Within the past two weeks, Riverside County Animal Services has been called into three “hoarding-like” situations involving a large amount of canines. The most recent incident occurred in Sky Valley when officers arrived at the scene and discovered that the landlord of the ranch was unresponsive. John Welsh, PIO for Riverside County Animal Services, spoke to us about the incident.
“All told, there’s about fifty dogs, but they’re mostly small dogs. The challenge, though, is that because it’s all open space, the dogs can run away from us and hide, so it’s a very difficult situation. We don’t want to run the animals ragged when the heat is a factor.”
The animal services initially took approximately fifteen of the dogs, but plan to return each day until all are transported. In the meantime, the residents of the property continue to provide the dogs with food and water. Similarly to Sky Valley, the two prior incidents were also a product of “hoarding”. One occurred in Thermal, the other was in Indio.
“The Thermal one, it was fifty dogs, but that number of dogs that we impounded included several dogs that were deceased on the property, so it was a very awful situation for our officers to deal with. The Indio case was a smaller matter, I think it was approximately 20 dogs if my memory serves me well. That was also smaller breeds as well.”
Welsh goes on to explain that although both incidents are extremely unfortunate, there is a silver lining, being that all cases involved mostly small breeds. Smaller breeds are more likely to be adopted out of the rescues and shelters, and will hopefully be placed into safe homes.
We questioned Welsh about whether these cases were consequences of running a puppy mill or over adopting. .
“It’s not really our belief that these incidents that we’re dealing with recently have anything to do with people selling dogs for profit or puppy mills. It’s just an owner who's allowed his dogs to inbreed and the problem just got out of hand.”
He said that these were, in fact, all separate instances. Once the animals from all three situations had all been picked up, most were taken to several shelters within Riverside County. Others, however, will be transported to other states through a partnership with Wings of Rescue.
“Some of these dogs will be loaded up on the plane, and they’re going to be heading to various destinations. I believe there is a total of three, and some of these places are in Utah, and I believe one is in Idaho. And so yeah, we're gonna have a good outcome for some of these animals. Nonetheless, we are still looking for the public's help.”
To learn more about the Department of Animal Services in Riverside, click the link on our website at kvcrnews.org