To the Editor:
In the evening of August 10, my daughter found a small loose dog in Oak Bluffs. She had just dropped a friend off and was heading home on Barnes Road. The dog was in the road chasing passing cars and looking obviously distressed.
My daughter pulled her car over and called to him. He was overjoyed and jumped into her car. After calling the number on his tags and getting no answer, she called Communications to report it and was told that Oak Bluffs has no animal control officer, and the police would not respond. She asked what she should do, since she had a strange dog in her car, and she couldn’t just throw him back out.
The person taking the call told her they would call Edgartown animal control and have her pick the dog up at our house. So, she drove home with the dog. Needless to say, the Edgartown ACO was not happy to be dragged out of bed to respond to an Oak Bluffs call. She did come and take the dog.
I’d just like to know what Oak Bluffs expects people to do in these cases? Certainly if the town is not going to support having animal control, they have some protocol as to who responds to these things.
If it was your dog, you can thank Martha Scheffer for being the only person who stopped and helped your dog. Don’t thank OB, whatever you do. They could have cared less.
Jessica Burnham
Edgartown
