Skip to content

Animals shouldn't be used as commodities

Editor: Re: Dancing with (tame) wolves in Quebec, Nov. 25 I wonder how many of your readers questioned the ethics of keeping packs of wolves captive in enclosures so tourists can pretend they're in the wilderness.

Editor:

Re: Dancing with (tame) wolves in Quebec, Nov. 25

I wonder how many of your readers questioned the ethics of keeping packs of wolves captive in enclosures so tourists can pretend they're in the wilderness. It's simply impossible to re-create a natural environment and captive animals are known to suffer from extreme stress, no matter how large or enriched the enclosure may be.

Having had his fill of wolves, the author then turns to domestic canines at a dogsled business. Very few tourists have been invited to see behind the scenes where the dogs live when they're not running. However, a CBC-funded documentary will be premiering at the Whistler Film Festival on Dec. 3 and 4 called, appropriately, Sled Dogs, that does just that.

In a recent interview, filmmaker Fern Levitt describes her shock after partaking in a dogsled excursion, when she asked to be taken to where the dogs were kept. She found 300 to 400 dogs chained in a field with plastic barrels as their shelters.

"The image will never leave my mind," she said. Then she heard about the massacre of 50 dogs in Whistler after the 2010 Winter Olympics and she decided, as a journalist, she had to explore it.

Her film is graphic and disturbing and will send shock waves through the industry. Most damning is her discovery that an effort to create a humane sled dog business failed miserably and left dozens of dogs homeless.

Whenever animals are used as commodities, their welfare is at risk. They cannot defend themselves.

Debra Probert