| ABC Dog School |
| HELP THESE DOGS |
| 2006 - Puppies in the Snow |
| copyright 2009 Carole J Sulser |
| The winter of 2006 brought a downturn in the lives of Star and her puppies. Star was tethered to a box similar to the one pictured below. She spent more time on top of it than in it. There were no shingles and it had cracks between the boards, so bedding was useless, had there been any. In the Yorkie pen I could see several black and tan puppies. As they grew, I began to hear serious fighting. Maybe they wouldn't all fit in the box. They had to fight for space, for food, and for survival. But the rest of the puppies had it the worst of all. They were tied to fences without shelter of any kind. They slept on the ground, in the mud, on a piece of cardboard, on an old jacket, in the snow. Bitter wind, snow, sleet, rain, temperatures in the teens and maybe lower, were their lot in life. One night I came home late and while letting my downstairs dogs out and in, I saw a little yellow puppy had crawled under the fence and had no cable left to move around. He'd turn around and pull and turn around again. I feared he would twist his collar up and strangle. I was torn with indecision about whether to call that late, and so I did nothing, except to pray he'd survive, He was still there in the morning, and still alive. I was so angry at that idiot woman for what she was doing to those dogs, that I stomped and cussed and yelled things like, "That woman ought to be horsewhipped!!!" By now you may be wondering why I wasn't reporting this obvious abuse. First of all, my neighbors and I had had a good relationship, and I didn't want to be at odds with them. I've been there, and it's very uncomfortable. And this is a woman who tried to keep an injured Kildeer alive! She has a big heart, and it seemed to me that the abuse wasn't intentional, but rather the result of ignorance. In addition, we sat across the table every week in Sunday School class! You may also be wondering why I wasn't photographing all of this. One reason was that my zoom lens had died and I couldn't seem to get a good photo without it. I had given up photographing my own dogs. I, also, didn't like spying. It made me feel like a traitor and a hypocrite. And, too, I considered that I was making more of it than it was. Not everyone has the same idea of how an animal should be cared for. Still, it looked really bad to me, and I will always regret not taking photographs, and keeping a log. I had no idea then just how bad things were going to get. As it turned out, someone else did report it, but I didn't learn of this until that summer, and I don't know who it was. I was the only one who could see what was in the back yard, so they probably think it was me. Somewhere along the line, skids appeared in the front yard; piles of them. I heard hammering and soon there were pallet pens! In order to keep puppies from crawling through the slats, plastic and other assorted items were tacked on, as well as some old fence pieces. Odd-looking dog boxes appeared. To keep puppies from climbing or jumping out, they were put on cables. Sound familiar? Now they could hang themselves! By April I was a nervous wreck. I would see puppies trying to climb out of pens, teetering on the brink. I would see puppies in the Yorkie pen, possibly old enough to breed, and going through the motions. It became obvious that they had been segregated by color instead of gender! The Mrs. referred to them as Rotts, like she thought she really had Rottweilers! One day I had seen a spotted puppy get loose and try to mate with his mother, but he wasn't sure just how to proceed, and apparently she wasn't quite ready for that. This was probably about the time I realized that these dogs would be as well off in the care of a four-year-old. April would bring a new twist to the story with what I call, The Great Escape. |
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| The open box is similar to the one Star spent the winter in, or on. Actually, it might be the same one. Could there really be two of these? The other one was Chubby's, though not usually on a skid. Being used by another dog in this photo. Late November, 2006 |
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