Animals From Puppy Mill Rescue To Be Released Soon, KY
Source: WBKO.com, October 13, 2009
The Green River Animal Shelter may soon say “good-bye” to more than 40 animals they rescued from a puppy mill 7 months ago.
The animals were rescued from Adair County resident, David Coppage’s home back in March, where officials say he was running a puppy mill.
Despite being convicted on 34 cases of animal cruelty, Coppage was able to appeal for custody of those animals.
Tuesday, a motion to dismiss the appeal was granted.
The decision to end this case and release the 45 animals court-ordered to the Green River Animal Shelter couldn’t have come soon enough.
It appears that after seven months of litigation the animals will finally be ready to be moved to rescues throughout the area.
“Between RePets in Bowling Green and their shelter and the rescue coordinator that we have, we’ve got rescues lined up for 99 percent of them right now,” says shelter director, Jeff Thomas.
The puppy mill animals take up 65 % of the space in the animal shelter.
Cages usually reserved for sick animals or those heading to rescues are occupied by the dogs from the puppy mill.
A court order prevents the overcrowded shelter from euthanizing or moving these animals, which has caused major problems for its employees.
“Unfortunately, we’re taking between 300-350 animals a month in. We’re having to move animals quickly by sending them to rescue groups, adopting them, or unfortunately euthanizing most of them,” Thomas says.
The shelter is only able to keep strays and other animals about 10 to 12 days now because of the lack of room.
While it appears that the animals from the mill will be leaving soon, that doesn’t mean they are ready to adopted out yet.
“From spending their lives in a small cage they’re not socialized. We’ve worked with them the best we could, but they’re still going around in really small circles. You can tell those are the area they’re used to,” notes Thomas.
According to Thomas, an official time to move the animals has not yet been set.
He says there is paperwork that must be processed before the animals can be moved.
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