The province has announced that it contribute $1 million toward an animal behaviour centre that will replace a 26-year-old SPCA facility in Duncan, the first of its kind in Canada.
Several of the society’s dogs were brought in Monday while B.C. Premier David Eby announced $12 million in funding that will be used to build four state-of-the-art shelters across the province where existing facilities are either outdated or closed.
Eby said the SPCA has seen an increased need for capacity in recent years, as some owners have been forced to drop off “pandemic pets” they can no longer care for after returning to the office.
But not every animal is as well-mannered as the corgi that patiently sat next to Eby as he delivered the funding announcement in Vancouver.
Leon Davis, SPCA senior manager for the Island and Coastal region, said that they have been seeing a “real growth” of animals coming to SPCA facilities that have behavioural challenges such as fearfulness and separation anxiety.
“We have a welfare behaviour department that helps the teams in identifying issues and working through behaviour modifications plans to mitigate some of these problems and to get them kind of more ready for adoption,” Davis said. “But shelters are also very busy with a million other things as well.”
SPCA’s Cowichan branch, a few kilometres north of Duncan, is the ideal location to build a dedicated behavioural centre where SPCA staff and volunteers can focus on helping animals work through their problems faster, he said.
The more secluded Cowichan branch has had more time and capacity to rehabilitate dogs with behavioural challenges than the other, busier branches on Vancouver Island, according to a 2016 SPCA report. The new centre plans to build upon that expertise and create a dedicated centre for helping Vancouver Island shelter pets with behavioural challenges, Davis said.
“There’s more than enough animal in the shelters on Vancouver Island so that will be the main focus at the moment,” he said. “But it could become a hub of training and support for other centres across the province.”
Rehabilitating animals for adoption can be a long, involved process.
After assessments by veterinary behaviourists, a combination of medication and behavioural training can help animals get back on the right track, Davis said. “Everything’s kind of positive reinforcement and force-free — the idea is to not make any animals more scared than they possibly already are.”
Eby said Monday that the funding is also crucial because it comes at a time where charities such as the SPCA are seeing challenges in traditional income sources like donations.
In 2016, a SPCA report said that it wasn’t expecting a need in provincial funding for facility upgrades for the Cowichan branch.
Plans at the time said that renovations would include a multi-purpose education room that would permit SPCA to expand its youth education programming in the Cowichan Valley and would cost a total of $600,000.
That same report said that a new facility would allow for women fleeing domestic violence to house their animals at the centre and would significantly expand the number of volunteer opportunities.
Currently, the Cowichan branch has five contracted staff, Davis said, adding that there is roughly a one-to-10 ratio of SPCA staff and volunteers across the province. He’s expecting that more staff will be needed once the facility is complete.
Construction for the Cowichan branch is to start in late 2024 and is expected to be completed in around a year.
It’s expected the new facilities, in Vancouver, Duncan, Prince George and Fort St. John, will offer care to thousands of pets every year, ranging from cats and dogs, to birds, rabbits and rodents.
The B.C. SPCA is in the final phase of a province-wide facility refresh that began with a $3.4 million Nanaimo Community Animal Centre in 2016.
— With a file from The Canadian Press
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