Participants in the city's first Animal Cruelty Prevention Walk attract passers-by            250News photo

Prince George, BC – It was a small, but committed group that turned out to the city's 1st Annual Animal Cruelty Prevention Walk…

And organizer, Charlene Myers, hopes the event will be the first of many.  Similar walks are being held around the province to draw attention to Animal Abuse Prevention Day in BC, observed since 2011 when a private citizen requested the provincial proclamation to honour the 56 sled dogs killed in Whistler on April 23rd, 2010.

Myers says she has been a long-time animal advocate, but was spurred into action by the story of Captain, the german shepherd beaten and left for dead in a Vancouver dumpster in July of 2012.

On the 1st anniversary of Captain's death, Myers launched a Facebook page, Animal Cruelty Legislation Canada, to push for stronger legislation to ensure animal welfare and protection.

Today, she was asking walk participants and passers-by to sign a petition calling on the federal government to move animal cruelty crimes from the property section of the Criminal Code and to close the loopholes that allow abusers to escape penalty.

Myers works at UNBC and was joined by many of her work colleagues for the first local walk.  She admits provincial organizers came up against a time crunch in organizing the inaugural walks, but she's hopeful they'll only get bigger and better.

She says she does not want Captain's death to be in vain.