With the downturn in our economy here in America, we hear more and more often about families living in "Tent Cities" across the nation. People lose their job, can't make house payments, and soon the family has no place to live.
Some of these people have relatives who take them in, some live in the homeless shelters, and some end up in the nearest tent city.
As people are leaving their homes in such large quantities; what happens to their pets ?? Some are taken along with the owners; but many of the animals are simply abandoned and left to wander around the neighborhood, searching for food and their lost family.
One place where this has become an epidemic is the city of Detroit; which has between 20,000 and 50,000 homeless dogs wandering through the city. They can be seen on streets, the freeway, and lying dead along the road, wherever you look.
Many have become wild, and now roam the streets in packs, attacking anything they can find to eat for food.
Detroit is struggling to take care of far more urgent responsibilities; so the dogs are pretty much just left to roam.
One has to ask, where are all the animal rescue groups, and why aren't they making this known and trying to help ??
Wow, if only in Detroit there are about 50.000 pets, let's not try to guess how many there are in the entire world...
My boyfriend's neighborhood is full of homeless dogs. Thankfully people feed them and they scavenge food from farmer's markets, but is it enough?
I think rescue groups are trying to fight this, but it's really, really hard. Specially considering the fact that more and more homeless dogs are born everyday, since there is no castration. I wish I could adopt all of them
We have lots of homeless here and I even see them almost everyday. Entire families living in wooden carts is a common sight in Metro Manila. It's heartening to see that some of those homeless families have their pets particularly dogs. Some have their dogs on leash and some are loose. It's a nice scene for a dog lover like me, that poor people can still afford to take care of dogs despite not having food for themselves sometimes.
I disagree that when an ordinary family is ejected from their home, they would leave their pets. For the real dog lovers, as manifested by those families living in wooden carts, I believe that those who lost their homes would bring along their dogs wherever they would go.
This is a common problem especially in urban areas where most of the people are tenants. The problem is due to the fact that some people keep more pets than they can be able to handle with respect to such contingencies or are simply the callous types who would only be too glad to dispense with them. I remember the situation a long time ago when we relocated from our rural home and left our cat behind. I was too young to intervene or even attempt to locate the cat and it only dawned that the feline had been left behind much later. The worst affected animals in this regard are stray dogs which roam about scavenging for leftovers. These hapless souls bear the brunt of the less empathetic members of society who attack them without any provocation. It gets worse when local authorities decide to eliminate them en masse after giving notice that they want to forestall a breakout of rabies without concrete facts due to vested interests.
We do not have as bad of a problem here in Alabama where I live, and the animal control seems to keep a good watch for abandoned animals. However, there are still people who will actually just move somewhere else and leave the pet behind, often just because they rented a place that does not allow pets, or charges extra for having one.
I belong to the local facebook groups for lost pets, and it is sad to see the abandond pets that are found wandering around the neighborhoods, especially on the outskirts of town.
I think that people must drive out there and dump off the pets where they are not as likely to be seen abandoning them. At least, most of the found animals seem to be coming from outlying areas. Since most out of town rentals do allow pets, as opposed to apartments here in the city; you would think that people that live out there could move and still take the pets along, which is why i think that some pets are just being taken out of town and dropped off.
We have strict pet laws in the city limits, and dogs have to be kept in a fenced in yard, or at least tied up, and not out loose on the streets. This does stop the dogs from getting run over, at least for the most part, which is a good thing.
I am saddened by the fact that the human race could be that callous as to abandon their long suffering and trusting pets. I would go to great lengths to make sure that my pet moves alongside me. Its sad that a person can drop his dog from their car. Dogs are poor survivors in urban areas. I usually see them haplessly moving around under considerable mental stress expecting the worst from us humans who should know better to have a sense of sympathy and empathy. It gets worse if the dog had familiarised itself to the family and integrated into the daily routine. Some local authorities make matters worse by declaring a false rabies outbreak and telling pet owners to cage their pets in a bid to eliminate these stray dogs whose fate has been designed by their owners. I am very encouraged that there is a Facebook group to deal with this sad situation. Congrats in torrents!
