Irresponsible pet owners get my goat! Tracey and I took in a a large dog from Startrax dog home because it had been abandoned. The dog was not eating or anything and the kennel had tried to re-house the hound but because it wasn't eating it was losing weight rapidly. The dog was also unresponsive and therefore the decision was taken to have the dog destroyed that Wednesday.
As chance would have it we found ourselves at the kennel the same day. The dog wasn't our first choice because I wanted a ferocious black Labrador, but the kennels staff quite rightly said no because at the time my kids were very young.
Andrew (who was about 2 years old then) took a shine to the dog that was unresponsive. We asked the kennel staff if we could have that dog... but they told us that he was due for destruction in the next hour.
We were mortified that this sort of thing still happens. We set about convincing the staff to give the dog another chance, and in the absence of the chief vet they allowed the dog to go to the exercise area with us to see how he would react.
Well before too long we had a whole line of astonished kennel staff lined up on the other side of the fence watching this dog play with the children. They were so taken back by the instant change in the dogs character that they invited us in to the office for a chat. They said that they couldn't stop the destruction order, but if we were to jump in to the car with the dog when their back was turned they wouldn't report the dog as missing and further more advised us how to get the dog out of the kennel without appearing on their CCTV.
You can imagine that they hadn't finished their sentence and we had gone!
We'll that was 13 years ago now and that dog was called Kye (apparently Cornish for dog).
The story of this dog continues.
A sympathetic R.S.P.C.A officer was told about our doggy rescue by a member of staff at the kennel. A week later she came to visit us at our home to make sure that we were treating the dog well. She already knew the dog and the dog's previous owners from dealings with the dog warden. Although she wasn't allowed to tell us the owners name she did tell us that they were aware that the owner didn't want the dog and they would take it on car rides and dump the dog in the street. She continued to tell us that they have found the dog more than 40 miles away from its home.
She was convinced that the dog had a broken heart and had given up on life whilst at the kennels, but was glad to see that dog was responding very well to family life with us.
Some months after we moved house. So far the dog had been well behaved but had a habbit of running away from the garden. As we had an ID chip installed in the dog, it made it real painless to get him back. In fact he became a bit of a celebrity dog for that reason.
Anyway getting back to that house move. Well everyone was excited because we were moving to a bigger house in Penzance. I hired a huge lorry and a bunch of mates helped us move. The dog was also excited but didn't know why. The lorry was packed and all that was left was the dog... In he hopped and we set off.
Upon arriving at the new house we all became very aware that the dog was acting very strange indeed. In fact he was cowering down as if he had been punished. We put it down to the short journey and got on with the parking of the lorry.
I opened the door to our new house whilst the kids dragged the dog by its leash to the house. By now the dog was trying very hard not to go in the house and the kids asked for my assistance just to get him over the threshold. As soon as the dog was pushed through the open door he shot straight under the stairs and curled up in to a ball. He was shaking and whining. Kye had always been a clean dog and well house trained so when he lay under the stairs whining and shaking he wet him self as well.
We stopped the move and spent some time with the dog to try and reassure him that everything was ok. As he loved walks I thought it would help him if I took him for a walk in the new area. I wasn't out long when one of our new neighbours recognised the dog. It turned out that the people who moved out of our new house use to own that same dog. The new neighbour went on to say how they mistreated the dog and left it tied up between the garden shed and wall for days. The gap between the shed and wall was about 18 inches (that's about 72cm). Apparently the dog wasn't fed and so the neighbours use to push food under the gate for him. At night they said they could hear him howling in pain as the rain and wind set in. He had no cover or shelter at all.
Eventually the neighbours complained and the dog vanished. The neighbours were told that he had been run over but what had really happened is that they had taken the dog 40 miles from their home and kicked it out and drove off.
Kye is no longer with us as he died last year. But during the 13 years he spent with us he had a fantastic time. He never did get used to having baths as he remembered that the dogs that had a bath at the kennels were put down after.
He was left with some deep emotional scars thanks to some irresponsible owners.
The story takes a wild step to the left as another neighbour passed by our estate. This new neighbour moved in with a cat. But it quickly became apparent that the cat wasn't allowed in the house, no matter what the weather. Well that cat adopted us and has lived with us for many years since. He's very happy now but when he first started to stay over we noticed that he wasn't a very good coordinated cat. If he jumped from a table to the seat he would miss quite often.
We've never had a cat before so didn't know what was wrong. We took it to the vet who took one look at the cat and turned angry at us. It turned out that the cat had such a bad infestation of fleas that they had colonised beneath the cats skin and a crustacean of fesses from the fleas was in-bedded in the broken skin. We explained to the vet that the cat wasn't our cat and she calmed down and agreed to do some emergency work on the cat for free! The thing is that the cat has long fur and you would need to pull the fur back to see the problem.
Anyway the vet went on to say that the flea infestation would have taken years to have gotten that bad and she was keen to warn the R.S.P.C.A. about the previous owner. Keen not to get them in trouble I said that I didn't have a forwarding address. I wish I had given the information over because they were wholly irresponsible pet owners.
From memory they had the following during the 18 months I new them:
2 x Rabbits
2 x Hampsters
Several fish
2 x Kittens
1 x cat
2 x dogs
1 x puppy
All were eventually abandoned after the novelty of ownership had worn off. The kittens, puppy, cats and dogs were all left outside the house all day and sometimes all night no matter what the weather.
The twist goes on... I've since discovered that these pet owners (the dog and the cat) are in fact related.
Should pets be licensed, should ownership mean some sort of dedication, should the law be extended to provide animal better treatment?
Below is an adaptation of the lyrics from the well-known song "Run around Sue" that best fits the irresponsible, careless attitude my ex neighbour had about animal welfare!
Here's a story sad but true,
It's about a neighbour that I once knew
She had two pets and then a hound
And dumped those pets all over town.
I should have known it from the very start,
This girl will leave those pets with a broken heart.
Now listen people what I'm telling you
She dumped those pets and got another two.
Her pets would vanish without a trace,
Then buy two more at lightning pace.
So if you don't wanna cry like me
Help me stop her getting another three.
Ohhhh, keep away from that girl,
I don't know what to do, keep her from buying another two
Ah, she likes to travel around, yeah
She'll leave the pet or have it put down.
People let me put you wise,
She gets away with it with no legal ties.
Here's the moral and the story from the guy who knows,
I took her cat in because it froze.
Ask any fool that she ever knew, they'll say
She’ll go off and buy another two.
As chance would have it we found ourselves at the kennel the same day. The dog wasn't our first choice because I wanted a ferocious black Labrador, but the kennels staff quite rightly said no because at the time my kids were very young.
Andrew (who was about 2 years old then) took a shine to the dog that was unresponsive. We asked the kennel staff if we could have that dog... but they told us that he was due for destruction in the next hour.
We were mortified that this sort of thing still happens. We set about convincing the staff to give the dog another chance, and in the absence of the chief vet they allowed the dog to go to the exercise area with us to see how he would react.
Well before too long we had a whole line of astonished kennel staff lined up on the other side of the fence watching this dog play with the children. They were so taken back by the instant change in the dogs character that they invited us in to the office for a chat. They said that they couldn't stop the destruction order, but if we were to jump in to the car with the dog when their back was turned they wouldn't report the dog as missing and further more advised us how to get the dog out of the kennel without appearing on their CCTV.
You can imagine that they hadn't finished their sentence and we had gone!
We'll that was 13 years ago now and that dog was called Kye (apparently Cornish for dog).
The story of this dog continues.
A sympathetic R.S.P.C.A officer was told about our doggy rescue by a member of staff at the kennel. A week later she came to visit us at our home to make sure that we were treating the dog well. She already knew the dog and the dog's previous owners from dealings with the dog warden. Although she wasn't allowed to tell us the owners name she did tell us that they were aware that the owner didn't want the dog and they would take it on car rides and dump the dog in the street. She continued to tell us that they have found the dog more than 40 miles away from its home.
She was convinced that the dog had a broken heart and had given up on life whilst at the kennels, but was glad to see that dog was responding very well to family life with us.
Some months after we moved house. So far the dog had been well behaved but had a habbit of running away from the garden. As we had an ID chip installed in the dog, it made it real painless to get him back. In fact he became a bit of a celebrity dog for that reason.
Anyway getting back to that house move. Well everyone was excited because we were moving to a bigger house in Penzance. I hired a huge lorry and a bunch of mates helped us move. The dog was also excited but didn't know why. The lorry was packed and all that was left was the dog... In he hopped and we set off.
Upon arriving at the new house we all became very aware that the dog was acting very strange indeed. In fact he was cowering down as if he had been punished. We put it down to the short journey and got on with the parking of the lorry.
I opened the door to our new house whilst the kids dragged the dog by its leash to the house. By now the dog was trying very hard not to go in the house and the kids asked for my assistance just to get him over the threshold. As soon as the dog was pushed through the open door he shot straight under the stairs and curled up in to a ball. He was shaking and whining. Kye had always been a clean dog and well house trained so when he lay under the stairs whining and shaking he wet him self as well.
We stopped the move and spent some time with the dog to try and reassure him that everything was ok. As he loved walks I thought it would help him if I took him for a walk in the new area. I wasn't out long when one of our new neighbours recognised the dog. It turned out that the people who moved out of our new house use to own that same dog. The new neighbour went on to say how they mistreated the dog and left it tied up between the garden shed and wall for days. The gap between the shed and wall was about 18 inches (that's about 72cm). Apparently the dog wasn't fed and so the neighbours use to push food under the gate for him. At night they said they could hear him howling in pain as the rain and wind set in. He had no cover or shelter at all.
Eventually the neighbours complained and the dog vanished. The neighbours were told that he had been run over but what had really happened is that they had taken the dog 40 miles from their home and kicked it out and drove off.
Kye is no longer with us as he died last year. But during the 13 years he spent with us he had a fantastic time. He never did get used to having baths as he remembered that the dogs that had a bath at the kennels were put down after.
He was left with some deep emotional scars thanks to some irresponsible owners.
The story takes a wild step to the left as another neighbour passed by our estate. This new neighbour moved in with a cat. But it quickly became apparent that the cat wasn't allowed in the house, no matter what the weather. Well that cat adopted us and has lived with us for many years since. He's very happy now but when he first started to stay over we noticed that he wasn't a very good coordinated cat. If he jumped from a table to the seat he would miss quite often.
We've never had a cat before so didn't know what was wrong. We took it to the vet who took one look at the cat and turned angry at us. It turned out that the cat had such a bad infestation of fleas that they had colonised beneath the cats skin and a crustacean of fesses from the fleas was in-bedded in the broken skin. We explained to the vet that the cat wasn't our cat and she calmed down and agreed to do some emergency work on the cat for free! The thing is that the cat has long fur and you would need to pull the fur back to see the problem.
Anyway the vet went on to say that the flea infestation would have taken years to have gotten that bad and she was keen to warn the R.S.P.C.A. about the previous owner. Keen not to get them in trouble I said that I didn't have a forwarding address. I wish I had given the information over because they were wholly irresponsible pet owners.
From memory they had the following during the 18 months I new them:
2 x Rabbits
2 x Hampsters
Several fish
2 x Kittens
1 x cat
2 x dogs
1 x puppy
All were eventually abandoned after the novelty of ownership had worn off. The kittens, puppy, cats and dogs were all left outside the house all day and sometimes all night no matter what the weather.
The twist goes on... I've since discovered that these pet owners (the dog and the cat) are in fact related.
Should pets be licensed, should ownership mean some sort of dedication, should the law be extended to provide animal better treatment?
Below is an adaptation of the lyrics from the well-known song "Run around Sue" that best fits the irresponsible, careless attitude my ex neighbour had about animal welfare!
Here's a story sad but true,
It's about a neighbour that I once knew
She had two pets and then a hound
And dumped those pets all over town.
I should have known it from the very start,
This girl will leave those pets with a broken heart.
Now listen people what I'm telling you
She dumped those pets and got another two.
Her pets would vanish without a trace,
Then buy two more at lightning pace.
So if you don't wanna cry like me
Help me stop her getting another three.
Ohhhh, keep away from that girl,
I don't know what to do, keep her from buying another two
Ah, she likes to travel around, yeah
She'll leave the pet or have it put down.
People let me put you wise,
She gets away with it with no legal ties.
Here's the moral and the story from the guy who knows,
I took her cat in because it froze.
Ask any fool that she ever knew, they'll say
She’ll go off and buy another two.
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