Over the years, AAS has been told numerous times of staff and volunteers finding live dogs and cats in SPCA freezers. Usually we were also told that the animal was then well and truly killed. The irony is unspeakably sad.

Those stories are just one of many reasons that AAS "imputed cruelty" to the SPCA. Even now I can hardly bear to think about the extreme and protracted suffering that the SPCA's incompetence caused to so many helpless animals.

"Incompetence" by the way, was a large section of the SPCA's lawsuit against us, which it dropped in 2007, after I had to pay thousands to defend it.