Dear Marika,

I meant to ask if you had seen the last episode of ‘Make the Politician Work’ on Sunday (TV1 7.00 pm)?  It featured Simon Power working at the Auckland SPCA.  I could hardly bear to watch and wound up howling my eyes out.  I so admire you for striving to save as many lives as you can by helping the SPCA centres you work at assessing, retraining and rehoming their many homeless dogs.
Sunday’s programme was a prime example of what you referred to in your blog ‘Dogs with questionable backgrounds or worse’ where perfectly ‘reformable’ dogs are needlessly (and I think a tad far too hastily) dispatched for the sins of pulling on a lead, holding onto a toy and (horror of horrors!) eventually biting a fake hand shoved in their food bowl whilst they are eating.  Just appalled me.  The majority of domestic dogs in the community would be instantly euthanized based on that criteria.  It certainly doesn’t encourage (as you so astutely note) people to donate to SPCAs around the country.
Whether it’s due to a lack of resources (either financial or human) or knowledge, I find some of the comments made on shows featuring the SPCA pretty bizarre for an organisation that ostensibly is about saving lives rather than destroying them.  They seem to be fond of the phrase “we aren’t going to win with this one” (ie we’re going to take yet another life).  Another justification they use for euthanizing dogs is that “he/she is wary of people”  (wouldn’t YOU be wary of people if all they had done to you was abuse, neglect and otherwise mistreat you?! – I would think that demonstrates a degree of intelligence on the part of the dog!).  Add to that the fact that a ‘shelter’ or ‘kennel’ environment is extremely stressful for most dogs, let alone those who have been subjected to acts of cruelty and is it any wonder that many of the dogs there are not immediately inclined towards being ‘canine good citizens’?!

Dear M,

I didn’t see that episode but I did hear about it the next day from a friend of mine at Wellington SPCA who thought exactly as you do about how the Auckland SPCA did not do itself any favours there. She was very worried that people would see that and assume that Wellington SPCA was the same organization (although related they are actually run by very different people). Although Wellington SPCA is by no means perfect, they just received a national award based on their re-homing program.

I am sometimes concerned that through my work with the SPCA people may associate me with the bad press they hear about shelters but then I think of something Nelson Mandela once said “No war was ever won from the outside.”

I certainly hope that Auckland SPCA is better than that show made it out to be or gets reorganized by people who actually care about saving lives.