October is Fundraise for Farley Month

It's every pet owner's worst nightmare. A beloved pet needs veterinary care, but the owner can't afford treatment. For many seniors and people with disabilities, this scenario is a sad reality.

That's where the Farley Foundation steps in.

The Farley Foundation helps sick and injured pets that belong to low-income seniors and people with disabilities.

The Foundation offers financial assistance to veterinary clinics in Ontario to help cover the cost of providing necessary veterinary care for pets belonging to seniors receiving the Federal Guaranteed Income Supplement or people with disabilities who receive the Ontario Disability Support Payment, and who cannot otherwise afford treatment for their pets.

The Farley Foundation pays tribute to one of Canada's most famous pets. Farley is the Old English sheepdog who appeared in the For Better or For Worse® comic strip. For Better or For Worse® is the charming and poignant chronicle of a Canadian family. Cartoonist Lynn Johnston first introduced the fictional Patterson clan to audiences 21 years ago.

Farley was the first dog I ever owned. As a puppy he was a boundless ball of black and white energy. As an adult, he was a personality, unique unto himself and truly, part of the family.

Owning a dog introduced us to the world of veterinarians, groomers and obedience school - all of which helped us to learn how to care for and understand what owning a pet entails (pun intended). Farley was a wonderful, unforgettable companion, who died but lived on for years in FBorFW.

In 1995, Johnston decided to develop a storyline about the death of Farley, the Patterson's 14-year-old sheepdog. The powerful and moving story received international media coverage. Johnston received more than 2,500 letters from fans. Many were devastated that the beloved dog was written out of the comic strip. Others shared their heartbreaking stories of losing a family pet. After seven years, Farley's loss is still a sentimental subject!

Long after Farley left us, I had the opportunity to work with my husband's sister, a veterinarian in Manitoba. It was Beth who made me so aware of her role in the community. As an "animal doctor", she tended to family pets as well as large farm animals. Every patient was handled with professionalism and sincere consideration for both the animals and their owners. After all, when a member of the family is sick, it affects everyone!

Seeing a worried family greet their healthy pet after a night in the "hospital" was a rewarding sight. Calming someone who had lost a pet was as heartwrenching as any final passage.

Beth did her work for the love of it. When people couldn't pay, they brought us chickens or fresh pies. Never did a patient go untreated - even in the middle of the night, sick animals were treated and cared for. Calves were born, piglets too and abandoned kittens were nursed by hand until they were big enough for adoption.

It was a hard job, and I was part of it for a season, carrying supplies, cutting sutures, holding flashlight and holding hands.

To be asked to help veterinarians to care for pets who, for lack of finances, might be left to suffer is an honour. By lending Farley's name and image to the Farley Foundation, I feel part of this venerable group, and once again, my very first dog, is remembered in a very special way.

More about the Farley Foundation and how to help out here

For Better or For Worse® official website here

More about For Better or For Worse® here

The Kindness of a Stranger

A puppy that seemed destined for the pound and possible death was reunited with his owner late Tuesday.

On August 26, Josh Gomez, a 22-year old music teacher, brought his puppy, Pilot, to the PetFIRST Veterinary Clinic in Duluth, Georgia. Pilot was suffering from parvo, a deadly virus that can kill young animals very quickly. Treatment, which involves providing fluids to prevent dehydration, and managing related symptoms, can be costly.

Three days later, Gomez went to pick up his dog. He paid the vet $1,152, the amount he said the clinic had quoted him. However, Dr. Garry Innocent, the veterinarian, Innocent, however, said he never quoted that figure to Gomez and that the real amount Gomez owed was $1,640. That amount eventually increased to over $2,200, because of boarding costs.

Gomez felt that his dog had been held "hostage", as the clinic refused to release Pilot until all additional costs were paid.

Georgia law allows veterinarians to "dispose of" a pet 10 days after demanding, in writing, that its owner pay the animal's medical bill in full.

In a letter dated Sept. 8, Innocent informed Gomez that if he didn't pay the bill, he would "report this matter to all authorities including Gwinnett County Animal Control for pet abandonment and disposal" and suggested that the puppy might be euthanized. He called Mr. Gomez a "jerk", commenting that "all the twit has to do is pay his bill". PetFIRST does not offer options like payment plan negotiations or Care Credit, a third-party loan for veterinary expenses.

In response to angry e-mails and phone calls that "were disrupting his business", the vet relented and advised that instead of handing the dog over to Animal Control, he would offer Pilot for adoption to one of his "star" clients.

Tuesday, September 18 was the deadline Innocent set for Gomez to make good on his debt.

That afternoon, Carol Diamantis of Brookhaven paid $972 in cash to free Pilot.

Diamantis, Gomez and his attorney, Ed McCrimmon, paid a surprise visit to PetFIRST Animal Hospital late Tuesday. The cash Diamantis ponied up Tuesday afternoon settles the bill once and for all, according to the vet.
Diamantis said she stepped forward after reading news accounts of the pet's possible demise. "If I was in the position, I would hope somebody would help me out," said Diamantis, who brought her two sons with her.

The surprise visit prompted further theatrics, and the vet demanded that Pilot's bill be paid in cash before the dog would be handed over. McCrimmon, Gomez's lawyer, even called the Duluth police — to make sure the exchange took place, he said. Finally, a vet tech handed Pilot to his owner.

The dog jumped into Gomez's arms, his tail wagging. Gomez beamed. So did everybody else.

"I feel better than ever," said Josh Gomez, as he petted and hugged his puppy, Pilot, in the parking lot outside PetFIRST Animal Hospital in Duluth, Georgia. "I'm just glad it's done."

Credits: Ben Smith at Atlanta Journal - Constitution; Jason Getz, photography

Pet lovers call for tougher cruelty laws

When Toronto Humane Society investigator Tre Smith learned this week that his licence had been temporarily suspended, pending review of an ugly confrontation with the owner of a dog whose life Mr. Smith had just saved, the incident underlined a murky no-man's-land familiar to non-police law-enforcement officials.

And with Canada's archaic animal-cruelty laws poised to leapfrog from the 19th century to the 21st, the altercation provides a snapshot of difficulties looming for the men and women who enforce those laws.

Nowhere more so than in Ontario, whose animal-welfare regulations are by every estimate the weakest in the country. The industrial and financial heart of the country is also behind most states in the US.

That could change. Provincial politicians of all stripes, including the governing Liberals, appear certain to raise animal rights in the election campaign this fall. A further sign of the times: A workshop at the Law Society of Upper Canada, a first, will examine the law and animal rights.

But the big change is likely to be in Ottawa, where two competing pieces of legislation are currently before the House of Commons. Both would amend the federal Criminal Code to make cruelty to domestic animals an indictable offence rather than a summary one.

And while tougher animal-cruelty laws are decades overdue in the view of Hugh Coghill, chief inspector for the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, he wonders how the province's more than 170 investigators can be expected to deal with offenders facing years in a penitentiary, rather than a small fine or - rarely - a brief spell behind bars.

"Indictable offences are arrestable offences," Mr. Coghill said.

"That means an SPCA officer would theoretically have to arrest the individual, take him or her to the police station to be fingerprinted, photographed and entered into CPIC [Canadian Police Information Centre, the national database that records criminal charges and convictions].

"Well, we don't provide handcuffs or handguns or nightsticks to our officers, and we don't provide them with the training to arrest people. Nor does any SPCA or humane society across Canada."

Laws in effect since 1892 decree that a Canadian can inflict on a pet the worst kind of suffering imaginable and incur no more than six months in jail, a $2,000 fine and a maximum two-year ban on owning animals.

Two bills are now before the Commons. One is Bill C-373, tabled by Liberal MP Mark Holland, which has passed its first reading and, along with severely toughening sanctions for abusing animals, aims to redefine them as sentient beings rather than objects.

The other initiative - Bill S-213, from Liberal Senator John Bryden - doesn't go that far, and in the view of its critics would still leave gaping loopholes in the law. But because it has the Harper government's backing and has now passed both the Senate and second reading in the Commons, Bill S-213 may be the one that takes effect.

Even with the way things are, he said, laying criminal charges for animal cruelty - 385 were laid province-wide last year - is expensive and cumbersome.

"The OSPCA act only gives us the power to write orders, it's ineffective and it's outdated," said Tre Smith.

"We'd like to see the federal laws toughened but also the provincial ones so we can hit [miscreants] in the pocketbook right away."

Even when orders are issued, one in four are contested via the Animal Care Review Board, a quasi-judicial government-appointed referee.

The society's files bulge with numbers. Each year, more than 1,000 investigations are launched citywide, and each year most perpetrators receive no more than a warning. In the first quarter of this year, the society was able to lay just four criminal charges.

Our laws protect anyone who wants to abuse an animal.

Source: Timothy Appleby, The Globe and Mail, August 11, 2007

What Can You Do?

Tell the Ontario government and Premier McGuinty that tougher animal cruelty laws are long overdue.

Sign the petition.