The Good News is that the City of Vancouver may actually do something about yard dogs. AAS has sent over 50 documentations of yard dogs, on chains, in dirty dark pens, in garages, and loose in yards, to the City in the last three years. We have given the City all our research that shows how cruel this is and how dangerous too because it is dogs like this that attack if they get loose, like the two dogs attacked Shenica White.

For three years the City answered our pleas to ban yard dogs that it was up to the SPCA to take care of this using the PCA Act and the SPCA had promised the City it would. It didn't of course. In fact, to this day, there is no SPCA educational material (another promise made to the City) about why it is wrong to keep dogs this way, even in English, much less in the languages it is so badly needed in.

On May 6th City staff presented its report "Animal Control Services Strategic Plan" to city council. The report deals mainly with dog control issues, but it also contains a section called "Animal Welfare" and it recommended that the pound do four things:

1: Include information on animal welfare (which means dogs as the City does not do any control of other animals) in its "Responsible Dog Ownership" education campaign. In other words, it has stopped waiting for the SPCA do keep its promise and do this and is doing it isles.

2. Increase information-sharing with the SPCA. So far the information has gone one way: the pound relays cruelty reports to the SPCA, and that is pretty much the end of it. Our experience with sending cruelty reports to the SPCA means we hardly expect that to change any time soon.

3. Amend the City's Animal Control bylaw to add animal welfare and care. This is exactly what we begged the City to do for three years and it always claimed its Charter didn't allow it to do. The City Charter has not changed, but the City's trust that the SPCA will do take care of this problem, before there is another victim like Shenica White or worse, a death of a child, must have changed. At last, our years of hard work and expense are paying off in the possibility of relief for poor, suffering yard dogs.

4. The City will beef up enforcement staff in order to start enforcing its new animal welfare bylaws.

All this is a HUGE victory for yard dogs, for people living near them, and for AAS. It does not appear that humane help for yard dogs will come from the SPCA and the City has at last acknowledged that and is getting on with the job.