The news about what Toronto Animal Services (South) is doing is finally starting to hit the mainstream press.
From "The canine underground railroad":
Last Saturday, 11 pooches from La Belle Province arrived at the Toronto Animal Services South Region centre on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition.
The batch included Sunny, a five-month-old German shepard; Midnite, a flat-coated retriever that seemed patiently hoping for a Frisbee; a Lhasa Apso mix waiting for the folks at TAS to give her a name; and Scratch, a shaggy brown-and-white two-year-old large Munsterlander that many a Queen West hipster would be proud to trot through Trinity Bellwoods Park on a Saturday afternoon.
Johanne Tassé likes to call it Le French Connection.
An umbrella group titled Companion Animal Adoption Centres of Quebec has driven 275 dogs from the Montreal area to Toronto twice a month, since last May, when it began keeping figures.
and
While Montreal has too many stray dogs, Toronto arguably has too few. "We don't have an overpopulation problem in the GTA," says Ms. Leiher. "Over the years, it's sort of dwindled off." Ms. Leiher believes that situation is the result of "education and people becoming more aware of spaying and neutering, and enforcement of the bylaw. "We remember a time when there were always loose dogs. We were always chasing dogs, and we hardly ever chase loose dogs any more."
As the number of stray dogs in Toronto dwindled, says Ms. Leiher, it became increasingly difficult for TAS to fill the demand for dogs.
"For us to be able to sort of fill the void here where people can get a shelter pet, and help them [in Quebec], where they were maybe doing a lot of euthanasias because there were more dogs than owners, we're just trying to balance that out," she says.
It's just saying what we all already know but the confirmation is nice.
There's going to be more media on TAS and CAACQ in the next couple of weeks as Johanne Tasse will be on Animal House Calls on CP24 on April 7 at 5:15 p.m. (repeated at 11:30).
Saturday, March 28, 2009
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4 comments:
This is really great. What an uplifting piece and finally TAS south gets some press! Amazing!!!!Big up James and Johanne Tasse. Thanks to them Abandoned dogs get some much needed love and the second chance they deserve.
Susan
wow! sorry to comment again but that was a great read. The article even listed our stats for 2008. How many were taken in, adopted out, euthanized, reunited with owners. So glad you posted this Fred. Its about time TAS south got some media attention outlining their hard work. This is a very positive step in the right direction!
Susan
Does BSL have anything to do with the reduction in stray dogs?
Anonymous, BSL must obviously have some affect but what that is ...? To find out, it would require some kind of statistical analysis and for that, we'd need data on dog population, BSL "breeds" population, BSL based euthanasias, etc. and I'm not sure we can get that data (I actually don't think anyone keeps that data).
My gut feeling is that in the last couple of years, at Toronto Animal Services South, because there has been more of a rescue philosophy in running the shelter, BSL does not play a huge role in skewing the numbers. I can't say that's the same with the other Toronto shelters (only because I have no experience with them) and I can't say the same for even the South shelter when BSL was first introduced 3 - 4(?) years ago because I wasn't there at the time.
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