'The Graduate English Dictionary defines ‘shelter’ [noun] as ‘A protection; asylum; refuge; security’. To continue to call these killing centres ‘shelters’ is an obfuscation I refuse to perpetuate. Unless there is evidence that ‘shelters’ are legitimately that – genuine places of refuge until all of the animals brought to them are re/homed, or given permanent and proper sanctuary within their walls, I will refer to them for what they are."
Ms Danaan calls "shelters" the way she sees them: "killing centres". Once one takes a hard look at the pet welfare industry there is no other conclusion to be reached. That is what AAS did with the BC SPCA, and for publishing our proof, we are being subjected to all the power tactics that one would expect from a business protecting its interests.
The industry has its stock of shadow words that hide and misrepresent the industry's real business. When light is shone on these words, a black picture emerges. Ms Danaan properly calls the industry's holding pens, what it calls "shelters", killing centres. No real shelter kills the sheltered.
Another shadow word is "euthanizing" instead of "killing". Euthanasia, according to the Oxford dictionary, means "the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable disease". The BC SPCA has killed, and is still killing, countless hundreds or thousands of healthy animals, and hundreds more ill but curable, sometimes easily curable, animals.
The SPCA's killing was not painless. The SPCA was forced by bad P.R., the only thing that has ever caused it to change, to stop inflicting pain and torture on the animals it was killing, but it fought hard to go on being able to cheaply gas and electrocute them. Even now that the SPCA kills with a needle, the psychological pain suffered by the animals as they are being killed is terrible. Ex-SPCA employees have described the looks in the eyes of dogs especially, as they are led to the room where they know that something awful is going to be done to them. We have been told how the dogs say with their eyes, "Why are you doing this to me?" Yet the SPCA would only employee people who would do this week in and week out for years.
Cheap killing is standard in the pest-pet control industry, and unwanted pets are as much pests as rats and raccoons are. The industry, comprised of pest control companies, pounds, and many animal-welfare agencies, avoids the words "kill" and "killing", substituting soft, misleading words like "euthanasia" and "humane destruction" and "put to sleep". SPCA literature still is full of those words.
The SPCA sold thousands of animals a year and successfully called that "adoptions". Adopting is a slow, complicated process where many potential homes are turned down, careful screening is done, illness is fixed first, home checks made, and after-adoption support given. "Sales" is the exchange of a product for money, and the SPCA itself has called its animals "product".
Under the unrelenting pressure of terrible P.R. the SPCA has made some improvements: it now spends some money on some sick animals. In the recent past, it killed sick animals or let them painfully die in their cages. And it kills fewer animals for space, although that may be only where there are so many small real animal welfare groups who are keeping animals out of the SPCA by doing more and more rescuing and rehoming. The SPCA does some screening and home checks and turns some buyers down, but this is hampered by its unlimited surrender policy that makes it imperative to sell or kill. It still provides no after-sales service though. Once you've bought it, it's yours and if you bring it back, the SPCA says it may kill it.
The SPCA is still successfully using these false words. Their success is assured by many of the very people who say they hate the SPCA for the way it treats animals - women rescuers. They call SPCA killing centres "shelters", SPCA killing "euthanasia", and SPCA sales "adoptions". These women betray animals every time they repeat the SPCA's false words.