PETA Will Pay for Lawyer and Spaying of Mother Dog if Man Who Left Puppies Is Located

PETA Suspects Man May Have Been Unable to Pay $120 for Midwest City Animal Shelter to Accept Litter Suffering From Parvovirus

For Immediate Release:
March 22, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

As Midwest City authorities search for a man who left a box of sick puppies outside the city’s shelter, PETA is thanking him for doing so and criticizing the shelter for jacking up intake fees, causing people to do worse things with sick puppies than bring them to its doorstep. PETA will provide legal representation for the man if he is indigent and is offering to pay for the puppies’ mother to be spayed, regardless of his financial situation.

Like many shelters trying to become “no kill,” even though it may cause animals to be abandoned by the road, left to reproduce, or even killed in violent ways, Midwest City Animal Shelter charges an intake fee of $20 per animal—which would mean $120 for a litter of six puppies. And comments on news stories about the incident reveal that people who can’t afford the fees have stopped taking animals to the shelter, leaving them in danger. If they hadn’t been taken to the shelter, the puppies—who required euthanasia because they were suffering from fatal parvovirus—would have faced a slow, miserable death from dehydration, anemia, and shock.

“This man was trying to do the right thing, and PETA is calling on the city to help humans and other animals by ending surrender fees, extending hours, and offering low-cost spay/neuter services that would prevent these kinds of incidents,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “When animal shelters prioritize their ‘save rates’ over animals’ well-being, it’s the animals who pay the price, as desperate people end up dumping them on the street to fend for themselves.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—notes that fees, waiting lists, and appointments are tactics that so-called “no-kill” shelters use to make figures look good: By taking in fewer animals, they have fewer to find homes for. Meanwhile, those who are turned away aren’t counted in the shelter’s statistics—but they end up being thrown in the trash, hit by cars, or even cruelly killed. In addition, as the popularity of turn-away policies grows, cases of hoarding are skyrocketing: It’s estimated that “rescues” make up 25 percent of the 6,000 new hoarding cases reported in the U.S. each year.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.