TEXAS CITY — Hurricane Rita was just beginning to batter Texas City with heavy rain Friday evening when Elizabeth West saw the black Labrador retriever running up and down her street screaming and crying.
“Just screaming!” said West, who rode out the storm with her husband, four children and four other people inside her Southpoint Subdivision home.
“I’m sitting here crying because I’m trying to get this dog out of the rain.”
West put on her rain jacket, grabbed a bowl of dog food and placed it out for the dog. The wind blew the bowl away, spraying the food around. It didn’t matter to the black Lab, she said. He ate the soaked food anyways.
Saturday night, the feeding of the dog turned into a potentially expensive act of kindness. West was given three municipal citations because the dog did not have identification tags, didn’t have a rabies vaccination tag and was running at large.
The tickets could cost up to $500 each.
Animal control officials say West was interfering with their attempts to round up the dog.
It was Wednesday afternoon when Elizabeth first noticed the dog running loose in her neighborhood.
“It’s really sad that people would just leave their dogs and not take them with them,” said West’s husband, Greg.
The dog would come drink out of the bowl left for the West’s two other dogs, she said. When she tried to approach it, the dog would run away.
At about 10:30 p.m. Saturday animal control officer Wendy Bardwell was in the West’s neighborhood working an animal cruelty case when West approached her about the abandoned dog.
West said she told Bardwell about the dog’s situation and asked her for help.
Bardwell contends that West cursed at her and was interfering with her job. Each time she would get close to the dog, Bardwell said, West would call the dog away.
West said she was only trying to help the officer catch the Labrador.
Bardwell said she gave her the three tickets because West continued to interfere.
Under Texas law, she said, a person who feeds or provides water to a dog for 72 hours is considered the owner of the animal. So, technically, Elizabeth is responsible for tagging the dog and keeping its shots up to date.
Bardwell said she knew West was trying to do the right thing and admitted that the citations for identification and the vaccination might be thrown out. However, the loose dog ticket might stand because she “continued to interfere with me doing my job,” she said.
“It’s up to the judge at this point,” she said.
“It’s a real sad deal that you get a ticket for trying to help a dog,” Greg West said. “I’m not saying I was totally right, but in the situation we were all in at the time, I don’t think I was doing anything wrong.”
