The concern is whether the SPCA gave up on Charlie. "This was a decision based on several factors," said Browning. "Charlie was never out of the woods, he was always in guarded condition". Charlie suffered from a blood disease that was shaping up to be incurable according to Chief Veterinary Officer Dr Helene Chevalier.
"Secondly," said Browning, "Charlie was showing aggressive behavior during a behavior evaluation consistent with dogs that have been trained to fight. The third factor was that Charlie started injuring himself in a heightened. frenzied state after the evaluation".
The SPCA maintains it was a safety issue for people, for other dogs and for Charlie himself. "Charlie was hurting himself and chewing through metal and extracted himself from a steel locked cage. He would never have survived a tranquilizer, he had no immune system. He was still very much underweight. His platelets had crashed, his red blood cell levels were not correct. There were several factors at play that told us we had to do something," said Browning.
The bigger question Browning said is "at what point are we not a humane society anymore, and becoming an inhumane society?"
As for what the organization learned from Charlie and what it might do differently, Browning said there would be no change with the medical course of treatment or the behavior course of treatment.
But she would change the Public Relations component.
"We did videos and made it clear, verbally, that Charlie was not out of the woods. But we've learned that the visual outweighs the audio. The videos showed a happy dog, wagging his tail, and appearing to get stronger every day. As you watch that, you tend to stop listening. It was like false advertisement. That piece would change".