posted on August 19, 2004 09:18:31 PM
Some of you know that I live in the country. People are always dropping off their unwanted pets around here and yesterday someone ditched another little cat in my front yard because they're too cheap to spend the $20.00 to take it to the animal shelter. I took the cat in to the shelter and started crying my eyes out because people are so cruel and uncaring. The place was full. One good thing is that they won't put any of them to sleep but it still made me sad all day. These little animals are gifts, not garbage. Please get your pet spayed or neutered, or if you find a stray, maybe offer to pay to get it fixed. Thanks for listening.
posted on August 19, 2004 09:32:34 PM
I had a small dog show up at my door one time and it was clearly a stray, didn't belong to any of my neihbors. I went to the grocery store and bought a 5 pound bag of dog food and he stuck around for about a week and then he was gone. I guessed that he must have been just passing through.
posted on August 20, 2004 12:05:32 AM
I know what you mean, Kraft. Far too many people treat their pets as disposable commodities. Tired of it? Just throw it away.
____________________
"Bad temper is its own scourge. Few things are more bitter than to feel bitter. A man's venom poisons himself more than his victim." --Charles Buxton
My neighborhood is full of stray cats. Rather than doing the right thing by finding their animal another home or by taking it to the APL, they just toss them out the door. It's sad and irresponsible. IMO, there is not enough of a punishment doled out to people who abuse animals and tossing one to the curb is abuse.
Cheryl
. . .if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend.. . - War and Peace, Tolstoy
posted on August 20, 2004 05:53:41 AM
I know how you feel kraft, we have the same thing happen here. People think they're doing the animal a favor and that it can "go live on a farm". Most towns these days have low cost neuter clinics. We take at least a half dozen cats to town a year to have them fixed.
___________________________________
Our `neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon
and evil as Hell." --Edward Abbey
posted on August 20, 2004 06:24:29 AM
The problem in our area is that all animals brought to the shelter are killed after several days. Since no one is likely to adopt a stray animal it's a last resort option for me.
Hmmmm...I wonder if they would take a few squirrels. Lol.
posted on August 20, 2004 07:37:13 AM
Agreed....living out in the country one gets plenty of dogs and cats dropped off out here. Everybody's always looking for a home for some new stray.
The animal shelter in my town is a little different than in the big cities. They have spaces for so many and no one new is accepted UNTIL someone else has been adopted and there's a space created.
BUT the good thing about it being done this way is no animal is destroyed until it's adopted...period. And doing it this way also encourages the whole community to be involved in getting the strays into good homes. Individuals taking care of the problem rather than expanding government. Seems to have worked quite nicely for a number of years.
Also wanted to mention that in our animal shelter a thrift shop is how they pay most of their expenses. And when people get rid of their unwanted items....one of the first they give them to is the animal shelter.
posted on August 20, 2004 08:44:23 AM
It's very sad to see this, Kraft.
It's the same in this area where people are always dropping off the kittens in rural areas.
Over the years almost all of my pets have been strays, most have found me but some I've chosen from the SPCA because someone had abandoned them.
Recently they showed on the nightly news a lady that has a shelter and only takes in and cares for older cats as hardly anyone wants them. The medical bills are enormous, she works as a nurse during the daytime and uses her own earnings plus donations to keep the shelter going. Many of the older cats are really snarky and need extra care. She is a very special person to do that.
posted on August 24, 2004 12:35:39 AM
Kraft, I thought of you just now. I was reading an Australian newspaper site (The Australian) and found this heartwarming piece:
“There’s a wild dog under the shearing shed,” said Aurora. While we have feral everything else - pigs, goats, cats, you name it - we’ve been spared the problem of dogs.
But I’d spotted our first dingo a few days earlier and, with lambing beginning, went looking.
It was hard to spot him. Moving fast and low to the ground, he concealed himself in the grass and the shadows, but fleeting, fragmented images started to form a picture - not of a dingo but of a kelpie cross, dragging a metre of chain from its yellow collar. Odds-on the chain would get caught under a shed or in the barbed wire of a fence - and the dog would die of thirst, hunger or strangulation.
Our prime concern was to protect the lambs from attack, so we tried to lure it out with profferings of food. But it seemed suspicious of the dog bowl and preferred to raid the dustbins, scattering rubbish everywhere. Then Aurora came running. “Dad, he’s in a bin.” And he was - trapped, the chain snagged on the back steps.
All fangs and snarls, he presented both a danger and a dilemma. What to do? I managed to free the chain and started to tug at it, fully expecting an explosive attack. But what emerged from the dustbin, like a tortoise from its carapace, wasn’t aggressive. It was the most terrified animal I’d ever seen.
The broken chain suggested it had escaped from a neighbour’s property or jumped off the back of a passing ute. We started phoning around - “Are you missing a cattle dog?” - and added another “Lost Dog” to the noticeboard at the local store.
Then we stopped phoning and removed the notice. How could we return the dog to an owner who’d clearly brutalised it? It cowered when you attempted to touch it. It reacted to the gentlest pat as if it were a beating. And we couldn’t let the dog without a home, without a name, off the chain. Already a wild dog, it would clearly get wilder. If released, it would do its best to hide, to disappear. And it could survive only by attacking the sheep. Or the dustbins.
For days, the only time it stopped shivering with terror was when Tommy, our cattle dog, would come bounding up, all licks and tail wags. Tommy’s third-party endorsement of me seemed to reassure the refugee.
But it still snarled at Patrice, growled at Aurora and savaged Gavin’s hand when we tried to worm it - its appetite is enormous but it remains appallingly thin. So the consensus was that I should take it to the vet, have it put down; put out of its misery - the accumulated misery of its abused life. Reluctant to do so, I kept talking to it, trying to calm it and, after three days, had a breakthrough. For the first time it actually inched toward me, just a couple of feet, without me hauling at the chain. A day later, it began to nuzzle me. And if I sat beside it, would try to climb into my lap.
Little by little it has decided to trust me. And to love Tommy. Now I let it off the chain and it follows me everywhere, obediently heeling. When I go out on the motorbike it runs beside me. And I can pick it up and plonk it in the back of the four-wheel-drive when heading off with the chainsaw to cut firewood. Trouble is, I spend three or four days a week in Sydney. When I leave, it immediately reverts to being terrified. No-one can get near it, let alone chain it up at night. And once again, it heads for the dustbins. On my return, usually at 3am on a Friday, it appears slowly, tentatively, out of the darkness. It takes a lot of reassurance to persuade it to creep forward for a pat.
Nonetheless, as I mumble these words into the dictaphone, it’s got its head in my lap, looking up at me with the saddest eyes you’ve ever seen.
Understandably, the family consensus remains that the situation is untenable. You can’t have a dog that’s domestic three or four days a week and feral the rest. But I find the poor little bugger irresistible. More than any of the dozen dogs I’ve owned, he has encouraged my maternal instincts. So I miss him when I’m in Sydney and can’t wait for Friday mornings. Today he let me pick him up and carry him around, giving me some affectionate licks. It’s taken an inordinate amount of time and effort to get this far, but few tasks have been as rewarding.
He reminds me of the kids that John Embling and Heather Pilcher look after at the Families in Distress Foundation, where nightmare lives and neglect produce children whose aggression - and violence - is an expression of fear. John and Heather have worked miracles with hundreds of them. Surely I can help one dog.
For no particular reason, Patrice has christened this escapee, this asylum seeker, this mad, sad, little dog … George. And I’ve had to promise to replace the wrecked plastic dustbins with a couple of strong galvo ones.
Come on, George, stop frightening the family. And wag your tail at the readers. Look! He did. Only a couple of little wags, but that’s progress.
____________________
"Bad temper is its own scourge. Few things are more bitter than to feel bitter. A man's venom poisons himself more than his victim." --Charles Buxton
posted on August 24, 2004 06:21:59 AMMaybe when Kerry gets elected, you'll have some extra money that you can give to your local SPCA
Miracle, but no; would be buying more guns and saving for the butt reaming that would begin... has to pay for those promises somehow... and letting the UN lead is no way to run a country...
Of course when President Bush is reelected, I will continue with my yearly donations.
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