Vancouver City Pound Manager, Nancy Clay said "We have no welfare or animal cruelty bylaws. That's the responsibility of the B.C. SPCA. They are supposed to look after welfare," she said.

Everyone at the pound and at City hall know that this can easily be treated as a dog control matter, which it is. The City has almost 40 dog control bylaws, and it can adopt one to control the keeping of dogs this way.

The City charter is clear: Vancouver City Charter, Chapter 55, Section 324A: Keeping of Animals:
(g) for regulating the keeping of horses, dogs, cows, goats, swine, rabbits an other animals, and for defining areas within which such animals may be kept or which the keeping of them is prohibited.

The City is dissembling when it says the Charter doesn't permit it to adopt bylaws prohibiting yard dogs.

Tell it to the next savaged child.

There is a glimmer of light in Ms Clay's next statement:

"That's an issue we feel we need to deal with, but up to this point we haven't had the bylaw or the resources to do enforcement in that area."

Is the City at last saying that it now understands that it must deal with this, and would if it had the money?