OGDEN, Utah (KUTV) — The Weber County Animal Shelter has its hands full after 156 dogs were rescued from an Ogden home.
On Friday, the shelter worked to treat and bathe the animals.
Animal Care and Community Outreach Coordinator Bailey May, of the Weber County Animal Shelter, said she’s never dealt with a situation of this magnitude at the shelter.
MORE | Ogden dogs rescued: Over 150 dogs removed from Ogden property after report of possible animal neglect
“This is the biggest one a lot of us here have had to experience,” she said.
When the call came in on Tuesday night, shelter staff jumped into action and helped animal control get the dogs out of the hoarding situation.
May said they worked from 7:30 p.m. into the early morning hours of Wednesday, getting the dogs and puppies — some as young as a week old — set up with food, water, and shelter.
“We just jumped right into, ‘Okay, how are we going to get enough supplies, vaccines? How are we going to get them out of here as quickly and safely as possible?'” May said.
Finding space wasn’t easy, because the shelter was already pretty full — but animal services and rescues from South Ogden to South Salt Lake offered to take some of the pups off their hands, leaving less than 100 of the original group in Weber County.
“I know it’s helped relieve a lot of stress on the staff that’s cleaning and taking care of them,” May said. “I think what it showed for the shelter is how we can handle an emergency situation,” said Sharon Bolos, Weber County Commissioner and the Interim Director of the shelter.
Bolos said that although this rescue cost them a lot of money, the community stepped in to contribute and help in this situation.
“Financially, the shelter is really secure, so we’ll be able to recover from this,” she said.
Now, the shelter is focused on continuing to bathe and treat these animals until they’re ready to be fostered, which, they hope for some of them, could be as soon as next week.
“We were surprised nobody needed emergency vet care, but they are in decent enough shape. They are going to need treatments for certain things that we know of so far, but not as bad as we thought it was going to be,” May said.
_____
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
