Surrey Now Newspaper
April 21, 2004

SPCA/Big Heart Rescue says it could have found foster homes for six sick dogs

DOGS DIDN’T HAVE TO DIE: RESCUE

Ted Colley
Staff Reporter

The Surrey SPCA and another animal welfare group are scrapping over the fate of six dogs put down at the Surrey shelter last month.

Gail Moerkerken, president of Big Heart Rescue, believes the Surrey shelter killed the dogs on March 24th because they feared an outbreak of distemper, but acted without waiting for pathology test results on another dog suspected of having the disease.

But according to Surrey SPCA manager Kim Archibald, that’s not the case. She said the six had kennel cough and conditions at the shelter made it impossible to isolate them from the healthy animals there.

The controversy revolves around the last days of Willy, a pit bull cross who was very sick when he arrived at the Surrey animal shelter in early March. BHR heard about Willy’s predicament and offered to take care of him. He was turned over to them on March 15th, but Willy’s condition deteriorated and on March 23rd he was put down.

Moerkerken said it was feared Willy had distemper so after his death, a tissue sample was sent to the lab to determine the cause of his illness. She said results were expected in three to five days and ultimately, it was found Willy did not have distemper.

Before the results came back, however, the six dogs at the SPCA shelter were euthanized.

“What I believe happened is they suspected distemper and rather than wait for the pathology to come back they killed six dogs”, Moerkerken said.

Archibald said Moerkerken is jumping to the wrong conclusion. She said the six dogs had kennel cough, a contagious disease, and space constraints at the Surrey shelter meant there was no way to isolate them to prevent the illness from spreading.

Archibald also said the sick dogs could not be moved out of the shelter because foster homes for contagious animals are hard to find.

“It was a very difficult day for us, but we felt if we didn’t stop the spread we’d have the whole kennel full of sick dogs”, she said.

Moerkerken said her organization could have found foster homes for at least some of the six.

“Kennel cough doesn’t spread from dogs to cats. We have foster homes that don’t have other dogs and they could have taken them”, she said. “We were never asked”.

Archibald couldn’t be reached for further comment to see if Big Heart’s foster homes were ever considered.