Kilpatrick residents raise concern over stray dog population
Neighbors fear their home has become a dumping site for unwanted animals
KILPATRICK, Ala. (WAFF) - ”It’s heartbreaking. It’s frustrating.” Those are the words Jeanette Peterson uses to describe the influx of stray dogs wandering the Kilpatrick community.
Peterson lives in Kilpatrick and runs her own dog rescue. She says the stray population is becoming too big for her to handle.
“We try to help as many dogs and families as we can help families get dogs spayed and neutered so that helps cut down the population of the dogs that are running loose. But we can’t keep up with it. There’s just too many,” Peterson said.
Peterson believes these dogs are mostly being abandoned in Kilpatrick by people who do not want their pets anymore.
She and residents like mail carrier Jade Burke work to make sure the dogs are taken care of, even getting some of them spayed and neutered.
Burke says she takes bags of dog food on her mail route so she can help keep strays from starving.
“There’s new ones every day. You just can’t feed them all. We’ll take so much food and medicine and just whatever we can as mail carriers to feed them and just nothing helps. They’re just so skinny and they have bad mange and scabies.. it’s just horrible,” Burke said.
“For every dog we save, five more pop up that need help,” Peterson said.
Burke and Peterson say they have reached out to animal control for support, but nothing has been done.
“Animal control has, over the years come and help me, now they tell me that they have to have a property owner’s permission to set up a trap. You just get a lot of excuses. We want to do what we can but it takes the communities help,” Peterson said.
WAFF 48 News has reached out to the Dekalb County Animal Control to see what could be done to fix the problem, however the director was out of the office.
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