Seized dogs now doing well

The more than 200 dogs that were taken from JB’s Precious Puppies, located north of Seneca, are now in the hands of the Humane Society of Missouri – St. Louis.

“They are doing well, now,” said Cyndi Nason, director of adoption services for the humane society. “We have got them all situated in pens and we are getting them all cleaned up. We are getting medical treatments started — many of them had eye infections, ear infections, internal parasites, external parasites, there were lots of long overgrown nails, we think we had some ringworm. A lot of medial treatment is going to be needed.”

According to Nason, the dogs seized included all sizes, but primarily three-quarters of them were small- to medium-sized dogs. Large dogs included mainly chows and huskies.

The dogs will be under the care of the humane society until the disposion hearing, which, according to Nason,  is set for March 9 in Newton County.

“So once that hearing is over and if we get the animals, then we will begin to move forward on determining adoptability,” she said. “And by that time, a lot of the common health issues like infections and things should be clearing up with the antibiotics. …We really want to place healthy, friendly animals. All of the time with large commercial breeders, we see some behavior problems. Those include fearfulness, sometimes there are some aggressive behaviors, and housebreaking can be a major issue for new owners, because they don’t know any better. They have lived their lives in a pen and their natural instinct to keep clean and keep their sleeping and living area clean, is gone. You have to work harder than with most dogs to get them into that habit again, especially with the smaller dogs: They have small bladders, anyway. People who are interested in adopting dogs from large commercial breeders really need to know that these are not well-bred, well-socialized animals.”

The cost of sheltering and caring for the dogs has not yet been determined.

“It is so dependent on what is wrong with each animal, and the numbers,” Nason said. “At some point here in the future, we will have that, once we collect all of that data. But I imagine the rescue of this size is going to cost us hundreds of thousands, by the time you consider all of the man power time, all of the medications, all of the lab work and X-rays that we are going to have to do and the surgeries.”

Nason said although 209 dogs, a tiger and a housecat were seized, this was not the largest seizure of animals in recent memory.

“In the last couple of years, we have really picked up a lot of cases,” she said. “We had one, which was our biggest a while ago, and it was over 300. When you get into the 200 range, it is certainly big and then we had it on the heels of our Feb. 13 rescue of almost 100 Yorkshire terriers from another breeder.”

Nason said that shortly after the animal rescue, she received one phone call about a missing dog.

“I had a call from a lady who had a Yorkie-poo, and I am certainly going to check it out,” she said. “But even if dogs at this point belong to an individual, we would not be able to address any of those issues until the animals are, hopefully, given to us by the court. So until the court tells us they belong to the humane society, we can’t address any of those issues, but we certainly take the information down and we will look into that. If people have pictures, they can gather information that will help to prove an animal belonged to them. We always want to get animals back to their rightful, loving owners.”

The humane society is also looking for donations, including blankets, towels, newspapers, single-cut shredded paper and money. For more information, visit their Web site at www.hsmo.org.
Their address is Humane Society of Missouri Headquarters Adoption Center, 1201 Macklind Ave., St. Louis, Mo. 63110. Report Animal Abuse: 314-647-4400. Donations: 314-951-1542.