By Brock Weir
Critics of the Ottawa Humane Society are concerned that a report on its animal behaviour assessment practices, commissioned after a controversial euthanization last summer, will fall short of being accountable to the public without releasing its euthanasia statistics.
The report, by Dr. Pamela Reid, an expert in animal behaviour, was presented to the society on Dec. 20.
The society expects to make the report public within days. The board of directors has reviewed the report and is drawing up a plan of action in response.
Simone Powell and her partner Kevin Skerrett brought a stray dog to the society last July, intending to adopt the dog if its owner could not be found.
After the society evaluated the dog, Powell says it was determined to be too aggressively protective of its food and space, and was euthanized.
Powell says the society did give them some information on the dog’s evaluation, but adds the information given to her led to more questions.
“It seems to me that they stopped after that part because there is nothing in writing,” she says. “There’s no record of how much of the assessment test took place.”
Powell, Skerrett and their friend Beth Greenhorn then launched the Reform the Ottawa Humane Society campaign to raise awareness of their concerns on Sept. 9.
The society announced its review on Sept. 13.
It focused on behaviour assessment, the assessment of potential adopters, and communications with the public.
While Powell welcomes the report, she says one of the key ways to measure its effectiveness is to release its statistics.
“They need to come clean with the public and say, ‘Just so you know, this is how many animals come in, these are the odds of an animal coming in and leaving, this is how we assess them, and this is the standard they have to meet,’” she says.
Greenhorn agrees. While she says she understands that not every dog that ends up in the shelter will be adoptable, transparency is important in determining the report’s impact.
“By not revealing the number of dogs or cats that are euthanized, we don’t even have anything to measure this against,” she says.
Tara Jackson, the society’s communications manager, says they have spoken to Powell and Greenhorn regarding transparency, but the society is not commenting.
“We’re going to wait until after the report is released to address that question,” she says.
While Reid acknowledges that some of the critics’ concerns lay outside the report’s mandate, she says she has spoken to Powell and Skerrett about the review.
“I wanted to let them know that I felt I had done a fairly thorough job and wanted to reassure them that this review was really something with some meat in it,” she says.
Reid says she spent three days observing practices at the society, which included watching five to six dogs being evaluated each day.
She also reviewed how decisions were made, and how the society finds dogs the most suitable homes.
But Reid says she was especially interested in seeing the society’s individual tests, as some are better indicators of future behaviour.
“Part of what I was able to do was share with them what we do now,” she says.
“In that sense, it’s not that we can blame them [and other animal shelters] for not doing everything right. It’s that we can improve what they’re doing with this new information.”
Although Reid was not able to give specific information on what she included in her report, she says she did make concrete recommendations and outlined possible models the humane society could adopt.
“I tried my best to address what they would need if they were going to [follow the models] and whether or not with what they have now in terms of their staff, space, and financial resources, if they could adopt that model currently.”
Jackson says the plan of action which will come with the release of the full report at the end of this month will outline what can be implemented right away and what will take more time and resources to put into place.