The article in the paper triggered a lot of response. Monday afternoon I talked on the phone to John van Dongen and on Tuesday morning he came to my place and we talked for at least 45 minutes. I am still stunned on how much negative information is out there about the SPCA that I was never aware of.

With this I will let you know a little more about us. I moved to this 50 acre property 3 years ago. At that point I had no plans to rescue horses or any other kind of animal, but I always had a lot of love for animals. My experience with horses comes from working on the race track in Germany when I was young. My now 22 year old daughter got into riding at age 5 and since than we have leased and owned horses.

Through a boarder I found out about Julie McMillan from J&M Acres and I bought a rescue from her. A week later she phoned me and asked if I could take another one. She had no room and I took in another very starved horse. Then she phoned me asking me to come with her to the Standardbred Training Center. Three horses were bound for the slaughter house and I took one of them.

It was such a wonderful experience seeing these horses get healthier and happier that we joined Julie at the auction and started taking home horses not wanted or bound for the slaughter house. In the meantime we rescued over 80 horses and placed 65.

My oldest daughter Alina joined me in my efforts 2 years ago and she is doing a wonderful job making nice riding horses out of our rescues. I feel very good about what we have accomplished and I am looking forward to learning more so we can help more horses and give some of the livestock we keep a good life as well. I have a volunteer program for all ages and it does not matter if the kids or adults have any experience with horses. We try to teach them as much as possible, because I believe it is the young generation that could make a difference once they own a horse.

Working with abused or neglected horses is quite different from training a horse brought up the proper way and I believe we have learned a lot over the last 3 years and we are looking forward to making new experiences every day. Wednesdays and Saturdays I work a part time job outside my home, but otherwise I spend 10, 12 or 14 hours a day, 7 days a week working with our animals. The work is no chore to us, we love every minute of it and both my daughter and myself would not want to change what we do. Except to make a little money soon. Besides all of our income, we spend over $25,000 of our savings on our operation. In November of 2003 we took in 22 pregnant PMU mares from Manitoba and even though it was a lot more work than I expected, it was an amazing experience. Last winter we rescued 11 more horses than I had budgeted for, but we did it and right now I am preparing for the next winter.

My experience with the SPCA now made me chance my mind about leaving them alone as long as they leave me alone. Even though Officer Eccles read me my rights on July 11th, I have not heard anything from them since, which makes me believe they have no real case against me. That again makes me believe it was plain harassment.

With all the support I am getting, I want to let everybody in Surrey know what the SPCA is really all about. I would like to put together as much information as possible and then advertise in the paper to have people come to my place and find out what kind of people run the SPCA. Complaining to people alone is not doing the job. The public has to be made aware of how the SPCA is spending their donations. With Eileen Drever's salary alone I could save another 30 horses per year.

Are you aware of anyone wanting to take over the Animal Shelter in Surrey? If so, can you please let them know about me. I would like to help them or if nobody is working on it yet.

I would be interested in investigating what it would take to run a shelter in Surrey. Have you ever seen the yearly financial reports from the SPCA? How much do you know about the court cases the SPCA has had over the years?

I am interested in going to court to stop the SPCA from harassing people like myself. I believe they use phoney complaints to come and check out people and their animals. I would like to see something in place that the SPCA must have a name and phone number of the person complaining and I would like to go as far as asking for the complainant to come with
an officer from the SPCA to check out the complaint. I do not have any experience with courts or the law, so it would take me a long time to investigate and learn about it.

Today is my working day so I have to finish for now, but before I go I want to complement you on what you are doing. I definitely will stay in contact with you and you can just tell me what to do in order to help you with your efforts.