Truro man warns about danger of taking your eyes off your dog
Don’t let your dog out of your sight, warns Darryl MacIsaac.
He thought his dog Bella, a border collie-terrier, would be right back in when he let her out recently, but she was nowhere in sight when he checked back.
“She usually does what she has to and comes right back in so I knew something was wrong,” he said. “She stays on our property.”
After driving around for about two hours searching for her, he learned she had been taken to the Colchester SPCA shelter. The person who dropped her off said she had been on the street but MacIsaac, who lives on a corner, believes she was probably
still on his property.
Because there was no one who could release Bella back into his care on a Sunday he had to leave her at the shelter overnight, then pay a $147 fee.
The SPCA was serving as a pound service for the town when they took the dog in, and the town’s director of planning, Jason Fox, said there is a standard impound fee of $30 for registered dogs and $100 for those that aren’t, as well as a pound fee of $30 per day. Bella was fairly new to the area and hadn’t been registered at that time.
MacIsaac was concerned about Bella being given a vaccine by a shelter employee, as she already had been vaccinated. However, Dr. Melissa Aucoin of Truro Veterinary Hospital said this rarely causes problems and the benefits of giving dogs vaccines when they arrive at a shelter outweigh the risks. Most vaccines take seven to 14 days to become fully effective so new arrivals are kept isolated from other dogs at shelters.
Bella is an extremely friendly young dog who MacIsaac recently got from someone who decided they didn’t want her. He now doesn’t let her out of his sight for a moment when she’s outdoors. He doesn’t know how useful it would be to fence in an area for her.
“What’s to prevent anyone from taking a dog off someone’s property? People can open gates,” he said. “I just want to warn people because I don’t want other families going through the same thing we did.”
The town can also fine people up to $2,000 for a dog running at large.