A dozen dogs recovered just northeast of Port Dover last weekend are in good condition and will be ready for adoption soon.
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The dogs were collected in the vicinity of Marburg Road, East Quarter Line Road and St. John’s Road East by Hillside Kennels of Innerkip, which provides animal control services to Norfolk County.
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“They are all in good body condition, and all within the eight-to-12-month range,” said Cassia Bryden, animal control officer at Hillside. “They’re not puppies but they’re not adults.”
Two of the male dogs appear to be a bit older than the other 10 and may be the father or from a previous litter.
“They’ve not been exposed to anything city,” she explained. “Traffic is new to them, other dogs and cats are new, and people are strange (to them). They are friendly but apprehensive at first because they haven’t had a ton of socializing or exposure.”
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Bryden rounded up 10 of the dogs on Dec. 2, while two others were recovered the next day from a woman who took them in.
“They have never been on a leash,” she said. “All 12 were quite the task to round up because once you put a collar on, they lie down flat and don’t want to move. It was quite an undertaking.”
Bryden said she believes the dogs are from a backyard breeder and raised in a rural setting on a farm or in a barn but may not have been an intentional breeding as they are not purebred dogs.
Some of the males, she noted, have scars and bite wounds on their faces from fighting, likely over food.
“It’s evidence these dogs were confined to a smaller space all together where they really couldn’t get away from each other.”
She described the dogs as a shepherd-lab-rottie mix, each weighing about 60 to 70 pounds, and said adopting them out will be challenging.
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“They’re not cute anymore, and they are big,” Bryden noted. “These are the types of dogs that don’t appeal to everyone so they’re harder to find homes for.”
Bringing in a dozen dogs at once to the Innerkip facility has put a strain on the kennel.
“The dogs we’ve had at the facility for seven or eight weeks – that we’ve spent a lot of time doing behavior assessments and fully vaccinating to be ready for adoption – they are not moving,” Bryden explained. “Nobody is calling about them or coming to adopt these dogs.”
In such circumstances, euthanasia is a consideration for dogs that have been housed at the kennel for a long time.
Spaying and neutering, Bryden said, is the key to avoiding these types of situations from occurring.
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“We’re getting a lot of calls from people who had a ‘whoops’ litter and thought they’d be able to sell the puppies for $50 to $100,” she noted. “Nobody wants to buy these puppies, so they try to give them away for free because they can’t afford to feed them and take them in for their first shots.
“The answer isn’t driving down a country road and letting them go,” Bryden said. “That’s just dumping the problem onto somebody else.”
Meantime, the provincial government introduced The Preventing Unethical Puppy Sales Act (PUPS) on Dec. 4, that, if passed, will amend the Provincial Animal Welfare Services Act to stop harmful dog breeding practices, impose penalties, and make sure dogs receive the care they deserve.
Anyone interested in adopting a dog can call 519-469-3247 or visit the Hillside Kennels Animal Control page on Facebook where photos and descriptions of each dog are listed.
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