This is exactly what happens to outdoor dogs left outside in the cold weather. This is dangerous weather for dogs that have decent body weight, how is a skinny, emaciated dog supposed to survive?
Why do people leave these dogs outside to begin with, let alone in the cold weather?
Why do people have dogs at all if they are not going to feed and care for them?
Why don’t they take these poor dogs to an animal shelter or call a rescue group to pick them up if they don’t intend to even feed, water and check on them?
How can they sit in their nice warm houses, with nice warm meals knowing that just outside the window there is a dying dog?
How can they sleep at night, surely this poor guy had to have been howling and crying before he succumbed to starvation and hypothermia?
How can they walk in and out of the house with the dog visible from the door and not even think twice about it?
These are some of the age old questions that we have been asking for over twenty years and still have no answer, and every winter we continue to find starving, dying, hypothermic dogs in backyards.
Sadly the dog in the photographs did not make it, by the time the complaint came in he was already almost in a coma and cold to the touch. Volunteers rushed him to the emergency clinic but it was too late and he was humanely euthanized by loving hands and hearts.
At least he did not die alone outside, lying half out of his doghouse in the frigid weather and snow. How long he must have waited patiently for someone to come out and see him or feed him. Sadly the owners were not even the ones that called, it was a concerned passerbyer.
This address has been reported to the proper authorities and we are hopeful that animal cruelty charges will be forthcoming.
www.michigananimaladoptionnetwork.org