18/11/2025
Cricket
I spotted a dog on outreach one day, tied up in a small homeless camp right beside a road. It was a beautiful mixed breed dog, about 50 lbs. It had a 2-piece dog house, which was laying over on its side. I stopped and there was a man there. I gave him supplies for the dog, along with our information. It was a female that he said had "found him". He had brought there and tied her up.
We continued monitoring this dog and her dog house was consistently on its side, the dog would have no water, there was f***s all over because she never had any room to move around. This was when the city first took over animal control and we finally reported this. All of the information that we could get at the time was that animal control told the guy he had to get a rabies and city license for the dog. We feel that the sanitation issue should have been addressed at the very least.
We kept monitoring this dog and trying to improve things. We took her straw for her dog house, which was consistently laying on it's side. She was tied up with a raggedy cable. We got her onto a tie-out cable; however, we frequently found her caught on the edge of the stone wall.
One day, it was pouring rain and we drove by to make sure she was in her dog house. She was not. Her cable was caught on the rock wall, she could barely move and she was soaking wet. Oh no! She’d obviously been like that all morning and it had been raining for hours. We got her untangled, put fresh straw in her house and got her fed. This was not going well at all over here. The guy was here about ½ the time and he wasn’t taking care of this dog.
One day, I pulled up and there was an adult tennis shoe all caught up in her collar and hanging off of her neck. The guy was there that day. I told him he needed to get that off of her. It was tangled horribly and I asked him how long it had been like that and he mumbled, “I don’t know, maybe a week.” It took him forever to get it undone and off of there, but I stood there the whole time and waited. This was unreal. This dog was in trouble.
The next week, we saw a KCMO Public Works truck at the campsite, talking to the guy. We know what this means-we’ve seen it a hundred times. They were giving their warning that they would be coming back to tear down the camp. We’ve seen everything from giving people 1 day to 3 days to a week later. You just never know when they are coming back. We knew this dog was in real trouble. We could come back the next day and they would be gone, into the wind. Happens all the time.
The next day we went over to talk to the guy about the dog. He was not there, of course. The dog was tangled again. We decided that we needed to take her with us this time. She was struggling and was in serious danger of falling through the cracks.
The next day, we drove by the camp and it was bulldozed down. Everything was gone. Boy, that was a close call. Thank God this girl was safe at Chain of Hope.
We named her Cricket and she was delightful. She just absorbed our love and attention, and we gave her plenty! She was so grateful to be here. We had her in our quiet isolation room so she could decompress from her previous life. She loved the play yard, after being caught and tangled all the time. She was free!
That following Saturday, Chain of Hope celebrated our 15 yr. anniversary! It was a beautiful evening and so great to see so many friends.
The next morning I came in to open our facility and take care of the dogs. When I got to our iso room to let Cricket out, I found her dead on her dog bed. It looked like she had just fallen asleep. I could not believe it. I was more than shocked. I couldn’t even process it. We were devastated. It was unbelievable. Since it looked like she had just fallen asleep and never woken up, we highly suspect a cardiac issue. So incredibly sad. Our hearts were broken, our spirits were crushed.
We did not do an autopsy. We put her to rest. There is now a cricket drawn on the wall of the iso room in honor of her. We will never forget her. RIP Cricket. We loved you very much.
