To Whom It May Concern, February 1/2001

I was employed by the Vancouver SPCA hospital for seventeen years, and I feel there are some serious problems with their system and the way things are run. When I was still there, my suggestions and complaints fell on deaf ears, so I hope this letter helps bring to light some of the issues.

First, there is no person on night duty to watch over the patients after hours. There's many a morning when I'd come to work and find dead animals that’d been hanged by an I.V., and if someone had been there they'd have been fine and gone home. Of course they don't tell the owners that, they say there were unexpected complications so the pet died.

Next, when someone pays to have their pet euthanized and cremated, with the ashes returned to them, they're not always getting what they pay for. I've seen a cupboard with urns that are pre-filled with regular ashes, and given to the unsuspecting grieving owner as "Fluffy".

The euthanasia method (gas chamber) is often not done properly by a qualified technician, so many animals end up suffering. When a mother cat and a litter of kittens are euthanized, they're stuffed into one gas box together and killed and counted as only one euthanasia. Great way to make the numbers look good, but certainly not an accurate count of the actual animals killed.

There are also problems with the type of care given to patients. One sick incident I recall was about a female dog that came in for spaying. She was supposed to recover in a kennel up front where people could watch her and make sure she didn't lick her stitches etc. She was a barker and annoyed the person on duty, so they put her way in the back in a concrete run alone. They obviously forgot about her, so it wasn't until later that night when I got an urgent phone call from a worker to come to the hospital right away, as there was a dog that would not get up off the floor. When I arrived, I discovered that her entire spay incision had opened up, the blood had dried and was stuck to the floor so she couldn't move, and her insides were hanging out. Amazingly she licked my hand, wagged her tail, and gave me a pleading look with her eyes to help. I phoned the vet and asked him to come down and stitch this poor dog back together again, since I could see she was ok otherwise. The vet refused, gave a short laugh and said "tell the dog I'm sorry", and told me to euthanize her on the spot. Grudgingly, I did as I was told. It was really sad.

An incident that comes to mind from 1997, when a dog was left in a stolen car for eighteen days, and was later rescued and made media headlines(Laska).The public donated so much money to a trust fund set up by the Vancouver Police to pay for the dog's expensive vet bills, that about $9000 was left over. The Vancouver Police agreed to donate the remaining funds to the Vancouver SPCA Hospital, only if the funds were put towards some much needed medical equipment to help alleviate the suffering of dogs (an intensive care kennel unit). I personally phoned the Constable in charge of this and warned her to make darn sure where the money was going. The SPCA told the police that the much needed equipment was on order, and they were given the $9000. As I had suspected, the equipment never came and to my knowledge the money went into general revenue. To this day, I don't believe the equipment was ever ordered.

I have owned many animals in my life and even when I worked for the SPCA, I would never bring any of my pets to work for treatment. I took time off work, and drove my pets to a veterinary hospital, where I was assured of quality care and compassionate treatment for them. There is definitely something very wrong with the BC SPCA system, and it needs an overhaul before any more animals suffer.

Sincerely,

M.L.