To All Those Well Meaning Neighbours

Every so often we are presented with an animal that is choking from eating a bone or the animal has a perforated bowel from eating cooked bones. In some of these cases, the owner admits that they are to blame, but in other cases it’s not the owner that’s giving their pet cooked bones.

There are so many cases where an over weight cat or dog is presented at the hospital where basically the entire neighborhood or the friendly neighbors have been throwing food over the fence in the belief that they are spoiling the animal.

The pet owners are usually fairly frustrated and in some cases (where the animal has to undergo expensive surgery) the owner is justifiably angry that their beloved pet has been placed in a situation where its life has been threatened and the owner has been placed in financial hardship because of the actions of others.

I have experienced occasions where good neighbors have literally come to blows or have ended up in court because of these ‘good intention’ actions.

I appeal to all of those good and caring people of the world to do some of the following;

1. Do not feed other peoples cats or dogs
2. discuss with the pet owner if they want you to feed their pet if you can not follow instruction #1
3. Do not feed any type of bone if you are having trouble with the #1 instruction
4. Use the councils rubbish collection to get rid of your scraps and not the neighbour’s dog or cat (another variation of the #1 instruction)
5. If the owner does not enjoy you feeding their animal, then please follow their instructions on what you CAN give them
6. If the animal is overweight – please refer to instruction #1

Noone who cares for the well being of animals likes seeing them suffer, especially if the suffering is caused or propagated by ourselves.

So, do yourself and the animal a favor and just start patting and talking to the animal. In the long term, EVERYONE will benefit