Willful abandonment

Don Famico has been finding forlorn dogs tied to stairs in Salem, just around the corner from the Northeast Animal Shelter. Farther north, Carol Larocque is fielding calls about hungry cats that are showing up on doorsteps on Plum Island, and not leaving.

In Middleton, Betty Heckman is rounding up frightened dogs -- mostly pit bulls -- that appear starved and lost.

The days around Labor Day have become high season for pet "dumping," when animal control officers across the region rescue furry and feathered creatures that have been abandoned in vacant apartments and seasonal cottages, shoved into boxes and dropped in unlocked cars, or left to wander the woods. The numbers of these castoffs appear to be rising, say officers, who are increasingly finding area shelters too full to take the animals.

The widely publicized dog-fighting case of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick sparked a national outcry recently about animal cruelty, but most cases of animal abandonment, abuse, and neglect never make the news, say the men and women who work the front lines of animal protection. Rarely are the owners who dump their pets identified, much less prosecuted. And yet, willfully abandoning a pet is defined as animal cruelty under Massachusetts law, punishable by up to five years in state prison and a fine up to $2,500.

"It's so time-consuming to bring a complaint . . . that you are just glad you got to the animal and maybe found a good home for them," said Jim Lindley, animal services officer in Beverly, who finds that most abandoned pets are dumped in the city's wealthy and wooded Beverly Farms area.

The Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals doesn't keep statistics on animal dumping, but Peter Gollub, the society's director of law enforcement, said based on what he has been hearing from local control officers around the state, the MSPCA believes it is on the rise.

"I have to wonder if economics isn't playing a role," said Gollub, who thinks the increased cost of housing and the rising number of home foreclosures that have uprooted families may partially explain the uptick in animal abandonment.

Larocque, Newbury's officer, believes money plays a pivotal role.

"It's so expensive now to take a dog to the vet," she said. "Let's just say a person gets a dog and the dog does not work out and they try to turn them back. The breeder won't take it back, and the shelters are full. They are putting them on a waiting list and the waiting list is so long, and then they charge them a large fee."

On any given day, the North Shore Animal Hospital in Lynn has half a dozen abandoned dogs, and even more cats, that have been brought in by area animal control officers.

"The problem on the North Shore is that the Animal Rescue League moved out a few years ago and that has left people with no place to take" their unwanted animals, said hospital manager Lauren Lacey. The hospital's staff relies heavily on the passion and persistence of area animal lovers to find the strays new homes.

"We are working with a lot of one-man bands," Lacey said.

Since the rescue league closed its shelter in Salem about four years ago, Famico, the city's animal control officer, has seen an increase in the number of pets dumped near the Northeast Animal Shelter, which also is in Salem, and has a policy of not euthanizing pets it accepts. The problem, say animal control officers, is that the overflowing shelter is increasingly unable to accept most pets.

"If they refuse them, people will go around the corner and tie them up, and how any one can do that to their own pet, it's beyond me," Famico said. "To tie your dog up you've had for 10, 14 years to someone's doorstep. Maybe they're at their wits' end."

As officers deal with the increasing numbers of abandoned pets, they are also regularly juggling calls from concerned citizens who want authorities to rescue neighbors' pets because they worry they are being neglected or mistreated.

Tom Flanagan, a longtime Boston police officer who is now an investigator for the Animal Rescue League of Boston, teaches animal control officers around the state to follow through on calls about neglected pets because they may prove to be a sort of canary in the domestic coal mine.

"People leave dogs outside, it never goes into the house, totally unsocialized. So many times you knock on the door, develop a rapport, and find out there are other things going on that don't lead to a good lifestyle," Flanagan said. "The more that we dug into these things, the more we found other things -- senior abuse, child abuse, so many of these things are intertwined."

Flanagan has come across so many of these cases, he has written a book, "Silent Victims: Recognizing and Stopping Abuse of the Family Pet," which was published last year.

The state's animal cruelty law was beefed up in 2004, increasing the charge from a misdemeanor to a felony.

Still, there is plenty of gray area in the law. Animal protection specialists note that the updated version requires animal owners to provide "proper food, drink, shelter, sanitary environment, or protection from the weather, " but leaves the definition of "proper" open to the interpretation of animal control authorities.

"The tricky part is having to define animal cruelty. Everyone has a different opinion of what cruelty is," said Scott Giacoppo, the MSPCA's deputy director of advocacy.

"When I was an investigator, I went to plenty of homes where the dog spent the entire day chained to a dog house, was given food and water, but had no toys, no interaction, nothing but a big chain on his neck. He had his shots, and that complied with the laws," Giacoppo said. "But is that cruel? "

Kay Lazar can be reached at klazar@globe.com.

NorthTalk
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