Whether distressing or heartwarming, nothing seems to catch Times readers’ attention like stories about animals.
This past year, we told you about two separate occasions in which the SPCA came to town to seize dogs and other animals from Langley homes.
• In February, the agency removed 66 sick and neglected dogs, including 32 adults and 34 puppies, from a Langley breeding facility. All 66 dogs eventually found new homes.
• In September, the SPCA returned to Langley to collect more than 80 animals, including 45 dogs, 18 cats and 24 farm animals from what was described as a not-for-profit rescue facility.
• It wasn’t all bad news, however. In October, Langley’s Tiny Kittens organization held its first fix-a-thon, trapping, spaying or neutering and treating more than two dozen feral cats from an Aldergrove colony. The story was among the most read Times stories of the year and garnered plenty of online feedback from around the world.
• In late summer animal lovers in the Brookswood area were on the lookout for a doe that had managed to get her back end tangled up in wire. To make matters worse, she had a pair of young fawns to care for. News of her plight became one of our top read stories on Facebook.
But by the end of September, she’d been spotted once again and appeared to have freed herself from her wire bindings.