A month ago or so, when it was about 300 degrees in shade here in Indianapolis, I started wondering what I should do to help a dog that lives at a garage behind my job. He's always been there, chained to a wire fence where his owner works. It's like a small junkyard. The guy is there most of the time, but even when he's not, the poor dog is there, hiding from the sun or the rain under some old car, or in his old house made out of really old wood. Rain or shine, he's always there. You can even see his house on Google map, I'm not kidding. Look:
Anyway, I thought about talking to his owner, but you never know how people are going to react if you point something out to them, and since I work right there, I decided not to take a chance and have some dude mad at me. But there was no way I was going to let that dog just sit there.
I thought about calling Animal Control, but I think most of the time, IF they come to check your case, they'll take forever and they might take the animal away and just kill him, which of course, I didn't want to happen. So I was googling to see if I could find some other resource, or if there was anything I could legally do myself to get the dog out of there. That's when I learned about
FIDO: Friends of Indianapolis Dogs Outside.
They are an amazing organization of volunteers only that helps to improve the quality of life of dogs who live always chained outside. The volunteers don't come and take the dog away from you. They encourage dog owners to work with them and educate themselves about how to take good care of their dog, even if they have to stay outside part of the day. Considering that shelters are already full of dogs in need of adoption, the last thing they need are more animals to be taken away from homes if you can try to give people a new perspective first.
So I called FIDO and I left a message reporting about the dog behind my job. I gave them the detailed address, a description of the dog, the conditions he was living in, my name and phone number. A week later they gave me a call and told me that they would go and check on him.
The day after that first call, one of their volunteers called me again saying that she had went over there and talked to two men who work for an architecture firm next to the guy's garage. They told her that the dog's name was Paco, and the owner's name was Kenny. They also knew about complaints that had been made to Animal Control in the past. I guess nothing happened with that. She then went to where the dog was and talked to the Kenny guy and explained the issue. He explained that Paco sits under the cars when he wants to be in the shade and that he's his guard dog, but he's not vicious. C'mon now! For real! What kind of crap is that?
I haven't seen Paco for a couple of weeks now, and I was wondering if his owner had given him away or something, so I started feeling bad. But yesterday I got a third call from another volunteer working on his case. She told me that she went there to check on him again this week, and found out that Kenny took Paco home for a while, at least while it is too hot outside. He's also fixing his house in case he needs to bring him to work. Hopefully he'll give him a better life, but who knows.
Moral of the story: I'm going to start to volunteer for FIDO, because I think they do an awesome job. I'm also going to offer to redesign their website and try put their name more out there so people will know they exist. More and more I'm finding out that I really love this whole animal thing, specially dogs. Sometimes they make me happier than people. I would die for my Puppy. Me and him usually go to Petco on the weekends to walk and play with dogs that live at no-kill shelters. They are there every Sunday, and so are we.
Black Dog
