Road trip 6

Johanne Tasse of CAACQ asked me what I was interested in doing in Montreal and I told her and she pretty well organized this trip for us. We have supper with her the first night we're in town. She picks us up from the Novotel and we drive to a Lebanese joint, Johanne taking us through u-turns and parking lots to get there. We get out of the car and by the time we get to the table, she's already said hello to three or four people in the place.

If anyone's going to transform Quebec's animal welfare practices, it's going to be Johanne Tasse. She doesn't get her hands dirty. The dog walking, the poop scooping - that's not her thing. Her thing is getting into the heads of the people who make the money decisions, the politicians and business owners. She started out by helping a local rescue with their adoptions. Take a big leap from there and she's recently just secured an animal welfare contract for Laval, Quebec's third largest city. She's going to bring that city's shelter services up to date from the dreadful state it's in now. She talks about bringing up a mobile spay/neuter bus from New York, a $350,000 unit to show to the municipal and provincial powers that this is what is needed to solve the pet overpopulation problem in Quebec.

She drives us on this tour of the region's pounds. She knows the route. She points out all the dogs tied up in backyards, the breeders, the pet store/pound/shelters. She talks about the vets' infighting, the petty politicians, the politicians with foresight, the crazy animal people, the best animal people.

"You have to know who to have in your inner circle," she says. "I don't have to love you. I have to know you can bring something to the organization."

She takes us on this tour of the region and we visit centers of suffering and centers of reprieve. We see dogs who are alive but there is only death in their eyes, dogs who are brand new and don't understand yet, dogs who are still waiting for an outstretched hand. At one place there are two buildings. In one building there are the presentable dogs. In the other building, which is the size of a small cottage, which we're not allowed into, there are 75 dogs in cages and there is a virus, something unknown, something which will remain undetermined because the place has no money for a vet, barely any money for food and who knows what will happen to those dogs.