Ecu for Paw Society

Purpose

With the surge of Covid-19 cases in BC in 2020, the demand for pets skyrocketed while the supply decreased. As people are working from home or at least spending more time at home, the needs for a companion grew. Conversely, due to the disruption to the global transportation system, the number of pets imported to Canada decreased. As a result, dog adoption started to have a long waiting time, and purchasing a dog directly from a CKC registered breeder became almost impossible. In fact, when I looked up the availability of Shi Tzu and Bichon Frise last October, the estimated waiting time of getting one from a CKC registered breeder in BC is approximately 3-5 years. Granted, the imbalance of supply and demand is not a significant issue by itself since the people who who to own a dog can just wait to adopt and buy a dog after it becomes available. However, the lack of supply led to a new phenomenon: more and more people started to purchase dogs through middle persons.

This led to many legal and ethical problems as these transactions are unregulated and the most buyers are uneducated in regards to detecting cruelty against dogs and fraudulent representations. In fact, the four of the first five new dog owners we served discovered that their pets are underage (approximately one month old) when it was sold, three of them found out that they were provided with fake vaccine documentations for their dogs, and all of them suffered from misrepresentation by the seller. The issue here is not simply a misrepresentation by the seller to the customer but a more significant ethical issue of harming the dogs. Take underage selling as an example. Any dog that left his mother before three months old may suffer from sever depression and possible other mental and physical issues.

This is why we created Ecu for Paw society. We are offering support to potential and new dog owners by informing them of what sort of documentations and information about the dog they should seek from their sellers, how to seek the credibility of the sellers, and what else they can do to make sure that the dogs are not being treated cruelly. By doing this, we hope that we can pressure the sellers to act legally and ethically as they now have to meet the requirements set out by the buyers. Moreover, we are also seeking to establish case laws regarding misrepresentation in dog selling (there are limited case laws in BC relating to dog selling) and drive for de-jure change to ban underage dog selling.

Ecu

Our society is named after Ecu, an one year old Bichon Frise. Unfortunately, he was sold at the age of one month and his exact birthdate can never be known as the seller provided a fake birth certificate. He had mental and physical difficulties as a result of leaving his family at such a young age but has slowly recovered after receiving help and training from a professional dog trainer. He is a victim of unregulated and unethical dog selling as he was at great risk of viral infection. The seller provided a fake vaccination record to hide the birthdate and save cost. It was fortunately discovered by the buyer and Ecu was then vaccinated at the earliest time possible. After receiving our help and encouragement, the seller decided to seek for justice and possibly establish a case law by suing the seller (Yao & Chen v Tao).

Dogs We Have Helped

Here are some of the dogs we have helped in the last 6 months:

De Jure Changes

We have been actively involved with the provincial parties to evaluate the prospects of introducing a ban on underage dog selling. The plan is feasible as the residents of the province is unlikely to oppose against underage dog selling and the law has already imposed in multiple states in the US.

Contact Us

Please feel free to contact us through email. If you have any queries or wish to seek any help for free, please leave your email at the end of the page and we will get back to you as soon as possible (we usually respond within 48 hours).

protectourfriends@ecuforpaw.ca