'Pay up or this dog dies!'
Alet van Zyl, Beeld
Randburg - If someone stands at your car window and threatens to kill a puppy unless you buy it, you should refuse.
That's the advice of Mandy Cattanach of Randburg's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA).
"If you buy the dog, you're creating a market. The sellers wouldn't stand next to the road the whole day for nothing," said Cattanach.
According to her, this new practice has become increasingly common since last October, with people from townships where animals regularly give birth in the street, using the new arrivals to persuade motorists to buy kittens and pups at busy crossings.
Cattanach says the "sellers" often dangle the dog by a paw, or its neck, and threaten to strangle them unless the occupants of the car give them up to R200.
"People pay up to R500 because they feel sorry for the animals, but it doesn't help because it (the animal) is just replaced by another," she said.
Since the beginning of January at least six cats and dogs have been confiscated by the SPCA and metro police.
One of the kittens died of dehydration shortly arriving at the SPCA.
Charged with animal abuse
Metro police confiscated two pups on Tuesday that were only about two weeks old at the William Nicol off-ramp on the N1 motorway in Johannesburg.
The pups had not yet cut their teeth and should still have been drinking mother's milk. They were covered in fleas, lice and ringworm, and constituted a health hazard.
Metro's Wayne Minnaar said the man was arrested and charged with animal abuse.
They were investigating if he'd previously committed a similar crime.
Most of the bogus sellers didn't have food or water to give the baby animals.
