Photos: Dogs Left on Chains as Ophelia Floods North Carolina

For Immediate Release:
September 25, 2023

Contact:
Brittney Williams 202-483-7382

Here are some of the dogs PETA’s fieldworkers have been out helping during the storm near our headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia.

Although dog owners in Virginia and North Carolina knew that the severe storm was looming, some still left dogs tied up outdoors, unable to escape rising flood waters—and many told our fieldworkers that they weren’t even going to go outside to check on the animals because they didn’t want to get wet! PETA’s fieldworkers visited dozens of dogs Friday and Saturday who were left in standing water in Tropical Storm Ophelia’s path and asked their owners to bring them inside. If they refused, the fieldworkers ensured that the animals had adequate food, clean water, and shelter from pouring rain and falling debris.

Many people don’t realize that countless dogs across the country are kept isolated, either tied up or penned, 24/7 for their entire lives—or that PETA, the world’s largest animal rights organization, has field teams dedicated to helping dogs in some of the most impoverished pockets of the rural South. PETA works with kind people throughout the U.S. to advocate for tethering bans in their communities—and in North Carolina, we’re calling on lawmakers to implement a statewide ban on tethering or chaining dogs in harsh weather conditions.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.