What does Animal Advocates do? Well, aside from "gossiping" on our messageboard, we spend hours and hours documenting, at our own expense, and personal risk, yard dogs, chained dogs, penned dogs, beaten, starved, and muzzled dogs that the SPCA knows about but won't help. We sometimes are able to rescue these dogs, and when we do we take months, and sometimes years, and spend thousands of dollars on rehabilitating them to the point where they are able to successfully be adopted into new homes. These dogs live in our homes, not in cages. They are rehabilitated, not "assessed" and sorted into adoptability categories. They are not set up for failure and killed by junk science. They are given time, not tests.

Animal Advocates also lobbies government to stop the abuse and suffering endured by yard dogs. We worked hard and succeeded in getting our Humane Treatment of Dogs bylaws adopted in eleven Lower Mainland municipalities, no thanks to the SPCA, who has never once enforced the bylaw, that we know of. We tried in 1997 to get the Humane Treatment of Dogs bylaw adopted province wide, but the SPCA stopped us.

Animal Advocates also traps and spays and neuters feral cats, and supports TNR (trap/neuter/return) programs.

Animal Advocates also lobbies government to stop cruel practices of animals in performance, including zoos, mall exhibits, and rodeos.

Animal Advocates also lobbies for pet shop and control of dog and cat breeding regulations.

We work very hard on all these things, and have not once been supported by the SPCA in any kind of joint effort to make real change. It seems the SPCA is content with the status quo. Are you, Jo, content with the status quo?

Above all, we recognize that the only way to help animals in this province long after we are dead and gone, is to make sure that the SPCA does its bloody best to help them. And right now, being content with the status quo is not good enough for the animals. We will drag the SPCA kicking and screaming into the arena of true animal welfare, and we will force it to do true animal welfare, lawsuits or not, until the day we die, because that is the only way to ensure long term help for animals in the future.

Yep, we are critical. So critical in fact that we are being sued for a third time by the SPCA. But in all honesty Jo, we tried asking nicely, and it got us nowhere. I have reams of correspondence between Animal Advocates Society and the BC SPCA. Stacks of it. Asking nicely did not help the animals.

But to be fair, I am keen to hear all your stories of SPCA "good stuff". Please tell us.