Surrey Leader

Cops against cruelty

BOAZ JOSEPH / THE LEADER

By Jeff Nagel

Jun 03 2007

A pack of Jack Russell terriers bounce up and down behind chicken wire in a slushy soup of their own filth.

Their owner makes excuses over the frenzied barking.

Eileen Drever, the B.C. SPCA's senior animal protection officer, turns away and shakes her head.

"I just knew it," she fumes, trudging through the muck. "They just don't get it."

It's a chilly day in Chilliwack and the family of amateur breeders behind this substandard, dirty kennel have again attracted the attention of SPCA cruelty investigators.

They know this dilapidated house well. They've been here before to seize dogs, horses and birds.

Family members have been twice charged and twice convicted of animal cruelty offences.

The couple's last court appearance netted them each $250 fines and an order banning them from owning more than four dogs and two cats.

The SPCA constables are certain the family is violating the order, but they won't reveal where they're hiding the latest lucrative litter of Jack Russell puppies.

Drever's face tightens as she counts piles of feces around the barking dogs and scribbles in her notebook.

These are foul conditions for any creature to call home, let alone hyperactive dogs in need of stimulation and exercise, she says.

After warnings, convictions and fines, the officers hoped this family might have cleaned up their act.

"This is a pattern," Drever tells colleague Laura Lavigne as the two constables quietly debate whether to seek a court order to seize the dogs and lay more animal cruelty charges.

"It's quite disheartening," Drever explains. "This has been going on for a couple of years."

The Jack Russell situation is just one of nearly 6,000 cases of alleged animal cruelty that are investigated every year.

And it's a typical day on the job for these officers, whose jurisdiction takes them across the Lower Mainland and sometimes across the province investigating allegations of animal abuse.

It's not always this bleak.

But some heart-breaking days truly test the officers' faith in humanity.

Drever has plucked dogs out of dumpsters, where they'd been tied up in plastic bags and left to die.

She's raided farms of horror, with emaciated pigs and sheep staggering at the edge of death.

And she's opened the doors to homes bursting with cats.

Most people the SPCA deals with aren't deliberate sadistic animal torturers, Drever explains. Some are simply ignorant of their animals' needs, and a little education often sets them straight.

Others know better but are somehow too lazy to act. In cases like one recently busted puppy mill, profit is the motive.

One raid netted scores of puppies, which would have sold for $600 each.

"You can imagine the money that's to be made," Drever says.

For these offenders, fines amount to little more than the cost of doing business.

But in a major push to crack down on puppy mills, the B.C. SPCA has taken more than 1,000 abused or neglected dogs from targeted breeders in recent years.

One of the most notorious was Marcy Ryan, an Agassiz woman who continually bred puppies in deplorable conditions until the SPCA seized 23 severely neglected dogs.

She was convicted on two counts of animal cruelty in 2003 and given the maximum $2,000 fine, along with a 10-year ban from owning animals. But she violated the court order and continued keeping animals, resulting in another conviction in the summer of 2006 and a 10-day jail sentence.

The puppy business is so lucrative there have been recent dog-nappings of prized breeds in Greater Vancouver.

Teams of people have been reported in Surrey impersonating SPCA officers in order to abscond pets for breeding.

If profiteers are on one end of the spectrum, the hoarders are at the other.

"People who hoard animals - that in itself is a mental illness," Drever says. "They keep collecting and collecting and they can't stop."

She once entered an apartment where a young woman had given up every inch of living space for a vast collection of cats.

"It was like a sea of eyes everywhere," she said. "And the stench of cat urine and feces - it was like a wall hit you."

Police had to take the woman to hospital. She had no food for herself and was vowing to kill herself if her cats were taken.

The next stops down the road from the Jack Russell home help restore the investigators' optimism.

They visit a Chilliwack goat farmer who is under orders to improve conditions in his barn.

To the officers' relief, he has taken their recommendations to heart. The situation is much better.

It's a similar story in Aldergrove at the Greater Vancouver Zoo. Keepers have followed directions and trimmed the overgrown hoofs of giraffes.

But the best comes when they inspect the new lodgings of young hippo Hazina, who became a celebrity with a popular Telus ad campaign and then a black eye for the zoo when charges were laid over her treatment.

Her initial pen was too small and her pond so shallow she couldn't float - a necessity for heavy hippos. But today Drever and Lavigne are elated to see Hazina splashing in a much more spacious and appropriate shelter. Charges against the zoo are subsequently dropped.

Other challenges soon dull the glow as the SPCA van heads west through Langley.

Drever is on the phone coaching animal shelter staff in West Vancouver.

They've apprehended a maltreated dog with matted hair but can't find a local vet willing to assess the hound - essential if cruelty charges are to be pursued.

It's a recurring problem.

Vets who work with the SPCA on animal cruelty cases can end up testifying in court against pet owners, and that's not always good for business. As a result, officers rely heavily on just one or two vets in the Lower Mainland.

Places to house certain seized animals are also in short supply.

Drever is agonizing about what to do with three Bengal tigers near 100 Mile House. At least one of the big cats is emaciated and their enclosure is tiny.

She has called all over western Canada but can find nowhere to house the tigers if officers were to seize them.

"What do we do with them?" she asks, adding the province should at least ban the import of dangerous exotic animals.

It proves to be prescient question.

By May, the tigers have become front page news - their owner's girlfriend dead after being clawed by one of them.