Is starving your dog because you are broke right?

I have this friend who is a dog breeder; he has been a lover of pedigree dogs (dogs of pure line not mixed breeds). He once had an accidental mating of his Bull mastiff with a local dog. It happened that the female bull mastiff ran out of his compound for two days while she was on heat and was found on the third day. He went ahead to mate the female dog with another bull mastiff but when the bitch whelped, the puppies came out with suspected traits of a local dog. He called me normally to inform me that his dog just whelped and on arrival he told me his dog just whelped and that I should help him check them and possibly do what was necessary.

At first sight at the puppies, I asked who the father of the puppies was; he quickly removed his phone to show me a huge handsome bull mastiff. I took another glans at the puppies and asked him if another dog possibly did something. Then he started asking me why I said so then I pointed at characteristics that showed that the puppies are possibly mixed. I only hoped things will change and maybe I will be wrong but 6 weeks later it was very obvious that the handsome bull mastiff failed to contribute to the appearance of the puppies. After this confirmation, the truth was now revealed and I was then told about the disappearance of the bitch before she was taken for mating.

That 6^th week marked the beginning of the suffering of the puppies. The guy became totally irritated by the puppies. He stopped giving them full attention & started to starve them at some point. To the extent that if you drop a chunk of meat to the puppies they will fight and wound each other just for that meat. He continued to feed the bitch very well with can food but locked the puppies away. I got concerned after his neighbor called me out of pity to complain about this treatment to the puppies. I had to come in person to see for myself. You will cry seeing these puppies. I just went home and placed a call to him (owner) to ask him why his puppies are losing weight. He simply told me that he is broke and can no longer feed the puppies. I quickly asked why their mother was looking well fed and his answer was that she was more important to him than the puppies.

Being broke can be a terrible experience especially when you don’t have hope of getting by. In Nigeria people live more communally than most western countries. Nigerians tend to help each other more maybe due to the fact that we embrace Christianity and Islam that preach love and care for neighbors. Even at that, no one is above being broke no matter the status.

Starvation on the other hand is a horrible thing to any human being because it can cause so many issues both psychologically, medically and otherwise. It can make anyone to do all sorts of things both ethical and unethical just to have something to eat.

Dogs on the other hand are very similar in behavior to humans when starved. They can fight and possibly kill each other for a piece of food. They can start straying outside just to find something to eat. They are most likely to ignore commands at this point due to the biting hunger.

So being broke with dogs that need food under normal circumstance can be a huge dilemma to a caring dog owner on how to save his dogs from such horrible experience. But what prompted this article is not being broke for real but claiming to be broke as an excuse to starve your dogs.

I am writing this article because many dog owners in Nigeria here are in the habit of favoring on dog against the other in terms of feeding. Some of them, especially dog breeders place more emphasis on feeding dogs that give them better money against others that don’t. They will rather invest more money on the former and totally ignore the later claiming to be broke.

If you own dogs and are genuinely broke, it is not bad to give these dogs out to those who can care for them but if you so love and want to keep the dogs, there are other ways to feed these dogs other than buying food. People go to restaurants to book for leftover meals for their dogs and you can do same until you can handle it financially. God will even bless you further for making such attempt to feed your dog or dogs. But if you are in the category of the people that starve dogs due to the fact that they don’t appeal to you, I want to beg you to please give those dogs to someone that is willing to do so. Thank you.