They just keep coming

Jodie, whom Sandra believes is another of Maggie's puppies and this little girl showed up yesterday. Summer is the time so many dogs are dumped at the beach. We are desperate for help! Nothing is being done to help this situation! The dogs keep coming - and then they either "disappear" by us rescuing them or by animal control taking them away. But we KNOW where the dogs are that we rescue - where are the dogs animal control takes away? What is happening to them? And why is NO ONE understanding that this is only going to keep happening over and over and over until there are changes made in the system BEFORE the dogs get to the beach!?!? Just sweeping them up like garbage and killing them is an ignorant, uninformed, and nonsensical policy. Why not help the situation BEFORE the dogs get thrown away by instilling responsible pet ownership and providing low cost spay and neuter services? I'm telling you, I could give a 2-minute description of this situation to my 6-year-old niece and EVEN SHE would be able to come up with a solution - as opposed to a non-effective bandage that would continually get soaked and infected and need constant changing! It completely baffles me why the Puerto Rican governmental agencies that are in office to deal with problems exactly like this one are completely inept with coming up with any viable solution. Until now, the only "solution" we have seen proposed is to have animal control trucks come to the beach a few times a week, catch the dogs and take them away to be euthanized. This it NOT a solution! It's an insane treadmill that will never stop. THE DOGS WILL KEEP COMING UNTIL SOMEONE TAKES THE TIME TO EDUCATE THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP DUMPING THEM!!!! What is so complicated about this concept? How much do you pay to hire animal control workers to spend hours on the beach each week setting traps for dogs and chasing them through the woods? How much fuel does it take in those trucks to travel back and forth to Humacao? How much does it cost for each euthanization of each dog (though I am convinced this is not done at all properly)? Wouldn't it be so much cheaper to just teach people that dumping their dogs is wrong AND illegal? To educate them that spay and neuter is good for the animals, not harmful to them? To provide low-cost spay and neuter services the citizens could utilize? To provide public awareness and education in the schools that animals are not inanimate objects - that they feel pain and get hurt and should not be treated like garbage?

Welcome to my morning pre-caffeine rant. These are the things that circulate through my head all night long, every night as I attempt to find a few moments of sleep - sleep used only to recharge my body so I can spend the next day frantically trying to pick up the "trash" for selfish people who refuse to pull their heads out of the sand. Maybe that's the solution - start dumping PEOPLE at the beach and see how quickly a solution magically appears!