A Special Hell: Part 2

The scalpel cuts deep into the stomach lining making a perfectly straight line and splitting the organ wide open. Her gloved hands pry apart the stomach allowing us to peer inside. Rocks, leaves and undigested dirt make up the hollow cavern.

It is Tuesday morning and I find myself kneeling on the floor of the euthanasia room floor of our local animal shelter assisting our veterinarian as she performs a necropsy on a Great Dane. The dog had been deceased for some time now. According to the owner the dog was starved to death while entrusted in the care of a relative. After having been notified of her dog’s death she had dug up the dog and contacted animal control in hopes of finding answers and justice. The case landed on my desk and led me to now crouching over the emaciated body of a once loved pet.

After interviewing the family members responsible and finding their other dogs in good health, it was determined that they had purposely not fed this dog out of spite for the owner whom they were at odds with. The Great Dane resorted to eating rocks and dirt in the kennel that ultimately became his death bed. Both adults in the home were charged, both pleaded down to misdemeanors. May they rot in hell.

If you think ‘skinny dog’ calls are common for animal control officers you would be correct.

These types of complaints comprise a large number of our welfare checks and results vary. Once you start working in the animal welfare field you quickly learn that a skinny animal is not always the result of neglect on the part of the owner. There are a hundred reasons a pet can appear malnourished and until we investigate the situation we can’t jump to conclusions. Of course there are plenty of cases where I found the cause to be blatant neglect and the situation was handled accordingly.

There are a fair number of cases where I make contact with a dog owner about a complaint and find out that the reason their dog is so thin is because it is 15 years old and at deaths door. People see a skinny dog laying in the front yard of a house and call in the perceived animal abuse. I make contact with the dog owner who shows me the animal and I can clearly see the dog is losing weight due to age, or medical conditions associated with age. Often the owner tries to show me vet records and is very upset that someone would suggest neglect and I have to reassure them that they are not doing anything wrong, and that people just jump to conclusions more often than not.

Then there are the times where I check on a dog and find that in fact there is a starving dog and an asshole owner to blame.

This adorable dog is named Mack. He lived in an apartment with an owner who, ironically, was very much overweight. The roommate contacted us and said the owner barely feeds the dog and they are not comfortable confronting him themselves. The dog owner struck me as a person who will tell you anything they think you want to hear. He had stories and excuses for days. He showed me the dog food bag he had in the apartment and we discussed how much a dog this size needs to be fed. He then claimed to work on a farm and said the dog comes with him every day and just runs so much that he can’t get weight on him. I had some follow up visits that showed me no progress in the dogs body condition. I had to make a plan to prove that this dog is simply not receiving proper care from its owner. I took the dog to the shelter and weighed him. Our shelter veterinarian did a physical on the dog and determined him to be a young and healthy dog that should have no reason to be malnourished. The dog was at the shelter for several days, and in that short time had gained a few pounds with our regular feedings. Since the owner refused to surrender the animal we wrote up a feeding plan he was required to follow if he intends on keeping the dog. He was told to bring the dog back for a weigh in after a week. Of course the week came and went and the owner was avoiding me. I was finally able to make contact and again confiscated the dog and took him to the shelter. After this time, with regular feedings by the owner, the dog should have gained several more pounds of body weight. We found he had lost weight. This was the proof we needed to send the case to a prosecutor and charge the owner with blatant neglect. The day we went to serve him the charges he suddenly wanted to surrender the dog to us in lieu of the charges. While I would have loved to see him go to court, we decided to just get Mack out of that situation. He was put into foster care with a family who fell in love with him and adopted him. He gained all the weight he needed and now lives his best life.

I see a fair amount of skinny dogs, and usually we are able to educate the owners, do follow up visits, and get the results we need without confiscating the dog. Other times the owners just don’t give a shit.

Taking a dog away from someone is not as simple and straightforward as you might think. Legally pets are property, so to remove them I would have to secure a warrant to take them away and be able to keep them. I also have to then house the dog somewhere, and in the case of skinny dogs we have veterinary care involved. All of this has to be coordinated with the animal shelter, which is already bursting at the seams and has no room to house yet another animal.

We try very hard to keep a dog where it is and instead work with the owners. Sometimes this involves supplying them with proper shelter, bedding, food, tie outs, etc. Despite our best efforts, when the owner is not willing to change their ways, we do take the dog. Recently we had such an outcome with this Rottweiler male.

The dog was living on a chain in the backyard. There were several people living at the house, but of course the dog owner was never home. We have dog food donated to our shelter regularly. Most people don’t know this but we actually don’t use that food for the dogs at the shelter since the county buys their own. That food gets distributed to families in need, and in some cases aids us animal control officers in feeding dogs out in the field. I brought food for this Rottweiler so he could be fed regularly. I went to the nearest farm store and bought straw with my own money so they could give him proper bedding while he lived in the yard. All of this was done to keep the dog from having to be brought to the shelter. In the end the owner proved to us that he is incapable of change and we secured a warrant to remove the dog for good. They always claim to love the dog, and don’t want to surrender them, until we threaten charges.

This dog was found deceased in a house where people had been evicted.

The landlord found a live dog left behind and called animal control to remove it. During the search of the house it was discovered that this young dog had died, and its skeletal body left behind in a bedroom. My coworker received this case and pursued charges. It is always difficult to punish the appropriate person when they have already left, and it is difficult to prove without a doubt who the responsible party was. May they rot in hell.

Finding deceased, emaciated and forgotten bodies of once vibrant pets is unfortunately not uncommon.

I received a call about a dog found outside of a business one morning. The body of a very emaciated dog was inside a wire kennel on a wagon and left outside of an address that is utilized as a pet food pantry. Maybe the guilty party thought it would be found by someone who can properly dispose of it since the location is used by people who care and love animals. Wouldn’t it have been great if they’d brought the dog here before it succumbed to a horrible death?

I checked with other businesses in the area to see if any had surveillance cameras that may have captured this wagon being dumped. Only one had a grainy video that unfortunately couldn’t even tell us if the perpetrator was male or female. The wagon and bowl were checked for fingerprints, but I was told none could be found. It was unfortunately a dead-end investigation. The only thing I could do for this poor soul is place his tiny, emaciated body into a bag so that he could at least be taken to the pet cemetery and be cremated with the rest of the animals from the shelter. The person who allowed this to happen left the body outside of a pet food pantry, which ironically exists to prevent horrible circumstances like this to happen. All they had to do was take advantage of resources like the pantry if they couldn’t afford the care themselves. May they rot in hell.

These stories are a small sample of the many cases I have worked over the years. Every once in a while, a case of animal neglect or abuse will make it into the news, but the majority are simply cases we get, work through and try out best with. There are too many to count and the general public doesn’t hear about most of them.

My friends and family know what I do for a living, but I don’t share too many stories like these. Many people don’t care to hear the sad details, and most can’t relate to that line of work. In the same way that my husband rarely talks about his job as a police officer, and all of the crazy, horrible things he encounters, I too don’t usually discuss the details of my job. This is why it helps to have coworkers and others in the field that we can vent to. They can relate.

Recounting some of these stories in my blog will hopefully shed some light on this line of work that exists but few know much about.