Potcake Pups

[RamboLiberal]

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Skinny, haggard, homeless dogs who wander the streets searching for scraps are an all-too-common sight in countries all over the world. In the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands, such dogs are dubbed potcakes because locals feed them caked remains from the bottoms of their cooking pots.

Believed to be a mix of Labrador retrievers, German shepherds and English fox terriers, most potcakes have sweet faces, mellow temperaments and short, difficult lives. The dogs have been shot and poisoned by police because officials on the tourism-dependent islands view them as nuisances. But their numbers have kept growing anyway because of a dearth of low-cost spay-and-neuter programs and animal shelters on the islands.

Several years ago, Providenciales resident Jane Parker-Rauw reached a breaking point. She couldn’t handle seeing yet another dog hobbling around with gunshot wounds or sickened by rat poison. She had to do something — anything — even if that something was small.

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Potcake Place, the rescue organization Parker-Rauw founded, became a registered charity in 2005. It has no budget and no paid staff, with the exception of one Haitian man who receives a nominal fee for bathing the dogs and cleaning up their droppings. The charity’s work is straightforward: Parker-Rauw and a handful of other volunteers take a multitude of potcakes into their homes at their own expense until the pups can be placed.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38434562/ns/today-today_pets_and_animals/

[BrklynLiberal]

1. It is awe inspiring to know that there really are such big hearted people in the world

I wonder how many tourists would still be going to those islands if they knew that the officials were shooting and poisoning dogs instead of providing the care and rescue that they deserve?

Thanks for posting this.