VANCOUVER – A woman from South Surrey has been given a 90-day conditional sentence with a curfew in connection to charges relating to dog theft. Janet Olson will also have to complete 30 hours of community service. However, her sentence will not start until she returns from a family reunion she had booked previously.
Olson, 61, pleaded guilty to the crimes in October. At one point Olson faced 38 separate charges.
“Overall I think this is a fair sentence,” Olson said. “I think in fact it was the minimal sentence she could give me in the confines of the law, so I’m really happy with that.”
A co-founder of A Better Life Dog Rescue, Olson was arrested in 2011 in connection with the theft of a Coquitlam bulldog.
Along with Louise Reid, 59, Olson is alleged to have posed as an animal welfare officer and stolen the bulldog named Sampson.
However, Olson said she was responding to a tip that Sampson was freezing and that the SPCA and RCMP had ignored neighbours’ calls of concern. She has also admitted to taking two other dogs because she said she had evidence that they were suffering abuse and were chained outside, starved and almost freezing.
Outside court in January, Olson said her defence in the case will be that “no one is enforcing the law against animal cruelty in this province, or in this country for that matter.”
“So I do not see myself so much as breaking the law, as enforcing it. Or more perhaps, breaking one law to prevent a worse law from being broken.”
The Crown insisted that none of the dogs involved were injured or abused and was looking for a 12 or 18 month conditional sentence.
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