The guilt I have as a human is immense. Up until now, I never thought too hard on the term “neglect” for how my family treats our animals. But I realize now, you may not abuse them, but neglect is just as bad. We have four dogs, a cat, and 9 chickens. Theres a mother dog and father and two siblings.

Never in my life have my parents given our dogs flea shots, (because they’re too expensive I guess) which caused me to constantly get bit and feel embarrassed in elementary school when someone found a flea because it was most likely from me.. Even when our dogs had puppies, I remember going to their cage often to clean the fleas off the puppies’ eyes. Not only fleas, but two of the dogs suffer from conditions we don’t know of because my parents are think the vet is “unnecessary and too much money”

Our chickens live in a coop we built ourselves years ago, and it has broken down and gotten quite dirty and dusty. The poop is extremely built up. Every morning they want to be let out as soon as the sun comes up, and they aren’t always let put until I realize my parents have either forgotten, or my mother just doesn’t care(even though she was the one who wanted them and bought them). They’ve been stuck inside their nesting house until 1PM before because of this. There is no watering system, we fill a bucket with water every now and then. I am the only one who goes in there and actually hangs out with them. If theres ever a sick chicken or something wrong, I’m the one who notices first.

When it comes to grooming, my mom or dad never take responsibility for all the dogs. My mother has an apparent bias against our boy dog, Max. He sleeps outside, mother never talks to him or plays with him like the other dogs. She prefers to wash the girl dogs inside the shower, but wants max to get a hose(even though he has terrible anxiety especially from loud noises and water), although I’ve always gone against her orders to ensure he has a happy bath inside. I brush our cat weekly, and my mother sometimes washes her with a hose.

I just turned 18 and I’m tired of being the caretaker of all these animals. I will take responsibility, but I think the other four people living in this house(living with my adult older brothers) need to as well. This is straight up neglect. If you can’t take care of all your dogs, cats, chickens, whichever animal’s needs because you have no time, or you don’t want to spend your money on them, you should not own any in the first place.

These loving and sweet animals deserve better. I have started the process of re-homing our chickens to someone who would care for them better.

I’m sorry to all the animals out there suffering from neglect. I’m sorry to my own which deserve so much better.