Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Unbelievable story about the culling of sled dogs in Pemberton.  People are going to go crazy over this one, all over the world. And what a nasty taint to give the B.C. Olympics - the image of all these happy huskies touring Olympic visitors around for their little sled rides, then killed at the end of the season because nobody could be bothered to figure out a better solution.
Nice try with the "we tried to get these dogs adopted" bit, but did you hear a word about this up until now? Had the company come out with a press release saying 100 dogs were going to die unless people stepped forward to adopt them, there'd have been homes found. If we can send hundreds of rabbits to rescue projects in the U.S., surely we could have found placements for retiring sled dogs.
Here's a link to the blogosphere heating up over this one. A measure of just how big this story is going to be: I did a Google search on "sled dogs killed" and quickly pulled up search page after search page of news coverage, blog comment and tweets on the Pemberton dog massacre.
Just in case you're thinking this is some kind of anomaly in the dog-sled-tourism business, a 2005 story out of Denver, Colorado notes a similar shocking slaughter south of the border.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yah, sure I too think that cruelty to animals is horrible, but why is there no law on BC's books to prevent the horrific things being done to the elderly in care facilities? A criminal act conducted in a care facility, especially a private for profit or society-run place will not be investigated by police. The agencies supposedly mandated to protect vulnerable people in care, turn a blind eye, or worse. What is going on???

Seniors' bill of rights??? Please, that's just laughable. The staff do what they want with these helpless victims when no one's around, the police won't interfere, the doctors drug them into stupifaction and the courts happily take their rights as persons away from them, literally in 10 minutes of court time.

Where is the compassion for these people, people who are not out of their minds, just out of sight?

e.a.f. said...

The killing of the sled dogs will haunt this province for some years to come. It might even lead to a boycott of tourism to B.C. given the provincial government is failing to deal with the situation.
The cabinet minister responsible has been quoted as saying the industry is self regulated and seems to be doing an adequate job. So if that is true, how did 100 dogs get slaughtered.
It is time the rules were changed, the government must adequately fund the SPCA to have a designated number of animal protection officers to inspect these organizations on a regular basis. But, hey, they don't even inspect where kids and seniors are so how can we even think they would care about dogs.
The sooner these liberals go the better.