AAS WATCHDOG POST MAY NEWS BULLETIN Read it here: http://www.animaladvocates.com/bulletins/may.2005.htm
In Memory of Dear Woody
Today was a very, very bad day for me. We had to put my darling Woody down. It's like losing my best friend. Somehow, stupidly or not, you start to believe that some of them will just go on and on. I couldn't imagine the farm without Woody's sweet face here to greet me every morning. He came back from the brink for me so many times I guess I just wanted to believe he would always be able to.
He looked so small when he lay down for the last time. But his dear little body had an enormous heart.
More story, photos: http://www.animaladvocates.com/in-memory/woody.htm
In Memory of Wee Jack
He was found wandering on Lonsdale all by himself, still with his umbilical cord and sack attached to him. His little nose was red raw, probably from dragging his head along the pavement. I called him Jack, after Jack Lonsdale.
He cried a lot and the only way to comfort him was to wrap him up and put him down my top, and that's where he spent the week of his life, all cosy, warm and loved. I got up every hour during the night to feed him, but I didn't mind at all. My dogs took turns cleaning him and he would snuggle in with them, probably wandering if they were his mom....
More story and photos: http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi-bin/newsroom.pl/read/9157
After threatening twice before, in 2001 and 2002, the BC SPCA started an action for defamation in BC Supreme Court against AAS and some of the women who write for our WatchDog Post web site. The action was started by CEO Craig Daniell shortly after AAS was involved in the rescue of the dog Cheech from the Delta SPCA by SPCA employees and volunteers in June 2004. The SPCA said on TV that if they got his hands on Cheech that Cheech would be dead. SPCA executives swore that Cheech was a highly dangerous dog that had "lunged at children's throats", among other lies. The media loved this story! TV and newspapers made liars out of the SPCA over and over. AAS supplied the proof of the lies with video tape of Cheech playing with a child and acting like a normal pup. Thanks to Daniell's uncontrolled rage, the Cheech incident did a lot of damage to the BC SPCA - perhaps even more than the revelation in 2002 that one CEO was making $204,000 plus perks a year. Animal-lovers didn't like that, but could understand that it may have been a one-time lapse that the Society would fix. But people were shocked by what Daniell's behaviour over Cheech revealed about the SPCA. See Cheech's web pages with photos and video: http://www.animaladvocates.com/CHEECH/index.htm
To get revenge and to prevent AAS's web site from revealing all it knows about the SPCA , the SPCA Board of Directors permitted this lawsuit to be launched against us all. The SPCA may have already paid over $20,000 in this suit alone and pursuing it may cost $50,000 in total. That is money that donators gave to save animals' lives - like the fifty-nine cats the Kamloops SPCA killed a week ago rather than treat them. That is ruthless, brutal animal control not animal welfare. Read the whole story
The SPCA has killed hundreds of thousands of animals it has made sick in its unclean facilities. Donators do not know that the SPCA is using their money to stop AAS from saying that the SPCA cheaply kills sick animals instead of treating them. It does this at night in the hope that it won't be found out as it seldom was in pre-internet days. Those days are over, but the SPCA keeps blundering into the internet web and entangling itself.
That $50,000 could pay for 1000 cat sterilizations and vaccines. The SPCA claims it is too poor to sterilize the cats it sells and it doesn't always vaccinate either and when the cats get sick it kills them, and yet it has an open budget to hound AAS into silence. If that seems shocking to you, there is worse for you to know about the big animal disposal industry that the SPCA is part of.
The SPCA may have spent several hundred thousand dollars on lawyers to silence those who have figured this out and dare to say it. The SPCA could silence all its critics by just doing real animal welfare, but it chooses to hang onto its pet disposal contracts and policies instead, and try to bludgeon real animal welfarists into silence. If this is not want you want the SPCA to spend its animals' money on, send President Mary Lou Troman a polite email at board@spca.bc.ca . Be sure to cc. your email to AAS at office@animaladvocates.com and to CEO Craig Daniell at cdaniell@spca.bc.ca
The SPCA started the Supreme Court action in late August 2004. The SPCA had failed to scare me into taking down the AAS web site by fake threats twice before. This time it counted on the bully-boy tactic of scaring my friends and supporters with ruin. It didn't work - we all stood fast. Frightening us was the SPCA's only card - they played it - and then they had no more cards to play. Meanwhile I have had to use the equity in my home, my only asset, to pay close to $30,000 so far to defend all of us.
After diddling around for eight months the SPCA decided to force us all to expensive court-ordered mediation. We asked if we could do a private mediation with just us and the lawyers, without a pricey professional mediator, to save some money. Nope! What do they care - it is only money meant for animals after all. Let them get sick and die or be killed. Let them huddle in concrete cells. Let them be sold unsterilized. The SPCA has better things to spend those animal's money on than humane improvements and vet care. Yet the SPCA constantly cries poor in the media.
This law suit shows that the SPCA is what we are being sued for saying it is: ruthless, self-serving and not very bright. Even if it wins on a technicality, it loses. Every last word and picture of AAS's investigation and documentation that shows how dishonest it has been and in many ways still is, will be on the public record, records that now can be accessed by the media and the public with a click of a mouse. And there is a very good chance that AAS will win. We say that because we know what we have. We have spoken to a dozen lawyers and all of them say the SPCA must have a death wish. The death of the SPCA is not what AAS has ever wanted and still does not want. But we believe it is going to self-destruct unless a new Board and a new executive are installed. It seems that it will take government to do that. We have waited too many years to expect any longer that the SPCA is going to reform itself. Read more about the SPCA's bully-boy law suits
Does AAS want to destroy the SPCA as CEO Craig Daniell keeps saying? The answer is 'No' now and was 'No' in January 2001 when we stood up to the SPCA's first SLAPP-style law suit. We didn't want the SPCA destroyed then and we don't now. But things have actually worsened... Read more
Mr Daniell, in his intemperate style, has lashed out at tiny AAS many times, telling (shocked) people and the media that we are hell-bent on destroying the SPCA. Here is the reply we made to the SPCA's bullying lawyers in January 2001 that made the SPCA back down. We made the SPCA back down again in November 2002... Read more
If this is not want you want the SPCA to spend its animals' money on, send President Mary Lou Troman a polite email at board@spca.bc.ca . Be sure to cc. your email to AAS at office@animaladvocates.com and to CEO Craig Daniell at cdaniell@spca.bc.ca
The only way we can end so much suffering is to join many voices together, all speaking for innocent, suffering animals. The greatest thing you can do for them is to send our web site to all the animal-lovers you know and urge them to add their voices to the cry for compassion. When we are strong enough - we cannot be ignored.
Sincerely,
Judy Stone
Animal Advocates Society of BC