The local celebrity pig that slipped off of its leash last month at Colby College is still loose and wandering around town. The pig has left campus, however, and has been spotted several miles away. This morning there is a news story about the pig in the local paper and how he has shown up in a residential area, and about the efforts of the residents to capture it. They have been feeding it dog and cat food, and the pig will come up close to them but won’t let them touch him.
I do hope that before winter comes the pig will allow someone to give it shelter, I don’t think it can survive the winter without a warm dry place to live!
Today’s local newspaper had another sad story about animal cruelty in the area. In this case the owners apparently simply abandoned the house with dozens of cats, dogs, and other animals left both inside and outside the house. The article does not say how long the owners had been gone, but the article does say that the police know who the owners are; they just haven’t released their names yet. I’m guessing that even though they know the owners that they think they probably won’t be able to find them.
I understand that people are reluctant to take their animals to local animal shelters. I think that is because the animal shelters charge people a fee to leave their animals there, and people sometimes just don’t have the money. But this is truly a very sad case. I think perhaps the animal shelters should revamp their system of charging people money for leaving their animals there.
I read that on Thursday a man in New York was in the process of loading his dog into his vehicle when a street sweeping machine rumbled past them, sweeping up the dog in the process. The poor little dog was crushed in the monstrous machine! What a horrible fate for that poor little guy! The owner is understandably heartbroken; I would be devastated myself to lose a beloved pet in such a manner. And to add insult to injury the agency in charge of sweeping streets simply offered their condolences on the loss of the dog! I would be so very angry over that! I would have expected at least an offer to replace the dog with a new puppy!
I think someone has dumped an unwanted dog by the road near where we live. I have seen this strange stray dog wandering around the neighborhood for about the past week. I’ve checked with all of my neighbors, and they say they’ve seen it too, but don’t know who it belongs to. I’ve checked the animal shelter for reports of a missing dog, and looked around for “lost” posters, and they have no reports at all of the dog being reported as missing, so I really think that they dog was abandoned. The dog is a very good looking dog, I have to expect that perhaps there were some kind of behavior issues that resulted in it being dumped. I’m going to try to get the dog’s trust and see if I can coax it to come to me at some point so it doesn’t get into trouble. I know one of my neighbors raises chickens and they said if they catch the dog in their chicken yard they will shoot it, and I really don’t want that to happen!
The annual college roomie reunion might be in Oregon this year, probably in mid-August. We want to rent out several ocean-view (or better yet ocean front) houses close to one another so we can have our own space when we need it, but be close by to each other when we want to party with each other! Sara has been checking out Oregon Coast Vacation Rentals over the Internet, and she tells me that she has found a rental agent that has over 150 rental houses available on the Oregon Coast for us to go through and pick out the ones we like the best. Their website has a live webcam of Lincoln City that we can go to look at the current weather if we want to.
They have some houses that are pet-friendly, which is important, because at least one of our roomies will insist on bringing her dogs with her. I’m not going to want to bring any of our pets; it would be too difficult to transport them all the way from the East Coast to the West Coast just for a couple of days vacation. I think the hassle of traveling with them that distance just won’t be worth it to me! So I’ll just ask a good friend to come stay at our house and pet sit for us.