Monday at the Kill Cage:
The door of the 40-year-old institution known as the Kill Cage was closed on Monday in preparation for the change, the conversion of the tiny facility into a Center for Dog Control.
By 9am there were nice puppies in boxes abandoned at the closed door, and the Animal Shelter called the rescue organizations to come to the rescue.
Nine abandoned, unwanted, dumped souls by 9am.
Monday teaches us that the plan for a dog center with 12 cages, is inadequate. The new plan — thank you for starting to think about solutions — calls for a 3-day moratorium where the abandoned dog will be held, allowing its owners to be found and/or change his mind about destroying the pet.
ONE out of ONE HUNDRED dogs is an animal dumped at the Kill Cage by a nasty neighbor and the new arrangement would indeed save him.
But judging from Monday’s numbers, in three days, you’d have 27 puppies, in 12 cage, not even mentioning cats, that usually arrive in much bigger numbers.
Cats were completely left out of GOA’s plan.
Those in charge of policy must understand that the animals dumped in the Kill Cage are all domesticated, they belonged to a family which irresponsibly decided to shirk its obligation. The pets are often dumped with fancy collars, by grandma and the grandchildren in the car, on a heartless mission.
These animals are UNWANTED. Their owners DON’T want them back, so holding them for three days entails, feeding, offering water, cleaning poopy cages, taking pictures, posting them on social media, trying to adopt them out. If you hold them for three days, you might as well make an EFFORT to find them new homes. Which of GOA’s employees will be in charge of that operation??
The dogs trapped in the street by Criollo Trapper, for example, and offered for adoption are often FERAL, and MORE difficult to adopt because they have to be socialized, domesticated first.
THE ONLY SOLUTION: It should be AGAINST THE LAW, to avoid responsibility like that without a fine. As long as it is acceptable here to just drop a bunch of kitties without their mom, or a bunch of pups in a box, the mentality of people will not change, you have to hit them in their pocketbook, fine them, you have to send the signal that this is kind of behavior is unacceptable.
We have reasonable spaying and neutering programs that are subsidized, and people should be taught to take that road!
All other solutions are just band aids.
In September the Kill Cage changed its hours of operation and closed weekends and holidays. People shamelessly continued to dump their owned pets in front of the closed door, driving away in a huff. These people don’t want the burden back, so why would you decide to hold their pets in the hope that they will change their minds. They won’t.
