For the SPCA to be so fixated on what it is calling "myths" is a serious sign that it is in big trouble. When a company, or in this case, a society, finds itself faced with a serious problem of perception, the problem cannot be fixed with P.R. It can be postponed, but not fixed because the truth will out - it always does in the end. The SPCA is attempting to dispel the truth, not myths, and it won't work, and the sad thing is that no one at the SPCA understands this.

This latest attempt from the SPCA to recover the money that once went to it alone and is now increasingly going to real animal welfare organizations as more and more people are angered by the SPCA taking so much money while doing so little direct care for animals, is as doomed as all the SPCA's slick P.R. We hear almost daily of those so-important "little old lady bequests" going to other societies because of this.

The SPCA has staggered from one P.R. disaster to another since the revelation in 2001 that one CEO was making over $204,000 a year. It has consistently made self-destructive decisions about how to handle bad P.R. It was advised by a major P.R. firm not to sue AAS, but it followed its own internal advise from its CEO and President and now it is in a P.R. mess its own making, one that can only do it irreparable damage.

Who is advising the SPCA this time? Is it President Mary Lou Troman? She does not answer emails about real concerns from real animal welfarists, but she promptly replies to emails that contain offers of donations.

Ms Troman's P.R. style has been closely described by Heather Pettit, president of the Vernon and District Animal Care Society in a post below (see link). Essentially it is to smilingly misinform. Ms Pettit was for many years the President of the Vernon SPCA before all the branches were amalgamated into one Head Office SPCA. There is very little that Ms Pettit does not know about the workings of the BC SPCA.

Is the SPCA's campaign to dispel myths this way, by bafflegabbing old ladies, the CEO's idea? But Craig Daniell is the man who almost single-handedly destroyed the SPCA by his astonishing mishandling of the Cheech affair, just to name one public outrage of his doing.

Or is it the brain child of the SPCA's P.R. boss, Lori Chortyk? There are too many P.R. blunders of Ms Chortyk's to list, but we cannot believe that she is the right person to control the P.R. of an agency in such hot water. Everything that comes out of the SPCA's P.R. department is so highly questionable that we can only think that she is a large part of the SPCA's problem. Some of our media contacts have been contacted by her with highly inflammatory statements about AAS and about me personally. Too many media people are laughing at the SPCA and using opprobrious names that we can't repeat. The media no longer believes the SPCA's P.R. There have been too many unbelievable statements from Ms Chortyk.

The only way to survive bad P.R. is to examine the bad P.R. for the truth that is in it, and fix the problem. No amount of spitting on a conflagration will put it out; all the SPCA's P.R. is doing is making its critics angrier as the problems go unfixed and the P.R. keeps being pumped out.

Remember the tainted blood scandal? The Canadian Red Cross chose slick P.R. In the end there was a government inquiry and blood transfusions were taken away from the Canadian Red Cross and a new agency set up by government.