Attached is the anonymous letter that AAS just received telling us a too-common story, of a dog kept in a crate in a garage. Read the letter for the details.

Here is our letter to the BC SPCA's interim head of Cruelty Investigations.

December 3, 2008

Shawn Eccles,
Chief Animal Protection Officer
BC SPCA
Fax: 604-681-7022

Re: Poodle in garage at (address removed)

Animal Advocates received the attached letter today.

I expect that, if this account is accurate, that the SPCA will seize the dog.

The PCA Act must permit the seizure of this dog when it is demonstrated frequently that it permits the seizure of dogs in the same, or even better conditions, than those described in this letter.

I look forward to your earliest response,

Judy Stone
Animal Advocates Society of BC
animaladvocates@telus.net
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It's frustrating for me to have to tell you that too frequently the SPCA has told me and others that there is nothing wrong with keeping a dog in a garage 24/7 as long as it has "sufficient" light and gets out once a day.

How to prove that it does get out? The SPCA has suggested to me and to others that it is up to neighbours to "stake out" a dog in a pen or a garage or on a chain, to prove that the dog does get the daily relief from its imprisonment that the owners have told the SPCA it gets.

This anonymous letter of complaint makes it clear that the neighbours are afraid of the owners, and that is precisely why it is not the neighbours' responsibility to do the SPCA's job. The SPCA has the trained uniformed staff; the statutory power; the credibility in court as witnesses if it comes to their word against an owner's; the backing of the police or RCMP; and it is paid by donators to "end cruelty now". To expect frightened neighbours to undertake surveillance and to testify in court against a neighbour is not reasonable nor rational. In fact, it is expecting animal-lovers, most of them women, to take the risks the SPCA is authorized to take. These women have to go on living near the person the SPCA expects them to testify against; not so the case with the safe SPCA officers.

The SPCA seized dogs recently from what may be better conditions than this poodle is kept in. To see the dogs the SPCA just recently seized and impounded go to http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/
"Owner of alleged puppy mill speaks out about charges",
or to this page for the text of the news item: http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20081202/BC_Mission_puppy_mill_081202/20081202/?hub=BritishColumbiaHome

Photo of dogs recently seized from breeder's home