Three Billboards: Greyhound Begs for Help at Blood Farm

PETA Calls Out Facility Owner for Holding Onto Neglected Dogs Despite Specialized Rescue Agencies Willing to Help

For Immediate Release:
October 2, 2017

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Patterson Veterinary Supply, Inc., which distributed blood products from The Pet Blood Bank, Inc., says that it stopped buying from the Cherokee-based company after a whistleblower revealed that 150 greyhounds were suffering in squalid conditions there (see PETA exposé). Yet the kennel’s owner, Shane Altizer, is refusing to retire the long-neglected dogs discarded by the racing industry. Now, in the style of the new critically acclaimed film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, PETA is seeking justice by putting up a trio of billboards near Altizer’s Llano home that show a greyhound still languishing at the blood farm, cowering in the dirt, alongside the words “Shane Altizer: Do the Right Thing. I Deserve Better. Let Me Be Rescued.”

“The Pet Blood Bank’s distributor bailed after tens of thousands of people expressed their outrage over the misery of the dogs in Shane Altizer’s filthy kennels,” says PETA Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA is calling on him to do the right thing and allow the dogs to be rescued and placed in loving homes, where they’ll finally get the care, love, and respect that they deserve.”

Since PETA’s exposé was published online and in The Washington Post, more than 82,000 people have e-mailed Altizer to urge him to give up the greyhounds to competent anti-racing rescue agencies, which are standing ready to transport the dogs, provide them with veterinary exams and treatment, and place them with adoptive families.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—exposed that dogs at The Pet Blood Bank were denied veterinary care for severe oral infections, painful and infected wounds, an apparent broken leg, and other health issues. Most canines at the facility are solitarily confined to barren kennels, in which they display severe stress-induced behavior patterns, including pacing, spinning in circles, cowering, and even urinating on themselves in fear when approached.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.