The errors made by municipal staff and councils in drafting new bylaws for the operation of their own pounds are staggering.

Coquitlam accepting and killing feral cats is one stunningly obtuse example. North Vancouver District accepting dogs from other municipalities as long as the dumper paid is another.

Who did the District ask for advice from before adopting such a doomed and elitist policy? No real animal welfarists as far as we can determine.

To demand money for what is being boasted of as welfare is crooked. To demand money is elitist. Only dumpers with money get to dump. How could a group of otherwise intelligent people think that the exchange of money can make an unacceptable action, acceptable? It only adds a layer of evil.

To take dogs from outside of the District of North Vancouver was also staggeringly stupid. It was a given that District taxpayers would pay for months or years of incarceration for other municipalities' dangerous dogs. AAS warned that this would happen and of course it did. It wasn't rocket science.

The District of North Vancouver donned the role of the reviled and booted-out SPCA by accepting from dumpers, cats, rats, rabbits, and other helpless creatures. It didn't kill them immediately as had the SPCA so often, but it kept them imprisoned in rooms in cages, often not attended to humanely. The greatest difference between the District of North Vancouver and the SPCA is that the staff at the District pound meant to do animal welfare. But they were untrained and underfunded.

No municipality has the right to call its pound an animal welfare shelter until it adopts breeding controls, bans yard and guard dogs, and provides true welfare for all species of animals in its care. None are doing that yet. Animal loving voters still have a lot of work to do.