Mountaintop Natural Pets

Source: al.com, June 22, 2010

The confiscation of 26 pit bull terriers in a suspected dog-fighting operation Friday has left the Mobile County Animal Shelter crowded with dogs, authorities said.

Animal control officials said the shelter’s adoptable pets may be in danger of being euthanized because the pit bulls must be isolated and kept until a judge determines what should be done with them.

The 26 dogs were confiscated from the home of Bruce McDonald on Red Fox Road in far north Mobile County, Mobile County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Lori Myles said.

McDonald is yet to be charged in connection with the dogs. He was arrested May 22 on multiple charges related to a methamphetamine operation at the same address, Myles said. Mobile County Humane Officer Carmelo Miranda said the shelter’s adoptable pets suffer when suspected fighting dogs are brought in.

“These dogs must be sheltered one dog to two kennels for at least seven days, because a door separates the kennels back-to-back,” Miranda said.

He added that strays, which also must be kept isolated for seven days, end up moving in to kennels meant for the adoptable pets, adding to crowding problems.

So far since the seizure, Miranda said, no dogs have had to be put down. He said 80 to 90 adoptable dogs reside at the shelter on average.

Since Saturday, Miranda said, rescue groups and individuals have taken in 72 dogs, but at least 37 adoptable dogs remain, and that number could increase.

Miranda said sheriff’s deputies noticed the pit bulls June 16, and animal control officers confiscated them Friday along with treadmills, medications, scales and other paraphernalia associated with dog fighting.  Miranda said anyone interested in adopting a dog can visit the shelter’s Facebook page online or call 251-574-3230 or 251-574-3647.

Source: Dallasnews.com, May 22, 2010

The man at the center of the disappearance of more than 80 dogs from the city of Ferris’ animal shelter was arrested Friday on animal-cruelty charges.

James “Soaring Eagle” Vonda was arrested at his home in Leonard, where witnesses described squalid conditions and 65 emaciated dogs, 10 cats and a horse at the property.

Melinda Pappa, 45, Yolanda Duke, 46, and Cody Sims, 22, also were arrested at the home in the 800 block of Flanagan Road in Fannin County and jailed on animal-cruelty charges.

“The animal conditions here are very sad,” said Maura Davies, a spokeswoman for the SPCA.

Dogs nursing open wounds were left tethered, and sickly cats were running loose or cramped into pet carriers.

Piles of charred animal carcasses were found in burn barrels throughout the 6.5-acre property.

“In one you can see the top half of a cat. In one, there’s kittens,” Davies said.

The site is believed to be the headquarters of Vonda’s Domestic Animal Rescue Emergency Shelter Services, as well as a domestic violence shelter called Safe Harbor Foundation.

The animals seized Friday were taken to the SPCA’s McKinney facility.

Beginning in November, Vonda, 54, had operated a nonprofit no-kill animal shelter under a contract with the city of Ferris. In April, the city canceled its contract after learning that the dogs and cats kept there were underfed and living in crowded, filthy kennels.

Vonda, the manager of the nonprofit, said that when the contract with the city expired, he took 80 animals to an undisclosed Native American reservation in Oklahoma. He declined to give the exact location because he said he didn’t want to jeopardize the safety of clients at the domestic violence shelter.

Animal advocates grew concerned about the animals because of Vonda’s secrecy surrounding their whereabouts.

“They all are in very good health right now,” Vonda said in an April interview with The Dallas Morning News. “Every Native American wants to have a dog and a cat because it relates to their spirit guide.”

When authorities questioned Vonda about the animals found Friday, he said that about 40 of the dogs were once kept at the Ferris shelter, Davies said.

Alex Fender, the man who reported the Fannin County situation to authorities Friday morning, said he was horrified by the conditions he saw when he visited the property Thursday night.

“Several of the dogs I was able to get close to, they were severely aggressive, but you could see the wounds on their necks for being tied to the chains for so long,” Fender said.

When Fender looked inside the dilapidated ranch-style house, he saw it was no more than a kennel. He said the carpet had been stripped away to the concrete slab and the sheetrock had absorbed animal urine like a sponge.

“I walked into the house for just a second,” he said. “I couldn’t believe the smell.”

Fannin County Sheriff’s Lt. Daryl Parker said the house was so unlivable that residents were living out of one of three large camping tents.

It’s unclear whether anyone besides the four arrested were living at the property.

Fender said he had placed a horse trailer for sale on Craigslist and received a response from a woman representing Safe Harbor earlier that day.

The woman told him she was the animal caretaker for a private domestic violence shelter and safe house. She said in the e-mail that she needed to transport a mare from Leonard to Deming, N.M.

“She is not only a well-loved pet to our facility, but she also a plays a major role in therapy sessions for our residents who have suffered some of the severest cases of abuse,” the e-mail stated. “Because our secret location has been compromised, we need to move her ASAP.

“We have another facility in New Mexico where we will be relocating all the residents and the animals to and we are in need of a fast, discreet and speedy relocation to that location, but we have run into a problem and could use your kind generosity in this urgent matter.”

Fender said the woman told him the nonprofit had only $200.

“This is a very touchy situation, and we need your help urgently,” the e-mail continued.

When Fender went to the home, he spent about 45 minutes on the property taking mental inventory of the animals’ conditions for the report he’d later file with authorities.

“I drove out there to do a good deed for this lady,” Fender said. “There’s some crazy stuff going on over there.”

Source: The Baltimore Sun, April 6, 2010

A Baltimore city animal shelter is seeking the public’s help to track down a group of children seen throwing rocks and bricks at a 1-year-old dog Sunday.

The Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter said the youths were witnessed abusing and injuring the dog while it was tied up in the 3700 block of Greenspring Ave. near Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School. When a witness tried to intervene, the group began throwing rocks and bricks at him, shelter officials said.

The dog was taken to the shelter, where it is being treated for several wounds to the top of its head, a swollen snout, hemorrhages in both eyes, blood in both ears and a wound on a paw.

The case is under investigation by the Baltimore City Bureau of Animal Control, according to the shelter. The children are believed to be between 12 and 13 years old. Anyone with information is asked to call 410-396-4698

Source: Earthtimes.org, Mar 8, 2010

Dynamite Marketing will deliver more than 2,000 pounds of its Super Premium natural dog food to the Idaho Humane Society on March 10 at 10:30 a.m. The donation is valued at $3,000 and is enough to feed the approximately 200 dogs for 125 days.

The gift is the result of Dynamite’s Facebook contest, in which Dynamite pledged to donate a pound of natural dog food for every Facebook fan who has signed up since Jan. 1.

In addition, Dynamite will enter the names of all Facebook fans into a drawing, and will donate 200 pounds of natural dog food to the shelter of the winner’s choice.

The gift is in keeping with Dynamite’s tradition of making charitable donations to motivate sales. Last year, the company offered its top distributors a choice of a personal prize such as a trip to Maui or double the value as a donation to charity. The result was $22,000 in charitable donations.

“People who buy our products are passionate about their animals and about making the world a better place,” said Callie Novak, Dynamite vice president. “We attract people who are driven by projects that help animals, improve soil, save lives and make the world a better place. We knew that for many of them, giving to a charity actually would be more of a motivation than a personal prize or special offer.”

“We are extremely grateful for the donation, as well as the visibility that the competition has brought to the humane society,” said Chris Wiersema, development director at the Idaho Humane Society.

A family-owned business that has specialized in animal nutrition for four generations, Dynamite Marketing makes products for virtually every member of the animal kingdom. It has long developed natural dog food and nutritional supplements for prize-winning working dogs and show dogs across the country.

Dynamite uses only natural ingredients, made in the United States for better quality control. Throughout its history, it has always looked at alternatives to animal by-products, antibiotics, chemical preservatives, fumigants, artificial coloring and other additives that have later caused health problems.

Dynamite products are available through more than 4,000 individual distributors across the country.

Additional information is available at www.DynamiteMarketing.com or by calling 1-800-697-7434. The company is based in Meridian, Idaho.

Source: OregonLive.com, Mar 7, 2010

The story of the man, his dog and the lost and found began on a spring day two years ago near an open field in Chicago.

Roger Mallette  was playing with his black lab, Ike, when his cell phone buzzed. Mallette turned around, took the call and Ike took off.

“It was extremely painful,” Mallette said Sunday at his office in Southeast Portland. “I never got over it.”

For the longest time, it seemed to Mallette the story would end right there and he’d never see Ike again. It seemed like all he could do was nurse his broken heart and tell friends about the dog that got away. But then, late last year, Mallette got a phone call and the whole story changed.

Mallette, who is 45,  found Ike on Craigslist in 2004 when he lived in Seattle. He went to pick him up and found his new friend in a muddy backyard, bounding around, full of energy. This did not bode well.

Ike is a runner. If he’s not on a leash, he’ll sniff around and take off. Mallette estimates that in their first few months together, Ike ran away five or six times.

But Mallette always managed to find his dog. He gave Ike a rabies tag and had a microchip implanted between Ike’s shoulder blades, both of which identified Mallette as his owner.

Together, in early 2007,  Ike and Mallette moved to Chicago. It was there, in spring 2008, when Mallette took that fateful cell phone call.

He’d taken Ike off the leash to play ball with him in a grassy lot. One minute, Ike was running around, chasing the ball. The next minute: gone.

Mallette put up fliers and placed an ad on Craigslist. No luck. He eventually gave up, too distraught to get another dog.

In late 2008, Mallette moved to Portland. He owns and operates a company that makes cycling jerseys and he wanted to be in the sport’s epicenter.

This is where he met his fiance, Elizabeth Everman.  He told her all about Ike.

“I’d heard all these stories about him,” said Everman. “Roger, whenever we saw a lab, would almost tear up.”

That’s where the story stood in early December, 2009.

Then early one morning, when Mallette was asleep, he got a phone call. It was a woman from a dog shelter southwest of Chicago. She had Ike, she said on the voice mail. Call us back.

“I about fell out of bed,” Mallette said. “I was in utter disbelief. I was so caught-off-guard I was hoarse. I could barely talk.”

Apparently, Ike had run away again and someone in Romeoville, Ill., southwest of Chicago, called the animal control department. An officer came and picked Ike up.

After the microchip and the rabies tag confirmed that Mallette was the owner, Mary Helton gave him a call from the shelter.

“He started crying,” Helton recalled.

With help from a friend, Mallette had Ike flown to Portland several days later.

Now when he tells the story about his dog, it has a happy ending.

“I have to say man, it’s the coolest thing,” Mallette said. “The greatest gift the universe has ever given me.”

This post is quite old but the situation at Gaston AC has NOT improved.

Permission granted to forward and cross-post!!

There is an immediate need for a rescue coordinator volunteer at the Gaston County Animal Shelter. Unfortunately, all dogs/cats lives coming into the shelter DEPEND on this non-paid position as shelter management does not have the foresight to see or care about saving dogs/cats lives; it is not now nor has it ever been a priority at this shelter to see that the dogs/cats make it out alive. Shelter management sees the overpopulation of pets as a nuisance to deal with, not as living beings that should be shown compassion and love. It is the animals who are punished, not the uncaring people that continue to allow their animals to breed.

The shelter is only open from 11-5 weekdays (no extended hours for people to come before or after work to see the animals) and only open one Saturday per month. They euthanize EVERY day, sometimes twice depending on how crowded it is. Rescues pulling these animals are usually the only chance they have as many are deemed unadoptable by the judgment of shelter workers without a thorough or repeatable evaluation process. They are proclaimed adoptable or “other” as soon as they are dragged through the door into a building that reeks of urine/feces/death and where dogs are barking and pleading for their lives. It’s truly a traumatic environment that causes all but the very confident animals to retreat and cower into their death sentence of being proclaimed unadoptable. It is especially traumatic for the cats as they are thrown into a pen at the end of the run, so they have to be walked down the loud/echoing aisle past all the barking/shrieking dogs before they are tossed (literally) into a pen with a 5 -10 other cats. When it rains the entire pen gets flooded. There is no heat or air conditioning in the cement/concrete building.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE is there someone who has time to devote to try to get the word out about the dogs/cats coming into this shelter and try to find them a rescue??

It is a HUGE undertaking, but these poor animals have no one else to depend on – the kennel workers and animal control officers at the shelter do not care about these enough to devote any time to this effort at all. They don’t care that they get gassed at the end of the day – plain and simple. It’s so very sad for these animals and the conditions that they have to endure for the 3-5 days that they are there. It is truly a jail for animals and they need our help.

If you or someone you know can help, please have them contact:
Leah at lepodz@yahoo.com or Marcie at buckeyepetlover@gmail.com

It doesn’t matter where you are, as long as you can use a computer and telephone during the day. Rescues from out-of-state and the surrounding tri-state area need to be able to speak to someone during the day via email and telephone to coordinate getting the pets pulled from the shelter, taken to foster homes or boarding kennels, and make arrangements for transport. The Rescue Coordinator does not have to physically do these things, but they must be able to communicate freely with people who can.

The few of us trying to do this have been shut down from emailing and taking calls at work, so we are trying to find a person who is either retired, semi-retired, out-of-work, or who works from home that has some time to spare during the day to help the pets in need.

We can give you all the contact information you need: rescue names, emails, phone numbers; names and numbers of people who transport, pull from the shelter, foster, etc.

Please forward this to anyone you know who might be in a position to help. We are DESPERATE to find someone IMMEDIATELY, as we currently have no one able to freely correspond throughout the day.

Animals will die, for lack of being able to communicate in time, if we can’t find someone to help.

Source: Associated Press, Nov 19, 2009

A shelter’s decision to euthanize a dog that was thrown from the sixth-story roof of a Brooklyn building has inspired new state legislation.

State Assemblyman Micah Z. Kellner said on Thursday that he introduced a bill requiring shelters to release any animal they plan to kill to a legitimate rescue group that offers to take in the animal.

Animal activists were outraged last week when the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals put down the pit bull mix named Oreo. The ASPCA said it tried to rehabilitate Oreo, but she was too aggressive.

Before Oreo was euthanized, at least one upstate sanctuary had offered to take her in. The ASPCA said sanctuary was not appropriate in her case.

ASPCA attorney Debora Bresch says the agency is reviewing how the bill fits with existing law.

Source: WREG.com, Oct 27, 2009

The City of Memphis Animal Shelter was the scene of a early morning raid by Shelby County deputies Tuesday morning.

Shelby County District Attorney Bill Gibbons and Shelby County Sheriff Mark Luttrell say deputies with the Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant at the shelter located at 3456 Tchulahoma Road and temporarily secured the facility as part of an investigation into alleged animal abuse and cruelty.

District Attorney Gibbons requested the Sheriff’s Office investigation of the City of Memphis Animal Shelter earlier this month after receiving a tip from a citizen on the conditions at the shelter.

Sheriff Mark Luttrell told us, “We are finding that some of the allegations that we have heard are true. That will just take a more through investigation to determine just how bad the situation is but on its face, we can definitely see that there are some problems here.”

According to the search warrant, “detectives have learned that some animals have been deprived of food and water while at the Memphis Animal Shelter…” and while in the shelter’s care, “some dogs have been starved to the point of requiring euthanasia.”

According to the search warrant, some of the dogs “are involved in court cases involving dog fighting and have been marked ‘Hold for Court.’”

Additionally, the warrant says that shelter employees keep “…dogs that are to be quarantined for rabies with dogs that are not required to be quarantined in the same kennel.”

“The information we received about the conditions of the Memphis Animal Shelter clearly warranted a criminal investigation, and it is very possible that one or more individuals could face criminal charges based on the outcome of the investigation,” said District Attorney Gibbons.

Janet Hooks, Director of The Division Of Public Services and Neighborhoods, suspended 12 employees to allow investigators unfettered access to the shelter and the animals. No one has been charged.

While deputies are executing the search warrant, the facility will not be open to the public, and deputies will supervise limited employees inside the shelter. Animals brought to the facility during this time will be transferred to another shelter in Shelby County.

Trained investigators with ASPCA and emergency responders with the American Humane Association are at the shelter assisting the deputies.