Dash, Dot and Dog Traps

The last three days have involved a lot of interaction with dog traps, as it turns out.

We hired a local company to help us trap Dot, and the only way they would do it was to come on Saturday morning and set the trap. They did so, and she walked in and tripped the gate mechanism within about 20 minutes. So, she was trapped. And stuck in that trap until Monday morning when we could take her to the vet for her spay.

Meanwhile, Dash was enjoying himself in the yard with his mom and little brothers. They all get along very well, and are very cute together. But he's not at all willing to let humans touch him, so we had been worried about how we were going to be able to catch him and get him to the vet on Monday with his sister.

So, this weekend was spent mostly out in the carport with Dottie in her trap, sitting with her, talking to her, and sleeping with her so that she wouldn't panic. She seemed to be most afraid of being alone, and having someone out there with her calmed her right down. We gave her treats, which she mostly ignored, and ice cubes - which she loved. The first thing she had done when she was caught was to destroy the two plastic bowls that were in the trap - and we couldn't get anything as big as a bowl in to her without risking her escape. So, it was a mess. I slept out there with her both nights - sleeping on the driveway is uncomfortable, even with the little mats I had to sleep on, but it was better than having Dottie crying all night long and even more traumatized.

At long last, Monday morning arrived. I tried to think positive, happy thoughts of success in terms of catching Dash, but that was to no avail. So, we had to take Dottie in and tell them that we weren't able to get our hands on Dash.

Luckily, the lady at the vet who has been helping us (she's a volunteer for Animals' Crusaders in Tucson, the only rescue group who cares about feral dogs, I think), once again came through. She had a trap she loaned us, so that we could set it out in the back yard for Dash, and she moved his appointment to Tuesday morning.

John and I set the trap with bait=hot dogs (argh - had to buy hot dogs at the supermarket! ugh!), and then left Dash alone in the yard with it. Since we had tried to catch him in various ways earlier this morning, he wasn't going to have anything to do with us - and he wasn't going to come near any weird trap-looking thing, at least as long as we were around. So, John left and I went inside and waited.

Two hours later, I heard the 'clunk' of the gate closing in the trap, and went out to the yard to find Dash sitting in there, wondering what the heck he'd gotten himself into. John was able to come home over the lunch hour so we could move Dash in his trap to the carport, where it's cooler and sheltered from any rain we might have.

So, we again have a dog in a box in the carport, one more night. It's good, but I was so looking forward to being done with this whole trapped, panicky, puppy gig! And it turns out that Dot has sarcoptic mange - which is curable with treatment, but is infectious...so we'll see how Dash and everyone else does. We may have to end up treating a lot of dogs for mange, since we don't have a way to separate Dot away from everyone else, given that Roxie and her pups are already segregated from Zero, Sally and Gator. We've maxed out on our ability to segregate dogs.

The big question that neither John nor I know how to answer is this: what happens to Dash and Dot in the long run? We haven't been able to come close to finding homes for the eminently adoptable Roxie, Pan and Iorek - and D&D are not at all close to being adoptable in any reasonable sense. They may never be. There is no room at the Animals' Crusaders shelter, and no other shelter takes ferals; several animal rescue types have told us that they'd recommend killing D&D, because they're not going to be placeable. We've taken that option off the table - but we don't have a workable option to substitute it with. Yet.