A photograph can go a long way in helping to find puppies new homes.
That’s what Const. Krista Mangan of the Alexis Creek RCMP Detachment learned last week when she put a photograph of seven puppies she planned to take into the BCSPCA on her Facebook wall.
“Several litters have gone from the Alexis Creek area to the SPCA in the past, but this time I decided to put the photo on my Facebook first to say, ‘look at the puppies, I’m going to take them into the SPCA tomorrow,’” Mangan told the Tribune.
When people saw her post they responded.
“I got such a response, just from my friends. They were saying ‘No don’t, I’ll take one,” and the effort to find homes for the dogs ‘grew legs’ from there.”
In the photograph seven puppies of varying colours have their heads peeking over the tailgate of a police vehicle.
“The photograph went viral,” said Tracy Dale, a member of the BCSPCA community council in Williams Lake, while volunteering at the BCSPCA garage sale held last Saturday.
“I got a text from one of my friends back east showing me the photograph.”
Three of the puppies have gone to homes on the Coast, one was adopted by an RCMP member, one by a family in Redstone, one by someone in Williams Lake, and Mangan has kept one for herself.
“I named him Chilko because of his bright blue eyes,” she said, adding he’s the beige one second from the left in the photograph.
The photograph wasn’t staged in any way either.
She’d placed them in the truck and they all jumped up so she knew she “had” to take a picture, she said.
Then she forwarded the photograph, along with some of her most recent D.A.R.E. grad photos, thinking they might end up as a cute picture on the RCMP website.
Mangan has been working at the Alexis Creek detachment since August 2012 and really enjoys it.
“I came from working in the Lower Mainland for ten years and was on a homicide team for five, and serious crime for more years on top of that.”
Being posted at Alexis Creek is the “true Mountie experience,” she wanted, she admitted.
“I’m back in uniform and back on the road and it’s a nice community because it’s very close knit.”