dig by dog

Talking with Pam Porteous, manager of the Animal Care Network, for today’s story Volunteer group finds growing number of pets frozen to death was absolutely heart wrenching.

This freezing pit bull had to be euthanized

As sad as the published article is, there’s a lot about the conversation we had that I left out.
Take, for instance, Porteous recalling the most emotional situation she’s encountered during her regular visits trying to save the lives of Pontiac dogs.
“Last winter, we found one address with two dogs and we had continuously reported this address to the city,” Porteous said.
After last winter’s first major blizzard, the team of volunteers set out to visit homes in the city and make sure dogs were doing OK. They went to that house and found the heavy snow had snapped one of the dog houses in half.
A pit bull was inside that dog house, trying to take shelter. Once it broke, snow fell inside and around him. At some point, his back became frozen to the ground.
“He was on his back; still breathing, still moving,” Porteous said. “His eyes looking at us ... I think that hit everybody the hardest.”
Unfortunately, the dog couldn’t be saved. Volunteers were able to get the owner to sign over the dog to them, but in the end, he had to be euthanized.

This dog was rescued and adopted to a new home

Because the Animal Care Network volunteers don’t have any legal authority to seize animals or charge owners with cruelty, all they can do is try to reason with owners and sometimes, plead with them as well. Getting animals signed over is a “huge challenge,” Porteous said.
“A lot of these people claim these are their babies and they love them,” she said.
How those loving emotions can coincide with the way the owners treat their dogs is a mystery to Porteous.
“These people, they come and go, they see their dogs,” she said. “We don’t understand it. We’ll never understand it. We don’t even try to understand it anymore.”
After so many years of walking Pontiac neighborhoods, passing out dog food, providing dog houses and even helping arrange things like vaccinations free of charge to residents, Porteous said she often feels hardened to what she witnesses.
In fact, she said that at times, it’s a relief to see a malnourished, neglected or abused dog has died.
“The dogs we see in the backyards of these homes, they have a horrible life. These dogs just live on a chain, they don’t get fed or watered. They’re just languishing there,” Porteous said. “It’s not that we want them to die like that, but they’re not suffering anymore.”
More than anything else, though, Porteous said it makes her angry to find dogs frozen to death or so frost-bitten and hypothermic they need to be euthanized.

Pam Porteous, manager of the Animal Care Network

“There’s so many resources for food — we deliver food, we deliver straw — there’s no excuse,” she said. “I probably get more mad now than anything else because I tried so much already. I just get angry.
“If you couldn’t keep these dogs, couldn’t feed them, call somebody. Call us — we pick them up for free.”
All 15 of the frozen dogs discovered by the group this year have been pit bulls, a breed notoriously unprepared to weather cold temperatures.
Pit bulls have extremely short hair, no undercoat and in most cases, may be practically hairless on their stomachs and underside.
As the owner of a pit bull myself, I have a hard time imagining my dog trying to live outside. I told one my coworkers yesterday that, upon realizing he wasn’t going to be let back inside, my dog would probably die of heartbreak and a panic attack even before hypothermia sets in.
I can always tell how cold out it is by how quickly my dog manages to take care of his business and what his bark sounds like letting us know he wants back in.
The past couple of weeks, in these frigid temperatures, he’s hardly been outside for more than a minute at a time and barks anxiously, sounding quite panicked, until we let him back in.
It’s really, really hard for me to think about the poor dogs who don’t even bark about being outside because they’ve never known anything else. I just want to round them all up and plop them in front of my wood stove, wrap them in blankets and try to show them that life can be better than they know, and so can humans.

(Australian bushfires are big. Really big. source)

Hey Julie,

What an important topic to raise. Its so important that we stop to consider what animals are experiencing in times of natural disaster and rescue. 

It got me thinking about a different kind of natural disaster that struck my local community in February 2009, the series of bushfires (wild fires) that came to be known in Australia as the Black Saturday bushfires. 

It was horrible. 

One of the formerly forested ridges in the 2009 bushfire zone (source)

Extreme weather conditions, the lay of the land, an unexpected wind change and a series of fires that merged into one enormous front resulted in Australias highest loss of life as a result of a bushfire. The fires were only 15km (9 miles) from my house and had the wind gone in a different direction it could easily have been my similarly bushy home area that was devastated. 

There were many, many, many people, pets, other animals and wildlife who were killed, injured and/or displaced by this huge and devastating event.

But Julie, do you know what? Dogs helped. They really did.
In so many special ways.

A search and rescue dog and handler (source)

Volunteer handlers with their search and rescue dogs helped to locate the remains of people who had died trying to defend or take shelter in their homes, enabling identification that would assist with closure for the victims remaining families. 

We have evidence about how important the role of dogs and pets can be in our lives. Especially for children. The relationship children form with their pets has been shown to help modulate the effects of traumatic events like natural disasters. So keeping pets with families (or in a safe place that can be visited and where families know they are safe) is an important part of helping people cope in times of disaster.

Just by being present, many dogs were acting as unwitting therapists. Offering the opportunity for calming behaviour - like patting, which has been shown to result in lower blood pressure and heart rate in the person patting the dog - when people really needed it. 


One of the most remarkable things that the injured and displaced dogs achieved was acting as a catalyst to community engagement and resilience. 

The nearest animal shelter to the area devastated was immediately inundated by displaced large animals, cats, dogs, other small pets and numerous wildlife. You can read their account from page 40 of the article in Animal Sheltering magazine here. 

Happy was treated for burns at the shelter & featured in the media (source)

As the shelter had prepared for the possibility of a fire in the region, they were prepared to some degree. However, they found themselves immediately under pressure to find resources to house, feed and reunite hundreds of small and large animals with families who potentially (and very probably) had no homes left to return to. Within two days the shelter was inundated by offers of support from other vet clinics, community members, volunteers and people WANTING TO HELP THE DOGS (oh, OK, and the other animals!). 

(source)

A huge network swung into action sourcing and coordinating the donations of cages, blankets, food, etc. etc. from all over the country. This was an incredible feat given many of the shelter staff lived in the affected area or had friends/family affected. It gave the wider community a sense that they were contributing to help in some tangible way (enabling them to COPE on a psychological level with the awful reality) and also helped the affected area feel that people were aware of their situation and there to support them.

So important.

Komar D. (1999) The use of cadaver dogs in locating scattered, scavenged human remains: preliminary field test results., Journal of forensic sciences, PMID: 10097372 

Yorke J. (2010). The significance of human–animal relationships as modulators of trauma effects in children: a developmental neurobiological perspective, Early Child Development and Care, 180 (5) 559-570. DOI: 10.1080/03004430802181189

Blue G.F. (1986). The Value of Pets in Childrens Lives, Childhood Education, 63 (2) 85-90. DOI: 10.1080/00094056.1986.10521747 

Vormbrock J.K. & Grossberg J.M. (1988). Cardiovascular effects of human-pet dog interactions, Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 11 (5) 509-517. DOI: 10.1007/BF00844843

Cherry K.E., Silva J.L. & Marks L.D. (2009). The Psychology Behind Helping and Prosocial Behaviors: An Examination from Intention to Action , Lifespan Perspectives on Natural Disasters, 219-240. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4419-0393-8_11

Lyons R.F., Mickelson K.D., Sullivan M.J.L. & Coyne J.C. (1998). Coping as a Communal Process, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 15 (5) 579-605. DOI: 10.1177/0265407598155001

Irvine L. (2007). Ready or Not: Evacuating an Animal Shelter During a Mock Emergency, Anthrozoos: A Multidisciplinary Journal of The Interactions of People & Animals, 20 (4) 355-364. DOI: 10.2752/089279307X245482 

Emergency Animal Welfare Plan (Department of Primary Industries Victoria)

Pets and bushfires (Country Fire Authority, Victoria)
© Mia Cobb 2012