We moved here less than a year ago. It’s wonderful, and it enables us to help more dogs since the setting is less labor intensive. Huge fenced yard is basically what we need to be able to care for more animals. With three jobs, volunteering work is limited, and walking every dog 3 times a day would alone be impossible. This to say that any issues with neighbors has to be dealt with VERY carefully because we just can’t afford to jeopardize our current standing in the neighborhood. We want to help the neighbor’s dog, but not if it means we lose the ability to help dozens more. I guess one could say that we could do the necessary to help the dog and move somewhere else if need be. Not as easily said then done. I think those who saw the pictures of the piece of fenced land we have access to to let our dogs play and exercise is something we may NEVER be able to find elsewhere unless we paid a fortune for it, and that, too, isn’t feasible as we need the money to help the dogs.
When we moved in, the young fellow living two doors down was walking his dog every day. It’s a beautiful male yellow Lab. Young, friendly, etc. About six months ago, he got tired of his prized dog and stopped walking him. The dog has been kept in a cage day in day out for the last 6 months at least, and it NEVER gets to go out to even just stretch out for 5 minutes. The cage has these two metal trays at the bottom collecting feces and urine, and the young lad never cleans them. After about three months stuck in the basement with zero daylight, our landlord complained about the smell so they moved the dog to the roof of the house. Our roofs interconnect so we see the dog every day when doing laundry. The dog barks but not so much. I bring him a raw hide quite often to help him kill extreme boredom. The dog under the sun all day, and every time I go see him he has no water nor food. He’s been losing weight quite a bit. He used to be gorgeous, now he looks a bit rough, and you can see his spine disks sticking out when he stands up. Same as before, the young lad NEVER empties the trays and they are filled with an inch of blackened urine mixed with feces. In the sun, it evaporates faster than the dog can pee, especially since the dog never has anything to drink. Summer is upon us now, and it’s getting tool hot.
He hasn’t been walked in so long that he can no longer walk without injuring his paws because his claws are curved right under his paw pads. The following are images of the dog, the claws and the trays at the bottom of the cage.
No food, no water as usual. (I fill the water bowl after taking pics) Notice the crap in the trays, too. It’s just sick.
We knocked on their door one day last week with a plan. The lad was sleeping on the sofa and wouldn’t get up. His sister slid a window open and talked to us. We claimed that our dogs were bored and we wanted a friend for them. He was hearing us, he was awake, but he did did not get up to talk to us. The sister said she would talk to him for us. Nothing happened. Then we caught up with the mother and asked her the same. She agreed to let the dog’s cage go to our backyard and let the dog hang out with our dogs. Nothing happened. Actually, the lad covered the cage with cardboard so that we can’t see the dog anymore, but that’s it.
Next move is to move the cage and the dog when they are not home and claim that we were just trying to be helpful since the cage is very heavy. Oh and we want to sneak the dog to the vet and have his claws clipped (He’ll need to be drugged because his claws are so long that they will all bleed and hurt badly when being clipped) and run a few tests. What do you think? You think that will work?
Other than that, we can call the Animal Health Institute and report them for keeping a dog caged 24/7 in the sun with images and testimonies. But that’s making them lose face and it translates in jeopardizing our ability to help other dogs. For all we know, the lad could poison our dogs, or someone could call the owner of the land/our backyard and complain. Like I mentioned in the introduction of this post, we will probably never find another place that is ideal to care for many dogs for this price(Only 15k per month). Currently, our dogs BARK a tad, but not very much and we have not received a single complaint in nearly a year. We just can’t fuck that up, but we really want to help this dog.
If you have any suggestions, PLEASE let us know. We’ll be moving the dog to our backyard in the next few days without permission, I think. Still procrastinating/thinking about the best way to deal with this…
marboulette