lETTER TO THE MAYOR
Your Worship and Councillors,
"The general consensus is that chaining out a dog for long periods makes it aggressive. There are even tracts which were found in the ruins of Pompeii suggesting that the way to make your guard dog vicious is to tether him on a short chain. Dogs which have been tied out are either vicious, fearful and hand-shy or both."
Dr. Stanley Coren, Professor and Director of the Human Neuropsychology and Perception Laboratory at UBC and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Author of The Intelligence of Dogs
For the past seven years, Animal Advocates Society of BC has been documenting complaints from many concerned people about hundreds of neglected, suffering dogs in Vancouver. The complaints are usually from neighbours who live near the dog and can no longer bear to see or hear the dog's misery. These caring neighbours have tried to speak to the owner, and sometimes may have succeeded in taking the dog out of its pen or off its chain for a walk, with the owner's permission. Despite these humane efforts by others, the owner's behaviour toward his dog seldom changes because the owner knows that no law has been broken.
AAS has compiled letters, photos and videotape that show the deplorable conditions in which many dogs have to live. In most cases, there is some sort of shelter, some food and water, as dogs in Vancouver seldom die from starvation and exposure to the elements, although these basics are sometimes only inadequately provided.
"For dogs, prolonged chaining is emotional abuse." Dr. Theo Capaldo, Past President, Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
In Vancouver, as in all communities across BC, indeed across North America, many dogs are alive, but not living. Because they have no voice, they have no choice but to live in hovels and pens, on chains and ropes, in boxes and runs and cages, in basements and garages, in filth and darkness. They are forced to endure blazing heat, bitter cold and wet, fear of storms and unknown noises, taunting by children, attacks from other dogs, and the degradation of having to walk and stand and lie in their own feces and urine, and to never be clean. Many dogs are excessively thin and dehydrated because they have lost interest in eating and drinking although food and water are provided.
"Alone day after day, the (chained) dog becomes bored and frustrated. He barks, and the neighbours complain. Passing children tease and annoy him. Because he has nothing to do he becomes listless...and then aggressive. Finally he has to be destroyed...This kind of pet ownership is cruel and irresponsible" Washington Humane Society. WHS/SPCA News. 1991 Issue 2
Many dogs spend their lives at the end of a chain: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. They chew on their chains or their cages, on rocks and boards, painfully breaking their teeth. Collars grow into necks. A dog can get tangled in a chain, unable to reach food or shelter and eventually die painfully and slowly.
Neglected dogs often suffer from the pain of untreated ear, eye, and tooth infections as well as the discomfort of worms, fleas, sores, itchy skin conditions and the pain of a matted coat. Dogs will lick one spot on their coat incessantly in an attempt to relieve anxiety until there is an open sore on their skin. Dogs that spend their life on the end of a chain or in a confined area do not have the opportunity for adequate exercise. As a result, dogs can become either aggressive or lethargic. A chained dog may bite out of fear, and it is most common for a person known to the dog to be the victim, rather than a stranger. Aggressive, maladaptive behaviour is the direct result of lack of human contact and on-going confinement.
"To chain a dog is to deprive it of its essential nature. A dog is a wolf.and to turn that animal into an isolated chained prisoner is the height of cruelty."
Jeffrey Masson, Ph.D. author of Dogs Never Lie About Love, and Co-author of When Elephants Weep E-mail communication with Animal Advocates Society of B.C. 3/12/01
For a dog, being starved of socialization is a punishment far more abusive than lack of adequate food, water, and shelter and veterinary care. Dogs suffer anxiety and depression when they are deprived of social interaction. A dog would rather be beaten and starved than isolated. Isolation is the greatest cruelty a dog can endure. It's important for dog owners to understand that dogs do suffer physically and psychologically when they are not properly cared for and when their right to freedom from suffering is not respected.
What has happened in the past, and what continues to happen, is that people take the law into their own hands and rescue neglected, suffering dogs. In our experience, this is only after phone calls or letters to the SPCA which says it cannot act on the dog's behalf if food, water, and shelter, is provided.
But a BC SPCA internet poll indicates 95% support for better laws to protect animals from cruelty.
AAS has been able to help many dogs by buying them or being given them after approaching the owners with the neighbours' concerns, but we know that there are a very large number of dogs that have been removed by neighbours who have given up asking for the law to act, and have been forced to act themselves.
The lack of adequate, humane laws that could make illegal what is clearly morally repugnant to almost everyone - dog-lover or not - has forced thousands of people, almost all of them women, to break the law at great risk to their personal safety. The women are almost always very afraid - but they do it because no one else will. These individuals then pay for the veterinary care that the dog almost always needs after years of neglect, and find the dog a new, good home. [For a description of this phenomenon see Excerpts of Vancouver Magazine Article, Release the Hounds]
Chaining of dogs has been going on for so many centuries, in all cultures, that we accept it as a right that we cannot infringe upon. But we ask you to consider this: would we accept the lifelong chaining of any other animal? Because a dog is property, guarding other property, we tend to excuse this abuse of dogs. It has been the dog's downfall that it is so instinctively loyal and protective - the very qualities that make a dog man's best friend and so loved by so many. With the technology of alarm systems, we believe there is no longer this justification for the isolation and neglect of dogs.
We do not have to accept it as a person's right to treat a dog this way.
What AAS wants, and what every one of the hundreds of people we have talked to over the years wants for dogs, is for them to be a loved family member. That is all that is truly important to a dog. A dog will endure beatings and hunger in exchange for being part of a family, a pack.
It is the isolation that people who understand dogs cannot bear to witness.
We know that love cannot be legislated, but we ask you to enact laws that will reduce suffering and establish standards of care that reflect some of a dog's needs, not just the dog-owner's needs. If owning a cheap alarm system becomes not so easy and cheap, we believe fewer people will use a dog this way.
And so, although AAS is asking for a minimum standard of physical care for dogs, we hope to achieve more than just that for dogs in Vancouver. We are also asking for a Minimum Standard of Care of Dogs By-Law that responds to not just the physical, but the social needs of dogs. We hope that dogs will no longer have to live their lives in 24/7/365 misery.
In addition to the sections of existing municipal by-laws (attached), AAS is asking that the City of Vancouver include the following elements to ensure humane care for dogs.
1. No tethering. AAS feels that it is important that tethering as a consistent device for controlling/ignoring dogs not be allowed at all. Dogs can easily get accidentally entangled in their tether or are unable to escape a frightening situation. AAS is not asking for a by-law to prohibit casual tethering, for example while a person is in a store or temporarily for the dog's safety.
2. Garage/shed dogs: Some dogs in Vancouver live their entire lives in a garage or shed. They are usually also tethered or sometimes caged in the garage or shed to keep them from damaging the car or tools they are protecting by their barking. Although these dogs have shelter, they still suffer from a lack of a minimum standard of care because they are shut out from their 'family/pack', often have no sanitary place to sleep and often lack proper veterinary care. Their plight is perhaps the saddest of all. Their lives are often spent not only with no company or stimulation, but almost entirely in the dark. Therefore, AAS believes that it is important for the bylaw enforcer to have access to garages and sheds if there is reason to believe that a dog lives there for a substantial part of its life.
3. Pen Size: Sometimes dogs are penned outside while the owner is at work. AAS does not believe it is acceptable for dogs to be left in pens all day where they still suffer from the isolation that makes them anti-social and which pens are almost invariably dirty with feces. If you choose to not ban penning of dogs, we ask you to enact humane guidelines for this. AAS would like to see a by-law that states than a pen must be at least 200 square feet and that a dog cannot be in a pen longer than four hours in every eight hours.
4. Muzzling: Dogs whine and bark when they are lonely and are neglected by the humans they count on to provide the social interaction that dogs (indeed, all creatures) need to be happy. Muzzling a dog to prevent it from making its needs heard is barbaric. Muzzling a dog has the same effect as chaining. It is an irresponsible way to control a dog's natural behaviours instead of giving it human interaction and socialization. It's the lack of responsible pet care that forces a dog to whine and bark incessantly.
As a society we are morally responsible for ensuring a minimum standard of humane care for the dogs in our power, but equally, our legislators have a legal duty to ensure the safety of the public from dogs that have been desocialized by the very chaining, confining and isolation that this report shows so clearly to exist. It cannot be argued, after reading our research section on "Public Safety Issues", that the city has no knowledge of the conditions that produce the very dogs that are most likely to attack and bite persons, especially young children. Animal Advocates Society of BC is willing to provide any further information and documentation that the Mayor and Councillors feel is necessary. We are available to meet with you at any time.
We have looked at the Vancouver City charter*, and at the current bylaws regulating the keeping of dogs, some of which are decades old, and we see no impediment to the adoption by the city of laws to further regulate the keeping of dogs in Vancouver, this time for the benefit of dogs.
AAS will work with the City of Vancouver to help make a humane bylaw successful. We will report dogs we have been told of to the City and we will continue to document cases of neglect and suffering.
Will you be so kind as to inform us of the date that our request will be brought before you in time for us to inform the supporters of this proposal and for us to be allowed to address you at a council meeting?
In closing, we would like share with you a quote from world-famous primatologist, Jane Goodall and Marc Bekoff , Professor. Ph.D., Washington University, St. Louis, (ed.) 1998. Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare. Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, Connecticut. (Boulder News, December 1999) that we consider at the centre of all humane efforts:
"Let us use our brains to move towards compassion away from cruelty, to feel empathy rather than cold indifference, to feel animals' pain in our hearts".
Thank you for your consideration of a minimum standard of care that incorporates a humane definition of neglect of dogs.
Sincerely,
Judy Stone
President, Animal Advocates Society of BC
984-8826
Jeri-Lyn Ratzlaff,
Proposal Co-ordinator
*Vancouver City Charter, Chapter 55, Section 324A: Keeping of Animals:
(g) for regulating the keeping of horses, dogs, cows, goats, swine, rabbits an other animals, and for defining areas within which such animals may be kept or which the keeping of them is prohibited.
