Animal Hoarding?

Yet another event at the Wharfinger Building the other day, this one hosted by Miranda Animal Rescue and dealing with the problem of animal hoarding. No link on the Eureka Reporter web page to the article but it's about the horror stories we've heard now and again about people have dozens of animals which leads to neglect.

While that should be a concern, seems to me an even bigger problem is people taking in animals who don't really have the means, or interest, to take care of them. I was talking to a neighbor about this just yesterday. He came by walking his dog, which he does at least once a day. I got to chatting with him, although it escapes me how we got on to the subject of animal neglect.

I pointed out the dog at the druggie house a couple houses up the street. They acquired that dog a few months ago, seems to me. They apparently don't have a secure back yard as the dog was out on the streets immediately after they got him. They'd catch him, throw him in the back yard and soon thereafter he'd be out again.

If the dog wasn't aggressive enough- it would get out on the street and go around barking and growling at everyone- now they have it chained in their front yard, making it even more aggressive. I guess that's what got the subject on my mind yesterday because, when I went out to drag my garbage can back up to the house, the dog's barking at me and I'm three houses away and across the street from him.

If they're just going to tie a dog up in the front yard, why'd they even bother bringing him home to begin with?

Then there's the relatively new neighbor next door. She ends up getting a dog a few months ago, too. Not that she can really afford it as she has two kids and no job. I've been given the impression she's not supposed to even have a dog there, it being a rental, but I'm not sure about that.

Her yard's not secured, either, but I can't blame her for that as our fence has been a shambles for years.

Her dog ends up in our back yard right away. Not so much a problem with me except for it being illustrative that she doesn't have any control over her dog. The wife gets pissed, though, cause the dog steals her flowerpots and craps in our yard.

So we try to block up the holes in the fence to no avail. Doesn't matter as there are other places for the dog to get out. Just about every morning, when I go out to get the newspaper, the dogs sitting in their front yard and gets all nervous when I go pick up the paper. No barking yet, but I think that dog will certainly get more aggressive as it gets older.

What did she even bother getting that dog for? I've seen her taking it for a walk once. Maybe she does more often, but I've never seen it. Bottom line is, she doesn't even seem to have enough money to take care of herself and the kids and she drags a dog she can't take care of into the equation. The mentality here defies common sense.

Then there's the older story that really made my blood boil, and this guy seems fairly well off:

Just around the corner from my house, on F Street, there's a guy living next to a yard I used to work in. He's some appliance repair guy, or at least he was a few years ago when this all came about.

One day I notice him walking a dog by my house. I didn't think much of it, just a guy walking his dog, but did take note he must have just gotten it as I'd never seen him with a dog before. Seems to me I saw him walking that dog two or three times, before he must have gotten tired of it.

Then one day I stop to do his next door neighbors lawn and I see he's got one of those 4' x 8' chain link dog kennels in his front yard enclosure. Inside it, there that dog sat, and sat. It was nice of the guy to put a dog house in there so the dog had protection from the elements, but with the dog house in the cage, that gave the dog only about half the kennel to move in, which meant basically all he could do was lie there.

I don't know if somebody said something to him but a couple months later he fully enclosed the area around front door of his house and opened the kennel so the dog had a little more room to move around. A slight improvement anyway.

But not much more room and there the dog sat. The small area turned into a mudhole when the rains came and there that dog was with nothing to do but sit in the dog house or lay in the mud.

Eventually, the guy filled the area with rock. I guess that was his attempt at taking care of the dog. I guess I should say dogS, because by now there were two dogs in there instead of one. The problem with the rock, at least I saw it, was it wasn't pea gravel, or anything that might have been more comfortable on the feet, it was big rocks, three to five inches around. That's what they had to lay on in there.

Can you imagine having to live on a rocky river bar with no soft ground to rest on? That's what it must have been like for those dogs living in that "kennel"?

I'm not sure what's going on there now. I stopped doing his neighbor's lawn a couple years ago. Even before I did, the guy raised the fence around his "kennel" so you couldn't see what the dogs were doing. I wonder if he got tired of people getting on his case about the dogs, assuming someone said something.

What did he ever bring those dogs home for, then add insult to injury and get yet another dog?

There oughta be a law. Libertarian though I may be, these sorts of things beg the question as to whether we should have means testing before people can adopt animals?