On Fridays, we feature other hard-working groups fighting BSL in Canada and beyond.
Paws for Hope advocates for improved animal welfare and better animal protection measures in British Columbia. The organization has always been a strong supporter of evidence-based, breed-neutral legislation. They have partnered with and co-presented with Hugabull Advocacy & Rescue Society on a number of occasions, and they have a position statement in support of breed-neutral dangerous dog legislation on their website.
A recent project is the Animal Welfare Advisory Network (AWAN BC). The Network is composed of responsible BC non-profit organizations who have undergone a screening process and commit to following ethical guidelines. These groups will work together to improve animal welfare in the province and encourage other groups to meet the same standards of service delivery.
Why is this important and what are the implications for BSL? Because as it currently stands, anyone can call themselves a rescue. This has opened the door to people moving high volumes of animals into homes for profit and/or without proper care and screening.
This leads to heartbreak. Foster holds, screening, assessment and support are the cornerstones of responsible rescue. Without them, animals end up in unsuitable homes, maybe even worse ones than they came from originally. People end up with dogs unsuitable for their lifestyles – sometimes because of health problems or nuisance behaviour issues, but other times because they are dangerous.
And what type of dog is most likely to be pulled and flipped from the “high kill US shelters” into BC homes? When they are not properly managed and something bad happens, they are the ones the newspaper headlines will inevitably call “pit bulls”.
We applaud Paws for Hope for taking leadership in this area, and hope to see similar models of collaboration take place across Canada and beyond.
#endBSL #notoBill128 #Canada150 #BSLbytes
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Source and further reading:
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For background on the #BSLbytes campaign visit the HugABull blog:
http://blog.hugabull.com/take-a-byte-out-of-bsl
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