The Craziness of the Craziness

As you may have read in the last entry, rescuing dogs out of East St. Louis is a tricky business. There is always one person with each pack of dogs who claims that ALL of those dogs are his. Sometimes they will tell us that we can take a particular dog. Sometimes they forget that they told us we could take a dog and come out yelling at us the next day. That is precisely what happened when we rescued Nancy. The next day that PJ showed up to feed the dogs, the guy came out yelling at her. "How come ever since you started coming 'round here, my dogs have started disappearing?" PJ responded by saying that she never takes someone's dog without permission, which he did give to her and one other person. So, there are at least 4 dogs that still hang out around this guys house, not to mention the one that is tied to a dog house in the fenced in back yard. I am pretty sure that one is Sherlock's relative. We call these guys Martin's pack. They all have eye issues, which is really strange considering what happened to Martin. It is unfortunate because it seems that this guy is not going to let us save any of these poor dogs anymore. We have to consider PJ's safety first.

And then there is the guy at the house where we rescued Snuffy yesterday. There are about four dogs who hang out around his house. He claims them all to be his. He came out and talked with us yesterday before we set up to rescue Snuffy and was incohesively telling us about how much he loves these dogs, but he doesn't love them as much as he loved the one he used to keep chained in the back yard. "But someone poisoned the one in the back yard and it died". He continued to say, "You know, I love them, but not that much." PJ asked him about a bunch of puppies he put collars on a while back. She told him that she removed one of the collars from one of the pups because she was growing and the collar was choking her. He proceeded to tell PJ that all of the other puppies from that litter died because "he could not catch them to get those collars off." Yet he really wants to get at least one more litter out of his girl (the one facing sideways in the picture above) before he lets us spay her.
I am not one to mince words. I feel like what we see over there should be known. I would love to come up with a solution to this. I just don't know where to start. I understand that possession of these poor, neglected and suffering creatures is a power struggle for some of these people. Unfortunately, people treat those below them the same way they are treated by those above them. I don't think many people know what the living conditions are like in East St. Louis. I don't think too many people know of the corruptions the government has allowed and that businesses have created their own zip codes so as to not have to give their taxes to the East St. Louis community. I have said it before, but so many things need to change before the stray dog problem is solved.

A lighter post tomorrow. I promise :)