Like so many yard dogs in Vancouver, this boy was named "Lucky" by the people who put him, still a tiny pup, out in the yard, with only a sheet of plywood for a "home" and no contact with humans or dogs. The irony of the name always escapes the many people who do this. Perhaps these people believe that their dog is "lucky" to not be actually starving to death. Or more likely they are appealing to some relgious spirit to send them luck and the dog is a kind of living sacrifice. All we know is that the name is very common for chained dogs, that and Rocky.

For three years this "lucky" dog cried and barked almost continuously, begging the only way he knew how to be allowed to be taken inside and made part of the family he could see through the windows. For crying, his tender muzzle was wired shut and the scars are still visible.

This dog had the happiest of AAS endings - After AAS was phoned by frantic neighbours who had given up begging the SPCA to help him, we came and photographed him and two days later the police raided this house and took Lucky to the Vancouver City Pound. We had to wait on tenterhooks to see if the owners would come to claim him, and when they didn't, we bought him the minute he was up for sale.

Yes, the Vancouver City Pound would have given him back to this misery, if they got paid. They do this many times a year. It is one of the ways they get rid of dogs. And what is more, the City and its Pound are determined to stay in the dirty business of impounding and disposing of helpless dogs this way because it flatly refuses to adopt a ban on yard dogs. Banning grow-op dogs would mean fewer grow-ops in Vancouver, but it appears such a simple, and humane solution is of no interest to the City. Instead, if the police encounter a chained dog they may have to shoot it to protect themselves as they recently did. So Vancouver taxpayers pay to kill dogs, either by being shot by their police or killed by their pound, and dogs stay in misery.

In 2001 the pound told the press that they had received 300 grow-op dogs. What did they do with the ones not claimed, the ones too ruined to be wanted by any normal person? They claim to be no-kill but it is not credible that they did not kill some of them. It is not credible that the pound does not kill some if not many, grow-op dogs a year. But then being killed is one of the least awful things that pounds do to dogs to get rid of them. They sell them back to more years of misery, they sell them to other abusers and chainers, they off-load them onto questionable rescue groups, they give them to the guard dog industry.

Lucky now goes to work with his "Dad", hiking and swimming, sleeping on a warm bed, and all the fun and love and security a dog's heart can, and does, desire.