Patrick is starting to act like a dog.
That's the best news we've heard about this pup since he lifted his head and starting eating just about a week ago. Sanitation workers found this emaciated, dehydrated pit bull mix wrapped in plastic trash bag in a New Jersey trash bin the day before St. Patrick's Day. Someone had tossed him down the trash chute in a 22-story building in New Jersey.
“Someone had no more use for this dog," the American Humane Society reports on its website. "They had starved it to near death, put it in a garbage bag and threw it down the garbage chute.”
The dog weighed about 20 pounds, less than half of what he should have, and was not expected to survive. Veterinarians at Garden State Veterinary Specialists gave him a blood transfusion, some fluids, warming blankets and a lot of TLC. And they waited.
On St. Patrick's Day, he surprised them all by just hanging in there, and that's how he got his name.
Kisha Curtis, a 28-year old New Jersey woman has been charged in the case, and could be sentenced to a maximum six months in jail and a $1,000 fine if she's convicted on all counts.
That didn't seem like enough to Rachel Wolf, a Burbank woman who has now taken up the cause to have those laws enhanced and changed. Wolf started up a website and put up a Facebook page on Saturday called "Patrick's Law" which already had 15,000 "Likes" by Monday.
"I am getting dozens of emails from people who want to adopt Patrick," she writes. "Please take that generosity and adopt a dog from your local shelter!"
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She's in Burbank, thousands of miles away, and has never met this pup Patrick, yet she has been moved to start something up on his behalf. She calls it a "nationwide grassroots movement for stronger legislation (federal and state) to enforce, prosecute and incarcerate animal abusers."
Wolf is working on getting people to start up "Patrick's Law" chapters in every state, to "coordinate on a national basis, to move the Media and encourage Government officials to improve the protection for animals in our country."
It goes beyond Patrick.
"Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living creatures," Wolf writes on Facebook, quoting Albert Schweitzer, "man himself will not find peace."
