So, the newly-appointed manager of the Chilliwack SPCA shelter is calling on the public to "... spay and neuter their pets, to socialize them, to volunteer with her society, and to sponsor urgently-needed improvements and programs." It's a familiar refrain.
Perhaps Ms. Halligan needs a lesson in cause and effect.
The castoff dogs filling local animal facilities are the natural result of the dog breeding industry. Puppies are as much a commodity as designer jeans, and it's just as easy to drop off last year's coveted puppy at the shelter as it is to donate last year's jeans to the Sally Ann. It's not the public's family dog producing this bountiful supply of new puppies, it's the dogs that are bred for profit, and the dog breeding industry is rampant in Chilliwack.
A simple perusal of the classified ads in any Lower Mainland newspaper tells the tale. There are more puppies advertised from Chilliwack phone numbers than from Vancouver, a city with more than 10 times Chilliwack's population. Keep a record of these ads for a few years, as I have, and you'll see that enough puppies are advertised from Chilliwack producers to provide a brand new puppy to every Chilliwack family every four years. At an average price of over $400 per puppy, that's more than $100,000 per year just in Chilliwack.
Members of this industry rarely bother with business licenses, sales taxes, or even income taxes. You can bet, though, that the Chilliwack taxpayer is on the hook for disposal costs once last year's puppy becomes too much of a bother.
Well, Ms. Halligan, what's it going to be? Hand-wringing in the newspaper will certainly increase donations, and we all know that the Chilliwack SPCA can use the good PR, but it does nothing to attack the source of the problem. Why not advocate for regulation of the dog breeding industry? Even a small tax on producers would go a long way towards relieving the public purse of disposing of the industry's over-supply.
Joann Bessler, Research Coordinator, Animal Advocates Society