The SPCA's answer to the charge that its CAMP (Companion Animal Management Program) Dog Behaviour Evaluation Test has not undergone scientific validation would be that it has, in England. We don't know how long the RSPCA has been using the test, but it very likely has enough "validation" to satisfy the media which we believe is the reason the SPCA went shopping for a test.

This is what must be questioned...what was the SPCA's intention when it went shopping for a test? Animal welfare or its own welfare? Was its intention to prevent bad adoptions, to find out what dogs need to be rehabilitated, and to prevent killing? Or was its intention to never again be exposed on TV for a mass killing of dogs for housecleaning, and to have an unassailable "expert" justification for all the killing?

AAS thinks the SPCA's intention in so quickly instituting a "behaviour test" after being exposed on TV was to prevent it from being exposed again, not to reduce the number of dogs killed. We think this on the grounds of the "kill order" that went out right on the heels of the implementation of the CAMP test. We now have it on reliable authority that there was a telephone order that was given to some branches to kill certain dogs on the basis of the test which was performed by "assessors" with a only a few days training, and that those branch managers refused because they have years, sometimes decades of experience with dogs, unlike the head of CAMP and the malleable, inexperienced, assessors.

We also think that the SPCA's choice of using people to head and do assessments for CAMP who have little or no experience with dog rehabilitation is another clue to its intentions, as the trainers in BC who are considered experts may have objected to the test and have refused to give kill orders. The test itself may come loaded with scientific validation, but those carrying it out have no credentials to do this, not even CAMP's head, Nadine Gourkow, who is a "cat expert" and has never been a dog trainer or rehabilitator. What these people have shown is a willingness to give kill orders.

The answer to the question, why did the SPCA institute CAMP, should be revealed in the next few months. Will the number of euthanasias go down? But how will we know? The SPCA is infamous for false euthanasia figures. The true figures will come from SPCA volunteers, and from the SPCA employees who are horrified by CAMP.