By Angela Hill

Local musher responds to BC dog cull

Feb 3, 2011 | 7:04 AM

After a report of a cull of sled dogs near Whistler recently surfaced, a local musher said he thinks the situation could have been handled differently.

“Every musher has to say goodbye to their dogs at some point in their lives. Dogs don’t live forever and yet a wholesale cull of dogs is something I can’t even imagine myself being involved in,” said

Bradley Muir, owner and operator of Sundog Sled Excursions at Anglin Lake.

From what Muir has heard he said the decision by Outdoor Adventures Whistler to put down their dogs last April seems to have been based in expediency and cost saving.

“We work with dogs every day … they aren’t objects to use, they are friends,” he said.

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With planning the situation of owning too many dogs could have been avoided entirely, Muir said.

However once the company found itself in their position, Muir said, it could have been dealt with the animals more appropriately.

“I think their other options were to look at dog adoption whether to the general public or other mushers,” he said.

The dogs need to be socialized differently before becoming a family pet, Muir said.

“We think that if the dog has given you that much of its life it deserves a better response and then what we’ve heard here. And that might cost you some money, whether it’s shipping the dog or helping re-socialize the dog or bringing someone and paying someone to take that dog off our hands and find a new home,” he said.

“There are options, they certainly aren’t all economical, but that’s not what we are in this business for exclusively.”

If all other options were exhausted and putting down the animals was the only option, then it needed to have been done humanely, he said.

The SPCA in British Columbia has begun a formal investigation into the allegations that the dogs were shot and placed in a mass grave.

For more on this story:
Tougher sled dog rules needed: ex-worker

Mass sled dog killing probed in B.C.
 

ahill@panow.com