BC SPCA Fast Track Dec 21/05
More Cruelty Department News
Cruelty investigations are under way in two separate cases involving dogs left outside in freezing temperatures in Prince George. In both cases the owners left the dogs outdoors in sub-zero temperatures without adequate shelter, resulting in frostbite and other severe medical issues…. Quesnel resident Heather Melbourn was convicted of animal cruelty on Dec. 15th for badly neglecting 10 Boxer-cross dogs and one cat. She was sentenced to a $500 fine, 18 months prohibition on owning an animal and 18 months probation… Four eight-month-old calves have been seized from a Rosedale property due to lack of adequate food and shelter… In Little Fort, north of Barriere, a trial date has been set for John Vieira in a case involving 31 abused animals seized from his property in 2004.
More good news! Two years ago the SPCA was letting dogs freeze on their chains and in pens. The story below is one of many that AAS has been told. Changing the SPCA has been a monumental struggle, one that has cost many animal-lovers dearly in legal threats and costs... but it has been worth it. And it will go on until the SPCA's actions and policies and programs matches its words; until no one needs to drag and push the SPCA while it lashes out with law suits; until the SPCA can be trusted to lead, not have to be driven.
It may be getting there. When it can be trusted, news like this below will be old news, no longer relevant. That will be a day for celebrating.
THE WATCHDOG
FROZEN DOGS: How Many Animals Will Freeze to Death Tonight? *PIC*
Posted By: AAS
Date: Saturday, 3 January 2004, at 8:59 p.m.
Tonight .. Clear. Windy. Low minus 8. Windchill minus 15. And that's just Vancouver. Prince George: Tonight .. Clear. Low minus 33.
How many dogs, unable to get out of the freezing wind, will die helplessly on the ends of their chains while the SPCA says that it cannot prevent the keeping of dogs this way because it is "reasonable and generally accepted practice of animal management"? (PCA Act, Section 24 (2))
It also claims that the Act does not permit it to seize dogs kept like the one below for the same reason. When will BC SPCA CEO Craig Daniell do what he has said the SPCA is doing, and seize for social/psychological suffering?
"The message is clear - if you are inflicting cruelty to animals, including psychological and emotional abuse, you will be charged."
That statement was made by Craig Daniell in the BC SPCA's Fall Animal Sense magazine.
We still have not heard that the SPCA has actually seized an animal for psychological and emotional abuse, but we hear every day about the freezing, lonely, dirty, and cruelly isolated dogs that the SPCA is ignoring.