Animal Advocates Society of BC
A COOPERATIVE OF ANIMAL-LOVERS AND ACTION-TAKERS
Charitable #887809267RR0001
 Box 114, 103-2609 Westview Drive, North Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V7N 4N2
Tel: 604-984-8826  
Email us: Copy and paste our address into an email:   Office@AnimalAdvocates.com     
An all-volunteer registered charitable organization dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating animals that official agencies will not help, getting laws passed to stop animal cruelty, and exposing the reason why there is so little help for suffering animals in B.C. from the BC SPCA.

Balm for the troubled soul...
AAS Happy Ending stories...

Home
About AAS

Dogs for adoption
Cats for adoption

Alphabetical list of pages

IT'S TIME!
The AAS Yard Dog Report
The dogs and their stories

Report neglected dogs

Print NO CHAINED DOGS petition

Email your petition

Women who steal dogs

Dog bylaws

Databases of breeders/sellers
Tracks puppymills, backyard breeders, home retailers, and protection-dog breeders in BC

Puppymill investigations

"Too Many Dogs"
AAS proposal for control of breeding laws

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE BC SPCA?
AAS spent five years investigating and documenting the things that people had been complaining of for fifty years and published them in this web site. Twice the SPCA used expensive lawyers to try to silence us.
SEE THE EVIDENCE OF WHAT IS WRONG

SEIZE AND KILL! or RESCUE AND SAVE?
TWO CASES: A COMPARISON AND OUTCOME
CASE ONE: TOPAZ CREEK DOGS: RESCUED AND SAVED BY CRESTON PAWS SOCIETY
CASE TWO: BEAVERDELL DOGS: SEIZED AND KILLED BY THE KELOWNA  BC SPCA
Fifty some odd northern mixed-breed dogs tied to trees, neglected and desocialized for years. One group in Topaz Creek BC, one in Beaverdell BC. Two remarkably similar situations, handled by two remarkably different organizations with radically different strategies and outcomes. Scientists themselves couldn't have created two better control groups.
Pictures and stories here

Yard/guard dogs - should keeping dogs in yards 24/7 be banned?
Yes No
View result without voting
More information about chained dogs

"IN MEMORIAM" Remembering people who loved animals, and animals who were loved by people

	Bunny-cat and her babies. No pound for them, but a safe shelter at AAS.
	What's it all about Alfie?  AAS made sure it was about love.
	Bernie sold into misery and then saved by AAS.
	Betsey, an old dog needed us...
	Cassie  this was good enough for her. Look what AAS did for her!
	Braille the story of a blind pound dog
	Annie  even when chained she tried to look after her pups
	Boomer  made it to freedom and happiness, after being found in a ditch dragging his chain
	Patches survived abandonment and rat poison
	Finnigan  found tied to a tree, his collar grown into his neck, almost dead from starvation
	Lucky  one of hundreds of grow- op dogs
	Billy run over by his "family's" car and left to fend for himself as best he could

Copyright AAS 2000-2004

We really help animals....Read her story

Click on her picture to make a donation so that we can go on helping chained dogs like we helped her.

 THE watchdog

Read all about it if it's animal news!

Daily top stories

Return to Watch Dog "TOP STORIES" list here

SPCA TAKES HEALTHY HAPPY DOGS FROM NATIVE FAMILY AND EXPLOITS THEM IN THE MEDIA

Chilliwack Progress
Rescued dogs need new homes

The BC SPCA is looking for a permanent home for a local, female Akita-Shepherd cross who survived great suffering after an encounter with a porcupine.

Six-year-old Spud was brought to the Chilliwack shelter on Hopedale Road Friday.

"She was taken immediately to a veterinarian who removed 980 quills from her face and body," says SPCA senior animal protecting officer, Eileen Drever. "Three hundred of those quills had punctured the inside of her mouth."

Comment: Spud was taken to Valley Veterinary Clinic by a son-in-law after the Chilliwack SPCA refused to help unless Spud was surrendered to the SPCA. The family member who brought Spud to the SPCA was the family's son-in-law, not Spud's owner, and so legally not allowed to surrender Spud. He explained he was not Spud's owner, nevertheless, he was given the option of misrepresenting himself as Spud's owner to get her help or being sent away. In front of a witness, he said he was Spud's owner to get her the help that would otherwise be denied. Then the SPCA told him to drive Spud to Valley View Vet.
 

Dr. Mark Steinbach's written report concluded that "not seeking medical aid" for the animal "was cruel and abusive." By studying the wounds, he estimates Spud must have fought with the porcupine at least two days earlier - likely on or about May 12.

Comment: Spud, Junior and Peanut Butter went missing somewhere on the family's acreage May 12th. This is not unusual - they are three of the few lucky dogs who get to roam to their heart's content and come home to a bed and a good meal. The family searched for the dogs but finding them was hopeless. Peanut Butter and Junior came home in the afternoon of the 13th with a few quills in them and the family removed many of them. At 6:00 am the family found Spud. They immediately began looking for financial help for her, phoning friends, SPCA's, and vets. They were given estimates as high as $900 and not one of many vets they phoned would allow them to pay in instalments, all demanding payment in full. One of the dogs had been attacked by a porcupine in the past and the family took it to a vet and paid for treatment, but they were in between paycheques and didn't have any ready money. They also had the two females spayed and had paid for other vet treatment over the years. Take a look at the photos of these dogs to see how fat and happy they are.

"Spud was suffering from severe pain, infection and abscesses, as well as dehydration and hyperthermia because of her inability to drink liquids or to pant to cool her body," Ms. Drever says.

Comment: The SPCA accuses this family of cruel indifference by saying that the quills had been in the dogs at least 30 hours. They cannot know exactly when the attack happened, and we question that. The dogs would have come home sometime soon after being attacked and that was on May 13, the same day the SPCA took Spud away from her family, which the family permitted under threat of criminal charges and to get them the help that they could not give them, at that time.

We question the infection and abscesses too. Quills probably cause inflammation, but it would take days for infection to set in and even longer for abscesses.

Shortly after Spud came to the SPCA, shelter workers visited her owner and persuaded him to sign over two more dogs that also had porcupine quills imbedded in them. They were treated at the SPCA hospital in Vancouver and no exact number of the quills removed available.

Comment: Of course not, as the family had removed most of them by themselves.

One is a two-year-old female Shepherd cross named Peanut. The other is a nine-year-old, male, lab-Shepherd cross named Junior. Junior was to be neutered by the SPCA.

Spud may require further treatment in case of infection. Peanut and Junior are fine.

"There's no way the owner will get these dogs back," says Ms Drever. "So we want to find them each a permanent home where they can be an only pet as they are not good with cats."

Would-be adoptors of any of the dogs are invited to make application by calling the SPCA at 1-604-879-7721.

"Spud is a wonderfully good-natured dog," notes Ms. Drever. "And, amazingly, she's still trusting of people."

Comment: Drever's statement that Spud is still trusting of people implies that Spud was an abused dog and is an unwarranted slur on this family. She trusts people because of the kindness, love and attention she received in her home.

The BC SPCA hopes to present to Crown counsel, a charge of cruelty to animals against the dogs' owner in the near future.

Comment: This board recounts many cases of real abuse and neglect where the SPCA has taken no action. Why is the SPCA targeting this family? They are timid Natives and have never had anything like the horror of what the SPCA is doing to them in their lives before. They have been vilified in the papers, on the SPCA web site, and on TV. They tried their hardest to get Spud the help she needed and in the end, surrendered her to the Chilliwack SPCA because the SPCA would do nothing for Spud until they did. For that they are going to be dragged through court, fined, punished and made criminals of.

This is Peanut Butter. Does she look like an abused or neglected dog?
 

Here is Junior *NM* *PIC*
AAS -- Thursday, 27 May 2004, at 1:30 p.m.

Compare these two: The Chilliwack SPCA got $12,000 and a puppymiller got her dogs back *LINK*
AAS -- Thursday, 27 May 2004, at 2:27 p.m.

Is this the kind of "relationship building" with First Nations that the SPCA was given grant money for?
Emma Vandewetering -- Thursday, 27 May 2004, at 2:09 p.m.

Silvia Rutledge Paid and Got Her Animals Back - Can the SPCA Be Bought? *LINK* *PIC*
AAS -- Thursday, 27 May 2004, at 5:45 p.m.

Update on Peanut and Junior
Emma Vandewetering -- Monday, 31 May 2004, at 9:37 a.m.

The story I saw on TV was not just biased but wrong and false!
Hiroko Nakagawa -- Thursday, 3 June 2004, at 6:54 a.m.

Family called the SPCA for help and was denied!
Chilliwack K9Rescue -- Thursday, 3 June 2004, at 3:13 p.m.

Will charges against the family of the "Porcupine Dogs" be laid? Where is the SPCA manager who stick-handled the best p.r. grab of the month?

Posted By: AAS
Date: Friday, 11 June 2004, at 6:18 a.m.

Will threatened charges against the family of the "Porcupine Dogs" be laid? Where is the SPCA manager who stick-handled the best p.r. grab of the month?

The SPCA has posted a job opening for the manager of the Abbotsford and Chilliwack SPCAs which until very recently were jointly managed by long-time employee Joanne Halligan. Halligan is the SPCA employee who opportunistically took a family's loved but injured dogs away from them after refusing the family's pleas for financial help, probably making a bundle for the SPCA.

This is one of an increasing number of unethical, anti-animal, but brilliant and money-generating p.r. stunts, that are part of the "vision" of the new CEO who was hired to ramp up donations by making media-grabbing seizures at the same time defusing the negative p.r. of AAS's web site which exposed the SPCA for decades of its own anti-animal cruelty and for ignoring generations of animal cruelty. Read the story of how the SPCA was cruel to the Porcupine Dogs by taking them from their family, putting them in cells, and then selling them to strangers who may or may not treat them well for the rest of their lives, no one will ever know as the SPCA does not follow up on its sales. http://www.animaladvocates.com/Watchdog/PorcupineDogs.htm. Notice the SPCA's press release says " Spud and the two other dogs surrendered by the owner are available to media for photos or videotaping."

Did Halligan get her reward for this by being promoted to the position of Senior Animal Protection Officer? Or was she demoted for fumbling the ball and letting a credible person witness her telling the son-in-law of Spud's owners to lie and say he owned Spud, so that Spud could be surrendered to the SPCA - the only way the family had left to get her the medical attention she quickly needed. Halligan's own staff had callously refused pleas from the family for medical help, even though the family offered to pay soon and has a record of paying their vet bills. The SPCA's callousness forced the family to surrender Spud and then the SPCA turned on them and threatened to lay charges of cruelty if the timid and uneducated family didn't surrender the other two dogs, who were not in distress.

The SPCA then made a "Poster Pet" of all three dogs, milking the story for all it was worth, while imposing cruelty of both the dogs and the family. You can see that all three dogs are fat and happy at http://www.animaladvocates.com/Watchdog/PorcupineDogs.htm.

Our money is on the promotion. We bet that Halligan is one of Daniell's Darlings - the women who best epitomize Daniell's standards of ruthlessness.

Looks like we put our money on the wrong horse....

The SPCA manager who mishandled the Porcupine Dogs incident is gone

Posted By: AAS
Date: Tuesday, 15 June 2004, at 5:27 a.m.

SPCA Says Goodbye to Joanne Halligan.

The Society is saying farewell in July to a wonderful and dedicated employee – Joanne Halligan, Branch Manager for Abbotsford/Langley and Chilliwack. Joanne, a longtime employee, has worked in a number of different capacities in the Lower Mainland and has shown an extraordinary commitment to animal welfare. She is now moving on to new opportunities and we wish her all the best for her future.
 

Possibly thanks to Kelly Cook being unafraid to do the right thing

Posted By: AAS
Date: Tuesday, 15 June 2004, at 5:32 a.m.

In Response To: The SPCA manager who mishandled the Porcupine Dogs incident is gone (AAS)

We can't help but wonder if the bad press over the porcupine dogs had anything to do with Halligan quitting or being fired. Halligan badly blew it when she got the son-in-law to lie right in front of Kelly Cook.

Also, the dogs were clearly fat and happy. And it was her staff who refused any help when the family begged as fast as they could----not any bloody 30 hours later as the SPCA said.

Possibly thanks to Kelly Cook being unafraid to do the right thing, Halligan is gone, but the family will never recover from their nightmare and who knows what will become of the dogs who were happy and loved where they were and now are with strangers who may pass them on to who knows where? If we were the family we would sue the SPCA to get them back.