The BC SPCA is seizing animals.
This should be a good thing and it should make all of us involved in animal welfare supportive and on the same page.
Unfortunately due to the fates of many of the seized dogs that have been in the care of the BC SPCA not all of us are. Also many of us are also now unable to accept what the BC SPCA does ABOUT ANYTHING without questioning why, as the Society's motives in many circumstances are self-serving rather than animal welfare based. This is truly a shame.
Take this latest seizure.
The stories I have heard of how the dogs were stuffed in large crates and loaded into a truck in the hot sun and made to suffer for a unspecified time while waiting to be transferred to the fair grounds don't sound a lot like animal welfare. The pictures of the dogs lying in sawdust doesn't look much like animal welfare either. Taking only the young and sellable and leaving the old and unsellable, well again personally I cannot understand how conditions too bad for some are acceptable for others but again I only have vague information to go on. Perhaps, sometime the BC SPCA will explain why it only took the young and good ones (as the newspaper article mentioned).
But back to the problem.
Am I for breeders keeping animals in horrible conditions? Not a chance.
However, I believe the BC SPCA needs to adopt a standard of care and make it well-known to all those who should be using it. I believe the BC SPCA should also up-grade some of it's own facilities it uses and tell municipalities that their pounds don't meet acceptable standards as well, and insist that those facilities are up-graded.
In September of 1994 the Canadian Kennel Club released it's standards. The BC SPCA has used these standards to inspect at least one facility that I am aware of. However it has not formally accepted them and I personally believe many of the SPCA own facilities would not meet them.
The BC SPCA has an obligation to behave in a manner that is above board. Until then the seizures will be tainted with innuendo and questioned.