Thanks Carol, for your excellent, well-researched post.

It has been a well-established fact for many years that both chained dogs and yard dogs pose a serious threat to public safety.

How many more tragedies that involve chained dogs, yard dogs and innocent victims have to happen before laws get changed?

The reality is that both the SPCA and the City of Vancouver have the power to directly impact how both people and animals are treated in our society. Unfortunately, it seems to be a never-ending fight to get either of these organizations to actually do something besides just commiserate with the rest of us.

I just don't think it's good enough for the SPCA to acknowledge how dangerous a chained dog is on its website without a public education campaign to foster a change in society’s attitudes towards animals and without lobby efforts to make it illegal to chain dogs. Obviously, the words on the website aren’t getting the job done.

Why won’t the media question the City of Vancouver about its lack of action in protecting its citizens from dangerous dogs? And why do taxpayers let them get away with it? And do taxpayers realize that when a dog attacks an innocent person, the dog goes to the pound and is ultimately killed by our tax dollars? I encourage all of you to keep asking what the hold up is in putting an end to the cause of so many dog attacks.

As Judy Stone mentioned in a previous post, it is exhausting to have to constantly fight to save dogs from a life on the end of a chain. The solution is so simple. Make it illegal to chain or isolate dogs outside and if a dog is removed from a negligent owner, don’t let him get another dog.

I don’t much care who gets credit for dogs to finally be treated humanely and as members of their human family. And I don’t care who gets credit for greatly reducing the risk to public safety. If you have the authority to advocate for constructive changes to prevent further misery for chained dogs and to prevent horrible vicious dog attacks, just get off your duff and do it!