Animal control? I am sorry, but ... Don't Make Me Laugh!

It is now nearly 24 hours Since Betty was attacked--twice--by an overly aggressive and uncontrolled black Lab. And for 18 of those past 24 hours I have been trying to lodge a vicious dog complaint with the people responsible for animal control.

It is now very much less than pathetic.

The municipality where the attack occurred, and the municipality where the owner and dog actually live, have both outsourced their animal control efforts to the SPCA (Quebec) and the Humane Society (Ontario).

The local SPCA (jurisdiction for the actual attack) at least gave me a number that I could call and leave a message with the complaint. (In the 18 hours since I left the message I have not heard back from them.)

The Ottawa Humane Society (responsbile for the area where the dog and owner actually live, and where they will be returning in about an hour or two after a nice weekend holiday at a cousin's cottage) does not even have a number listed on their web site, in the phone book, or in the voice mail complete listing of departments for their Animal Control department.

The fact that I cannot reach somebody to report two unprovoked and vicious attacks to anyone (I called the police in both regions first, and they said 'we don't do that any more') has me quite a large amount more than pissed off.

What angers me the most is that when I visited the cottage where the owner was visiting for the weekend to say that my vet had said that I must report the dog, or he would due to the nature of the attacks (the multiple atttack without provocation), I could not get out of my car as the dog was roaming free and unmonitored on that property. I had to wait in my car for somebody to come out and call the dog off. (To be honest, I cannot say he was behaving in a threatening manner or that I HAD to wait, but after what I had seen from that dog in the afternoon, there was no way I was getting out of my car until somebody had their hand on that dog's collar. You make think that wimpy of me, but so be it.)