The Paws Cause –

The Vancouver 2010 Olympics were a time of jubilation and success. My city was alight with cheering Vancouverites, beaming with excitement and a sense of civic pride. Doe-eyed tourists wandered around town taking in all the sights, sounds and tastes of everything that my beautiful international city had on offer, and little they know, that when the curtain fell, the repercussions of the tourist clear-out would result in something so horrific, I can barely speak on it.

Whistler was the scene of nearly all of the main ski events during the Olympics, and where many tourists indulged in any number of winter activities including snowmobiling, snowshoeing and of course, taking sleigh rides with our world famous wilderness dog sled team. In April 2010, a mere month after the Olympics had ended, over the course of two days, an employee of Outdoor Adventures conducted a mass cull of 70 sled dogs. The only reason that the public heard anything about this mass slaughter was because the employee in question went to Work Safe BC and claimed that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress because he was forced to cull the herd from 300 dogs down to 200. And if you knew anything about the details of this vicious cull, you might draw conclusions prematurely.

The reason for the cull was economically based.  The employee in question did phone a veterinarian to come and have the  dogs euthanized humanely, but the veterinarian refused to kill healthy animals so the employee took up arms, and brutally shot the animals. He systematically slaughtered 70 dogs while the other dogs watched, and you don’t have to be a psychology major to know that it takes a certain type of individual to look into the eyes of a perfectly healthy sled dog, and shoot them at close range. The employee claims he received considerable compensation for the culling, and in his report to Work Safe BC, he described execution-style shootings, dogs that were still alive, trying to crawl out of the mass grave he had dug for them, and stepping on dogs necks to kill them at close range.

I apologize for the graphic details of this particular article, but I needed to convey to you the raw absurdity  and senseless tragedy of Canada’s most notorious crime against animals. A charge has since been laid against the formal owner Outdoor Adventures Bob Fawcett who was also the mystery employee who conducted the killings, and he is set to appear in court in May 24. When news first broke of the death of these beautiful dogs, it sparked outrage, not only around the country, but around the world. Sadly, Whistler’s beautiful slain sled dogs made the papers from Rome, to London to Rio de Janeiro, and everyone was asking themselves, “what goes on in that country!” While Canadians are passionate about animal rights, and treat their pets as if they’re valued members of the family, there is little emphasis under the law placed on the protection of animal rights. The BCSPCA, the organization that was responsible for investigating this heinous crime, seriously lacked the resources they needed to conduct a full investigation, not to mention, they didn’t have the support they needed to help the investigating employees work through their own grief. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have to excavate 70 frozen dog carcasses, knowing full well what they endured before they went to their tragic deaths? It’s enough to keep anyone up at night.

The only silver lining to this story is the fact that the law prevailed, and that there is a renewed interest and concern for the health and wellbeing of sled dogs around the world.