Lest We Forget

I am feeling very conflicted. I feel very bad for the NS SPCA right now because I'm pretty sure that they are victims in the Celtic Pets plea deal fiasco. It would seem that the deal was worked out between the Crown, the Judge and the defence - the NS SPCA didn't have any real input into the decision to give animal abuser Alice MacIsaac back 2 dogs and 1 cat. That is what we're being told at this point. And if that's true - that is wrong - when animals are involved - the the NS SPCA should be very involved in the decision. Because obviously the Crown Attorney's office and the Judge did not have any empathy or have any idea that they were dealing with live sentient beings.

In a conversation I had with someone tonight though - this has given us something new to work on - there seems to be no one in the legal system in Nova Scotia who is representing animals in the court room, and there should be - and I think we need to start lobbying the government that the NS SPCA needs to be the voice for the animals in the court room - because this verdict might have been different if that was the case. As least I hope it would have been.

I have an allusion that gives some depth to the decision they made. Say instead of the case being about animal abuser Alice MacIsaac and the dogs she was abusing - say it was about a person who was accused of using his dogs in dog fighting - and he had his dogs - pit bulls, say - seized from him while the case was before the courts. The dogs had to stay in custody while the person waited to go to trial.

The person was found guilty of fighting his dogs - he was found guilty of dog fighting. The dogs - because they were used for dog fighting - could not be adopted out, the only thing that could've happened to them was that they had to be euthanized - so instead of doing that - as part of the guilty plea - the defence negotiated to give the dogs back to the dog fighter.

How is this any different than what the crown, the judge and the defence did with animal abuser Alice MacIsaac? It's exactly the same thing. It shows you that there was absolutely no thought to their decision to give living, sentient beings who have already gone through hell - and that's why they have temperament issues, obviously - and they are now being delivered back into that hell for the rest of their natural lives. It's unconsciounable.

I also have something else to say about this - if they have temperament issues - what are they? Are they aggressive? What kind of dogs are they? Are they dangerous dogs? How is animal abuser Alice MacIsaac going to manage that? Should she even have them? Does she have some special skills that she can manage dangerous dogs?

Will these dogs have to be muzzled or contained in any way? Licences? Microchipped?

Are the people in Alice MacIsaac's community safe with these dogs going back there? Should they be warned that temperamentally unsound dogs are going back there to an animal abusers home? Maybe they should. How can we get the word out.

I wanted to put this article here from February 8, 2008 when Tara Camus went to animal abusers house to try and do an interview - and she had to call the RCMP because Alice was going off on her so bad - it shows how confrontational Mrs MacIsaac can be when she wants to - and it also talks about what the neighbours had been witnessing about the dogs never going outside - yet nothing had been alerted to. Could this scenario happen again? I don't know. I hope not. If you click on the photos it'll come up big enough that you can read the article. Enjoy.