responsibility themselves because the agency is not going to do their dirty work for them. Word would quickly get around that it was no longer easy to get rid of a ruined dog and the number of suffering yard dogs would lessen.

Imagine this - owners of pit bulls and Rottweilers, two of the most abused and dumped dogs, being told that the agency won't take their dog because there are so many of them in pounds already and so few good homes them that most are killed. Word would get around and owners of these breeds would have to think twice about getting one and breeding of them would decrease if the market for them decreased.

Only when all agencies, including all the little rescue groups, refuse to take any animal that it has not the resources to assure an animal of a good outcome, will the cycle of get/dump/kill end.

As long as the BC SPCA retains its policy of unlimited surrender, it will need a policy like CAMP to justify killing.

As long as the BC SPCA uses ad campaigns to sell more dogs more quickly, it is still a long way from understanding the very fundamentals of true animal welfare.

Read more on CAMP, the BC SPCA's dog disposing tests: http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi-bin/newsroom.pl/read/3013

Or look for more posts on CAMP under Edit/Find

SPCA TV ads; Marketing abandoned dogs like any other product http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi-bin/newsroom.pl/read/3294