WHY IT MATTERS
The most likely person to be bitten by a dog isn’t a stranger provoking an animal — it’s a five to nine-year-old child living in an Indigenous community, often bitten on the face, on a weekend afternoon, by a dog they weren’t engaging with.
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This isn’t a coincidence. It’s the direct result of a 150-year gap in access to animal-care systems — the absence of the same protections, bylaws, and services that cities have long taken for granted. When no one funds prevention, the burden falls on families, health workers, and the dogs themselves.
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Red Collar Day is a national call to end this inequity — to make sure every community, no matter how remote, has equal access to the health, care and safety that all families deserve.
On November 1, communities come together in remembrance of the dogs who have been shot — and in honour of the families and children who still grieve them.
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In many communities today, when dog populations grow beyond control because of a lack of veterinary care, bylaw support, and other basic animal-care infrastructure, fear and frustration can quickly spread. Without equal access to the same public-health systems available elsewhere, the only attainable “solution” is too often to shoot the dogs — a desperate act in the absence of humane alternatives and sustained investment.
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To spare their pets, some families mark their owned dogs with brightly coloured collars so they can be recognized and spared during culls.
The red collar has become a symbol of both survival and solidarity — a reminder of the lives lost, and a promise of Equal Care. Every Community.
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Red Collar Day isn’t about blame. It’s about truth, healing, and shared responsibility — to ensure every community has the care, infrastructure, and respect needed to make these culls, and the grief they cause, a thing of the past.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
VOICES OF REMEMBERANCE
"The red collar honors the dogs who were shot and the families who grieve them - while naming the system that created these losses"
"I'm wearing red on November 1 to remember, and to stand for safer communities and equal care everywhere."