Cases show animals undergo many forms of suffering

The range of animal abuse cases in the Rio Grande Valley is broad.

Neglect. Outright, intentional torture. Dogfighting. Cockfighting.

From leaving a horse in a hot field for days with no fresh water, to kicking a dog to death in a fit of rage, to throwing two roosters or dogs into a ring to fight to the death, the intention behind an animal’s abuse is all that seems to vary. In some rare and bizarre cases, people have been charged with sexual abuse of animals.

Nicole Nicotra, a pet advocate in McAllen, has seen too many cases of animals being "thrown out the door to fend for themselves."

"People will not neuter their animals, and then they have puppies or kittens and they are just left to fend for themselves," Nicotra said. "The animals don’t have nutrition to make healthy babies. The babies aren’t healthy. If they make it at all, they become food for some other predators – raccoons, possums, neighborhood cats, neighborhood dogs trying to survive – because there’s no one to take care of them.

"You’ve got dogs giving birth in a hole in the ground in 100-degree heat. That is just not right."

One especially horrific case occurred a few months ago down the road from Cinderella Pet Rescue in Mission. Suzanne Herzing, owner of CPR, said someone tossed out a plastic bag bearing the decaying remains of at least one puppy and what she believes was the mother. Another puppy lay nearby, barely alive.

"He was just a solid coating of mange, and so emaciated," Herzing said. "You picked him up and he was just limp. It was really horrible.

"But he survived and he turned into a beautiful dog," she said. "He looks like he might be part Rottweiler. We’ve got a picture of him before and after ... boy, what a drastic difference."

Dee Labunski, executive director of Tip Of Texas K-9 Rescue in Harlingen, regularly sees horrible cases of abuse.

One man drove up to the rescue with a dachshund in a garbage can and asked her to put the animal to sleep. The dog was covered with mange, his condition so bad that no hair was left on its body. The man had used a remedy many believe will cure the problem: dipping the dog in motor oil. When that didn’t work, she said, he wanted to have the dog euthanized.

Dr. Sherri Wooding, the veterinarian at the Brownsville Spay and Neuter Clinic next to BARCC, said motor oil can indeed kill some types of mange, but it also is very toxic.

"They do it a lot around here," she said. "In fact, we have dogs with scars on their backs, where they put the hot motor oil on it and it burned the skin. It’s a very bad, bad idea. It’s very toxic to the liver, and if they lick it, they get really sick."

Labunski took the dachshund and asked the man to leave. She then washed off all the motor oil, had the animal treated for mange, and within two months all its hair had grown back. The healthy dog was adopted by a proper new owner.

One day, Labunski said, a pug with its eye popped out was dropped off at the Brownsville Animal Regulation and Control Center in Olmito (also known as the City of Brownsville Animal Shelter). An employee contacted Tip of Texas, which agreed to pay for the work needed – removal of the eye, administration of vaccines and neutering, among other needed care.

"There have been numerous dogs who have been rescued with embedded collars – sometimes an inch into the flesh – that had to be surgically removed. It had grown into the skin," Labunski said. "That is just neglect and / or abuse on the owner’s part."

Herzing, too, had just such a case recently. Someone had placed a plastic-coated cable around the neck of a Labrador retriever when she was a puppy. But they never bothered to loosen the cable as the dog grew.

"It was so far into the meat, you couldn’t even see that they had the clip still in there," she said. "When we put her up on the counter to get it off, we had to dig in there to get at the cable to cut it out.

"The bizarre thing is, she turned around and licked my hand," Herzing said. "Like, if somebody were doing that to me – it had to hurt – I’d have been biting and screaming. But she just was so tolerant."

The dog, Labigail, recovered from the ordeal, and in a big way.

"She has been adopted," Herzing said with satisfaction. "She’s in a great home, she’s doing great."

Nicotra said people too often tie up their dogs outside to guard the house. If not done properly, this can be a form of abuse.

"How many people have an animal out on a chain in their front yard or their backyard and they say, ‘Oh, it’s for protection,’" Nicotra said. "Well, explain to me how it’s going to help you when it’s on a six-foot chain, it’s just about collapsed from heat. It’s got no water, it’s got no shade."

Animal rescuers have the burden of dealing with sick people, as well as sick animals.

"Time to time, rescuers hear of an animal having been raped by a person," Nicotra said. "There was a dog awhile back, just torn up and bleeding, a real mess, that someone gave to a rescuer and said it had been raped by a neighbor. People are reluctant to talk about things like that, afraid of retaliation from the offender. How do you prove it unless you catch them at it?"

ABUSE FOR SPORT

Cockfights, too, are a problem in the Valley. The extent of the problem is evident in the presence of farms where fighting cocks are being raised beneath small, steep-pitched, triangular-shaped shelters, said Omar Garza, chief of misdemeanors for the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Department.

"It’s a rampant problem down here," Garza said. "By seeing all the ones that are raising the cocks, you can tell that they don’t raise them for eggs."

Law enforcement can’t prosecute people for having a field full of fighting roosters. People must be caught at a cockfight before they can be prosecuted. But that is easier said than done because the fights don’t take place at the farms where the roosters are raised; they take place on isolated ranches, and people generally do not call police or the Sheriff’s Department to report that a cockfight is under way at a specific location.

"I’ve never had to prosecute one of those personally," Garza said, "but it’s one of those things, when they hear about it they’ll go out there and do a raid or something like that.

"By their nature, the guys that go to those things don’t want the cops to know about it. They like to go see this stuff."

Joe Serrata, a former livestock officer for the Cameron County Sheriff’s Department, said people have called him to retrieve fighting roosters, and while he was still working for the sheriff’s department, he was called out to a place that had fighting roosters and chickens.

"They actually had incubators and things of that nature, and we seized them all," Serrata said. "This was a tough deal. They were storing illegal aliens there, too, to boot."

The people running the operation got spooked and took off, leaving the animals abandoned. Someone called the authorities, telling Serrata, ‘Joe, you’ve got to take these animals and feed them or do something, because we don’t believe the owners are coming back."

One man who is engaged in cockfights, and who would not reveal his name because it is illegal, conceded that cockfighting is cruel, but maintains there is more to it than that.

"It’s an art," he said. "There’s a lot of money invested in each one of these animals and a lot of training goes into them. So basically, the rooster that is successful is going to fight for his life. It’s like the bullfights. It’s an art. The only thing is that, here, they are banned. It’s like the bullfights, the bull also gets killed. So if you really think about it, that’s cruel also."

Sibyl Simpson, president of the Brownsville Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said her organization has rescued animals that appear to have been used in dogfights.

"One rescuer, just a citizen, was going down a road and saw a vehicle pitch a dog out the window," Simpson said. "It was a moving vehicle. It was thrown from the vehicle, and they tried to pursue the vehicle to at least get the license plate number."

The failed to catch the culprit because the car was going so fast.

"But they went back for the dog," she said, "and the dog had road rash on it, of course, and wounds like perhaps it had been fought. It was a pit bull."

The pit bull currently is being fostered, and Simpson believes the foster family probably is going to adopt her, even though it can’t be around other dogs because it is "dog aggressive" after having been used in dog fights. She’s great around people, though.

"She’s a real sweet dog with people and kids," Simpson said. "She recovered from her injuries. She had heartworms and she’s been treated for that. The thing is, that’s probably why she was thrown out."

Most rescued dogs are heartworm positive, which is a devastating disease that is expensive to treat.

"Oftentimes, people get a diagnosis and just throw their dog away," she said.