Faith, Hope and Cruelty
The Telegram: February 24, 2008 (http://www.thetelegram.com/index.cfm?sid=111064&sc=86)
PAM FRAMPTON 
The Telegram
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G. and I watched the mockumentary "Best in Show" last weekend.
It's a hilarious look at the world of show dogs and their neurotic owners, and it made us laugh out loud.
I laughed again one morning last week, when the pooch and I were out in the park and came upon a dog's abandoned toy. It was a foolish-looking thing - a small, green rubber boomerang with a goofy grinning face. Willie sniffed at it for a bit, but I tugged him gently away. Dogs, like little kids, get attached to favourite toys, and I knew whoever owned it might be back.
But there were no laughs later that morning when I went to the SPCA to meet shelter manager Susan Deir.
I was greeted by a chorus of beagles, abandoned recently with the waning hunting season - their lives a far cry from that of the groomed beauty who took top prize at Westminster on Feb. 12.
Deir pulls out a big binder of pet photos and newspaper clippings.
But it's hardly a sentimental scrapbook; it's a record of investigations of pet cruelty the SPCA has conducted over the years.
The photographs are graphic and shocking.
They have the eerie quality of crime scene photos, because that's exactly what they are.
In one case, a few years ago, a dead dog was found frozen inside its snow-filled doghouse, just outside St. John's.
The owner insisted the dog had been dead only a couple of days and he hadn't had the heart to bury it.
Turns out, the shepherd cross had been dead for three months and very likely starved to death.
Starved to death at the end of a chain, 40 feet from the house. As Deir pointed out, close enough to have smelled food being cooked in the kitchen and the scraps in the garbage being toted outside.
The photo shows the scrawny black and tan two-year-old lying dead on his side, his beautiful blue eyes wide open. Deir said pathology tests revealed that at the time of his death he had no fat, no muscle, no food in his belly.
The owner got a $750 fine.
Crude shelter
In another case, a Doberman cross that had spent five years as a house pet was exiled to a cold, crude shelter outside when its owners brought their new baby home. When the SPCA found the sick, malnourished animal, there were rocks and shards of glass in its vomit and feces from where it had wolfed down the scraps of food thrown to it on the ground.
Another photo shows the cramped and filthy interior of an old metal suitcase. There is feces and dirty containers and shreds of urine-soaked newspaper. Police found it during a search of a house in downtown St. John's. Hearing something, they opened it to find a terrified cat that had been barred up in the dark for God knows how long.
Its owner said he was punishing the cat because "it was being bad."
Deir recalls one dog that was found tied up and emaciated in a yard that boasted a swimming pool and a big travel-trailer in the drive. On another property, there was one dog tied to a shed and two beagles confined to a filthy shell of a car.
Deir said she and shelter director Debbie Powers figure some dogs must think their name is "Shut up," because that's probably all they ever hear.
The Alberta effect
Unfortunately, animal cruelty is only one of many problems facing the SPCA.
The charity typically helps 1,600-1,800 animals each year. Last year, that number spiked past 2,000 - and that's just the SPCA in St. John's. That does not include animals sheltered at the City of St. John's Humane Services facility or helped by other SPCAs or rescue groups across the province.
In the nearly 900 cases in 2007 where owners themselves dropped their pets off at the SPCA, one in 15 cases involved out-migration - often families moving to Alberta uncertain if they'd be able to find housing that would accommodate their pets.
But Deir said she has also had owners abandon their pets for frivolous reasons, including one woman who brought in a cat she had kept as a pet for seven or eight years because the colour of it clashed with the new furniture.
"We live in a disposable community," Deir said, adding her work sometimes makes it difficult for her to like people.
"We have something, we're finished with it, we chuck it away."
The SPCA is often overcrowded with cats in spring and summer, and has noticed a recent disturbing trend of cats and kittens literally being dumped in landfills.
"A lot of our problem is that people aren't spaying or neutering their pets," Deir said. "If they did, we wouldn't have this problem. I know it's expensive, but that has to be part of the responsibility."
Pets as products
Her group is also grappling with the surfeit of black-market pets of dubious provenance being bred for cash by backyard entrepreneurs and sold as "purebreds," when there are hundreds of homeless animals awaiting adoption each year.
She admits there are days when the work seems fruitless and the challenges insurmountable.
Last year, the shelter had 116 dogs and 716 cats euthanized.
And while most people realize it costs the SPCA money to house and feed and provide medical care to abandoned pets, they might not be aware of how much it costs to have them humanely put down and properly disposed of.
Deir explained the recent decommissioning of most incinerators in the province means the shelter has to have each euthanized animal cremated.
"The cost of euthanasia - I don't know if it's doubled, but it's close to it (because of disposal costs)," she said.
The local pet crematorium gives the shelter a small discount, but the costs still add up.
"There's not enough good homes out there," Deir laments.
"You just sort of shake your head and say, 'Is it ever going to change?'"
Pam Frampton is The Telegram's story editor. She can be reached by e-mail at pframpton@thetelegram.com. Read her column online at www.thetelegram.com
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