The warden has gone home; the bite victim has gone to the emergency room. I follow the victim's wife down the dark country road to where the dog waits. It's a bad scene--a young chow mix, matted and covered with beggar's lice, lies exhausted in a snare along a barbed wire fence. The elderly couple had been feeding her for two weeks; she's been too shy to get too close. Tonight they saw her in the snare, illegally set in our city, and the bite happened as they tried to free her.
I'll have to cut her loose to get her into the van, and not get bitten myself. I put the control stick on her neck, and she struggles furiously. The snare is of braided wire, the wire cutters too small. It's a race, she's got to be freed before she chokes. Finally the snare breaks, and I lift her through the fence. Oh, no! In the tall weeds, a coil of barbed wire, wrapped around her body and her tail. She's still now--barely breathing. Cut, struggle to cut--eight times to free her and she's still festooned with barbed wire. Onto the van and released--still breathing? Is she okay? Yes, breathing, but oh, so still.
At the shelter, I quickly set up a cage--water, food, hoping she's okay when I go to get her out. She's sitting up, so it's back on the pole. Gently, slowly, coaxing her out. She panics again, twisting and crying. "Please, sweetie, it's okay. Just let me bring you in, you'll be okay." She collapses again just inside the front door. Now there's enough light and, unresisting, she allows me to remove the snare and the pieces of barbed wire still entangling her.
I finish the paperwork and check on her. She's sitting up! Unbelievably, her tail begins to wag. Shyly, hesitantly, she comes up to the bars as I sit on the floor next to the cage. And when I touch the cage, she sighs and leans her head against my hand. Deep down inside, I feel the wound in my heart that never quite heals here tear open once again, and I try to tell her how sorry I am.
I cried on the way home. Having saved her tonight, I must put her to death in the morning. She bit a person--not from meanness, but from pain and fear. Because the people she once trusted dumped her on the outskirts of town, there is no choice. She'll have to be tested for rabies, and the horrible task falls on me.
All I can see is what I saw in her eyes as she leaned against my hand--a desperate hope, an unrequited need for a loving touch. And I am powerless to undo what was done to her by the person who abandoned her, the person who failed to spay her mother, the person who set the illegal snare. We're both the victims of uncaring, irresponsible, and downright cruel people who will not, as I will, lie awake tonight wondering when this sort of pain will finally end.
--Animal Services Officer Bruce McKane