Alaqua Animal Refuge Rescues 37 Animals From Bruton Trailer
Alaqua Animal Refuge took in 37 animals last week after a call for help took the Freeport sanctuary’s team across state lines to a 22-foot trailer in rural Bruton, Alabama.
Inside the trailer, 12 dogs lived tethered to the wall while more than 25 cats were confined to the trailer’s bathroom. Alaqua Founder and CEO Laurie Hood said some of the dogs had been in there for about five years, and the cats had been left stacked on top of one another in a space so small the owner had stopped opening the bathroom door, sliding food and water underneath instead.
“They just sat in their cage, and they looked at us with these big sad eyes. And we just looked, all of us looked at one another, and we thought, we’re saving all these animals today, aren’t we? And we did,” Hood said.
Before the team arrived, Hood said there was a real possibility the animals would be beyond saving. “We did have that in our mind, that there’s a chance we might have to get there and provide humane euthanasia, which is not something any of us ever want to do,” she said.
Alabama state officials condemned the trailer and hauled it away. The woman who owned the animals is receiving mental health treatment, WMBB reports.
Nearly a month of care later, the survivors are beginning to come around. “It just makes my heart so happy because they’re wagging their tails now. They’ll come up, they’ll even give you little kisses,” Hood said, though she noted some still have physical injuries from being tethered and fighting among themselves for food and water.
Almost all of the dogs will be treated for heartworms, and staff and volunteers continue socializing the animals with the goal of placing them up for adoption.
For a refuge that is constantly at capacity, absorbing 37 additional animals was never going to be easy. But Hood said declining the call was never on the table. “You’re their last hope. And if we didn’t step in, we knew what was going to happen to them, and it wasn’t good,” she said.
The rescue adds to an intake load Alaqua knows well. The 100-acre refuge on State Road 20 east of Freeport frequently serves as a regional partner for cruelty and neglect cases across the Panhandle, most recently taking in six horses seized in a Holmes County investigation in June.
Originally reported by MyPanhandle (WMBB).
Image: MyPanhandle (WMBB).
