animals

Dogs Dead and Alive - NYCACC

Ace

While I wait tonight to see if Ace and Courage live or die -- one dog seemingly perfect (Ace) and the other simply gorgeous and maybe in some mild tiny way fucked up -- did Courage maybe nip a stranger in their home and were promptly driven by the family to “the shelter” which here in New York City is a slot machine of death. Some of these dogs were found wandering in the streets or were left in the halls of a building where they once lived (Mars), or the family had a baby and no longer had the time or someone like in the case of elegant and perfect five year old Ace (will he live or die) someone had an allergy -- take the dog to the kill shelter. We’re moving -- drop him off, the landlord says no dogs, so the dog gets bounced to here. Some people go on a vacation and can’t find a place to board the dog. So...the shelter! People die or go into the hospital suddenly and do they realize that NYCACC will immediately murder their beloved pet. It’s horrible. Do these people believe their dog is so cute that no one would ever put them to death. Some dogs have a few days, a few weeks, Animal Care Center in New York in three boroughs is a kind of meaningless and blurry bureaucracy. A darling like Skylar can stick around Manhattan ACC for a few months and delight everyone with his silvery frisky soul and one day they just stick a needle in his heart. I don’t want to know more about the method -- it isn’t always quick. I know that for a fact and some of them suffer and I don’t think they get any painkillers first they just do it.

People go on dating sites looking for love and some actually find it. How did you guys meet. Amazing. I go on twitter looking for puppies and old family dogs and irascible strays that I unaccountably become attached to like the dream of winning it big at a casino. But all it is here, the gamble, the wager is a dog’s life. Winning means the dog gets to live out the next ten years, a dog while, rather than walking down the hall. I fell for Scrappy Doo, a low slung pit mix who must have been someone’s dog for a bit. Some dogs are adopted and then abandoned on the street. Some dogs come back several times. With new names. In worse shape. How we cheered -- myself and the other dog obsessives when they got rescued. Then they come back. Like returned goods then NYCACC kills them fast. We are still recovering from the pointless murder of beautiful Rambo, an adorable black pup, a lab about six months old with big sad eyes and such an earnestness that it’s hard to imagine someone would be willing to snuff him but someone does. Someone decides in this inscrutable fashion, someone else walks the dog to their fate and another sticks the needle in their heart. I walk through the world looking at all the dogs I see out here and my only thought is that they are the same dogs. I mean the ones that wind up in the city’s slot machine are our beloved dogs yet instead living out this other entirely grizzly fate. The dogs walking with us might be who the machine spits out -- now living on their leashes, in their dog beds, or in bed with with us, like my dog, Honey, in our home. You see this balm in the eyes of dog owners when they nod yeah she’s a rescue, acknowledging the silent good fortune of both of us to be with this creature who is special because she escaped doom, she’s mine, she’s one from the many who made it out. You hold that dog in your life’s virtual hands like a sailor who washed up on a beach, the lucky one who survived the wreck. Dozens are killed every day in New York, thousands every year and New York City Animal Care Centers receives grants for being NO KILL. Older dogs are killed at extremely high rates, large dogs, high kill, owner surrendered, lots get “put down” aka murdered because the shelter likes to convince the owners to opt for euthanasia which does not enter into the shelter’s cooked books so NYCACC is looking good. Risa Weinstock, the shelter’s CEO, who has a Park Ave office off-site doesn’t even oversee or witness any of the killing and makes over 200K a year for running a entirely fraudulent institution, a slaughterhouse, that relies on the fact that its New York City and people are busy and everything’s spin and nobody’s looking at all. Here’s a good article about what’s going on:

https://njanimalobserver.com/2019/12/30/new-york-acc-quickly-kills-large-numbers-of-animals/

And here’s a decent law -- NY State Senate Bill S7245 -- that keeps getting stuck in our state legislature because the politician who’s the head of the state Agriculture committee won’t let it even get voted on. What does she get campaign support from the animal organizations that rake in contributions because they support NO Kill New York City and help perpetuate the lie. I’d check out the ASPSC and Animal Friends for two who support this lie. You can look up your state senator and lobby them to get this bill, SARA, voted on and passed.

Honey

has become my form of measurement. I don’t take pictures of humans to explain scale in my photographs or just understanding the measure of the world, I use her. She makes me understand a corner, wind or just the urgency of being alive. Our relationship is now eight years old. Her rear left leg has a limp right now and I will get it looked at this weekend. I’ve also been having some ankle issues of my own recently so it’s a little weird, or perhaps just right. She’s less aggressive with other dogs lately, less inclined to pounce, more inclined to sniff. No matter what my feeling about the dogs I’m trying to rescue in our dastardly city shelter I try to rescue I always remember that I saved this one and daily she saves me too.

Rosie

RIP. I met Rosie as a puppy on E. 3 St in 1990. She was my first dog and she died in San Diego, in a vet’s office, in 2006. I started writing about her when she began to die and I kept it up until spring of 2015 and finished the book in Marfa. I joke that I am now a dog biographer but in fact it is true. The book is as fantastic (and I mean realm, not quality) as Rosie was so I have written a dog memorial and I urge you to go there now and read about her, a wise, soulful, great great dog. And more.

The blurry photo below is actually of Rosie lying “in state” in the vet’s office after the deed was done. It seems almost papal to me in its grandeur though I know you can’t see a thing. Right after she died the vet’s assistant dashed out of the room and came back with a tiny posey which is the bright colors you see under her white chin.

2006

Dog Craft

“Protect Me You”

Allie

Allie is a dog I fell in love with in May of 21. My dog rescuer friend who brought me Honey stopped me one day in the street when Honey was in Texas and she asked would you foster. I’m only here for another week or two. That’s perfect said Cheri. What kind of dog? She’s small. Was she ever. This tiny wild thing dog with tremendous energy came to me in a pink halter and a pink leash and Allie was incredibly light. She had some silly other dog name at the time. I named her Allie after a lot of thought. She was a dirty scraggly punk rock puppy, a yorkie and a maltese I think. It was strange to wake up and have that manic little face right near me on my bed. A dog with an enormous excitement and enthusiasm for life. Unfortunately that same week I twisted my ankle. Really minor, tiny and I wasn’t going to let something like that keep me still. Plus now I had Allie. So probably just when I got this ankle sprain that should have been nothing I made it something by walking to Allie’s satisfaction which was unbounded. A puppy wants to walk all day and I walked her a lot and the ankle started to turn into a thing. There probably should be a category on this site called ‘foot’ or ankle because this enthusiastic dog walking with this wild eyed girl led to pain and MRI’s and physical therapy and now it’s flipped to the other side (meaning my right foot) and I’m thinking this foot suffering is endless. But I’ll get to the end of Allie’s story. I wanted her though it was possible that Honey would have killed her. It was a distinct possibility. Cheri wouldn’t let me have her anyway. She needs a family. I love and respect Cheri so I won’t go there at all. I don’t really need this dog so I didn’t contest her assertion. But friends of mine, Bob, Bob Holman and the painter Susanna Coffey both wanted Allie. They were ready to adopt. She had just that much charisma of the variety that anyone would want her especially a mature poet or painter who was game for a small new someone to love. A small dog travels well. There’s a lot to be said for a small young dog. But Cheri wouldn’t budge. Neither of these people qualified either in the particular family way Cheri was looking for so Allie went off to some hopefully great family in New Jersey and the end of the story is a dud unless she’s happy which I have no way of knowing. I loved this dog and her daily effect on me is ongoing.

Horses

I love and miss these horses and my relationship is very ancillary meaning that Honey is obsessed with them, and exceedingly gentle and it is reciprocated by a few of the horses in Marfa we visit almost daily. They let Honey cozy up and then sometimes just kind of dwell. Disco is maybe the great beauty of the bunch, but each of their natures is a thing unto itself which not being a horse person, meaning I don’t ride them is a new kind of fact. I just watch what they do with and without Honey’s influence. Her magnetism to horses is utter so for example driving cross country together we’ll be at some pit stop at the side of the road and suddenly she’s impelling me to go rushing forward on grass along some fence and there they are. The horse in the red crate here was just temporarily parked across from city hall and Honey just wanted to stay offering support and the usual trans-animal awe.

Pigs

This is Charlotte who lives in the Ironwood Pig Sanctuary in Arizona. In fact here is her address:

POB 35490
Tucson AZ

If you feel like spending a little money you can help feed and house and pay for medical care for one of these sweethearts. There are 660 pot-bellied pigs there making it one of the largest pig sanctuaries in the US. If you give Ironwood money you’ll get all the details of Charlotte’s story and lots of her cohort. You will love their monthly newsletter. Charlotte was roughed up by dogs which happens to pigs a lot. They often lose an ear or two. Pigs are abandoned either at home or just left to roam freely and be in danger. People get them cause they’re cute and then lose interest or during the pandemic people were and still are broke. So they feed themselves first, then their dogs then these guys. The stories of each of these guys is riveting and having a wide-ranging interest in pigs’ ways I’ve become a real fan of this place. Pigs live alone and in groups and Ironwood makes it possible for a pig to find their posse and then hunker down. It’s so right. Even ten bucks, just give it to a beautiful little pig or two.

Squirrels

live inside trees, and on them and alongside them as we know. But what happens when the tree goes. In the midst of the havoc created by the ESCR (East Side Coastal Resiliency) “plan” many big beautiful old trees are getting chopped down and these guys are losing their homes. You can see the fear in these squirrels’ eyes. Squirrels have been found dead in the park, surely some will be dashing across FDR trying to get to the shrinking number of trees on the other side and they will be hit by cars. One or two geniuses will get across. I think of all the habitat loss in the world right now and how bridges are one of the things humans can offer other species but that ain’t happening here. The squirrels are being pushed further north in the park until eventually there will be no park at all. There will be no trees. No homes for them, no air for any of us. When the city did an Environmental Impact Statement on this stupid plan they said the impact on the environment would be negligible. Well they didn’t listen to us, or birds or squirrels or trees. Who did they listen to? The panic in the dark eyes of this cluster is as articulate as hell.