The Los Angeles Times reporter Martin Zimmerman wrote how even responsible owners were desperate, caught between a new home or apartment where the landlord won't permit pets and the old home where the pets must remain until the final closing date, as an owner desperately looks for a new home for the pets.
You see these pet ads in Craiglist popping up. Foreclosures in California are at record levels so the problem is replayed more often. Rescue organizations are getting desperate calls. Brokers like Leo Nordine find abandoned dogs at least once a month. If the dogs are lucky, they'll still be alive. Maybe Nordine will get the neighbors to take the pets in or a public or private rescue group. One shelter manager reported a 16 percent increase in owner turn-ins.
According to Zimmerman's article, the owners are unlikely to be punished. With only a name and a disconnected phone number, no one has the time to track these people down.
All three writers indicate that finding rental housing that accepts pets isn't easy, particularly dogs. From my own personal experience, this isn't because of heartless landlords, but rather a result of negligent renters with pets making current landlords wary. Soiled and/or torn carpets and chewed-on wood cabinets or stairway rails, ruined gardens and angry neighbors and even abandoned pets make landlords hesitant to rent to pet owners.
With this current economic downturn and high rate of foreclosures, these stories of animal abandonment are likely to become more common. There is no kindness in allowing an animal to starve to death and ownership responsibility shouldn't be passed off to a stranger. Pets should not depend on the kindness of strangers; they depend upon the kindness of their friend, their owner, even if that kindness means sentencing the animal to death.
Wasn't that what Disney's Old Yeller was about?
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