Why I Muse about things at Midnight

From this morning's Herald
'Slap on the wrist' for C.B. women who admitted animal abuse By LAURA FRASER Cape Breton BureauTue. Dec 9 - 5:28 AM
An animal rights activist says that allowing two Cape Breton women convicted of animal cruelty to keep pets exposes the flaws in the province’s animal cruelty laws.
Janet Chernin, who runs a daycare for dogs, says she’s outraged that the former owner of Celtic Pets Rescue and her mother got only a "slap on the wrist" after each pleading guilty to a provincial animal cruelty charge Friday.
Zonda MacIsaac and her mother Alice will each have to pay a fine of $1,000 and are prohibited from running any business that would care for or board animals.
Both the Crown and defence lawyers agreed upon the sentence.
They must also allow the Nova Scotia SPCA to search their properties for the next 20 years without a warrant. Zonda will be allowed to keep her five pets and the SPCA will give Alice back two of the dogs seized from her home. The rescue society had not been able to find new owners and the dogs would have otherwise been put to sleep. But Ms. Chernin said it would be more humane to euthanize those dogs than return them to a convicted animal abuser.
"To allow these women to have animals of their own is a travesty. To me, they should be doing jail time. They should be living in the same condition the animals were living in."
The charges against the former operator of the Celtic Pets Rescue shelter were laid after the SPCA found more than 100 feces-encrusted animals living in a compound in West Bay Road. Some of the animals were found dead. The SPCA later seized 25 animals from Alice’s home. The two women were well-known in the animal rescue community before the raid. Alice had been a special constable with the SPCA and the Crown attorney said Zonda had helped find homes for about 600 animals.
The sentence reflects the fact that the pair did have a clean record when working with animals in the past, said Daniel MacRury, the chief Crown attorney for the region. He said the women also got credit for pleading guilty at an early date.
The Nova Scotia SPCA was involved in the discussions between the Crown and defence lawyers, a society spokesman said.
Sean Kelly said the parties had to reach this compromise because of the toothless animal cruelty laws in place. Typical sentences usually only prevent someone from owning an animal for a couple years, he said.
( lfraser@herald.ca)
There has been a lot of buzz in the animal loving community about the conditions of last friday's judgement. People who were initially outraged by the betrayal of trust after the seizure were hoping for more than our legal system had to offer.
There have been so very many hard lessons learned from the whole sad miserable Celtic Pets story. It shone the light in some grubby corners and was the catalyst for the changes we have seen in the society.
But it is impossible to talk about the Celtic Pets story without talking about the situation for the animals in Cape Breton in general and the problems with the CB Branch of the SPCA in particular.
One of the society's unwritten mandates is to lead the way for the animals by their own example. How has the Cape Breton branch done this?

• by killing healthy adoptable pets at the owners request
• by inappropriately labelling animals as unhealthy or unadoptable to justify killing them. This number is never included anymore in their branch statistics, which is how they were magically able to improve their adoption rate without actually changing anything. In the business world that is referred to as 'cooking the books"
• by only ever listing a few token adoptables on their petfinder site, which btw this morning has no animals. Is it too much trouble to have to keep the ones listed on the site alive for a little while? Is it too embarrassing to have to explain when anyone inquires that " nope we killed that one already" ? Is the branch worried that people would pay attention and actually notice how many they are killing?
• and last but not least, by attempting to sugar coat the whole situation by sweeping all the dirt under the rug instead of letting the light shine in. Trying to pretend everything is alright when they are so evidently in need of real assistance.

With such a role model at hand, is it any wonder that it is such a crapshoot to be a homeless animal in Cape Breton. All the laws in the world are not going to make a difference until the inadequacies of the Cape Breton Branch are tackled head on.

What time is it? Its time to recognize that Celtic Pets was just the tip of the iceberg.