This is an article about how neighbors are helping take care of the animals in Glen Lyon's house while they wait for animal control to take them. This will also be my last blog for a while because our class has come to an end and I start my next one on Monday. Thanks for the great month and hopefully will be back soon!
Neighbors help animals locked inside Glen Lyon house
NEWPORT TWP. - The big mixed-breed dog drank thirstily from the cup of water Amanda Rake held up to the broken window.
"No, no, honey, you can't come out," she crooned, patting the dog's muzzle as others milled around in the junk-strewn, foul-smelling room behind it Thursday. "We're trying, guys. We're trying to get you out of this smelly hole."
Rake's boyfriend Robert Smith led an effort to ensure the eight dogs and other animals - four cats, two ferrets and a bird - in a vacant Glen Lyon house are fed and watered until authorities could do something about the situation. The Luzerne County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is meeting the owner's son Friday morning to collect the animals, SPCA employee Cary Moran said.
She said the animals weren't technically abandoned - a male resident of the house at 56 E. Main St. would visit in the evenings to take care of them - and although the house is dirty, the dogs seem to be in good shape. A neighbor has a key to the house and has been feeding the cats, which are locked upstairs.
"They're trying to do the right thing. It's not like they're really bad people," Moran said of the owners. "They got themselves in over their heads by taking in too many animals. Spaying and neutering would have been a good idea."
Moran said the SPCA was acting on a complaint by neighbors. Smith said he saw the dogs in the house for nine days, apparently without the owner stopping by, and decided to take action.
"It was just eating me. I couldn't sleep at night. I had to do something," he said.
After rigging up a system that allowed him to lower a bucket of water into the house for the dogs, Smith bought food from his own pocket, then put out signs and took up a collection from neighbors. He said he has collected $112 and six or seven big bags of dog food, which he plans to donate to the SPCA.
Moran said the SPCA has just two officers to cover all of Luzerne County, from Dupont to Hazleton to Newport Township.
And they have been busy this week.
On Monday, SPCA officers rescued 11 Australian shepherd mixes, a bichon frise and a tortoiseshell cat found malnourished, covered in feces and locked in a trailer Monday at the Petro Stopping Center in Dupont.
SPCA officers had their hands full again on Wednesday, when they responded to the Comfort Inn in Sugarloaf Township to find 21 cats, many in poor health, in one of the rooms.
"It is raining cats and dogs right now," Moran said. "Our shelter is so full. We're just not getting enough adopters through the door."
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