Animal Advocates Watchdog

CEO Daniell could not point to any inaccuracies in the Sun article

CEO Daniell could not point to any inaccuracies in the Sun article

Brian Hutchinson, National Post
Friday, Feb. 4, 2011

The "execution-style" cull and disposal of 100 sled dogs in Whistler, B.C., was atrocious, without question. The animals were raised for business purposes only, and when tourism began to drop in Whistler, post-Olympic Winter Games, they were simply written off.

The dogs were shot and dumped in a mass grave in late April 2010. Details became public only this week, when a Vancouver radio station got wind of them. Things then really turned ugly. Allegations, counterclaims, back-pedaling. A social media backlash. The aftermath looks as bad as the slaughter itself, perhaps even worse.

Robert Fawcett is the founder of Howling Dogs Tour Whistler Inc. and was its general manager when he killed the dogs, so one might think the buck would stop with him. No one had instructed him to shoot the animals; Mr. Fawcett acknowledged that himself, in a joint statement he released late Wednesday with Outdoor Adventures at Whistler Ltd., the company that hired Howling Dogs to run its tours last year.

OAW took full control of Howling Dogs in May, and insists its hands are clean; however, it knew prior to the kill that dogs were to be "euthanized." The story has turned and twisted this week but by last account on Thursday, this is what happened: In mid-April, Mr. Fawcett explained to OAW owner Joey Houssain that some 50 of his operation's dogs had to go. The animals were either "too old" or "too sick" and were "not adoptable," reads their joint statement released on Wednesday.

"Considerable efforts were made to arrange for dogs to be adopted, both before and after mid-April, 2010," the statement reads. "The efforts at adoption were not as successful as hoped." OAW said it had assumed the kill was done "in a proper, humane and legal manner ... Mr. Fawcett was known to have very humanely euthanized dogs on previous occasions."

So why did he resort to picking up a firearm and shooting the animals, one by one, over a two-day period -- in a manner that no one could call appropriate -- until 100 of them were dead? These were not all clean kills. Some of the dogs were badly wounded and limped around before taking more bullets. The statement that Mr. Fawcett released with OAW on Wednesday doesn't explore the shooting spree. Mr. Fawcett has not made himself available to media for comment.

But according to The Vancouver Sun, he did call the B.C. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals at some point, to describe the condition of his animals. A B.C. SPCA animal protection officer admitted that she had spoken with him. "What happened last spring is [Mr. Fawcett] contacted me and complained about some of the conditions of the dogs and I was supposed to go up there and check," senior animal protection officer Eileen Drever told the Sun.

Ms. Drever did not travel to Whistler. This might seem like a missed opportunity for someone ostensibly in the business of protecting animals. "[Mr. Fawcett] didn't advise me he was going to kill any dogs," she explained to the Sun. "He was going to find homes."

The Sun story angered Ms. Drever's boss, B.C. SPCA executive director Craig Daniell. He fired off his own news release Wednesday. "It is deeply distressing to our organization that anyone would imply we had knowledge of, or could have prevented, the devastating killings carried out by Outdoor Adventures Whistler," it read.

Reached at his office on Thursday, Mr. Daniell could not point to any inaccuracies in the Sun article. He said that Ms. Drever was not misquoted. "We know that she made those quotes," he said. So in other words, Ms. Drever really was "supposed to go up there and check" on the Whistler sled dogs and their miserable conditions? "I think she indicated in the article that she would go up in the summer," said Mr. Daniell. In fact, she had not indicated that at all. Well, her boss added, "in an ideal world she would have gone up."

What a mess. The kicker, of course, is that two weeks after he slaughtered his 100 dogs, Mr. Fawcett filed a B.C. Workers' Compensation Board (known as WorkSafeBC) application for compensation, citing post-traumatic stress disorder.

Compensation from whom? From Howling Dogs, of which he had operational control; OAW only had a financial interest at the time of the mass kill. Mr. Fawcett "submitted both [his] employee report and the employer report" to WorkSafeBC, according to OAW. The company says it "had no input" during the workers' compensation process.

In an eight-page report made public this week, WorkSafeBC describes with gruesome detail the mass kill. It notes that after it was over, Mr. Fawcett sought counselling and was diagnosed with PTSD. The report also notes that he had received prior counselling from the same professional "in late 2009, after euthanizing a number of dogs."

In an October 2010 medical assessment, the report notes, he complained of "panic attacks, nightmares, sleep disturbance, anger, irritability and depressed mood since culling approximately 100 dogs...the 'mass-cull' was unique in its size, not only in respect of the worker's experience, but in all of Canada." A WorkSafeBC review officer concluded "there was a sudden and unexpected traumatic event arising out of the worker's employment." Thus Mr. Fawcett became eligible for compensation. It was only because he sought recourse that the slaughter became public.

OAW, meanwhile, has become a pariah, perhaps unfairly. Threats of protests and boycotts have exploded on the Internet. The B.C. SPCA has not emerged unscathed, either. But compared to what befell those dogs, they could all be considered lucky.

bhutchinson@nationalpost.com

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