TYLER, Texas — Animals in need are always on East Texan‘s minds, but this weekend the story of a roadside abandonment of nearly 20 mixed-breed puppies had people flocking to a local rescue to help.
"This past Saturday morning, someone had messaged our [Facebook] page saying there were about 20 puppies sitting in the middle of the road and they were afraid that they were going to get ran over," said Daphne Smith with Nicholas Pet Haven. "I drove out to New Harmony, County Road 415, I pulled up and they were they were all sitting out in the middle of the road just waiting. They all came running towards me and they were jumping all over me, just happy to see somebody. Then they got scared and ran. I got some treats out of my car and started passing them out and I started grabbing them one by one. We picked up 19 of these beautiful babies and brought them back here. Cindy posted on Facebook that we had 20 puppies coming in and we had a whole bunch of people helping us. They were bathing puppies, drying them off, loving on them."
"They are all very healthy," said veterinarian Dr. Gary Spence. "If you had one mama with 19 puppies it wouldn’t be like that, this was at least three mamas. They’re about 6-weeks-old. The folks who had these dogs are responsible enough to know that you didn’t want to wean them until they're six weeks. So we suspect that these puppies came from a breeding situation, they were accidentally bread. They were dumped by the breeders because things like this just are not supposed to show up in areas where there are purebred dogs."
More than $16,000 in donations have poured in the last few days.
So far, five of the puppies have been adopted and five more are currently being fostered while Nicholas Pet Haven is going through dozens of applications to adopt the rest.
