Horrible Case of Animal Abuse In Albany. Hank, the Starving Dog

Click post title to go to story about Hank, a dog who nearly starved to death in an Albany backyard. A neighbor called police. A community service officer, unable to get the residents to respond, spent the night outside the fence. Hank was 100 pounds underweight. The photo shows a dog in despair, bones protruding and it's a horrible sight to see.

And yet.

And yet, cats are abandoned, neglected and abused everyday here in Linn County, with no consequences for those who do these things. Why is it different for dogs? Why do they matter and cats not matter? I wonder that all the time. I run into so much neglect and abandonment and law enforcement apathy over cats, I no longer call it in.

I remember the horrible case of starving cats out on Kelly Road. I got a corrections officer, whom I knew, because he's a board member at Safehaven, to call a deputy he knew, so the case could be investigated.

But nothing was ever done, and, because I did call, and they wanted the cats back, even though they admitted freely to the deputy they don't feed them, I had to return them. This nearly killed my soul, to return those cats to certain slow horrible death. I found out later from a neighbor they all died. The vet had been abhored to find even internal organs shriveled from starvation.

I still have guilt over returning those cats to certain death.

Cats don't matter here. I so badly regret calling the deputy on those cats. I would have had it out with them personally, threatened them with a lawsuit, informed them of what the vet found or told them the cats died in surgery.

I'm glad Hank was saved, but I do wish the law would enforce the law on abuse, neglect and abandonment when it comes to cats also.

I also wonder if people making all those nasty comments about that woman, who caused such suffering, have their own pets fixed. It is the single most important and helpful thing a person could ever do to prevent massive amounts of animal suffering and death.