If you held a meeting of a thousand trainers, not one of them would agree 100% with any other. It's a given that there will be professional disagreements.

These tests could be okay in the right hands and wrong in the wrong hands, and we think that the SPCA three-day dog assessors are the wrong hands.

It's the possible intent to use the tests as a way to "fail" dogs that the SPCA knows it is not going to be able to sell that concerns us. No matter what tests are used, no matter how much we all agreed with them, any subjective test, no matter how good, can be rigged for failure.

If the SPCA didn't take in more dogs than it can honestly help, then it wouldn't need any testing system.

The long and the short of it for AAS is that it is not so much the testing system that is awful, but that the SPCA is doing the killing that is awful.

We think the test is designed to allow the SPCA to kill as many dogs at is always did, but now with a "scientific" justification. After all, the test comes from the RSPCA doesn't it, another big dog disposer that has come in for some criticism recently? We think the test is designed for shelters that need a media-friendly excuse for all the killing. Almost any test would do if the testers have been told to get the numbers down because any subjective test can be used to "prove" what the tester wants.

We hope to have the ten SPCA tests posted tomorrow and then we would welcome any comments from trainers or any comparisons of the SPCA's tests to the testing methods of acknowledged experts such as Ian Dunbar and Jean Donaldson.