We wish the Vancouver City Police would stop advising people to get a dog as an alarm. Many of the owners of these dogs are recent immigrants who are fearful of crime, especially in East Vancouver. When the police advise them to get a dog, they do not realize that leaving it in the yard is both inhumane and possibly a great danger, aside from causing profound anxiety to the neighbours who have to listen to a pup cry for months and watch it grow into a dangerous or depressed dog, that has given up begging by crying and barking to be made a part of its "family" and is curled in ball, it's back to the world, waiting to die.

The indifference of the SPCA and the City to the suffering of the dogs and the misery of dog-lovers who have to witness suffering of the dog daily, often results in the person stealing the dog and rehoming it. Almost all dog-rescuers are women and they do this in spite of their fear of the abuser. These women may be single mothers on welfare, Shaughnessy matrons, lawyers, off-duty police, and the elderly, but they cannot bear the suffering they must witness and they have given up begging the City and the SPCA to do something, and so they break the law. Read about this at: http://www.animaladvocates.com/release-the-hounds.htm