Last Sunday, I showed you a cell phone (and a bag of trash) that we picked up on the trail. Well, this time we picked up (or truth-be-told, were picked up by) another dog.
This young female bounded out of a side trail and glommed onto the both of us immediately. She wouldn’t leave us, even when we met other doggos (and their minders) that were more her size and amenable to her…ahem…rough, playful energy.
We went to a nearby holiday trailer park resort but no one there recognized “Missy” (as another person on social media named her. More on that later…). I kept hoping that she would bound away again at some point but Missy followed us all the way home. I gave her food (a couple of cups of Bowser’s horrifically expensive schnauzer chow) and water and secured her in my daughter’s yard. I took Bowser to my place and posted about Missy on our community’s Facebook page and also on ROAM (as one person on the trail suggested). I also called Animal Control to come pick her up as she wouldn’t let me touch her – despite her apparent friendliness – and there was no way I could coax her into a vehicle to take her anywhere.
Missy was howling at being left in my daughter’s yard all alone, and when I went to check on Missy then Bowser was barking at being left behind at my house. So we all ended up together, waiting for Animal Control…
Animal Control did show up about an hour later and they were no more successful at getting close to her than I was. Things escalated, and Missy escaped through the back fence and into the neighbourhood. I saw a lot of Facebook postings about her after that, and the next day another person was able to get her secured, and again Animal Control was contacted. By this time, all of us who encountered Missy were thinking along the same lines: that she had been “dumped” – abandoned by her owners – and left to fend for herself.
What was especially heart-breaking about this situation was reading on Facebook about how exhausted and scared, and also that Missy had returned to the trail and was found lying beside a pile of women’s clothing. Which makes me wonder if the clothing contained the scent of her former owners, or reminded her of them somehow. I really do believe she was abandoned, and perhaps that person had left the clothing there to get her to stay near that spot.
This time Animal Control were successful, and (not without a huge struggle) Missy was contained and taken away – hopefully to be adopted into a more loving home than her last one.
As someone who grew up on an isolated property on the outskirts of town, I am no stranger to animals being dumped. At least once a year a car would pull up at our house (usually in the middle of the night) and a dog or cat would be cast out, and then the car would accelerate away. I suppose they thought because we had a large property with pets and a barn, we would welcome more pets. Once in a wee while we did, but mostly we had to take them to the local SPCA as we already had enough animals of our own to care for.
Please love your animals and, if you can’t look after them anymore, take them to an agency that will try to rehome them. Don’t leave it to chance.*
Rock on,
The WB
*I know I am preaching to the choir here. None of my regular readers would ever be so cruel as to abandon an animal. I felt I had to close this post with this message, though. I apologize that it is not my usual cute little doggy post.
