Within days of its arrival to the neighborhood, we had sub-zero nighttime temperatures with daytime temps only slightly better, and yet, there huddled this tiny, forgotten dog without any shelter. I was devastated. I'd stare out the window at the freezing puppy and scheme ways to dognap it and bring it home into the warmth of our house...even if only for the night. Once, I called the non-emergency police number, only to find out that there aren't any laws dealing with cruelty to animals in Bethel unless there are obvious signs of abuse, but that dognapping would be a crime! I still am not sure how my concerns didn't at least warrant a check by local law enforcement, but apparently they had more important stuff to do.
Of course, if they chose to deal with my dog problem, they'd have to deal with the hundreds of others around town. Dogs in Bethel are second-class citizens and there's even the threat from the PD that they will shoot loose dogs. Not dogs that are being aggressive or threatening or are a danger to the public, traffic, themselves, or livestock. Any loose dog...period. PETA would seriously go nuts up here.
When we lived in North Dakota, I had similar problems with how people treated cats. It was almost as if most people viewed felines as a farm implement, whose sole function was to catch mice.
One late night, I was drawn to our garage where a hugely pregnant black "munchkin" cat was struggling to even walk. She had no ID or collar, so we called her "Gypsy". Within days, J and I spent hours helping her deliver her litter of seven. Four of the kittens were "munchkins", one was somewhere in between and two looked like normal cats. It was truly a wonderful experience for us and the kids enjoyed getting to experience the miracle of birth!
Sadly, when it came time to find homes for most of these kittens, nobody in North Dakota wanted them simply because they weren't likely to be good hunters because of their diminutive stature. I couldn't believe it. So, we literally paid to fly four of them to Oregon where my mom had been able to find people that wanted to care for them.
At another of our stops, the feral cat population was so out of control, cats were being born under the church, the church office and behind the old English Rose next to the parsonage. We'd rescue the kittens after the feral moms would abandon them and do our best to raise them and find homes for the kittens before they followed in their mom's footsteps or managed to get run over on the rural highway that ran through town. Often our only choice was to give them to the Feral Cat Coalition of SW Portland.
Our local Friend of the FCC was an alcoholic, crazy cat lady, little person that always managed to take two cats but convince us to take a different one that she couldn't find a home for! At one point, I wouldn't let J answer the phone when she called for fear we'd be adopting another cat! As I tried, mostly in vain, to capture the feral cats, I found little support from the community that apparently didn't mind seeing hordes of cats roaming around the neighborhood or scraping road kill off the side of the road.
So, here I am again, doing my best to understand attitudes and cultural norms, despite my own desire to "rescue" every animal I can. I guess I just don't understand why people would even want a dog (especially at the cost of keeping a dog here) if they aren't going to let it become a part of their family.
I finally had enough of seeing the little black dog curled up without any shelter, so I hired the wood shop class at the high school to build my neighbor-dog a house! I figured it's as much of a win/win as I can get with this situation. The kids will get some real-world woodworking experience (Not that the trivet below doesn't have any "real-world" application!) and with any luck the dog will have a safe place to protect it from the elements. I also hope the neighbor will realize the error of his ways...
Well, I'm proud to say that the doghouse is complete and has been delivered! I didn't make any ceremony about giving the house to the dog. I just pulled up, carried the dog house near the dog and left it. Honestly, I'm not sure anyone at the house has even noticed. For the first few days, I never actually saw the dog inside the house only sniffing around it. Honestly, I was a little upset that he didn't run right in and start sleeping inside, until I realized that up until then neighbor-dog had little reason to trust humans at all. This thought devastated me even more.
Last night, however, as I was walking Tracker, neighbor-dog was watching us from the comfort of the doorway of his new house! Enjoy your new "home" neighbor-dog!
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