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Post by fureverywhere on Dec 6, 2011 10:01:03 GMT -5
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Post by lovemybully76 on Dec 6, 2011 11:20:58 GMT -5
She did the right thing IMO. Would the airline act the same way if she said something about a child that looked neglected? Probably not.
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Post by catstina on Dec 6, 2011 11:30:37 GMT -5
Terrible! I can't believe they sent the dog back to the owner!
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Post by johnr on Dec 6, 2011 13:16:51 GMT -5
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Post by melonie on Dec 6, 2011 22:04:47 GMT -5
Uhmmm I thought animals had to be healthy enough for transport no matter how they travel. (plane, bus, car) when being shipped. Cleveland had to pass his checkup and be vet cleared. You would think an airline would require current, (within 7 days) health check.
Oh, and I would choose the dog.
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Post by perfectpit on Dec 6, 2011 23:09:28 GMT -5
I am they allowed the dog back to the owner. Even though she refused to load the dog, she did follow the directive of her supervisor when being told to go home. Kudos to the lady who refused to put the pup on the plane. She should be given an award for saving the pup.
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Post by odnarb on Dec 13, 2011 16:43:46 GMT -5
I will admit that I was very skeptical of this story when I initially heard it. I read yesterday that the baggage handler got her job back. One day when I was waiting outside a grocery store with my late Harry, a woman got in my face about my skeletal Shepherd, and how horrible I was to abuse him. She screamed that she was taking my license plate number down to report me to AC, and all sorts of horrible things. My then boyfriend then came out of the store and started yelling back at her and things got really ugly. The truth was that Harry was always a thin dog, and he was about 10-months-old or so at the time, so he was going through a particularly gawky period. Not to mention that he was a Malinois, not a GSD, meaning that he was more slightly built. This woman was sure that I was abusing him terribly, though. I'm sure that anyone who knows me could tell you that Harry was far from abused. Here is a picture of him around that time... What one person observes as an emaciated, abused dog might not be the case. My mother always claimed my dogs to be bony, while hers was in perfect shape. Fact is, her dog was fat as a hog. What does this baggage handler think that a dog should look like? I live in the heart of bird dog country, and I can tell you that like Harry, Pointers tend to be on the thin side. A dog working in the brush has a tendency to get cuts and scrapes, especially the smooth coated Pointing breeds. Some veterinarian found him healthy enough to issue him a health certificate to fly in the first place. Other articles on this case state that the owner was not charged, and the dog was released and shipped four days later. The veterinarian who examined the dog thought that his condition was consistent with that of a dog that had just been out hunting for a week. This makes me think that maybe this baggage handler was a busybody like the lady that confronted me outside the grocery store. If there had been a report about a woman who had gotten in the face of some horrible animal abuser who had starved her German Shepherd, what would your reaction be? In this article, we really don't have much to go on other than what the baggage handler said. What if we had been traveling and a baggage handler had refused to load Harry because he was thin and had cuts and scrapes from his latest run in with a cat/barbed wire fence/who knows what with that dog? I would have been very, very unhappy. Maybe this dog was abused. It's hard for me to pass judgement, though, when I've been the one with the healthy dog getting fingers pointed at me.
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Post by catstina on Dec 14, 2011 11:41:56 GMT -5
Thanks for the response, Aimee. I hadn't thought of it that way, but you could be right. I have a coworker with a Munsterlander who is pretty thin. He's healthy, active and eats plenty. She can't bring him to work anymore because she got pestered so much:
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Post by sugar on Dec 14, 2011 11:49:29 GMT -5
I've gotten yelled at many times because of my dogs. My rottie had an awful and chronic skin condition that she was on antibiotics for for most of her life. When she had flare up her chest would ooze and look horrible. People yelling at me didn't know I was spending upwards to $250 a month trying to clear her skin problems. I also get verbally abused a few times because of Chubby hacked of ears. People assume I did that to him and have threatened to call the cops on me for dog fighting and animal abuse! I try to explain I adopted him that way and that he is very spoiled, but they don't believe me.
These things can be hard situations without all the facts/photos.
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Post by RealPitBull on Dec 14, 2011 11:51:35 GMT -5
I have had several naturally thin dogs - they were healthy, happy, just THIN (a GSD and a Siberian - I'm talking ribs and hip bones). So I can relate to Aimee's story and agree that one person's "abused" dog is another person's happy/healthy/well-cared for animal.
A lot of well-meaning but naive/ignorant people form snap opinions about animals.
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Post by catstina on Dec 14, 2011 13:22:18 GMT -5
Just take a look at this well meaning (but rude and just plain wrong) comment by Mitchell Ray on my picture of Saxon: Because of Saxon's super sensitive skin the collar has to be tighter rather than looser. Otherwise the collar rubs and he gets a really painful and terrible looking rash on his neck.
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