A dog was left tethered in a Mustang Ridge backyard with no food, no water, and no shelter from the sun until a neighbor noticed it wasn't moving and called police. By the time officers arrived, the dog was already dead.

According to the Mustang Ridge Police Department, the dog had been staked to the ground on a short lead that didn't give it room to reach shade. No one was home when officers came to check. Two months later, Joshua Esquivel and Victoria Castillo turned themselves in at the Travis County Jail, facing a Class A misdemeanor charge of cruelty to non-livestock animals and a Class C citation under the state's animal tethering law.

That's the maximum the current charges allow, but a Class C citation for the tethering violation is barely more than a traffic ticket, a light response to conditions that left an animal to die in the heat. This case shows exactly why Texas's tethering law needs real teeth: a dog can suffer through fatal neglect in someone's own backyard, and by law, the restraint violation alone carries almost no consequence.

We're calling on the Travis County District Attorney's office to pursue the full penalty available under the cruelty charge, and on Texas state lawmakers to strengthen the tethering statute so leaving an animal without food, water, or shade isn't treated as a minor infraction.

This dog didn't have to die. Sign the petition to demand full accountability in this case and stronger tethering protections in Texas, before another animal is left to suffer the same way.