Good for councillors Kim Capri and George Chow. I hope councillor Chow's interest will be the impetus for dialogue with leaders in the Chinese immigrant community to start a humane education program. It has been sorely lacking for the fifteen years that I have been aware of the many dogs who suffer in Vancouver's yards. Animal Advocates has been getting reports of yard dogs for ten years, and in Vancouver, the vast majority of the dogs' owners are from the Asian immigrant community.

Animal Advocates Society tried hard without any interest or help from the city or the SPCA to start a dialogue on this problem. Out of our tiny budget we ran ads in Chinese and Korean papers and we went on Chinese radio and TV. We contacted leaders of the Chinese business and cultural community and were told there couldn't be a problem because the SPCA had never mentioned it. We asked over and over for the SPCA to specifically produce humane education material in other languages.

Some cultural differences enrich our lives and communities and some cause dissension and distress. Dog abuse and neglect is one of them.

In spite of many requests by Animal Advocates, there is still no law in Vancouver against chaining or penning dogs their whole lives. What does the city do when one of these abused dogs finally bites someone? It kills the dog, often after the expense of a trial. An anti-yard dog law is long overdue, as is humane education. Preventing dog attacks in the first place is an intelligent and humane use of tax dollars.