MONTREAL - A West Island animal advocacy group is seeking to curtail the thousands of lost and adopted pets in Montreal each year by creating a centralized animal control system.
Currently, when animals are found, they are sent to animal control, and not necessarily the one closest to where it was found. Without a centralized lost-and-found system, animals can be lost, and if they're not recovered by their owners within a few days, they're often destroyed.
Animal activist Johanne Tasse of the Companion Animal Adoption Centres of Quebec is spearheading the effort to create a system that will make it easier for people to find and adopt pets.
"I believe the role of the pound is to reunite as fast as possible the lost pet with the guardian," said Tasse.
When Dr. Enid Stiles of the Sherwood Park Animal Hospital lost her dog earlier this year, she said she found it frustrating thanks to the leg-work involved to find her pet.
"We were a little concerned because our dog always wears her collar and has her tag with our telephone number and our address on that tag and we never had a call," she said.
Tasse hopes to change the system, following Calgary's lead, where it is easier to find a lost pet no matter where it was lost.
"For the cities there's a cost on holding animals. There's the cleaning, the feeding, it represents maybe $40 a day," she said.
That and other issues will be discussed at a CAACQ meeting Tuesday, Oct. 5 at Christ Chruch, 455 Church St., Beaconsfield. Register at 6:30 p.m. Admission is $10.
