Councils miss opportunity with dogs

By Judy Stone, President,
Animal Advocates
Society of BC
Aug 30 2006

Dear editor,

Animal Advocates Society of BC welcomes any regulations that improve conditions for dogs, but councils keep missing a golden opportunity to regulate backyard breeding and puppymills at the same time.

All they have to do is count puppies as dogs, then every breeder would be regulated.

Dog breeding should be licensed like all businesses, and the licence fees ought to be high enough to deter the people with a dog in their yard that produces a few hundred or a few thousand dollars a year.

They make money while the taxpayer pays to deal with the problems of dog overpopulation and dangerous dogs, many of which come from backyard breeders.

These poor dogs are shuffled and sold by owners, pounds, and SPCAs.

Many are ruined by the process and are put down at the taxpayer’s expense.

We hope that the SPCA is urging breeding controls be included in every municipality’s bylaws.

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