----- Original Message -----
From: Animal Advocates
mayorandcouncil@city.vancouver.bc.ca
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 2:34 PM
Subject: Re: the destruction of the German Shepherd cross at Atlas Animal Hospital on Thursday, April 7, 2003

ANIMAL ADVOCATES SOCIETY OF BC

April 13, 2003

Mayor Larry Campbell and Councillors,
City of Vancouver

Re: the destruction of the German Shepherd cross at Atlas Animal Hospital on Thursday, April 7, 2003

Dear Mayor Campbell and Councillors,

I am involved in this matter because I was phoned by Donna Liberson of the Animal Rights Coalition while the dog was in the back of Atlas Animal Hospital at 41st and Fraser in Vancouver. Donna told me that two City Pound employees had just brought a German shepherd cross in for destruction and that there was a Pit bull in a City van in the parking lot waiting to be brought in for destruction.

I then spoke to Kal, the Atlas Animal Hospital employee in charge, and she confirmed all that Donna had told me. I then asked to speak to one of the City Pound employees because I wanted to find out more about the German shepherd with a view to offering to rehabilitate it at my expense and responsibility. One of the employees came on the line and hung up immediately on my introducing myself.

I phoned your Director of Licenses, Paul Teichroeb, and talked to him Monday morning. Mr Teichroeb confirmed that it is not VCP policy to accept owner surrendered dogs, but he suggested that this may have been a special circumstance because apparently the owner, a woman, claimed the dog had bitten her while she was asleep. This is possible (though hardly credible), but has no bearing on the point at issue.

There is either a policy or there isn’t. There shouldn’t be a policy to kill people’s dogs for them, as it is not up to the taxpayers to pay to “get rid” of someone’s dog, and killing for this reason is one of the things that has earned pounds so much well-deserved opprobrium in the past.

I urge you to investigate this further. Answers are needed. Why was policy ignored in this case? Did the pound, or the employees, accept money to kill this woman’s dog? Did it make a profit if it did? If payment was made, is there a record of it?

There are other questions that must be resolved. Mr Teichroeb led me to believe that the German shepherd cross was accepted for destruction in part because staff were already scheduled to take a Pit bull (or cross) that had been in the pound for some time, to be destroyed. Serendipitous convenience ought not to be an acceptable justification for deciding to kill a dog.

The dog was killed only on the word of a stranger who got free or cheap disposal of her dog from the Pound. It is well-known that people will lie about the animal they are “getting rid of” in order to justify what they are doing. If the Vancouver Pound really were a "shelter", as it says it is, it would have tested the dog and given it a chance before killing it. The haste in which this was done is very suspicious.

No rescue group was contacted to see if they could take the dog from its owner instead of the City dirtying its hands and reputation this way. I do not believe that there is one redeeming factor in this case, no matter what staff say.

I hope you will investigate this case and I look forward to the knowing the results of the investigation.

Please also read the attached material on the joint UBC/VCP research project. We expressed concerns to Ms Clay and Mr Teichroeb regarding the ethics of this research that were never answered.

There are several other disquieting things that need a hard look in our opinion, not least of which is that even Pound employees steal dogs because the City and the SPCA continue to avoid responsibility.

Judy Stone,

Animal Advocates Society of BC