It’s brutally cold out right now. No pets should just be out roaming around. And we live in a time where people just seem to dump dogs and cats, and even things like hamsters and rabbits without blinking an eye.
And now you have puppy mills overfilling rescues with dogs they can’t sell. They now are using rescues as an outlet to get rid of their excess product so to speak because they’re not viewing these dogs as pets, these dogs are like ears of corn, they’re a product.
Puppy mills give legitimate breeders a bad name. Yet people keep buying from them and then you have lots of big shelters with issues like the Montgomery County SPCA, which really needs a lot more happening than is currently happening, and then you saw what happened to the Delaware County SPCA years ago? That’s how it became Providence because the old Delco SPCA was finally shut down. It was so problematic. And now Providence is a much better place.
The Chester County SPCA also was rife with issues a few years ago and I don’t know what’s going on there today they’ve rebranded they’re now the Brandywine Valley SPCA.
All of these bigger rescue organizations participate in these clear the shelter events or “mega adoption events.” The problem I have with those events is pretty simple. They pretty much just let whomever adopt to literally just clear out the shelter cages and then a few months later you have a lot of those animals coming back into rescues. Ask any of the smaller rescues, especially ones that handle cats and they will tell you about all the kittens that get adopted during clear the shelter events…. and then dumped as young adult cats. And I especially have an issue with holiday mega adoption events and remember the good old days when rescues paused at Christmas because so many Christmas pets end up back in rescue after the holiday glow has worn off? One of my favorite rescues was an ooopsies Christmas pet.
So back to the impetus for this post: loose dogs. Dogs get out even if they are a beloved family pet and sometimes they just want to go on walk about. Sometimes it is because a human is not paying attention.
Yesterday on in Willistown off Paoli Pike, and I guess around Cedar Hollow Road a woman walking her smaller dog, was attacked by a pit bull mix. I don’t know what the end result is, but I was told last night by someone I know that people weren’t sure if the dog was going to make it because it was pretty badly attacked, and that the dogs human also had wounds.
I just drove past a disturbing scene on Paoli Pike. It appeared that a Pit Bull was loose and was mauling another dog and a woman. Police were on the scene and had just pulled the dog off of the person and dog who were lying on the ground. I hope everyone was ok, but by the sounds of the screams, I don’t think so.
Now I will honestly say that the owner of this dog did show up in local social media groups and apologize. That’s a good start, but….its not all that needs to happen.
I would like to apologize to the malvern, Paoli and surrounding residents for the accidental incident that took place earlier today. I am the owner of this rescue pitmix, XXXXX. She escaped out of her reinforced enclosure while I was gone from home. My dogs are up to date on their shots. I am so sorry to the owner of the other dog and will pay the vet bills. I will take even further precautions so this does not happen again. The safety of my community members is of utmost priority to me. Thank you to the Williston Police department for promptly showing up and separating the dogs and help contain XXXXX. I really hope the other dog is ok and not too badly injured. I just wanted to clear the air because I see a lot of posts going around speculating their own stories from me being a terrible owner to someone dumped a dog on Paoli Pike. My sister called me while I was driving panicking because Honey escaped and I told my sister to call 911 ASAP. I rescued this dog and I am responsible, I will not dump her at the spca and let them deal with this issue as they already have a lot to deal with. XXXXX is not human aggressive. She is very loving towards humans so I am not sure if she deserves to be put down, she has never had an incident with aggression towards humans. I will be reinforcing her enclosure further to make sure this does not happen again. Thank you.
But we don’t know how that poor woman is or her dog are today do we?
The fact that the owner publicly owned up to what happened and said sorry is a help, but it’s not the solution. It’s only part of a potential solution.
Twice in my lifetime I had dogs of mine attacked while we were walking on a leash. One time was just walking down a public sidewalk and the other time was on the nature trail at Haverford College.
One of the dogs that attacked one of my dogs back then was a golden retriever. I had to push for the owner to get a $50 fine and he continued to walk his dogs off lead, and the dog continued to go after other dogs on leashes. That particular dog caused thousands of dollars in vet bills to my dog because the golden retriever was a big dog and it ruptured a disc in the back of my dog, which was just your average sized field dog. It was a springer spaniel, a breed not prone to back issues.
The second time it happened it was another spaniel at another point in time and we were walking the nature trail at Haverford College. We were attacked in front of lots of people by two black labs off leash the owner and the black labs took off and my dog got rushed to the vet and it’s neck had been bitten / ripped open.
So I actually know what this feels like and for those of you who assumed I would say it was because it was a pitbull doing the attacking, I would not. I also had an old neighbor once upon a time that was at a dog park in Gladwyne, who was attacked by a much smaller dog and had its whole underbelly ripped open.
But if this dog has gotten out before and has done things like this before, or even if this was just the first time, that dog needs to be professionally evaluated, especially if it drew blood on a human as well as attacking a dog. What if that had been somebody’s kid walking their family pet?
I am not trying to deprive someone of their dog at Christmas. But what happened was horrible.
This dog that went after the other dog could have leash aggression. It’s an actual thing, but it’s something that has to be dealt with.
And I just feel for the woman and her dog who were attacked. I have experienced it.
I rarely write about animal issues any longer because so many lack reading comprehension and we in the age of social media just shoot from the hip.
But I am going to give a shout out to the people trying to save the Montgomery County PA SPCA and the animals. They are doing God’s work. (https://share.inquirer.com/0ZyV4v ) Again, the Montgomery County PA SPCA needs to have what happened to the Delco SPCA – it needs to be shut down, clean house and start again. I am told there are lots of good people in lower levels who work or volunteer for the Montco SPCA but leadership and the board? Not so good.
Our pets deserve our best and this past year has seen an increase in dumped, lost, stray, loose animals. Accidents happen, no one disputes that. But we as the humans? We have to do better for them.
That’s all.