From the Brindleweb messageboard http://www.brindleweb.com/rescuebb/viewtopic.php?t=25436&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=45#top, posted by Carol Hine, the president of Senior Animals In Need Today Society.

"or we could look at this a little bit differently...
a sick and obviously in pain puppy comes into the spca's care..they take it to the vet.
the vet tells them the pup looks like he has a bowel blockage (they would have known this based on exam...tender, distended abdomen, no bowel sounds present on auscaltation...could be from a foreign object...could be a torsion.

they would have been told by a responsible vet that this will be an expensive surgery with no guarantee that the pup will survive, they also would have been told of the risks..that if there is permanent bowel damage, if the pup survives, it may be bowel incontinent and leak feces or suffer from chronic constipation/mega colon and require frequent enemas for the rest of his life.

so now the spca has to make a decision..the pup is in crises and in pain now...do they risk the surgery minus the crystal ball to see the future and hope the pup will survive and the pup will have a normally functioning bowel?

and if the pup survives but now has severe and chronic bowel problems..what are they going to do next?..they probably don't have a lot of adoptive homes lining up for a permanently incontinent dog...they cannot house the dog for the rest of his life if the risk actually becomes a reality either cuz who wants to live forever in a kennel?...not a young puppy.

so..having thought this all thru, weighing the risks, the pups age and current condition against the possible but not for sure benefits..and they with great regret opt to euthanize (do not tell me that anyone in the spca wants to euthanize because they think it is fun.)

and gee..the clinic offers another solution...they will take the pup on and try to find help. i am sure the spca was grateful that someone else was not only willing, but able to take on the risks to give this pup a chance to live. and they agreed.

and now once again their butts are getting bitten on brindle because when they were unable to help that pup because of their mandates and society rules and policies and the type of care they can provide which is not sanctuary care but temporary care to adoptable animals....i bet they are re-thinking their decision and wishing they hadn't signed that pup over to the clinic. political risk is pretty painful and harmful to them and can do a lot of damage when they are in reality doing the best they can in a difficult job.

as to the time frame in making the decision..i am sure they made the decision as quickly as they could while seeking out advice from their superiors and in phone consultations with the spca's own vets...because i am also sure that all of them wanted to help that pup if they reasonabley could... but in the end it was decided they could not take the risks.

i am truly glad the pup is in rescue and got the care he needed...but if he had a permanently damaged bowel..even in rescue that would have been very difficult to manage for the rest of his life...i know this because we cannot find homes for our incontinent dogs...and lots of other rescues ask us to take incontinent animals that they took on but in the end do not have the ability to care for long term.

i think we owe the spca an apology for making them the bad guys in this....we in rescue often make decisions to euthanize our animals for reasons we believe to be reasonable, responsible and correct and come here and everyone is supportive and caring...we respect that someone has made that difficult decision because that is what they had to do at the time.

we do not give the spca the same respect for their work and their difficult decisions...(do we actually just assume they are cheap and lazy and don't really care about animals at all?)..i am sure that is not why they decided to turn tht pup over to the clinic..they wanted that pup to have a second chance and they gave it to him...and i say good for them and thank you!"