The revised report says that “evidence ….has not been found” which would support Animal Advocate’s concern that greater cruelty might result if there is no law against keeping dogs in pens or garages instead of on a tether. Staff did not contact us to ask what is the evidence we have, nor were we advised that a revised report was being presented to you. (The online report says that it was mailed to Animal Advocates but we have never received it.) I can’t know if staff asked the SPCA, its dog control contractor, if it had any evidence, even anecdotal, but I know that the SPCA does have evidence, not only because of the number of times I have been told by complainants that the SPCA has been informed and has answered that there is nothing wrong with keeping a dog in a garage, but because of the following:

On January 13, after the Burnaby Now published a story on the concerns Animal Advocates brought to you, we were contacted by a person who told us that a young female Husky named Coco had been outside on a tether at (address removed) 24 hours a day for a year, and that after the SPCA came on a complaint in September 2005, her owners put Coco in the garage on a four foot rope where she has been for almost six months. Complaints of that were made to the SPCA but nothing changed.

Several people were under the impression that the owners wanted to give Coco away and offers were made to adopt her, including by myself, but were refused.

On February 6th I made a complaint to the Burnaby SPCA. I made the complaint anonymously because in the past, when I have given my name, the SPCA will not tell me anything. After many phone calls to the SPCA I was told that:

1. One neighbour says the owners treat Coco really well (which ignores all the neighbours who are upset by Coco’s incarceration);

2. Coco is exercised every day;

3. Coco is not on a tether in the garage;

4. Being in a garage 23 hours a day is no worse than being alone in the house while the owners are at work.

I can assure you that Coco is on a tether in the garage; I have seen it for myself, neighbourhood complainants see it daily, and it was confirmed to me as recently as Friday the 17th. Yet the SPCA denies it.

As for the fourth statement made by the SPCA, people, including myself, have been told that for years by the SPCA. Do they truly think being confined 23 out of 24 hours in a dim garage, on a four foot rope in Coco’s case, is no different than waiting inside the family home, free to move and free to choose where to lie down, being part of the family in the morning and after work, and sleeping in the home with the family? Dogs have been bred for companionship for hundreds of thousands of years; they are the only animals that have been; they are the most social of all animals and isolation is the greatest cruelty that can be inflicted on a dog.

Coco is serving a life sentence in solitary confinement. For a short while every day she is freed from her garage prison. She is allowed a brief glimpse of sunshine and of lives being lived. Then it's back into the dark with four walls and a water bowl, a four foot rope hooked to her neck. She is young yet, and has many endless months and years of darkness and loneliness before her. Yet the SPCA actually argues that there is nothing wrong with that. Animal-lovers think it is cruel and cannot agree with the provincial agency charged with preventing cruelty that it isn’t.

The 4' rope that ties Coco to her dog house in the garage has been outlined