The Animal Advocates Society WatchDog News

Re: One way to relieve distress is to kill the distressed *LINK* *PIC*

Posted By: AAS
Date: Saturday, 31 January 2009, at 6:07 a.m.

In Response To: One way to relieve distress is to kill the distressed (AAS)

'In spite of a rescuers' animals being far happier than animals in SPCA madness-producing cells and cages, if there is any illness, even if being treated, the SPCA can and has stormed in with RCMP and seized the animals, killing many of those happy animals.'

The most egregious example of this is how the SPCA seized Gwen Wilson's happy cats and her happy dog. The link to the whole sordid story of how the SPCA then killed all or most of the cats and made Gwen pay approximately $4,000 to get her dog out of an SPCA cell where he had become sadly depressed, is below.

Citizens of Hope, who knew that Gwen was a kind, decent person who for years had given up all but the bare necessities of life to properly care for her rescued animals, including vet care, expressed their outrage in the media, and raised the funds to get Dakota out of the SPCA before they killed him too. Much of the outrage centred around the well-known fact that people dropped their cats at Gwen's because the Chilliwack SPCA killed so many cats and charged $50 if they surrendered their unwanted cat to be killed. Gwen was saving cats from the SPCA, but in the end the SPCA got them and killed them anyway.

The SPCA could have damage control by offering to help Gwen with her expenses, but instead it chose to defame her in the media by intimating that she was a mentally ill hoarder.

And then it stepped up the punishment of this kind person and the justification of what it did, by having cruelty charges laid against her even while it knew that she had cancer. The Act doesn't say the SPCA must have charges laid; it didn't have to do this to Gwen. Gwen died a convicted animal abuser.

This is one of the saddest and most enraging cases of the SPCA's abuse of statutory powers and cruelty to animals and people that AAS has been involved with. In memory of Gwen, and all the other SPCA victims, I will carry on the fight to make the SPCA accountable.

Gwen and a friend are greeted by her remaining pets. The cats who used to rush to greet her are probably dead by this time. One of the dogs is Dakota, seized by the SPCA at the time it seized the cats, on the grounds that he had a small sore on his leg. It cost almost $4000 to get Dakota out of the SPCA before it killed or sold him.