HELP SUPPORT THE SPCA, MONTREAL WITH THEIR RECENT RAIDS ON TWO PUPPY MILLS IN QUEBEC, CANADA

Walk into the SPCA's obedience school turned emergency shelter and get an instant headache.

In each of about eight rooms, 20 to 80 dogs - boxers, bulldogs, mastiffs, you name it - are barking and banging their tails against the bars of their cages.

It is a good sign. Just days after they were rescued from utter neglect in one of two puppy mills raided near Montreal, most of the 330 dogs are exhibiting normal canine behaviour and demanding attention.

The bad news is that by tomorrow, the volunteers who came from as far as New York and New Hampshire to give the dogs names and attention will have gone back to their day jobs.

Although local volunteers have stepped in to help - so many, in fact, that the SPCA has designated a volunteer to coordinate the volunteers - the task is enormous: Six hundred dog bowls to be cleaned and filled twice a day to feed the emaciated animals - and again whenever a puppy tips over its water bowl so that someone will hold him while his cage is mopped up.

Floors swept repeatedly to prevent disease, dogs groomed and bathed for the first time in their lives.

"No job is too small," said Marcel Marcotte, the regional director for United Animal Nations based in Nova Scotia. Like many of the volunteers, he has spent his vacation time at the shelter because of this crisis.

"We don't do the glamorous job of kicking in doors and rescuing the animals, but that's only 10 per cent of the job," Marcotte said. "The rest is here in the shelter, and if we don't do this, the animals won't be socialized and can't be adopted." No job is more rewarding, said Marcotte, who in the past has volunteered to help people caught in natural disasters.

"You help people but you know that when you leave, they will still have lost everything and will still be poor," he said. "With the animals, it is black and white. Either they die, or they find a loving home." He said the puppy mill in Rawdon was the worst he'd ever seen - worse than a mill that was recently raided in Virginia, which housed 927 dogs.

"The dogs (in Rawdon) weren't fed at all, really - they couldn't be. Each crate was surrounded by hay to muffle the barking, and hay is the only thing in their stomachs." So far, of the 330 dogs rescued in Rawdon, on Sept. 27, and Lanaudi%uFFFDre, on Oct. 1, about 100 of them have found new homes, and calls keep coming from people wanting to take in others.

Most of the dogs can only be placed in foster care, however, because legally they still belong to their original owners, who are awaiting trial for animal cruelty six months to a year from now.

"So a foster family can potentially care for a dog and love him and in a year they may have to give the animal back to the original owner who treated him this way," said Alanna Devine, head of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Montreal. "We need legislative reform. It's insane." As a gesture of goodwill, the suspect in the first seizure in Rawdon has agreed to give up his ownership, or "liberate," 86 of the 110 dogs seized on his property - typically the less expensive breeds, Devine said.

Rather than have streams of potential owners visit all the dogs in the emergency shelter, the SPCA is asking those interested in fostering or adopting one of the seized animals to fill out an application form specifying which breed they are interested in and they will be given an appointment to visit the dogs. Call 514-739-4444 or visit the SPCA at 5215 Jean Talon St. W.

PLEASE SUPPORT THE SPCA, MONTREAL http://www.spcamontreal.com

Posted by: Carol Waterman
A Dedicated Animal Activist,
Montreal, Qc. Canada