SPCA employees are "encouraged" to take the course, which can be done via correspondence. Few have. It is probable that many more have been instructed (briefly) in how to cheaply kill animals, than have been instructed in what animals need to become and stay physically and psychologically healthy. SPCA ignorance of animals is legendary and would be funny if not so tragic for animals.

The education levels required in Germany are indicative of real animal welfare and real sheltering. The lack of training of BC SPCA employees is one of the markers of the animal disposal business. At the BCSPCA, many employees can barely write intelligibly and according to our information, no training is offered at all - new employees are just told to go clean kennels. We have been told that there is not even training in how kennels must be cleaned to keep them disease-free and so SPCAs are chronically infested with diseases. Animals that catch SPCA infections are largely killed, not treated. There is no training in the ethics of animal welfare. All this is how a pet disposal business is run.

There was some training of some staff in administering the SPCA's junk-science dog temperament test, DTA4, the test that the SPCA uses to explain to the media why it is still killing so many dogs. (The real reason is the SPCA's unlimited intake policy and its lucrative dog-disposing pound contracts.) But the test was so subjectively unscientific that the results were nonsense. Some dogs were killed for easily treatable kennel-madness (foster homes, more volunteers, more walking, a dog playground, and some commonsense and compassion) and others were sold even though they were dangerous, some severely biting the children of the families the SPCA had sold them to - after the dogs had passed the haywire test. This is the test that was devised by the SPCA's Animal Management expert, Nadine Gourkow, and "management" is the right word - the test "manages" to provide an excuse for "managing" the numbers of dogs in an SPCA, by choosing the ones to kill to reduce crowding caused by the pound contracts and unlimited intake.

Gourkow and her "scientific test" were exposed on CTV when she used the test to justify the SPCA's attempt to kill Cheech. CTV's reporter had a copy of the first test which Cheech had passed handily. Subsequent tests were rigged so that Cheech would fail. This is the SPCA's version of "science".