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Sunday, October 21, 2012

MAS Continues to Starve Dogs; Puppy Cannibalizes Littermate Out of Hunger

This is a difficult story to tell. It is the story of 2 puppies, impounded by MAS along with 4 others (whose outcomes are unknown), who are both now dead. The details are horrifying but must be shared if there is to be any hope of justice. In my view, justice for the deaths of these two puppies would be nothing short of immediate arrests, criminal charges, and a complete overhaul of MAS – starting with the state Attorney General placing the facility into receivership, as we requested more than a year ago. This ongoing crisis of suffering, neglect and needless killing at MAS must be met with swift and decisive corrective action. It has gone on far too long.

On September 4, 2012, a Memphis animal control officer responded to a call from a school reporting puppies on the property. The ACO impounded 6 puppies, including dog ID #245825 and #245826, who were listed as 4 month old Lab mixes. On September 5, both pups were dewormed and vaccinated. Each weighed a little over 14 pounds. Both pups had the note “nasal discharge” entered into their medical histories on September 17 but no weights were recorded.

On September 13, an adopter expressed interest in puppy #245825 but MAS would not release him without a background check and a yard inspection because, although his medical history says Lab mix, and his littermate’s records say Lab mix, puppy #245825′s cage card says Pitbull mix. And MAS has special adoption requirements for Pitbulls. There are no notes indicating those tasks were ever completed. On September 19, the would-be adopter was phoned and advised that the puppy she wanted had been found dead in his kennel that morning.

In fact, the two pups had been caged together and one ate the other. Puppy #245826 ate his littermate’s face, trachea and esophagus as well as his shoulder. Someone with initials RC, presumably the MAS vet Rebecca Coleman, performed an examination on the remains of the partially eaten puppy and found he was very recently deceased and not suffering from an upper respiratory infection. The final notes are:
Cause of death undetermined. Body was cannibalized post-mortem.
There is no way of knowing whether this puppy was dead when the littermate ate him and I see nothing in the the records that supports this conclusion. He was not sick and in fact, there is no known cause of death. This conclusion seems irresponsible, at best.

Dr. Coleman then killed puppy #245826 marking “behavior” and “health” on the card. She performed a necropsy on this puppy, noting that portions of the other puppy were readily identifiable amidst the stomach contents. His body condition score (BCS) was 1/5. Anyone who has sat in a vet’s office looking at posters on the wall probably knows what a BCS of 1 looks like (see an illustration here). It indicates an emaciated animal. In an apparent contradiction, she also notes the pup had “good fat” under the skin and around the internal organs. The fat around the organs is among the last reserves to be used in the case of starvation. And the “good fat” beneath the skin is inconsistent with an emaciated puppy although the mere presence of fat in no way indicates the puppy was being fed enough.   To read the rest of the story Click Here.

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