What Are They Thinking?

The equine vet's office called asking if we could help out a man with six dogs. His wife left him, going through a divorce, no job, no dog food, but he wants to keep the dogs and doesn't want to spay and neuter. We have no available space, and since he doesn't want to spay/neuter and wants the dogs back at some point, we offered to give him dog food to give him some time to find a place for them. He said they had destroyed all his furniture, so he took each piece out of the house one at a time, and now has them peeing on one post. He has no shelter outside for any of them, so we did offer a couple of dog houses that we don't use.

He came to the farm and said he used 100 pounds of dog food a month. Seems light to me, but I'm used to feeding 40 dogs a week. I gave him 150 pounds of food. He returned two days ago and said he needed to get them vaccinated, so I gave him six doses of 5 way, and six doses of kennel cough preventive. He also said he was giving one of the dogs steroids for flea dermatitis, so I gave him six doses of flea preventive. He also mentioned that one of the dogs had passed worms, so I pulled out wormer for all of the dogs. Then he said he didn't need it for all of them, just the one dog. Duh --- told him to use it on all of the dogs at the same time or they would pass it from one to the other!

He told me the house had to be cleaned up to be sold in the settlement and it was full of fleas. He was planning on scrubbing down the floors and cleaning out the sediment between the hardwood. Said he didn't need the dog houses because one of the dogs had destroyed the fence, so they wouldn't stay in the yard.

After he left, I emailed animal control in our county and the neighboring one, told them what had been provided, and mentioned that they might be getting a visit from him, or maybe they should drive by and check up on him and his pack. Maybe they can talk some sense into him.

The dogs shouldn't suffer or starve because of the situation, but you have to wonder what the heck people are thinking. Life is about making choices - preferably ones that benefit all concerned!