Erika McGuire
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Central Missouri Humane Society is seeking help from foster families after 15 severely neglected dogs were rescued from an impoundment case by Columbia Animal Countrol.
In a press release Tuesday morning, CMHS said the adult dogs arrived extremely emaciated, terrified and under socialized. The shelter said the animals had spent most of their lives in the woods, surviving with very little support.
“While the dogs are beginning to trust shelter staff and show small but beautiful signs of progress, they are not yet ready for adoption. They need time, patience, and gentle guidance to recover, gain weight, and learn the basics of being a dog. Many are too underweight to undergo spay/neuter surgeries at this time. CMHS is looking for fosters who can provide a low-stress home, offer love and consistent care to help the dogs build confidence, and work closely with the CMHS veterinary team to follow an individualized treatment plan.” the release said.
Columbia/Boone County Public Health and Human Services spokesman Austin Krohn said the case began with a July 31 complaint about three possibly aggressive dogs on Squire Court Road. The caller said the dogs were attacking their pets and a neighbor’s animals.
When Animal Control Officers investigated, Krohn said, they found the three dogs and followed them back to a property on Squire Court Road. When they entered the property to make contact with a possible owner, they noticed several dogs that appeared underweight and possibly ill.
On Aug. 1, officers found 15 dogs on the property in various states of neglect.
“Completely emaciated, really dirty, lots of scars, lots of open wounds, covered in flees and parasites, they weren’t going to make it a whole lot longer without help,” Michelle Casey Associate Director and Campaign Manager with CMHS said.
The shelter says the dogs were living the woods with very little support to survive.
“They’re medium sized dogs, most of them are around 30 pounds or under, so they’re not huge dogs, they’re short coated. there may be some shepherd, definitely some lab,” Casey said.
Since arriving at the shelter, Casey says the dogs have shown signs of improvement, but still need extra one-on-one care and socialization. One of the dogs recently gave birth to two puppies. She said so far, three of the dogs have been taken in by foster families.
“Often its the scars you can’t see that take the longest time to heal, so these guy definitely need a little extra love and attention, but they’re available for foster right now, they will do so much better in a foster home rather than there at the shelter where they can get that extra love that they need,” She added.
Casey says three of the dogs are already in foster care, but each will recover at a different pace.
“A lot of them are going to have to gain quite a bit of weight before they’re even eligible to get a spay neuter surgery,” Casey said.”It’ll be a little bit of a longer term foster situation. Definitely a couple weeks at minimum. But we’ve already placed a couple of them in foster and the before and after pictures are just incredible even after just a week, there’s a huge difference in these dogs, the fosters have said its incredibly rewarding working with dogs like this that have been in a traumatic situation.”
According to the Columbia/Boone County Health Department one person has been charged with animal neglect. ABC 17 News has reached out to the health department to find out the identity of the person charged.
Boone County Prosecutor Roger Johnson said he is not aware of any charges being filed in the case.
But, he said it doesn’t mean no one was charged or ticketed.
“Charges could go to the city, could still be in transit, or we could have it but I don’t know about it yet,” Johnson said in an email Tuesday evening.
“Animal neglect can be a misdemeanor on the first offense thats punishable by up to 15 days in jail or if its a repeat offense it can be a misdemeanor thats possibly up to six months in jail, in addition to that there can be fines up to $2,000,” Johnson added.
However, Johnson said, cases involving multiple animals can lead to multiple charges and stronger penalties.
“If someone has a large number of animals there potential that you could have a separate charge for reach one of the animals, so the number of time in jail and find could multiply, in addition there are heightened charges if the animal ends up being injured because of the neglect,” Johnson said.
To determine if someone can own an animal again after being charged, Johnson says there’s a hearing process to decide whether the animal should be returned, placed in foster care, or sent to a shelter.
“There a process where the person can get a hearing to decide if the animal should be returned to them, or whether they’ll be fosters or sent to the shelter,” Johnson said. “Potentially they’d be on the hook for paying the cost of housing the animal at the shelter while the case is pending and they would have to pay that amount for the care of the animal that they were initially caring for,”
The owner was present during the search and chose to give up ownership of all the animals. The dogs were taken to CMHS after receiving vaccinations and a health evaluation.
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