Theoria

As those who bothered to read my admittedly boring last post may have noticed, I’m in the midst of doing the final administrative and organizational matters for the “Enriched Mini-Course” I am teaching in early May. Among the various activities (it is supposed to be “hands-on”) I had wanted the students (mostly grade eight) to do was (1) visit a lab using animals in research and (2) have an SPCA officer/investigator come into the class. The most local and largest humane society in the area – about fifteen minutes from campus – is the Ottawa Humane Society. It turns out that their investigators are just too busy (perhaps this is true, but given that the course isn’t for another three weeks, I have a hard time believing their schedule is completely set) and their “humane educator” is just unavailable for class visit. Rather disappointing. But then, the OHS claims to process 11,000 animals per year. Assuming that the OHS falls into the normal range of about 30% of admitted animals being canines, that would be roughly 3000-3500 canines per year. Roughly another third of those are returned to owner, taking out another 1000-1200 canines, leaving about 2000-2300 canines. How, then, are there only about a half dozen dogs up for adoption each week and none over three years of age? (Numbers taken from here.) But, rest assured, the OHS is committed to seeing 100% of adoptable animals finding a home. (Our first dog, who we had for six years, was eight when we got him from the OHS. He would have been deemed unadoptable under the current system; likewise with our other three dogs who, luckily, were brought in to other humane societies.)

Perhaps more troubling than the OHS situation, is that after spending the past week and a half trying to get access to a lab on campus to show the students a modern psychological, biological, microbiological, etc research lab making use of animals as research objects, I have determined that there is a concrete effort on the part of my colleagues to prevent “outside” scrutiny – or even “outside” curiousity. Thus far my efforts have been met with “it is dangerous,” “there are security concerns (as you know)” and being sent a report prepared by a consultant veterinarian on the evils of animal rights activists.

On the other hand, my vet was more than happy to volunteer to come in on his day off to talk to the students about being a vet, going to vet school, etc. He was (and is still, I hope) excited to bring in a bunch of cool things. Similarly, the education coordinator at the Ottawa Carleton Wildlife Centre agreed to come in for a presentation on human/suburban/rural animal conflicts – raccoons, coyotes, deer, etc – within a couple hours of receiving my initial inquiry. And, likewise, a program director at the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies agreed to come in to present on their recent report [pdf] on agricultural uses of animals after a five minute phone call.