ANIMAL ADVOCATES SOCIETY OF BC - HOW TO GET A HUMANE POUND IN YOUR COMMUNITY

HOW TO GET A HUMANE, MUNICIPALLY-RUN POUND IN YOUR COMMUNITY

SUCCESS!!
The District of North Vancouver and the City of Coquitlam listened and investigated and found that what AAS said about how their pounds were being run by the SPCA was true.
Both are going to run their own pounds starting January 2002.
This is such good news for animals! Read the following so you can convince your mayor and council to stop pound contracting and to operate their own municipally-run, citizen-influenced pound.

THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF POUND

"Private Pound Contracting" is one - the other is the "Municipally-run pound".

"Private pound contracting" is a business. Businesses have bottom lines.
In the lower mainland the SPCA is the private pound contractor in 18 municipalities.

"Municipal pounds" are run by municipal staff and policy is set by citizens through their mayors and councils. Only Vancouver, West Vancouver, and New Westminster have "municipal pounds". Everywhere else has a private "for business" contractor running the pound. In the lower mainland the Vancouver SPCA is the private "for business" pound contractor in 18 municipalities.

Your taxes pay for both methods, but only with a municipal pound do you have a voice in how your dogs are treated!

THE MUNICIPAL POUND:

This is the type of pound that most people think they have, but in fact there’s not many of them. They are "owned" and run by their municipality. The employees are employees of that municipality, just like other city staff. In the lower mainland, only the City of Vancouver and the City of New Westminster, have municipal pounds. West Vancouver uses its bylaw enforcement officers to enfoce its dog control bylaws and rents kennel space for the West Vancouver SPCA to hold its stray and impounded dogs. The West Vancouver SPCA refused, many years ago, and very rightly, to be a pound contractor in West Vancouver
A municipal pound is the kind of pound you want because decsions as to pound policy can be influenced through the democratic process of appealing to the mayor and council.

THE CONTRACTED POUND:

This is the type of pound in every other municipality in the lower mainland. About forty years ago, municipalities decided they could save money by contracting out poundkeeping, just as they contract out road-repair, construction, garbage collection, roofing, and other work. Private pound contractors sprang up to take advantage of this new business. In most cases, the private pound contracting company was the Vancouver SPCA. They now have 18 pound contracts in the lower mainland.

The contracted pound is the kind of pound we currently have but don’t want.
The private pound contractor in North Vancouver is the Vancouver SPCA.

WHY YOU DON'T WANT POUND CONTRACTING

ANY CONTRACTING IS A BOTTOM-LINE BUSINESS – POUND CONTRACTING IS NO DIFFERENT

A pound contract is a contractual obligation to dispose of excess dogs – for a set contract price. Keeping dogs alive is expensive. Selling is profitable. Killing is cheap. There is no opportunity for citizens of the community to influence their pound's policy.

WHY YOU DO WANT A MUNICIPAL POUND

A MUNICIPAL POUND IS CLOSE TO THE CITIZENS OF ITS COMMUNITY

A municipal pound is answerable to your mayor and council. If you want to help to make it better, you can go to your mayor and council and make suggestions and make offers to help. You can influence your community to have a compassionate pound.

If you live in any municipality where the pound is contracted out to a private pound-contracting company (the SPCA has 18 pound contracts in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley, and it's being run in a way that you consider inhumane, animal-unfriendly, too prone to kill, with indifferent, uncaring, even brutal staff, dirty kennels, no toys, or blankets, no raised beds, little or no walking, no playing, no socializing, no training, no attempts made to make the dogs happy and therefore more adoptable, selling to any one with the cash, no screening for suitability, killing for cash (at owner's request), in other words, a private for-profit dog controlling and killing business, you too can make a profound change in the treatment of dogs at your pound. Every municipality in the Lower Mainland and the Fraser Valley has chosen to contract-out it's dog control obligations except for West Vancouver, the City of Vancouver, and New Westminster. In those municipalities, the pound is run by city hall, which is, or can be, influenced by it's animal-loving citizens. In every other municipality, except Mission, the private contractor is the Vancouver SPCA. That may explain the many times so many people have angrily asked the question, "Why is the SPCA out cruising around looking for people and dogs to fine, but they won't help the chained dog." There is only so much time in the day, and only so much money in the contract, and the employees are all very busy doing the work of the contract - if they didn't, it might not be renewed. That's how business works!

If you want a humane pound in your community here is what you do...

Download any info you want to use from our web mag;

Go to your local pound several times at different times, inspect and take photos;

Hold a public meeting;

Write a letter to the editors of your local papers, telling what you've seen and what you think needs to be improved; announce in the letter that you would like interested persons to contact you and/or attend the meeting;

Run an ad to this effect in your local papers if they won't print your letters, or;

See if you can interest a reporter in what you are attempting;

Post notices in pet stores, vets, and at dog walking areas, announcing the formation of your group, why it's necessary, and announcing the meeting;

Invite the press and the Mayor and Councilors to attend the meeting;

Do a petition;

Formally request your mayor and council (in writing) to consider not renewing the contact, and instead to revert to a municipally-run pound, the policy of which the citizens of your municipality can influence through your elected council;

Form a group (a good name is Friends Of The Pound), and go to council meetings to meet your mayor and councilors face-to-face;

. Make up an info pack with documented evidence that our pound is not being run humanely;

. Give this to your mayor and councilors, the press, and interested persons;

. Send out press releases;

. Offer to help make your pound a humane place with volunteers and fund-raising.

. Write your Mayor and Council to formally ask them to stop contracting out animal control services to private pound contractors, (usually the SPCA) and instead to operate a municipally-run pound;

. That they form an Animal Welfare Committee to advise the municipality on animal welfare issues, which committee has no voting members who profit in any way from animals;

. Get the evidence of mishandling of the contract and the inhumane treatment of the animals at your pound;

. Do the research necessary to show that your municipality is currently paying more than it needs to for animal control;

. Ask your local veterinarians to support a municipal pound;

. Your pound should not take dogs from other municipalities. If it did, your noble experiment would fail in no time. It is not the duty of the taxpayers of your municipality to pay for other municipalities' responsibilities. By succeeding, your model will be copied by other municipalities. This is the way to realize the goal of a no-kill Lower Mainland;

. Ask that your pound not "kill for cash" - killing dogs cheaply at owner's request. Providing this service is incompatible with true humane intentions. We believe that it is not the duty of the pound to provide cheap euthanasia. We do believe that it is an easy source of revenue if one already has the trained staff, the euthanol, and the crematoria.

Urge your mayor and council to reject any proposals of GVRD-wide pound services sharing for these reasons:

A central pound is extremely dog-unfriendly, removing as it would all decision making and facilities from any local control.

That there can be no local participation if there is no local pound, therefore no possibility for the citizens of North Vancouver to help to make our pound true no kill.

That "shared services" may promise savings initially, but as with other large bureaucracies, the costs will keep rising.

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN TRUE NO-KILL AND FALSE NO-KILL DEFINITIONS

The "San Francisco model" of no-kill

Urges your Mayor and Councilors to not adopt what is being called by the Vancouver City Pound and the SPCA, the "San Francisco model" of no-kill. The San Francisco SPCA is doing many wonderful things, but in fact, San Francisco has a pound that is still killing thousands of "unadoptable" dogs a year. When the Vancouver City Pound, and the Vancouver SPCA call themselves "no-kill, based on the San Francisco model" the public believes that they kill no dogs. In fact the SPCA and the Vancouver City pound kill many dogs. They just call them "unadoptable" and then say "We kill no ‘adoptable’ dogs".

False no-kill:

Some pound facilities are capitalizing on the public’s desire for no-kill pounds, by claiming to be no-kill, but in order to do this within budget constraints, they actually do kill dogs by using a definition of no-kill that says "We kill no "adoptable" dogs". But they themselves are the ones that decide which dogs are "adoptable" and which aren’t. So in practice, this definition is no different than any other pound or SPCA because none of them kill dogs that can be sold. That wouldn’t be sound business practice. "Unadoptable" means un-sellable.

This false definition should really be "We kill no sellable dogs".

True no-kill

True no-kill does not kill any dog, except to relieve unrelievable suffering. AAS and other local true no-kill societies, and many large and well-known societies in the U.S., all know the same thing – that all dogs are recoverable. And any that are not adopted must be kept within the safety of the Society. They’re called the "keepers", and are mostly old dogs or dogs that remain fearful.

"Adopting" or "Selling"? True no-kill screens potential new families as strictly as they would for their own beloved pet. Many dogs’ lives are a bitter journey from one abusive "home" to another, over and over, with frightening, dirty pounds in between, until they die, or are killed because they have been ruined by their many "families". Pounds that don’t carefully screen, do home visits, and follow-ups are NOT "adopting" dogs – they are "selling" dogs.

Animal Advocates Society has bought many dogs from SPCA’s and the Vancouver City pound, that were going to be killed as "unadoptable", gave them love and rehabilitation and found them real families. And it has recovered dogs that were sold (in the guise of "adoption") to abusive owners by pounds and SPCA's.

How can you help AAS to really help animals?

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