Little Mel, the frozen skittish little Poodle mix that I managed to corral on Melvina Avenue just before Christmas is now affectionately called ‘Buddy’ and his new family absolutely adores him.
He and his new canine pal Benji get along marvelously, and they both now wear cold weather sweaters as they romp and play together out in the backyard of his new home. His story is linked below:
However, poor Cookie, the tiny Chihuahua/Terrier mix that has been living on the grounds of Cook County Jail for over a year now is very sadly still out there today. Katie and I have been attempting to trap her for several months now, with no success. She is extremely skittish and afraid of people, and to make matters even worse, on New Year’s Eve three Animal Control employees came out and chased her all around the complex with a Catch Pole, traumatizing her even more.
I had begged the person who called them not to, but he did anyway. Human beings will never out run any dog in any open area, and chasing after them only makes them more skittish and more traumatized – you would think that Animal Control personnel would know this by now.
And then when the sub-zero temperatures arrived last week with the 40 Below Wind Chills, we really thought that we had lost her, and that we would find her frozen little body lying dead somewhere on the complex. But I soon followed her tracks in the snow to a large clump of bushes on the grounds, and I eventually discovered that she had either dug her own burrow or she had used an old fox den to escape the brutal weather and to somehow survive. As I was about to give up on her as dead, she poked her adorable little head out of her lair, grabbed the tidbits of food that I had placed in there for her, and then immediately retreated back underground.
She remained in her deep underground lair for four days and nights in the brutally cold weather, only emerging periodically to gobble up my food offerings at her lair entrance, and then quickly ducking back inside. In her captive hunger, she crawled halfway into one of my traps on two separate occasions, only to be severely startled and scared off by someone walking or driving by her den.
And now that the weather has warmed again, this homeless little dog is out and about once again, forlornly wandering the enormous Cook County Complex, refusing to enter our carefully baited traps. And despite all of our verbal pleas and posted signs not to feed her, the people working there refuse to listen to us, and I am sadly finding food everywhere around the complex again, since Cookie is once again being sighted all around the grounds.
Most dogs will only enter dog traps when they are extremely hungry, and unbelievably, I found an entire roasted chicken that someone had tossed into the bushes yesterday. Besides refusing to stop feeding her so that we can finally catch her, the employees of Cook County are even feeding her chicken bones, which may eventually choke this poor street orphan to death.
An illustration of a deep underground fox den similar to the one that Cookie used to survive is attached. This poor dog has a tremendous survival instinct, and she deserves a far better life than she currently has – as do all of the far too numerous abandoned street dogs out there today.
A happy post script to this story is that Ed emailed me today (19th February 2014) to let me know that one of his co-workers had managed to rescue Cookie. That put a huge smile on my face. Pauline
A Morning Kiss
A morning kiss, a discreet touch of his nose landing somewhere on the middle of my face.
Because his long white whiskers tickled, I began every day laughing.
Janet F Faure
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