The following is the type of story I hate reading. Someone had a dog they didn't want or couldn't care for. They thought they were doing the right thing by leaving the dog at the steps of a closed animal shelter but in fact they condemned that poor animal to death. It was 27 degrees outside and the dog probably froze-to-death. From the Arizona Daily-Star:
A dog left in a cardboard box outside the Humane Society likely froze to death Tuesday morning, after authorities issued warnings about the first freezing night of the year.
"The fact that we found this animal outside in this kind of weather was amazing to me, that either these warnings missed the owner or they just didn't care," said Marsh Myers, education director for the Humane Society of Southern Arizona.
The low temperature Tuesday morning was 27 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. The over-night low was expected to be 30 degrees this morning.
Humane Society staffers aren't sure what happened to the 3-year-old Welsh corgi before they found her in the box about 7:45 a.m., more than an hour before the facility opened.
Efforts to save the dog's life failed, Myers said.
Please don't just leave them outside the door of an animal shelter somewhere and hope for the best. It's not fair to the shelter workers and it is cruel to the poor animal.
Don't expect everything to work out the way it did in "the Manger". You must care somewhat or you wouldn't have left the puppy anywhere, but you must take some responsibility for that sweet young being more than just beyond dumping it on someone else's doorstep and running away.
The ignorance of people regarding temperature and their pets is truly astonishing. It's not just people who are careless and callous enough to dump them at the shelter steps, it's ordinary pet owners, too. I used to work as a veterinary technician in Phoenix, and every summer we'd have to inform a few confused and grieving owners that they'd basically allowed their pet to cook without a second thought. One girl went on a long hike with her long-haired black dog. In July. And then she and her friend went inside and got some water for themselves, leaving the dog in the backyard. When they brought its stiffening body in, its internal temperature was still over 105.
Posted by: LabRat at December 1, 2004 03:43 PMUm, not to criticize these folks to much, but it has to be colder than that for something healthy to freeze to death. I've seen dogs ouside in subzero weather (labs and german shepards mostly) there had to be something else wrong with this dog.
Posted by: theco at December 3, 2004 01:23 AM Some people are even worse. As I was driving to Tyler , TX wednesday morning from Dallas I saw a man in a pickup get out along the inside shoulder , pull a good sized black dog from the bed and throw a ball out into the median. The dog ofcourse went after it and in my mirror I saw the man drive off , leaving the dog.
I took the next exit and headed back. When I approached the area I had seen this happen in I slowed and scanned for the dog. I spotted what turns out to be as sweet and gentle a female black lab I have ever encountered. I can't really estimate her age yet as she is emaciated and barely able to walk normally. She is getting better quickly and eating heartily. She has obviously been abused physically.
I don't know why someone would do this.
Sadly we cannot keep her so I will be taking her to DFW Lab Rescue. In the mean time she has stayed in the garage , warm , safe and treated as caringly and kind as we can.
Sean