A Mother's Plea for Help!
I am a mother to hundreds of orphan children. Before you run and contact child services, let me explain. I feed, vaccinate, spay and neuter and care for pet colonies. They are my babies. Every day, rain or shine, I feed and take care of each and every one of these abandoned animals. However, I am not alone in this endeavor. Many have heard this call to action and have taken part in the bigger picture. We do not just do it for the individual animal. We make this sacrifice to reduce the overall homeless pet population. The only problem is that cities like Miami are still stuck in their old ways, drawing the community into a costly, endless cycle of trapping and killing. Trappers can be paid more than $700 per job!
Currently, more than four million dogs and cats are killed in shelters each year. In Miami Dade-County alone, hundreds of dogs and cats are euthanized each day. Even worse, the economic downturn has caused many families in Miami to either abandon their pets or take them to animal services. This has caused their numbers to balloon out of control.
Many pet owners choose to abandon their pets at local parks instead of taking them to shelters where they only have days to live. For a while, the Parks department was very empathetic toward these families who were forced to make this incredibly difficult decision. I am one of many who voluntarily care for these abandoned park animals. In the past, these animals were not removed from parks unless they posed a threat to people. As a park official once told me, “these parks are huge; if I didn’t see you everyday I wouldn’t even believe that there were animals here.”
This past week, after over 20 years, the Head of Miami-Dade Park Services, Jack Kardys, has decided to take this choice from us. People are not just losing their jobs, they now are forced to either abandon their family pets on roadsides to either be hit by a car or to take them immediately to animal services where healthy pets only have days to be adopted. We are paid nothing for our efforts nor do we ask others for money. We care for these animals and try to do the best that we can to make a difference. We are willing to continue to make the sacrifice, all we ask you to do is to sign our petition and to pass it along. Catching and killing pets, the traditional method of many communities, does not and never will work. Please tell Mayor Gimenez (mayor@miamidade.gov) and Director Kardys of Miami-Dade Parks (kardys@miamidade.gov) to stop the trapping and euthanizing of pets at the Dade-County Parks.
