How hard did Global have to work to get the 'fat cat' story? How hard did it ever have to work to get all the cute stories fed to it by the SPCA for decades? How much thinking? Any time-consuming research or investigation into the SPCA all those years?

But we have been told that an angry animal-lover phoned Global and got no satisfaction, then phoned the SPCA and got Director Rick Sargent who said he would see that if Global ran the story again that it would comment on the cruelty.

At last - a real hands-on Director of the BC SPCA who isn't vainly enamoured of media "friends" and who's more interested in animal welfare than golf games with media "stars".

AAS is familiar with Rick Sargent's wife Millie who single-handedly reformed the Victoria SPCA by speaking about what she saw there when everyone else was silent. More than two years ago Millie asked us to put her experiences with the Victoria SPCA staff and it's protective and complaint board of directors on our web site and we did. Millie is one of the very few people AAS found, or we should say, found us, who understood what she was seeing and refused to be intimidated by SPCA lawyers into being quiet.

Millie's husband Rick not only supported his wife but went on to get involved in the restructured SPCA, becoming a Director.

After decades of self-servers who got to add "Director of the BC SPCA" to all their other Directorships and have their names on the letterhead of the "illustrious SPCA" and who allowed the SPCA to degrade into a big dog-disposal business that did almost zero prevention of cruelty, the BC SPCA has Directors who are there for animals - not themselves.

AAS has been watching the signs and portents at the BC SPCA for the last two years since it said it would reform and we were heartened when we found out that Rick Sargent had been made a Director. Since then it has made so many colossal self-serving bloomers that we wonder if our job of holding its feet to the fire will ever end, but people like Rick Sargent give us hope.