Fact-based journalism that sparks the Canadian conversation

Articles Business Environment Health Politics Arts & Culture Society

Special Series Hope You’re Well For the Love of the Game Living Rooms In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration Terra Cognita More special series >

For the Love of the Game

In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration

More special series >

Events The Walrus Talks The Walrus Video Room The Walrus Leadership Roundtables The Walrus Leadership Forums Article Club

The Walrus Video Room

The Walrus Leadership Roundtables

The Walrus Leadership Forums

Subscribe Renew your subscription Change your address Magazine Issues Newsletters Podcasts

Renew your subscription

The Walrus Lab Hire The Walrus Lab Amazon First Novel Award

Amazon First Novel Award

A Halifax Woman Devoted Her Life to Rescuing Dogs. Then Authorities Investigated Her

SPCA officers used fake adopters, covert surveillance, and a sting operation

SOCIETY / JULY/AUGUST 2026

A Halifax Woman Devoted Her Life to Rescuing Dogs. Then Authorities Investigated Her

SPCA officers used fake adopters, covert surveillance, and a sting operation

ILLUSTRATION BY MADISON KETCHAM

Published 6:30, MAY 27, 2026

LISA BENOIT RESCUED her first pet when she was just a kid. As an adult, she continued to be an animal lover, assembling a menagerie of strays. In 2019, Benoit and her family—a husband and three kids, who lived in Halifax—were looking to adopt yet another dog. They used Petfinder, an international online adoption database, and inputted all their needs: kid friendly, cat friendly, other-dog friendly. But scrolling through pages and pages of cute photos, Benoit saw nothing that quite met her family’s criteria. She turned to pet rescue organizations bringing strays into the Atlantic provinces. That was how she found Marley—a boxer-lab puppy who was owner surrendered and looking for a home.

Benoit had to drive to St. Stephen, New Brunswick, to pick her up. When the rescue volunteer opened the back door of the transport van, Benoit was overwhelmed: it was full of dogs of every shape and size—a mix of nervousness and desperation and love looking for somewhere to land. “There were chihuahuas and shepherds and just everything,” says Benoit, now fifty-four. Marley was sitting quietly, almost completely still, her laser-beam eyes burrowing into Benoit’s heart. “She was saying, pick me, pick me, because she didn’t know where she was going or what she was doing,” she says. Benoit started crying and couldn’t stop—even after the volunteers placed tiny Marley in her hands.

Benoit, who works as a business analyst, left that day with more than a new puppy to snuggle. She knew that all the dogs in that van—all dogs everywhere, really—deserved loving homes. Soon, dog rescue became her mission. “It was too important to not be involved in,” she told me. By the summer of 2020, she was volunteering for rescues and fostering dogs who were waiting on their “forever homes.” The rescues were staffed by volunteers and often stretched thin. Benoit threw herself into the work, managing transports and filling out paperwork. Most of the rescue dogs being brought to Nova Scotia were from the southern United States, especially Texas, which has a large population of strays. Benoit was determined to do everything she could to help bring those lost dogs to loving homes in the Maritimes.

She decided to form her own rescue: Furever Homes, a branch of a Texas-based rescue of the same name. Working with a partner in Texas named Jeanine Christian, Benoit’s transport team made monthly runs, driving through the night in a van loaded with some seventy barking, crying, and confused pups. Her drivers slept in shifts and were paid $500 (US) per transport by Christian’s organization, when they weren’t offering their time for free. At the end of every transport, Furever Homes got to deliver each dog to his or her new family.

As Benoit embarked on an ambitious new chapter, she believed she had an unquestionably righteous mandate. But she would soon learn that there were unexpected and abundant tripwires to her work. The world of animal welfare can be an opaque wilderness. Rescuers and adopters are pitted against regulators and enforcers—all parties convinced they’re doing the right thing. And the resulting power struggle would not only threaten Benoit’s personal mission but temporarily upend her entire life, threaten her job, and send her spiralling into despair.

THE HUMAN–DOG connection is ancient, but the past decade has seen a pet ownership boom. Between 2013 and 2019, the number of dogs imported into Canada increased by an estimated 400 percent. Today, around 60 percent of Canadians own a dog or cat. They sit next to us at baseball games and on airplanes. We bring them to birthday parties and bat mitzvahs. In Korea, sales of strollers for dogs reportedly outnumbered those for children in 2023. Some dogs have closets full of outfits, dine on organic food, and travel in Gucci carriers. The Louis Vuitton logo-embossed “Speedy Pet Trunk” retails for $24,700 (US)—an amazing amount to transport an animal that, while completely lovable, also often needs to be forcibly prevented from eating trash.

Concerns about impulse purchases and puppy mills have led to a widespread phasing out of buying dogs from retail stores. Some jurisdictions, such as Vancouver, forbid it. And so, when the pandemic pushed our obsessive puppy love to the next level, Canadians instead emptied shelters across the country. This coincided with an uptick in demand placed on the global dog rescue network, where dogs move from country to country in search of a permanent home. Dogs have long come to Canada from the southern United States, Turks and Caicos, South Korea, Turkey, Mexico, the Gulf countries, and beyond. Many are strays; some have been saved from grim conditions, like meat farms in Asia or abusive homes.

But international dog rescue organizations sometimes operate in grey areas. Foreign paperwork, including vaccination certificates and other vet records, can be hard to verify, and import regulations (dogs are considered commercial imports) are sometimes applied arbitrarily. There are countless examples of rescue dogs coming to Canada with dangerous and communicable conditions, like rabies, heartworm, influenza, distemper, and parvovirus. A 2022 Toronto Star investigation into Redemption Paws found that the Toronto-based rescue was importing more animals than it could responsibly manage, particularly dogs with behavioural issues.

For many rescuers, the situation is acute. Kristina Grevatt, who organized international dog rescue in Nova Scotia for years, told me that rescue partners in Texas would reach out about dogs that were going to be killed the next day. “Would you like us to save any of these dogs and bring them up to you?” they would ask. “And I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, yes, please,’” she says.

But the desire to save as many lives as possible had to be tempered against the temptation to cut corners. Rescues need to vet prospective adopters, many of whom have signed on after simply viewing a cute dog online. And they should be confirming the health of dogs and ensuring they don’t have any serious behavioural concerns. “I know many, many adopters who have ended up with thousands and thousands of dollars in vet and training bills with dogs that were not what they expected to get at all,” says Grevatt. “And that shouldn’t really be happening.”

In May 2021, after hundreds of devastatingly sick puppies arrived from Ukraine for adoption, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA, introduced revised regulations governing the commercial import of dogs under eight months old. These included requirements for recent rabies vaccinations and travel plans that allow for inspections in the country of origin. The CFIA now publishes an online guide to adopting a rescue dog, including “red flags” such as........

© The Walrus