Rescued Dogs and Cats from Arkansas Getting Medical Care in Chattanooga

Some states are looking at legislation to regulate puppy-mills, like the one that resulted in the Chattanooga Humane society getting 49 abandoned animals last Friday.
They are now getting medical treatment that will lead to eventual adoption.
BOB CITRULLO, DIR, HUMANE EDUCATIONAL SOCIETY  “There are multiple dogs. We have Cairn terriers, we have west highland terriers, have a couple of labs, some heeler mixes, some Shih Tzu,  Lhasa apsos…so its kind of all over.”

There are 42 dogs and 7 cats getting some special attention this week at the Chattanooga Humane Educational Society. They were found last week on northwest Arkansas, the local group volunteered to take most of them.

BOB CITRULLO  “Most of the time in these situations you see a lot of parasites which ..uh, we found here of course. Whip worms, round worms, hooks ..you know majority from drinking bad water…so we’re working on addressing all of that currently.

Its the kind of story that brings animal lovers from all over who just want to help. Some volunteer at the shelter—others are waiting to adopt one of the newcomers.

BOB CITRULLO “The good news is we’ve had an overpouring of community support. Uh, it’s been great. A lot of volunteers have come out and helped us and they’re helping to socialize the dogs already. And so that means a lot to us, so it just gets them ready so when the day comes that they’re available for adoption, they’re going to be ready.

The extra care now being given to the puppy-mill animals is an added expense.

CITRULLO  Anything like this is above and beyond that and that’s money that we raise from local community members that support our mission..what we do, and people have been doing that as they found out, you know what we got involved with because again, they feel like we do too, we want to help the animals that uh, unfortunately had been let go on their own.”

The local shelter works with others around the country to accept recovered animals like these when the need arises.
Bob Citrullo says some of these newcomers may be ready for permanent homes in about two weeks.
We’ll keep you posted.