Winter is coming and there will be animals suffering through it 24 hours a day, day after day, no matter what the temperature and wind chill. It is time again to remind ouselves of Buster’s Law which requires that all outdoor dogs have good shelter and fresh unfozen water daily and plenty of food. Acceptable shelter must be rain and snow proof, insulated, with a floor. The dog must be able to stand up, turn around, and stretch out. Older dogs simply cannot withstand our winter weather at all. They should be kept indoors. Puppies and short haired dogs are also at risk. I don’t understand why anyone would get a dog and then banish it to a life out doors.
Last week on WSYR TV’s five o’clock news someone had written in to say that all her efforts to get some agency to respond to a dog cruelty situation had gone unanswered. She wanted to know what the public should do when witnessing a suffering animal that is the victim of.cruelty or neglect. The news staff had checked around and came up with this: call 911. Law enforcement is required to respond though, depending on what they are dealing with at the time, the animal call may not take priority. They may also refer the complaint on to another agency such as the SPCA or dog control. Of course if there is anything the witness can do to alleviate the suffering we should all pitch in.
Winter will also cause suffering and sometimes death to feral cats. Some of us walk in Auburn for exercise. In every neighborhood, almost on every block, we see roaming cats. Some of those cats may belong to someone who allows their pet to roam without having been spayed or neutered or received shots. Those people are part of the problem in Auburn and in the county. But the biggest part of the problem are the feral cats, those who belonged to someone at one time and were abandoned, plus the generations of offspring of those cats. Here and there are the kind souls who feed these unfortunate cats and try to provide some kind of shelter for them. Here and there are some cats that get taken to the Finger Lakes SPCA of CNY low cost clinics where they are spayed or neutered, microchipped, and given shots and ear mite treatment then returned to the colony that is being fed. But there are just way too many of them who go on breeding, suffering disease and sometimes dying. The problem is so great and so many citizens view the cats as a nuisance that it should be addressed by the Auburn City Council and the Cayuga County Legislature. (it is against the law to harm the cats or even trap them unless it is done by a humane organization) The solution is for those public servants to set aside funds each year for spay and neuter. Eventually the number of cats will dwindle down by attrition.
Another part of that solution is to educate the public about the need to spay and neuter their
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