Dead dog left to rot on street corner
"The Department of Health provides an essential service; surely the strikes should not affect this department. If it has, the municipality needs to make a plan very quickly. It's a health hazard,"
For the past week, what was left of a dog decayed to almost nothing where it was left on the corner of Drakensberg Drive and Allen Street.
A resident informed she had seen police on the scene last Saturday, and had seen the dog lying on the ground, breathing rapidly.
“I assumed they were helping the poor dog,” she said. “I am an avid animal lover and I would have stopped myself, but I thought they would deal with it. The next afternoon, on Easter Sunday, as I drove into town, I saw the dog still lying there,” she continued. “I did not stop originally to help the poor animal as I had assumed the police would call for help.”
The animal died shortly thereafter and can still be seen lying next to the road, now a full week later. What remains is a heap of fur and bones, covered in flies and ants.
According to Heather Gero of the SPCA, Department of Health workers had come to collect carcasses to be destroyed from the SPCA office, and must have driven past the animal everyday for the past week.
“The SPCA will be contacted by the police in cases where the animal is still alive,” said Mrs Gero. “If by the time we arrive and the animal has expired, we will remove the carcass. In this case, we were never contacted, for what reason, I don’t know.”
Mrs Gero added that the SPCA had also contacted the municipality, and she knew of several residents who contacted officials, to no avail.
“The Department of Health provides an essential service; surely the strikes should not affect this department. If it has, the municipality needs to make a plan very quickly. It’s a health hazard,” she concluded.
