Dowdy Ferry Animal Commission
A man driving a sedan pulls to the side of a busy road, he and a dog exit the vehicle, the man gets back in his car leaving the dog behind. The abandoned and confused animal is soon struck and killed by a passing car.
These heartbreaking videos are caught on video only because of the volunteers at the Dowdy Ferry Animal Commission, which was formed to monitor a stretch of Dowdy Ferry Road known as an illegal dumping ground for not only people’s trash but also dogs and other unwanted pets — healthy, sick and dead.
The DFAC monitors cameras that are placed in the area. Lifelong Oak Cliff resident Jeremy Boss is one of the founders of that group.
“Without these cameras, we would have come out here and do what we did the other 780 times in the last six years,” Boss told news reporters in 2021, after cameras helped nail one animal cruelty suspect. “We would have found two dogs hit over the head and no leads.”
Boss, who ran for District 1 Dallas City Council in 2019, also made a Dallas Animal Services accountability page and made a documentary called Dogs of Dowdy Ferry.
In 2016, I wrote about East Dallas resident Marina Tarashevska, founder of Dallas Dog, who was so fed up with the city’s lack of response to the Dowdy Ferry situation that, in order to gain the attention of Dallas Animal Services, she once left two dead dogs, found at the Dowdy Ferry dump site, on the steps of the DAS building.
The Dowdy Ferry Animal Commission website is highly disturbing and features images of dead and wounded animals. But as Tarashevska told us, sharing those gruesome photos and videos on her social media pages jolted more rescuers into action than almost anything else she’s done.
Another man whose images, recorded by the DFAC, were shown on WFAA recently, was arrested for disposing of a live dog at Dowdy Ferry.
(featured image by Sofia Guaico)
