It’s time to end cruelty and mistreatment of sled dogs

In the blazing days of an Ontario heat wave, few minds may be on the commercial dog sledding industry. Who stops to consider what becomes of those energetic dogs in the summer, after pulling tourists and kids in the winter?

Toronto animal activist Jenny McQueen wants us to think about it, so much so that she chained herself to a doghouse at Chocpaw Expeditions in southern Ontario last weekend to bring attention to the issue. As temperatures hit 30 C, McQueen, working with local group End Dog Sled Cruelty and international group Direct Action Everywhere, live-streamed every moment: just her, dozens of dogs, a soft-spoken OPP officer unable to help and more than 300 people watching online, including me. While controversies remain about the ethics of commercial dog sledding, what may be the industry’s cruelest time of year is the summer, when dogs are chained up outdoors for months with little more than a barrel and a barren field. No matter the storms or the isolation.

There are some laws in Canada limiting unattended dog tethering (one hour maximum in Toronto, four hours in Mississauga), and an outright ban in Calgary and some B.C. municipalities, but the province of Ontario lacks any such rules. Animals classed as “working dogs” are typically exempt.

According to provincial animal care standards (which the OSPCA no longer enforces, and no one is sure who now does), dogs kept tied up outdoors require only three metres of chain, and “access to adequate and appropriate water and shelter.” That’s it. Places like Denmark and Switzerland, on the other hand, require dogs’ social and psychological needs to be met.

For the dogs on that Ontario property, “adequate, weatherproof shelter” meant cut-out plastic barrels and holes the dogs dug in the worn-down ground.

“I was just thinking, as the rain was battering our windows last night at home,” McQueen said, “that the dogs have no protection from the rain, because there is no flap on the barrel, and they can’t go underneath as they usually do when shielding themselves from the sun, because that area would fill up with rain.”

There are no rules in Ontario regarding outside temperatures which dogs cannot be left outside, or concerning extreme weather at all. Nor are there any laws against commercially exploiting dogs — considered personal property — for profit and entertainment.

While Canadian animal advocates have long called for a blanket national ban on unattended dog tethering, including for working dogs like sled dogs, a new wave of activists are now working toward a greater goal: ending the unnecessary, unethical commercial dog sledding industry for good.

Because while McQueen now faces illegal trespassing charges, people who exploit dogs and keep them tied up outside face nothing. And that’s not right.