Dog dies in kennel!!!

[ralphie]

Dog dies
in kennel
Couple warns pet owners to be wary of using collars in cages
By ANTHONY COOPER

KINGSTON - A young Valley couple wants to warn fellow pet owners about a bizarre hazard they had no idea existed until recently.

Mark Messom and Noelle Langille of North Kingston found out that putting a dog into a wire kennel with a collar on can lead to a pet owner's nightmare.

The pair had left their young dog home alone inside his kennel for less than three hours when he was killed in a freak accident. Otis was the couple's first pet as a couple.

Mr. Messom had been working a 12-hour shift at Michelin while Ms. Langille was stepping out for about two-and-half hours to attend a college class.

Otis, a rambunctious fourteen-month-old beagle, was placed in his wire kennel in the basement as he always was when no one was home.

As a puppy, Otis had loved to chew on the walls and furniture. But Mr. Messom and Ms. Langille live in a rented home that they have to keep from getting wrecked.

"I came home," Ms. Langille recalled Sunday, "and there was a really bad smell. He had emptied himself. And I was so ticked off. I thought, 'You made a mess of that cage!' But then I got down the stairs and saw why. He was hanging there in the cage."

Otis was hanging by his dog collar from the top of the cage, dead.

At first Ms. Langille refused to believe he was gone. She thought if she could only get him down he would start breathing again.

She called her father who lives nearby and then tried to pull Otis free.

He was so tangled up that Ms. Langille's father ended up having to bend some of the wire bars in order to get the collar loose.

"He fell with a loud thunk, and I knew he was gone," Ms. Langille said.

"It was the worst thing I've ever seen."

Otis had been trying to get out, Mr. Messom said, and somehow pushed up hard enough to break the welds on three metal spokes at the top of the cage so that they lifted up about a centimeter.

Then in his efforts to squeeze through the tiny opening, Otis looped his dog collar around the lifted wires. His body weight pulled the wires back down and there was no escape.

The couple had purchased a cage meant for large breeds in order to give the dog room to play, so it was too tall for the small beagle to touch the ground to hold himself up to avoid suffocating.

"He tried so hard (to hold himself up) he broke his (back) leg," Mr. Messom said.

"He was quite a dog. One of the best I ever had."

Ms. Langille is still haunted by the image of her little dog hanging there. "I have the basement horrors," she said.

Since the accident, the pair have been telling their friends not to put dogs in kennels with a collar on. They also contacted the Texas company that manufactures the cages and suggested they put a warning on the box.

The couple recently picked out a new beagle, named Cletus, from an area breeder.

"He never wears a collar unless he's outside," Mr. Messom said, and "he has a plastic kennel."

[gaddylovesdogs]

We have one wire cage and one plastic cage. I have been very weary of leaving collars on when I'm not around. I feel so sorry for these people .

[Lil'Paws]

OMG. How sad.

[WingedFoal]

Oh that's horrible. That poor woman for having to find out that way.

[ralphie]

I take my dogs collar off when he is in the cage now!!

[Rip's Girl]

Oh how horrible.

My dog's collar is always off when he goes in his cage for that reason, he always jumps up and could easily get his collar/tag hooked on the cage.

How awful for that woman to have to find her dog like that, though. That would haunt me forever.

[poodlesmom]

How sad!!

One of the 1st things the gal who runs the obed. school stresses at the initial class of every session is to never put any dog in a kennel with a collar on. She also goes so far as to say never let dogs run free playing together with collars on either as in the rough housing they could get tangled with dire consequences as well.

[Alexis]

I never leave collars on my dogs when I am not able to supervise them. As Poodlesmom said, dogs can get tangled up in eachother's collars while playing. That unfortunatly happend to a friend of mine. She had an adolescent golden and a puppy. While she was gone, the older dog got his tooth stuck in the puppy's collar and the puppy ended up getting strangled. Terrifying. So, my dogs go collarless when they are home alone!

[sunny98]

I have heard of other stories just like this one. It is very sad. I agree never leave collars on dogs when they are caged. I do leave Sunnys collar on when I am gone but she is not caged and her collar is loose enough to slip off her head. In fact she has done just that many times!

[holly13]

This is awful, so sad. I have a friend who came home to find her dog had strangled himself, not because of a collar, but because he forced his head thru 2 prongs of the wire kennel. After he got his head thru, he could not back himself out, and strangled. The wire cage was large, he was a Samoyed, very large dog. I am partial to the plastic and grate kennels. My sisters 110 pd shepard knows how to hit his metal wire kennel just write and pop the door wide open.

I take the collar off Kyaio when I am home, but I'm terrified to not have it on her when I'm not home. My grandmother lost her dog when a serviceman came into the house, dog got out, no collar. I am always afraid of not having proper identification on her, she does have a chip. I also don't kennel Ky, I have been lucky to never have to , she behaves so well even when I'm not home. I think I'm spoiled.

[eskilady]

My niece lost her puppy in one of those freak accidents also. she had a puppy and an older dog and they would play alot. They went out one day and the dogs were loose in the house, the puppy with a collar on. while racing around in play, the puppy's collar got caught on the arm of the dining room chair as she ran by and it broke her neck. My niece was pregnant at the time and came home to find the puppy hanging from the chair. It was not a nice thing.

[gaddylovesdogs]

Originally Posted by holly13

My sisters 110 pd shepard knows how to hit his metal wire kennel just write and pop the door wide open.

My Lab does that. She was crated during a thunderstorm (poor girl doesn't like those, very scary ) and was freaking out because of all the thunder. She just head-butted the door open so now we have to block the wire cage door, lol. Plus she taught the other two how to also and they've banged the cage up pretty bad, we have to keep fixing it.