Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

 

The SPCA sold Alice to an elderly woman with known dementia, who the SPCA had previously sold a dog to. The SPCA was forced by a bylaw officer to repossess that dog after the SPCA ignored repeated complaints about the mistreatment of the dog from the neighbour who lived who lived across the hall. God only knows who the SPCA sold the dog to next.


A few months later the SPCA sold Alice to the same woman. This time there was no one watching as the neighbour across the hall had moved. But someone in the apartment building was listening to the sounds of a dog crying. Not often, but lonely-crying. Alice was crying in misery. This person also reported Alice to the SPCA, and again the SPCA ignored the complaint.

When the rotting food could be smelled, the neighbour who had heard Alice cry for six months and who had been ignored by the SPCA, phoned City Hall who sent a different animal-control officer. She was an animal-lover and under her insistence to be allowed in, the elderly woman opened her door.

What the bylaws officer saw moved her to tears. Alice, covered in so many fleas that her hair had fallen out and her skin thickened to a condition called Elephant Skin. The maddening itch was extreme and the skin was weeping, causing an overpowering smell. Urine had scalded and infected the skin on her stomach and legs. That pain, and loneliness, is why Alice was crying, and that is why the bylaws officer cried.

The bylaws officer told the old woman that if she didn't surrender Alice to her, that she would be charged with cruelty. At last, Alice was rescued.

The bylaws officer knew that if she took Alice to the SPCA they would kill her because she was no longer sellable. So she gave Alice to us.

First, we took Alice to the vet for an exam and a flea bath. Our vet gave us medications for her infected skin and her painfully infected ears, and a special shampoo.

When Alice was much better, we found a family for her, who, as soon as they saw her, dropped to their knees and put their arms around her.

It took three years for Alice's skin to heal and for her hair to grow in, but she lived until she got old and died of natural causes, surrounded, not by rotting food and feces, but by her family.

AAS has been asked to rescue dogs by welfare workers, bylaw officers, lawyers, and even police. Thank goodness that these professionals have someone to turn to, who they trust to only act in a dog's best interests, no matter how long it takes or how much it costs.

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