| RESCUE 2006 |
| ABC Dog School |
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| Gracie, Belle, and Jasmine, three of the pups rescued from a neglectful home |
| Animal cruelty is a relative term. It means different things to different people. By law, a dog must be provided with shelter, food, and water. But it does little good to say a dog must have shelter, without defining what shelter is. When the doghouse amounts to an oven in the summer, and a wind tunnel in the winter, it can hardly be said to shelter the dog. In the case of some of the pups who lived next door to me, there was no shelter at all. It's a complicated story. It involves my closest neighbor, which means that I see and hear things that make me sad, make me angry, and stress me to the max. Yet we are neighbors, and we need to be friends. So what was I to do when they hauled home a stray dog, female, and didn't provide her with a house? When it got really cold, I gave them one of mine, which she promptly demolished!! Move ahead to the following summer. Star, as they call her, comes in heat. There she is, tied out in the front yard, sort of like the goat in "Jurassic Park," (you know, lunch for T-Rex) not far from their intact male. Soon he is joined by two other hopefuls. And the nightmare begins! Two months later, close to the end of October, and it's cold, and raining. From my front dog yard, I can see Star chained to a fence, and obviously pregnant. She looks like she's about to whelp. Her "shelter" consists of a piece of plywood leaning against the fence. She's on the windward side of it, which means she's getting wet. Our properties are on a slope, so water is not only blowing in on her, but running down the hill, soaking her straw bedding. Are you getting the picture? This is not intentional cruelty. This is ignorance. These good folks simply do not know how to care for an animal. Their male dog, Chubby, does have a doghouse, but most of the time, the doorway is facing into the wind. Their other female, Annie, is kept in a small pen that was constructed for a Yorkshire Terrier, from which she often escapes even though she is on a cable. So far she hasn't hung herself, and how she gets into that little doghouse, I don't know. So I'm seeing this poor pregnant dog standing in the rain, and I'm seething. You wonder why I don't just go over there and say something about it? In case you haven't noticed, people of low intelligence can be quite aggressive when they feel threatened, and they feel threatened by a world they do not understand, and by people who interfere in their lives. They become very territorial. These folks have surely had run-ins with authority, due to circumstances that I won't divulge here, and I could easily be demoted from friend to meddling neighbor. I walk a fine line. Fearing that Star would give birth on the cold wet ground, I bite the bullet and make a phone call to the dog pound, which is the only connection I know of to the humane society, such as it is. I explain the situation, and why I can't personally do anything about it. They tell me they have free doghouses, and so I wait and hope that one arrives before nightfall, when the temperature will take a nasty dip. Nothing happens. Except that a couple of days later, Star disappears. I hope for the best. Eventually I learn that she has been taken into the trailer and has become a mother. Winter is in full swing. It's January, 2006. The puppies are on the back deck now, with plywood barriers. Next they appear in Annie's pen. I haven't seen Annie for some time, and wonder if she has died. I try to count how many there are, but it seems like each time I count, there are more of them. After I've confirmed eight, I can hear more puppy sounds coming from a storage building. How many can there be??? As they grow, and as some become more dominant, I begin hearing savage arguments about who gets to be in the box, and who has to sleep outside. I didn't know pups that young could be so aggressive, but for them, it's a matter of survival. The next installment in this saga finds several puppies on cables, tied to fences, with no shelter at all in the dead of winter! I'm finding it difficult to sleep at night. I'm tense and angry. I pound my pillow and cuss. I lie in bed and listen to those pups crying over there, and no one pays any attention. In bitter cold, raw wind, driving snow, there they are, huddled up on an old coat or a piece of cardboard. In the mornings I check to see if anyone has frozen in the night. Every so often someone gets loose, and I rejoice. March arrives, and I relax a little, but not for long. The count is up to eleven now. Just when I think I've got the correct total, another one shows up. I'm toying with the idea of rescuing a couple of them, if possible. Maybe a black and tan, and that sturdy little yellow male. This is not a good idea, due to my financial situation. So I resist, and look for other options. With March and April, we go from blizzards to rain and mud, so I'm still pounding my pillow and cussing. The man of the house has now hauled home a pile of pallets, or skids, and the Mrs., who is the caretaker of the dogs, (and their many, many cats,) attempts to build dog pens out of them. As I recall, there are two or three of these. From my bedroom window, I can look out over the nearest one, where a spotted pup is tethered inside. I hold my breath as he teeters on the edge, barking at someone, and thinking about jumping. There doesn't appear to be enough cable for him to reach the ground. What next??? Do you see the problem here? This is like dogs being entrusted to the care of a four-year-old. She tries to solve a problem, and creates another one. Why put up a fence that won't hold the dog, then tie him inside of it so that he is now in danger of hanging himself? What is the purpose of the fence? At one point a six by eight by four foot chain link pen shows up over there, and it won't hold any of their dogs, so once again, the dog is kept on a cable, in a restricted space. And they don't see the folly of this. Also, I don't see any evidence of waste removal. The original pen behind the trailer, must be getting pretty deep, and those pups are wallowing in it. I hate when it rains! |
| Copyrighr 2007 Carole J Sulser |
| Surprising developments... |
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