Dumping Pets & Divorces

Okay, I've got the serious blog out of the way, now I'm gonna rant a bit.

Today, we had a couple of ladies call in that had found a dog on their back porch and had been hanging around for a few days. This sweet little dog had a petfinder.com tag on it's collar. So they called petfinder. Petfinder called the owner who called the ladies and told them he didn't want the dog back and that he'd called petfinder claiming the dog had a new owner. He'd also told these ladies that we'd seen this dog and had given her vaccinations. We searched and found the owner but not the dog. We searched for the dog and found only a horse by that same name. It really disgusts us when people lie. So we called the other clinic and they don't have any pets under the name of first owner.

We had another dog dumper two years ago (I think). They brought a nice, shy dog in for boarding then promptly moved to colorado before the arranged pick up time. We tried to contact them and found the phone disconnected. We luckliy had the phone number of son's girlfriend and it worked. We called her up and found that they'd moved out of state and she gave us their address. We sent a certified letter which was returned. The Humane Society director at the time refused to take him because of his breed. So I took a photo of him and hung posters up around town. He quickly found a new home and we haven't seen him since. His dead-beat owners have been sent to collection.

A few years back when our doc's were out of town on a well deserved vacation we had a lady come in with two sweet little young dogs. She and her husband were going through a divorce. She desparately wanted these dogs euthanized. She refused to take them to the Humane Society or to surrender them to us so we could find them a new home. She said she'd tried for to find them another home and couldn't do it anymore. Her primary reason for neither us or the Humane Society is that she didn't want them in a cage. I know our wonderful people at the Humane Society and they would have treated these dogs like royalty.

I tried for 30 minutes to convince her that we needed another option. It is office policy that euthanasia only happens with a medical reason. I didn't stick to my guns. Soon we found ourselves in the exam room with the relief vet and euthanizing these two dogs. I was so depressed and angry at myself. Two days later it got worse. Her brother in law came in and informed us that she had been living in a motel room with the dogs in a cage. If you are the husband of this person, I sincerely apologize. I wish I could have done better.

We currently have another divorce situation involving a cat who's been boarding with us for 2 months. Our last contact with the female owner was early july when she said she'd be in either 7/5 or 7/7 to pick her up. We left a message with her and husband last week and haven't heard from either of them. I'm hoping that somebody calls soon.