Let’s take our dog to the COUNTRY!!!

So it can starve naturally.

This is Skelly. She was found by a park in the outskirts of Lakeport. There were 2 others with her that have not been caught, yet. There is no way of knowing how long Skelly and her siblings have been out in this wild remote, dry, area. What is known is that Skelly and her siblings were abandoned in the wild to fend for themselves. Skelly is now 5 months old, and she weighs 13.3 pounds. She should weigh 40 pounds. She is dehydrated, severely emaciated, probably anemic and has mange. The person who abandoned her and her siblings apparently did not want to take the dogs to Animal Care and Control.

Laziness or stupidity?

Laboring under serious misapprehensions, the perpetrator of this crime decided that it was better to let the dogs starve slowly, over time, rather than be cared for, fed, have air conditioning and heat, and WATER. People dump their dogs in public places because they do not want Animal Control to euthanize their pets. Certainly, Animal Control is forced to euthanize pets on a regular basis. But the person responsible for the killing is the person who dumped their pet. For every animal in our shelter there is someone, somewhere who is directly responsible for that animals being there. The person responsible is the owner that did not socialize their pet, did not feed them properly, care for them, or allowed breeding. They did not take them out to meet other people or dogs, train them, or housetrain them. Then, when these owners chose to dump their dogs, they dump them in public places rather than let a professional organization handle the problem they created.

There have been many abandoned pets in remote areas recently, and Lake County Animal Services is one local organization that tries to work with them. Lake County Animal Services is small, under funded, owes the vet a ton of money, and can not take in the numbers of dogs that require care. Three dogs recently abandoned in the wild are currently the Lake County Animal Services program. The mom and her two older pups were dumped in the middle of no where, and they are under-socialized, and fearful of men. It took a caring neighbor hours to coax the dogs into her care. It will take months to undo the damage that these dogs’ owners did to them. It will also take months for Skelly to recover. There is a hunter’s dog with a remote training collar still loose out there. He is so shy and scared he won’t go near anybody. He is also starving slowly. Animal Control set a trap for another pair of dumped scared dogs, but someone stole the trap. Another neighbor took in a starving limping dog who had been wandering the park for months prior. Finally he got weak enough to capture. If you have not cared for your dog properly and it is fearful, how can you expect some one to even catch your abandoned pet? If you must dump your dog, take it to an agency. Your pet will be safe there. She will not be in pain, starving, dehydrated. Lake County Animal Care and Control only euthanizes animals when our citizens force them to.

Karen Schaver, Director                               www.lakecountyanimalservices.org                                                        707-349-2624