June 15, 2015: What Volunteers Have to Deal With on the Street

You name it, the Animal Care Network volunteers deal with it.  The streets are a never ending constant battle for the animals. The ACN phone never stops ringing 24/7.

Many of the calls are very disturbing and many must be referred to local animal control. We are volunteers and cannot take animals unless they are surrendered to our group. We do not have the authority to ticket people or force owners to take their animals
to the vet, though we try like crazy.

Cruelty, neglect, lack of medical care, lack of food and water, lack of shelter, abandonment, near death, dead animals, sanitary conditions, over the limit, dogfighting, dog attacks, rabies and licensing, length of chain must be enforced and handled by animal control and city agencies.

The Animal Care Network does not have a medical fund or fund for injured animals so we are constantly telling people to take their pets to the veterinarian and always give them resources and phone numbers. We offer rescue for every single call if the owner
cannot or will not take the animal to the vet.

We received a call from an owner that thought there was something wrong with her dog. Six months earlier we had offered free spay neuter and vaccines but they refused. Certain family members DID NOT want the dog fixed, they wanted to breed her. Well this is what we found when we went to check on the dog.

Something wrong? The dog was dead in a crate in the middle of the kitchen. Very disturbing and upsetting. We have no idea what happened, did she have parvo because she was not vaccinated, did she have a uterus infection that festered which can cause death, did she get poisoned, we have no clue.
The owners were told to call animal control to have this poor little dog
picked up.

We are not telling this story to upset you, but are making the public aware
of what we are up against out on the streets. In our target area, more times than not
when we advise people to take their animals to the vet, they do not and here is the end
result in some cases.

This possibly could have been avoided by vaccines, by getting spayed and
by taking this dog to the vet, but none of that happened despite our advice,
persuasion, offer of free spay, vaccines and transportation, despite our referrals
to cheaper local veterinarians.

This is horrible and heartbreaking to witness and extremely frustrating.

Get your pets spayed and neutered and vaccinated!!! The sooner the better!
If you get a cat or dog be prepared for the responsibility, they must go
to the vet when they get sick and stay current on vaccines, that is part of owning a pet!

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