Dear Editor,

A while back, at around 4.30 pm, myself and GSPCA Inspector Colin Piper went to the High Court to pick up some animals. Coming out of the court, a man flagged us down and told us of a dog he had seen lying in the trench at the corner of Lamaha and Pike St. He said the dog appeared to have a broken back. The Inspector and I rushed to the area where the dog had been seen but it was not there. The GSPCA was closing at 5 pm so I returned the Inspector with the dogs we had picked up from the High Court.

When I got home, I couldn’t get the picture of the dog with the broken back out of my mind. I quickly got some food together and went back in search of it. I asked a few persons, including some school kids, but no one had seen the dog. Then I went to a shop where the owner told me she had seen a dog in the trench and she directed me to some people across from her.  I was given permission to enter the yard and to my sad disbelief the dog was lying on the grass and only her head, twisted to the side, could move. She had obviously once been very beautiful and I asked the owners of the house how she gotten to this stage. The man said he did not know. He said he pulled her out of the trench, after seeing her lying there for a few days, and started giving her food.

She then dragged herself to a street corner and then back into his yard. He gave her some antibiotics and some more food but was at a loss what to do next. I put some food on a Styrofoam plate which she ate with a lot of difficulty, not being able to pick her head off the ground. I told the man I would take her with me and he lifted her gently and put her into my car.

All the way to my house she kept staring at me with those beautiful brown eyes. I stopped at the home of a friend and animal lover, Bibi Narine, to show her the dog. Bibi said that same dog was at her gate a few days ago and her male dog was going crazy for her. She said she fed her and then she ran off.  Perhaps she made the mistake of going into the wrong yard to get away from the many males and met up with some macho monster who broke her back.

One never knows! I made her comfortable in my dog kennel, spoke with her, gently stroked her beautiful face and fed her milk with a syringe. Then she ate more food.

The next morning I took her to the GSPCA to be euthanized by injection. I stayed with her while the vet tech administered the euthanol to the vein; all the while the dog was staring at me, very calmly. With tears in my eyes, and a sense of relief knowing she would soon be free of pain, she died within a few seconds.

The two most common methods of euthanizing animals at GSPCA are shooting and injection. I prefer the injection method because they are taken into a room, it is quiet, quick and painless and does not distress the other animals in the vicinity. However, euthanization by injection comes with a cost ($2000). The person delivering the animal to the GSPCA should have the right to choose the method of euthanization, if they are willing to pay for it. Thank god this dog died by injection; thanks to Noreen Gaskin for covering the cost.

“The measure of a society can be how well its people treat its animals.” –Mohandas Gandhi.

Yours faithfully,
Syeada Manbodh