----- Original Message -----
From: Animal Advocates
To: provletters@png.canwest.com
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2006 11:17 AM
Subject: Police dog should not get special treatment

There is an aspect to this story that Animal Advocates is only too well-aware of - that dogs that are isolated in pens and kennels are high public safety risks. Isolation makes dogs angry, desocialized, depressed, and desperate, and forces them to make their own decisions. We hear too often of police who keep their "beloved" dogs like livestock in pens.

AAS has been urging the SPCA and municipalities to ban the keeping of dogs on chains, in pens, and in other forms of isolation and confinement such as under porches and in garages, for many years. Not one has. Even the SPCA when called has told owners that keeping a dog in a garage is okay or to lengthen the rope.

Since the snow and cold snap our phone and email has been flooded with pleas to help outside dogs. There are literally hundreds of them in Greater Vancouver alone, and hundreds more in the Fraser Valley. Society must question the keeping of dogs like livestock, but in ways that would not be tolerated if they were any other species of animal.

Judy Stone
Animal Advocates Society of BC
604-922-1813
www.animaladvocates.com