SHELTER & RESCUE

Dumping Bins Catalyst

DUMPING BINS - THE CATALYST

I'll never forget that newspaper clipping.  A reader had sent it for my ShowSight column but sickened, I laid it aside.  The AP story was about a Tennessee humane shelter with a pet dumping bin.  The photo was gruesomely disturbing.

Barbara J. Andrews, Publisher TheDogPlace, Sept. 1998

Went on with my day. But the photo haunted me.  A father holding his little boy over a steel dumpster so the child could drop in a little brown puppy he dangled by one leg.  I kept seeing the puppy struggling upside down, his soft baby ligaments tearing, his big brown eyes wide with terror as he heard the death wails of the other dogs.  I could imagine the puppy's gasp as he was released to tumble down into the melee of agony below.

The father's face kept popping into my thoughts.  He was grinning!  The little boy was braced against his dad's thigh but held tightly around the waist so that he could lean way out over the steel bin to drop the puppy down the chute into the black hole.  Had his father lifted the black steel lid over the puppy-sized opening?  It must have been like grabbing a hot iron.  Maybe the photographer caught this shot in the morning...

Thankfully, the child's face was not visible.  Didn't matter.  What I saw was a child learning the rules of a society wallowing in self-centered indulgence, violence, and animal cruelty.

Thoughts tumbled like demons.  Sure, we're a throw-away society.  So why not throw away a puppy?  And, stupid me, isn't it perfectly logical that we would dump garbage in a dumpster?  To that family, the unwanted puppy was nothing but garbage. 

How long could a dog survive in that steel bin?  Hopefully the puppy's little heart would have failed from fright as he landed among the angry, frantic dogs.  The heat-crazed dogs inside that black bin would dispatch it quickly.

The photo showed a gap of about an inch around the bottom of the dumping bin. I stared at it, wondering how much air could come in through that slot, then realized what the air temperature would be as it radiated off the black asphalt, super-heated by reported temperatures in the high nineties, bouncing off the brick wall of the "humane society" building. 

Surely the dogs (and cats?) thrown in there would die quickly.  That must be the point!  Death in the dumping bin saves money - no gas chamber, injection or whatever else they might use at that "animal shelter."  Thinking... lower payroll and less care because a rendering plant could just come and pick up the bodies after the sun had done its work.  Surely that's why this dumpster was hidden out of sight behind the "humane society"? 

The reporter had received a tip and said he didn't have long to wait that Sunday morning.   His third graf said local people were working to stop it but that it had been that way for a long time...  My husband found me crying.  He made it worse by telling me he had seen something almost as bad in the next county.  A dumping bin right here in North Carolina?  Yes.  He hadn't told me.  Didn't want me to know, nothing we could do, the animal shelter was a good customer...

Bill drove to the Rutherford County Animal Shelter and took photos. Look closely, see the signs?  The dog or cat must be shoved through the opening to drop from a height of over six feet!  Well OK, credit to Rutherford County, they put signs up so you know not drop a litter of kittens down into the dog cage. Sure. No kid would think doing that on a dare or just because he wanted see the fun… At least the animals can get air if they survive hitting the pavement and the mauling sure to follow.  Bill said if the pet is too big to lift or shove through the hole, they are usually left tied to the fence.

I called and spoke with Officer Reeves because the Animal Shelter is operated by the Sheriff's Department. He assured me pets are "taken inside within a matter of hours, even on the weekends when the shelter is closed."  I didn't ask him how working people could adopt.  Didn't want to interrupt him as he said the "shelter vet comes three times a week but if the dog or cat is injured bad enough, the staff is trained and can go ahead and put it to sleep by lethal injection."

The deputy sounded like a regular guy. A family man. Protector of the community. Said that part of his job "made him sick." I asked him how many pets are dumped at the shelter? He said over 5,000 pets per year. The city and county population is only 56,918 people!  That's a 10% pet abandonment rate? 

A week of mental torment ended when out of the blue, I was given the best possible means to fight this.  Politicians, budget managers, idiots; they only listen when their jobs are in jeopardy!  It takes a big voice to get the ear of a corrupt law-maker. It takes a lot of voters to get an ego-driven politician to stop stumping long enough to actually do something for the constituents whose vote he seeks. 

So now you know how TheDogPlace came to be. I know nothing about computers but the internet is here!  TheDogPlace will be the voice of the people and it is the sound of OUTRAGE.  It is your enlightened voice that will serve the dogs, the people, and Projects we have planned.  If ever there could be a shred of good out of something so horrible, then we owe a callous father and the depraved officials of one Tennessee town a debt of thanks.

My sanity came back because I found a way to deal with the horror. I hope you find a way too.  Ignoring monsters doesn't make them go away.

Barbara "BJ" Andrews
Photographer, Bill Andrews

Soon after this was published, Rutherford County Animal Shelter did away with the dumping area. Now, if and when they are open, you can dump animals in the office.  If you find something similar in your area, TAKE PHOTOS, get quotes, and report it to Editor@TheDogPress.com