Lakeland Veterinary Services have been nurturing two small female pups after they were abandoned near a gas station earlier this month.
The clinic received a troubling phone call July long weekend from a concerned employee at the Esso in North Battleford. A young couple was walking in the alley behind the station and found two newborn puppies in a plastic bag in the dumpster. They brought the puppies into the store and put them safely in a cardboard box.
Veterinarian, Shawn Haas, arrived that evening to take the puppies, that were likely less than 24 hours old, evident by a still attached umbilical cord, he said. He suggested they couldn't have been there for long, as they didn't seem in bad condition, showing no signs of dehydration. They were only five ounces at the time.
"We've been hand rearing them since then, which is a fairly time consuming process," said Haas. "They need to be hand fed every two to three hours all day long and throughout the night."
The puppies are doing well now and are 15 ounces. One of the girls at the gas station asked about adopting one of the puppies and there has been interest in them as far as providing a home, but Dr. Haas and the staff at the clinic want to make sure this inexcusable situation does not happen again.
"From my perspective I'm just trying to get a message out there to the public that there are more humane ways to handle this," said Haas, suggesting animals be spayed/neutered before hand to prevent the problem in the first place.
"The animal shelter can take the animals once they are older, on solid food, if they even cared enough to keep the animals for the first five weeks until the puppies can be weaned, that would be a better option than this."
Although they don't encourage it, in desperate situations puppies can be euthanized which is, "Far more humane than letting them die in a dumpster," said Haas. "We need to place more value on an animals life than this."
