Perhaps I should respond by telling about all my rescues who were NOT owner surrenders but who WERE dumped despite the fact that the SPCA has an unlimited surrender policy, and would have taken them had the owners been bothered drive them up there.
Georgia - dumped in the middle of highway 97
Pogo- found running in a pack of 5 semi-feral dogs in Cherryville
Noelle- thrown from a vehicle in a garbage bag as a 2 week old pup on Christmas Eve
Gracie- abandoned in the crawlspace of a house when owners moved out
Fiona- abandoned in an apartment when owners moved out
Carl- abandoned in an apartment when owners moved out
Charlotte- abandoned in an apartment when owners moved out
William- abandoned in an apartment when owners moved out
Star- dumped as a pup with her brother on Highway 7 near Agassiz
Donny- wandering the streets of Port Coquitlam with a severely broken leg
Bernard- abandoned outside his house when his owner went to jail on drug charges
Daphne- abandoned at five weeks old in an empty lot
Peggy Sue- one of five cats left behind on a rural property when the house was vacated and put on the market. A litter of kittens was left trapped inside. All died before the realtors discovered them.
Lily- left behind on a rural acreage with a litter of kittens when the owners moved out.
These are just the current abandoned dogs and cats under my care. The list would be ten times as long if I recounted all those abandoned over the ten years I've been doing this. Wake up people- pet abandonment is already rampant and it has NOTHING to do with SPCA surrender policies. The type of people who dump animals at the side of the road wouldn't bother to make the effort to take them up to the SPCA in the first place.
What the SPCA's unlimited surrender policy facilitates is an easy out for people who have a conscience. People who have a conscience don't shoot, drown, or abandon their pets.
Dumping at the SPCA is simply an easy out for pet owners. I have turned away owner surrenders for two years now, but I always offer alternatives for the owners whose pets I refuse to take. I explain to them how to go about rehoming their pet, and lo and behold, I quite often see their pet advertised in the paper days later. Now how difficult was that, I think to myself. I refused to be the dumping ground, and like magic, they took responsibility for rehoming their animal.
And when someone calls to ask me to take their 14 year old cat, or their 12 year old dog, or their blind diabetic 10 year old poodle who still has "lots of life and finds his way around our house just great", I tell these people that the only humane answer for their poor old companion is to for them to stay with him while he is quietly euthanized by a veterinarian. No more shuffling poor old pets. They have lived long happy lives in familiar surroundings. Don't make them end their lives in the comapny of strangers.
But the SPCA would accept them, wouldn't they? And put them in a cell and let them rot away in terror before they kill them because there is next to no one who will buy them.
All the SPCA's unlimited surrender policy does is provide a crutch for an essentially lazy pet owning public. It has no effect on the sort of monster who would shoot, drown, or abandon an animal. This sort of person is not lazy, they are dysfunctional.
The SPCA provides a convenient service. Fast food restaurants are also convenient, but if they were to all disappear tomorrow, the human race would not starve to death. They would find alternatives, as time-consuming and inconvenient as they may be.
If the SPCA withdraws its convenient pet diposal service, lazy pet owners will just have to try a little harder, and be a little inconvenienced. Some may even find it more convenient to keep their pet.
Best of all, the SPCA would have a lot more time and space to deal with the existing problem of animals dumped and abused by dysfunctional people. THIS is its mandate. It is a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, not a pet recycling centre.