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| | The *It's a Dog's Life* Network is not currently active and cannot accept new posts | | It's Just an Animal | Views: 256 | | Feb 02, 2005 11:38 pm | | It's Just an Animal | # | 
Wicked Witch of the West | | Cross-post from another list. I did not write this letter and have been unable to verify the validity, but I did find it referenced ona bulletin board for ACO officers. True or not, this is something that we do know does happen way too often in our society and too many times, people like Larry never get any type of punishment for their actions. I can only hope that once their lives are done that whomever they answer to at the end of their journey takes this under strong consideration.
Subject: True story and you can help.
Please read this story, and if you feel strongly enough, print it out and mail it. Permission to cross-post - by all means, please circulate as you wish. - Patsy
He was so terribly cold, and his arthritic hips ached, particularly the bone that had been broken and hadn’t healed right. In the days around Christmas, the wind chill factor had pulled temperatures down into the single digits. His captors hadn’t fed him much for a long time and he had no reserves to fight off the chill. His thin coat didn’t help much. Now they slung him into the back of the truck and sped away. He curled on his side against the cold metal and tried to protect his face from the stinging wind. He shivered, from cold as much as fear of what fate lay ahead of him. He knew the situation was bad, very bad. When the truck stopped on a lonely stretch of road, rough hands jerked him to the ground. The driver grabbed a tire iron and began to beat him. He ran, awkward and limping, ran for his life into the
woods. He didn’t look back until he heard the truck crank and its tires crunched off the shoulder of the road and found the pavement. Then he began to cry.
* * *
If this was a story on CSI:Miami or one of the popular TV shows, you would feel the pain of this frightened soul. It could be a story about a crime victim or a terrorist hostage. If you read a newspaper account of an old man treated so inhumanely, you might turn away and look for happier news. How long did it take you to figure out that this was not a human, it was just another abandoned dog? And can you still believe that it doesn’t matter because “it’s just an animal?”
This is a true story, and it is making the rounds on the internet among animal advocates. I know it is true because I called Rowan County Animal Control and spoke with the officer who brought in the animal. I offered whatever assistance we could give to the Rowan County Humane Society,
and Jane told me that it was in the dog’s best interests to have it euthanized because it was so sick, so arthritic and old, and its heartworms and other parasites had pretty much consumed its life. What a pity, that the most humane thing this creature had been offered for a long time was an injection to end its life with some degree of comfort and dignity, instead of freezing or starving or being shot by irate neighbors or killed by other dogs or run over and left to decay on the side of the road … And the worst part is, there isn’t a darned thing the law can do about such neglect and abuse and abandonment because the owner claims he doesn’t know who drove his truck out on Rogers Road in Salisbury,NC on December 28, 2004 and dumped his dog out to die. The victim couldn’t speak to name his abuser. The owner claimed the dog had run away. The witness who actually saw this man drag the dog out of the truck and chase it off with a tire iron turned her car around and followed the vehicle until she got the license plate. But she can’t prove who did the deed.
This is what we know. A blue truck with license plate LSN3249 abandoned a Doberman on December 28 on Rogers Road. That truck is registered to Larry’s Mobile Home Repair, 120-130 Phaniel Church Road, Rockwell, NC 28138. Larry admits it was his dog but denies any knowledge of the incident. He would not return calls to Animal Control or answer when they knocked at his door. He says somebody else must have done it, not him. His truck, his dog, not his fault. But no matter who or what took the life of this dog, Larry or somebody didn’t care that it was starving, had a broken hip, had heartworms, was old -- Larry didn’t even seem to know or care that his dog was missing. He had no concern for its comfort. If an animal rescuer took the dying dog from Larry’s yard, it would be a felony. For Larry to allow his dog to live in this level of suffering is, at best, a misdemeanor under the laws of North Carolina. To prosecute him for abandoning his starving and sick and
pained dog requires a witness who can positively identify him in court and prove beyond doubt in a criminal lawsuit that he intended to cause harm to the animal. That sort of offense against a dog rarely ends well in the judicial system. So there just isn’t much we can do in this lifetime to bring justice to Larry or his friend who borrowed his truck and stole his dog without his knowledge.
I personally believe that God created man as well as dogs and all beasts, and to cause harm to anything God has created is disrespectful to God and, at some point, will require explanation to a Higher Power than a criminal court judge. But that didn’t stop Larry’s dog from suffering. And Larry has probably got himself a brand new dog by now. This is the one thing we can do to people like Larry. We can let him and his disrespectful buddies know that there are people who do not sit idly by and tolerate such inhumane behavior. We don’t care much for dog owners like him. If you want to write Larry a very nice letter and explain your feelings to
him, please do so. If you’d like to just print this one out and mail it to him, just sort of let him know that his actions didn’t go unnoticed, please do that. I’d like to know that he received enough letters from concerned animal lovers that it might change his thinking about the rights of animals to some degree of comfort in life. I’d hope that he feels ashamed. And if you want to just let this one pass and hope that this will be the last story with a sad ending, that’s okay too. But I don’t think it’s the last story. There are too many folks like Larry out there, and too few people who take a minute to get involved.Private Reply to Wicked Witch of the West | | |
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