Two weeks ago, the Thrissur office of the People for Animal Welfare Services (PAWS) started getting calls about a dog in pain wandering about Ollur. The dog, said the callers, had tape wound around its mouth and seemed to be in pain, unable to open its mouth to even drink water.
The dog, about three years old, was at last found in Ollur junction in Thrissur by members of PAWS, who rescued it and took it to a hospital. “We thought that a single wrap of the tape was made around the dog’s mouth. But when we found the dog, there were several layers of tape, wound so tight that it had almost pierced deep into the skin and the bones around the nose had become visible. As soon as we removed the tape, the dog drank two litres of water,” says Ramachandran, secretary of PAWS, Thrissur.
A dog found with several layers of tape wound around its mouth :(. It went around like that for two weeks before being rescued by PAWS, Thrissur. pic.twitter.com/qYVStp87Ep
— Cris (@cristweets) June 7, 2020
The team could not find the dog for days after the calls. It seemed to be afraid and must have been hiding from people, Ramachandran says. It is obviously a domestic dog, for it still has the collar used for pets in houses. “We can’t say who did this. The dog might have barked continuously and someone might have wound a tape around the mouth to stop the barks. It might have wandered away from the house and entered another. So far, there have been no calls to enquire about the dog by anyone claiming to be the owner,” Ramachandran says.
Dogs can survive for a few weeks without food, says Ramachandran, who has found some dogs trapped in wells and being able to live as long. But they get noticeably weak. “This dog has been given antibiotics and is getting stable now. We will be giving a police complaint,” Ramachandran adds.
Last year, a white Pomeranian dog was found abandoned outside a market in Thiruvananthapuram after the owner apparently had a problem with an 'illicit relationship' the animal had with a dog next door!