Amid record-breaking temperatures and headlines about “heat domes,” I worry profoundly about dogs like Cash, who spent his life deprived of relief from extreme weather—and everything else—while chained to a tree in North Carolina. Legislators there are considering Duke’s Rescue Act, a bill that would restrict tethering—a move we should all ask our own state legislators to make, given that millions of dogs like Cash are suffering across our nation.
“Food. Water. Play. Every single day.” The words were spray-painted in impossible-to-ignore lettering across the doghouse that my fellow PETA Community Animal Project fieldworkers delivered to Cash, like those we frequently bring other dogs kept chained and/or penned outdoors in northeastern North Carolina.
For the average canine guardian, these daily necessities are no-brainers. But for Cash—whom I found emaciated and dehydrated earlier this year—food and fresh water hadn’t come his way for days. And “play”? All that his owner appeared to play with was Cash’s life.
My coworkers and I had been visiting Cash for years. His owner repeatedly refused to surrender custody of Cash to PETA, despite the dog’s persistently poor condition. Local law enforcement didn’t intervene. So, PETA did what we could. We brought Cash straw bedding every winter and flea and tick preventative every summer. We filled his empty water bucket too many times to count. We transported him to and from a neuter appointment, vaccinated him, and secured treatment for his lesions, parasites, diarrhea, and dehydration. We patched up and expanded a pen already on the property so that Cash could be freed from his chain. All this was free to Cash’s owner.
