This is mad and it is all over the news media this morning both online (hugely) and offline in The Times. It is also on the radio. I think the woman in the mobility scooter is just a bit thick (sorry for being rude but I believe it to be true). She’s blind to what is going on behind her and she assumes that her overweight dog is jogging along behind the scooter, tethered as they are to it.
Please click the link to see a still image from the video.
And please click on this link to see the video.
Woman drags dog along road behind her mobility scooter
People in the vicinity were aghast and tried to stop her. The footage was captured by someone in a car who pulled up alongside the woman to tell her that her dog was being dragged along. The footage looks horrific. And it was horrific which is why it is uploaded to a page where there are no adverts as advertisers would object to the ads being next to such a video.
A man can be heard telling her: “You are hurting your dog”. She looks towards the man and says, “Sorry”. But apparently didn’t hear what the man said. The man repeats himself and says: “Bro, the dog is going to die, you know bro?”
Then another bloke chips in. He can be heard repeatedly telling her to stop and said:
“The dog is going to die.”
The black-and-white dog can be seen moving their legs but unable to get a grip on the road and unable to keep pace. The road was damp apparently which may have helped by lubricating the contact between dog and road minimising injury.
The police and RSPCA are involved. The RSPCA said: “This video is very shocking to see. It has been brought to our attention and is now being looked into by our experienced officers.”
And the West Midlands police said: “We’re aware of a distressing video circulating on social media involving a dog. We are told it happened somewhere in Erdington, Birmingham, within the last few days. We are currently looking into this to see if we’ve received any reports and will also liaise with the RSPCA.”
A quick search online tells me that this is not a unique event because I saw a video of an American woman on a scooter dragging her dog behind her. She did stop but she has no excuse because she could easily see that her dog couldn’t keep up.
As I said at the beginning, I’m convinced that this is not a case of malicious and intentional animal cruelty. It is almost certainly an example of carelessness and an assumption by the woman that her dog can keep up. Her basic method of exercising her dog was badly flawed as she’s going too fast, and it looks to me as if her dog is overweight.
As you can imagine, the comments on social media I’m very critical of her with people demanding that she be banned from keeping animals for life and that sort of thing, which may be too harsh. That punishment would be suitable for deliberate cruelty but for ignorant carelessness it would be too severe a punishment in my view on this occasion.
The dog has been rescued and is with a foster carer. 🙂
Yep, thanks Tamara. Good ending. And now what about the woman?
It was in the Metro and Daily Mail but neither said anything about the woman. I think she has dementia. After watching the video she acted like she had no idea what was happening.
Yes, dementia or thick. Certainly, out of it to do that.