I got an e-mail yesterday about my article on Sally's visit to a Marist College classroom on Tuesday. The writer expressed concern that the article didn't address the state of the economy and the fact that people may not be able to afford to feed their pets.
Sally is the terrier mix dog found abandoned in a clothing donation bin in a parking lot in Hyde Park Sept. 15.
The writer said maybe the person who left Sally was afraid of being charged with a serious infraction of the law if they were to "do the right thing" by dropping her off at a shelter. The writer was thinking specifically of the elderly and urged me to, in the future, consider including information on what people can do when they can't afford to care for their pets any longer.
I responded that I understood the point the writer was making, that there are instances in which people can no longer afford to keep their animals. I have blogged several times about the foreclosure crisis that has forced many families to make difficult decisions about giving up their pets.
But one thing must be kept in mind about Sally: the dog was starved long before it was tossed into a metal clothing bin. Medical tests found there was no underlying condition that would have caused such an extreme case of malnutrition.
When found, Sally weighed 16 pounds. At approximately 2 years of age, she should have weighed 36 to 38 pounds. She looked, as I described in an article, "as if someone had taken a dog’s skeleton and wrapped it in light brown fabric."
I don't think it's necessary to explain to any rational human being — someone who still has feelings — that it would be better to, say, tie a dog up to a fence, out in the open, where there is some traffic, than throw it into a container in a remote portion of a parking lot from which it could not escape. Where it could very possibly have died, had the person whose responsibility it was to collect the donated clothes not been on schedule.
I think the thing to keep in one's mind in this situation — and the reason the Dutchess County SPCA feels this falls under the heading of criminal activity — is that the dog was essentially starved for a very long time then thrown away to die, alone and unwanted, in a metal container. It would have been a horrible, unjustifiable death.
She was in a metal bin in a shopping center parking lot exposed to the summer sun for about a week. No food. No water. No way to escape.
Sally was, as DCSPCA Executive Director Joyce Garrity said, "horrifically disposed of like a pile of old clothes."
There is No. Possible. Excuse. for this type of action.
What happened to Sally was not, under any possible explanation, anything other than a despicable act of depraved indifference.
I watched Sally trot up and down the aisles of a Marist classroom, going from person to person — curious, loving and trusting. Cocking her head at a photographer's camera, as he clicked the shutter. Barking at shadows moving by the classroom door window. Being a dog, in the only world she knows.
Trusting. Forgiving.
And then I look at my dog, Kate, sleeping next to me on the couch as I write this.
She trusts me.
I hope, though I try not to anthropomorphize animals, that she loves me.
I cannot imagine a situation in which I would leave her to die, alone and hungry and unwanted.
She trusts me.
That is my burden. And I gladly accept it.
