Friday, September 13, 2013 - By Anonymous - No comments
Pets, Involvement, and Awareness
If you read our last blog post, you know that we are constantly in awe of the ways in which residents go above and beyond to help one another with issues they collectively find important. We wanted to highlight a few reports that capture the caring sentiment one would hope to see in all neighborhoods and communities. The following issues all involve a pet, but as Ben mentioned in his post yesterday, we consistently see this level of involvement in a diverse collection of reports.
This report of a seemingly abandoned dog, tied up with a leash behind a New Haven high school, quickly caught the attention of community members. The first individual to comment immediately volunteered to come and stay with the dog while a few individuals, including a local Alderman, helped sort out the situation with Animal Control. SeeClickFixer "Robbin" brought food and water to the dog and reported on the comment thread that the dog was tame, and happy for food, attention, and water. "Robbin" later posted after Animal Control had come to retrieve the dog:
I was happy to help...and it was nice to see so many other people helping out as well...great neighborhood involvement...another great thing about New Haven! The officer...was familiar with the dog and said it belonged to a homeless man, and well taken care of normally—he found it odd the dog was left since midnight, so perhaps something happened to the guy. But animal control responded pretty quickly—and took her with them, leaving a note for the homeless guy if he returns...It took a network of community members to help this dog and shed light on its history.
Around a week later, another example of great neighborhood communication and involvement surfaced on the site. This report about a loose dog in New Haven is awesome because the communication amongst neighbors started before the report was put up on SeeClickFix. The individual who posted about the dog hadn't even spotted the pet herself—she had received a text message from another individual who had seen the dog and she felt compelled to publicly share the information.
The first comment revealed that the dog, who had been in the care of a community member when the report was posted, had transferred hands and was with an individual who was putting up "Found Dog" postings around the internet. The dog's owner was found the same day and the individuals who had helped along the way expressed their delight that the dog was reunited with its family. We were also happy to see a neighbor who hoped to collect the owner's contact information so that she could directly get in touch should the dog ever get loose again.
The final post we would like to share with you is about an elderly cat named Tom. After he went missing, his owners submitted a report.
We have not seen our elderly cat "Tom" since Monday (9/9) in the am when he went outside...We are thinking he might have gotten stuck in a garage or something. He is a very loved family member and any info we can get will be appreciated...Before we tweeted about Tom, a few neighbors had already commented with the message that they would be on the lookout for him. We periodically monitored the post for updates and were so excited when we saw this comment a few hours later:
We have your sweet kitty! I left a message on your answering machine, email or call me...and we will bring him over! In the meantime, he is snoozing in a safe and cuddly cat bed in our apartment...but we are so happy to have seen this message and are eager to reunite sweet Tom with his family!! :)Tom's owners commented that they would pick him up after work. Turns out he is eighteen years old!
We love all of these examples of community teamwork and look forward to seeing many more posts that exhibit such exemplary qualities of the human spirit.
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