Enough Is Enough: Why Animal Abuse Must Have Consequences

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Hey, it's Eric from Love the North. And here's another animal episode with the animal herself, Jill.

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Which animal of her are you referring to? Well, I don't know. It could be your spirit... It could be your spirit animal. It could be your spirit animal.

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Depends on the day, but... It does actually. It really does. So we've been a few weeks in between and you have something that needs to get out. Yeah, like you know what? I was a little frustrated, you know, yesterday and I'm going to watch this one, this case, very closely. Like I'm going to keep it updated. We're going to keep updating the podcast and we're going to... My crew is going to follow it right through the court system because I want to see what happens in the sky. Okay. So this is so egregious and we've already watched how the ministries failed us. The police have failed us. You know, on the case of

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xxxxx Street there with

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Christine

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Marshall.

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They were the two, I don't remember them. They had starved dogs to death and they've had multi animals dying in their care. Right? We took in four late emergency one night at like 10, 11 p.m. I rushed them into the vet and they didn't make it. So two of them didn't make it, two of them made it. Like starved to death and there's no reason for it. How many dogs did they have in total in their dwelling? Apparently five, five or six in the dwelling. I think she was hiding the one when the ministry showed up. The ministry did confiscate the fifth one.

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But you know, we have doctor's report. We had all the vet reports. We have, you have the pictures, the videos, you have dead bodies and nothing happened to these guys. How long did it take for the ministry to get over there? Well, I think the ministry picked up the one dog maybe a week later. Maybe. Yes. And what was disturbing was they came to the videos, they came to see the dogs. We expected charges. No charges were laid. We called the police. The police got involved and said, we're going to, we're going to investigate it. We still had no charges on those girls. Now, just so you know, they've since split. So now they don't like each other. And so the one girlfriend called in on the other girlfriend and says, guess what? She has 14 cats still in there with no litter box. Oh. Right?

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58 xxxxx Street,

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apartment number 10, apparently one moved out, you know. So anyway, so that's one case that bothered me because there's been many animals die in that, in that house of horrors. Cleaning the litter box for one cat is enough, let alone 14. Can't imagine 14. I don't know who the landlord is, but you're going to have a good time. Well, we thought they're being evicted. We certainly hope so. So, so there's, you know, and that was so great. So I actually posted that online. I do as a lot of cruelty neglect, like every day, every day. But when I see something that is so egregious that there needs to be serious charges filed and there isn't, that's very frustrating for somebody like me.

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You know, our police force and our court system is our fabric, is our moral fiber. Yeah. And when they're failing us, there you get the free for all. Right? It's like the wild, wild west. Absolutely. And I'm waiting for the guns to come out. Just around the corner, honestly. You know, no, it's not funny because it really was disturbing. And so we'll get to the next case. So then there was Steven

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Young

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who, you know, when I got the video of that one, I said to one of my girls, Kim, she said, what do we do? I said, post it.

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Let's show everybody the action that we see every day and let's, let's see some what happens. Yeah. It's not cartoon. I mean, this is real life. And these animals are suffering in real time. And so he only kicked the dog. And I know that sounds terrible. You only kick the dog. You only kick the dog. Was it his dog? Yes. It was his puppy. Puppy. And his neighbor had got it on video because when she called me first and I said, until you get on video, I'm going to tell you nothing's going to happen. Sadly, you can call and call and call and nobody's going to come. Do you have it on video? And that's hard evidence. Like you're looking decades ago, we didn't have that opportunity to have that kind of solid evidence. We had it was that he said, she said, you know, that sort of thing. But now he's got a camera on their phone. You're able to actually get footage of it. And so to me, that's pretty solid evidence. You can't beat the videos, right? So that should be enough to convict these people. You have the actual proof because it's always proof of burden, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, we got it. So why is nothing done? So we watched the we watched Stephen

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Young,

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who was who was the gentleman on Bruce Street that kicked his dog. And and he went through the court system. And one of our people, Pauline, went to all his his hearings and, you know, was demanded for this and for that. And, you know, of course, this is slow as anything. And as he finally got recently probation, probation, pro kind of probation, probation, no restriction on animal use on animal owning an animal. No restrictions like, you know, so so now we're getting a little frustrated. We're like, Kate went through that process. And I'm like, what's the joke?

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And then last night, you know, I get a call. Of course, my phone blows up, right? And he happens in the city. I start getting the text and the calls. And inside of five minutes, I probably had seven, eight texts and three phone calls. And I'm like, well, something's going on. So they send me the video. They said here, what do we do with this? And I said, Kim, post it, find out who he is because we have 37000 people in our network on just one page that we're going to find out who he is. Anyways, we did find out who he was. And this guy, what was interesting was, was last week, I had a lady call my pet save line. She called my cell phone directly. And she said, I just saw something downtown. I don't know what to do about it. And I said, well, you can call the police. You can call Permission Alamo Welfare.

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She goes, it was like a massive kind of looking like a beige dog. And a guy kicked it was kicking it in the head. She's been really disturbed. Like I'm very upset over it. And I don't know what I said. Well, you know, report it. He saw it in action. Call the police.

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Of course, nothing really materialized. I get it. I went down. I drove downtown to see if there was anything I could see. I saw what was the area, you know, that sort of thing. So I try and get a video. I said, man, if you ever see anything in your life, take a video. It really helps. Anyways, so last night somebody did take a video. I don't know where the video comes from, whether it's off a camera in the vestibule over at the building at Lord Street, or whether it was on somebody's phone. But somebody saw him beating and apparently stabbing this dog in the vestibule of the building on Lord Street. So when I saw the video, like it's so disturbing. Like a lot of people didn't sleep last night because of what they saw. What's the vestibule? Is that like the lobby? In the lobby of the building. It's an apartment building up on Lord's. And a guy named xxxxxxxx is, at least that's what he goes by online, his name is TJ. And he's known to police. He's known around town. And immediately some of our contacts started calling me saying, we know who he is. Here's where he hangs out. Here's the three places. He allegedly likes to beat up on people too. So he's a pretty nasty little fella, right? So our crews went to the building to watch for him when they were in the area. And I checked again 10 p.m. last night on my way home. And there was an officer sitting there in the vestibule. I assumed they were waiting for him or the dog or both. Anyways, they put out a new statement. They have confiscated the dog and they've arrest warrant out for him.

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So here's what I'm going to do is continue to follow this case because here's where the problem happens. Our police officers, when they do get to these cases and they do file charges, it falls apart in our court system.

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And the court system has become quite a joke. And it's when you talk to young people and you talk to some of the people we've dealt with who've broken the law, even towards us, they laugh and they say, well, nothing's going to happen anyways.

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And that's what's really concerning as a community, whether it be animals, humans or anything else in our, like I have our thrift store, our pet safe thrift store, and I watch the amount of crime that happens in the store, in our store, theft, busted windows, damage, you name it. And there's never anybody held count before. Yeah, I know that at some of the retail stores, people just walk in, load up and they walk out and someone asks, are you going to do anything about it? No. No, nothing happens. And they know that. And they know even if they have the footage in a lot of the stores have the cameras and they see it. It doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter anymore. And that's where we're running into it's getting very scary as a society, because there's people, you know, we're not caring even about our humans, let alone our animals. And these animals like that, if you saw the video, and I don't know if you have yet, but it's so disturbing. And you think of that dog suffering and this is not his first beating.

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Right. And I'm sure when I talk to this lady today, I'm sure it's going to be that same dog when I show her the picture that she described a few days ago. Yeah, you shouldn't even have a dog. Right. Or dogs or any. So my network has already sent me messages today saying not sure who has the dog at this point. We know it was taken to a vet clinic last night. And I'm not sure whether the ministry has possession of the dog at this point or not, or who's going to receive possession.

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And I've told them I've offered up because I really think this dog needs some help. And what's really sad in this case, a lot of times the abuse is so bad that they deem these dogs dangerous or because they're reactive because of their prior treatment, they'll euthanize him. And I don't think that's fair to this dog. Like, I think he and I'll tell you, people say, where do they get these dogs? These are your free off the Internet. So when I click open this morning, I've got already messages saying, oh, my God, look at this dog. They're handing out for free. Unspayed bullies and and, you know, bullies are target animals on the net just because of their appearance. Just their breed that all the little young people like, particularly those who are in bad positions in life, like right now with either addictions, homelessness, it seems to be a dog of choice. Dog of protection. I don't know what they use them for, per se. I'm not sure what all the reasonings are for. But it's just, you know, it's very frustrating. It was heartbreaking to watch that dog go through that and knowing that that wasn't the first time. And I presume it's probably the dog that I was called about a few days ago. Right. So I'm trying to connect the dots with police in that one. But what's what's more, you know, I've already had messages this morning saying, be careful. There's talk around the group here where this person is that they're going to try and get the dog back to get back to him. Can you imagine that dog going back with that over?

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Like, where are we in society? When do we start to care? Our compassion and our and our I guess our protection is melting away.

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And it's it was just it's just for just, you know, very frustrating for us. So we're going to follow this one. I said, I think we're at the point where almost going to have to start walking the streets like we gave a buddy like, you know, 20 years ago when I started, you know, the dog was shot out in in in in Albin and dragged itself to the road and a school bus driver picked it up and called me and sent it to Walden. And, you know, we put a thousand people on the streets of Sepere on our walk for buddy because he died. Dr. you couldn't save him. But anyways, you know, I don't know where we're at that we have to push. How hard do you have to push? Do we as a public have to start protesting? Do we have to start showing up at courthouses? Do we have to what do we have to organize? Because, you know, the laws people say, well, we need tougher laws. We don't need tougher laws. We need tweaking of the laws that give, you know, officers and a little more power and the courts to, you know, like, for example, they they can confiscate and somebody appeals there them taking animals away. They can actually end up, you know, months and months in boarding kennels and ministries paying those bills till they go to court. Well, we need those are the tweaks we need to make is that absolutely when they confiscate they lose rights to the dog. There's no appeal. There's no anything just absolution. That would make it simple. It would make it very simple. It'd be very cost effective for the ministry for us as taxpayers. And for us as taxpayers because at the end of the day, you're right. We're all paying the bill. So whatever the ministry, I mean, right at this point, I feel like ministry might as well go home. You might as well. What do you show up for? Because all these cases that we get, nothing's done.

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So so why even come into work? Well, how are you helping an animal? It's not coffee break all day. I don't know, but I'm not seeing the results. So for the amount of money it's class has to run these these these officers in the north. And you know, it's funny because I talked to other people in the province because we're in a network that's throughout the province. And it's interesting. Some communities actually get excellent service. From their police force? From the police force and combined with pause, which is provincial animal welfare. So down in Barrie, there was a case and I remember one of my leads sent me the things that I'm like, God, can you believe in like one hour? They all showed up. Wow. I mean, that we don't have that in Northern Ontario, their animals suffering and dying everywhere at the hands of people and nothing's being done. Is it that we're understaffed or do they have more pause? We don't have a facility in Northern Ontario. So they're encouraged not to confiscate the animals up here. There's nowhere to put them except put them in a boarding camera, which costs more money. What do they have down south that we don't have besides population? Well, the population, I think they've got a lot of things. They've got facilities to be able to move the animals into where we don't have that here. So what we need is to have, you know, our ministry needs to come north and they need to reevaluate how we do business up here because right now there's very little protection going on when you say our very little charges being laid and there's no the convictions like I mean, they don't happen. They're being moved down from criminal court into provincial offenses of court, which is basically a slap on the wrist. So what do we need to do? We don't need more laws. What we need is proper enforcement of what we already have and tweaking some of the details to make it more efficient and more quick to actually confiscate and for it to be uniform. And to have those rights of the owner who was, you know, and bump those cases along quicker so that when they can be determined because while they're being determined whether they're guilty or not, that's where the holding pattern is for those dogs or cats. So we need to be in limbo for months while the court works their way through. We know how slow the court system is. So the laws are there. The ministry is there. We just need the same enforcement in the north that they have in the south. Not all areas in the south because people who tell us in the south and other areas don't get it so well. So it seems like city to city seems different for some reason. I'm not sure why that is. So but it's interesting question, right? Why? What is? So why in northern Ontario, why do we not have all these people charged? You know, why do we have animals continuously being beaten and killed and on video and nothing's happening. So it's very frustrating for some. And then so this is like a day of bitching basically. But this is a day in the life. I didn't sleep last night. And this is a day in the life of rescue. Our frustration levels with many levels of government, with communities, even, you know, within city communities and city bylaws, you know, when you see 15 or 20 people, you know, you're not going to see a lot of people. You're going to see dogs or cats and that's it. That's against our bylaws. They're not fixed. So get in there and start ticketing these people. You know, several housing is full of it and that's our city runs that. So city housing. But we should have more people in there.

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Right. And you're targeting people. You're targeting a problem. Which is prevalent in those areas before everybody says to me, it sends me hate mail and says she's picking on everybody in separate housing. Look at where the numbers are. Where does it tell you a story? Numbers tell you a story, right? And they tell me we have a problem in those areas and we continuously for 25 years have worked in those neighborhoods and we're not judgmental. We're factual here. So it's just where there's more cases. They tend to be in this. When you have unspayed, unneutered, it's generally because people in financial brackets are unable to afford. So two things we're doing to combat that is we're doing the spay-neutom program, right? And again, we're going to post again this week that we've got more spots open now. Let's keep the spaying and neutering going. When you're on lower income, we offer a clinic through East Village Animal Hospital that offers low cost spay-neuter, low cost medical assessment, you know, end of life assessment so that, you know, proper euthanization, not done at the, you know, at the pound out in the zilda there. You don't want your animal going down like that. Trust me, you don't. So they are not allowed to possess the drugs that a veterinarian is. They are not licensed veterinarians. They're not even licensed anything other than poundkeepers. So, you know, these are not people who should be dealing with your animals medically. They should be in your vet clinics. So we offer that so that those people on the lower income are fixed income, whether you be senior, or OSP, OW, reach out. Anywhere where you need assistance. Anywhere where you need assistance. In the meantime, we're going to keep you, you know, this TJ Beggood here. We're going to keep an eye on that case because I want to see what happens to the guy over there. That was so brutal. The brutality and that attack on that poor dog is beyond words.

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And he needs to pay for that. And this is not, this is, he's known to police. This guy's a repeat offender. So maybe it's time they send him a message. Maybe it's time you lock him up. And if people say, well, you know, addictions this, and I've already heard it, said, you know, well, because of addictions, he may not be, no, this guy has an anger issue with his addictions, which is a dangerous combination. So, you know, right now there's talk in our community about forcing him to go to the community about forcing, you know, incarceration into drug programs. I'm absolutely for it. And, you know, there's going to be the pros and cons and some, you know, advocacy groups will come out and say, well, it's not effective only in this percentage and for the amount of percentage. Well, if it even gets 10%, because right now that number is climbing faster, then we can control it. And it's getting worse in our society everywhere. We're not just the only city. So maybe it's time to drop the number. And if it's even by 10%, that you get success on that program. It's still 10% better because right now the number is going the other way so far out of control. And we're seeing a lot more of the addictions and the homeless people with animals they can't take care of. They obviously are struggling to take care of themselves. Everyone needs purpose. That's right. So, you know what, we need to get people shouting. I mean, it's time we hit the streets and hit the court doorstep and say, enough of this. Let's get some action on these people. This guy should be banned for life and he should be charged. He should be thrown in jail. Well, we'll have to follow this as the time passes and keep us updated. Thank you. All right. We'll have time.