A bleeding, flesh-torn mixed Retriever female was standing alongside a tied up intersection. Cars sprinting by on a crowded Monday morning, travellers trying to get to work on time, all seeing the poor mutilated dog but too late for work to stop and do anything about it.  With four pups waiting for this mama Retriever to find foodstuffs and come back to the hole underneath the overpass to nurse them, time had run out. It’s been three days, since she had left and due to her wound by a hit-and-run car, she will not be going back.

pups will starve. The entire family lost…

This sad tale is not an uncommon one. In fact, thousands of unspayed hounds with pups – the results of crossbreeding between strays – are trying to live  via the country’s woods and city roads.

Those picked up by the local animal services are the more fortunate ones. With a chance for adopting, especially for the pups, these animals are cared for and fed for a bit of time. And when that time period runs out, and it’s clear that nobody wants them, the creatures are painlessly put to sleep.

Filling the cages of SPCA buildings all across the country, there are loads of puppies and grown dogs, purebreds and mixed breeds, large and small, black, brown, red and white – all undesired. They wait zealously for hands to pet them, to love them.  With patient, trusting eyes and wagging tails, they wait.

For some of the creatures time has run out, and they are doomed to execution. Adoptions are few and new pups and kitties looking for homes are coming in every day. Funds and space are often limited and, regrettably, this is not uncommon for an animal shelter. Spots similar to this are being reproduced in thousands of humane organizations around the globe.

The dog population in the United States has increased greatly due to haphazard breeding, and homes for these puppies are virtually non-existent. The purebred dog might have a greater chance of being adopted than the mixed breed, but even his SPCA cage is not likely to be traded for the loving confines of a home and family.  Few SPCAs can claim even one third of their annual intake of dogs being taken by adoption, and too many can only note the thousands that they have had to “put to sleep”.

A fierce prize for a man’s best friend?

Yes, it is, but one that will and has to carry on until pet owners can make up their minds to spay and neuter their hounds, thus averting innumerable litters of undesired pups, who may be put to death only weeks after they are bred.