All seven are adults, were emaciated and covered in “thousands and thousands of fleas,” said Amy Carroll, who owns and operates the Rescue Haven, adding that at least two females have had puppies before. The largest of the dogs is 15 pounds and the smallest at seven pounds.
The Rescue Haven was founded in May 2023, and Carroll prefers to take in medically fragile dogs.
Once the dogs have received proper medical care, including their shots, they will be temperament-tested and the organization will find homes to foster them, Carroll said.
Dog dumping has been a consistent problem in the Dayton area in the last several years, but it’s less common for seven to be dumped at once, Carroll said.
However, dumping large numbers of dogs, particularly puppies, is becoming more common, said Greene County Animal Control Director Julie Holmes-Taylor.
“In the ’80s and ’90s, for somebody to dump a litter of puppies (was) rare. Did it happen? Yeah, probably once or twice a year you’d see it. Now we’re seeing it once or twice a month. And if it’s not us, it’s surrounding counties,” she said.
The Rescue Haven handles roughly two or three dog dumping cases per day, mostly one or two dogs at a time.
“I’d say the last six months we’ve seen a lot more of it happening. We were contacted earlier today about a German shepherd,” Carroll said Tuesday. “People just can’t afford it, and they don’t want to ask for help. But at the same time, everybody’s so overextended.”
In this case Carroll suspects these Pomeranians might have come from a backyard breeder, either dodging U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations, or who simply can’t afford to take care of dogs that aren’t selling.
“We’ve had cases down in Kentucky … where all of a sudden, they’ll kill them, they’ll dump them, or whatever, so they don’t get in trouble with the USDA, and they can continue their breeding,” she said.
One factor that contributes to people abandoning their dogs is economic downturn, being unable to afford taking care of the pet, or owners will get in over their head with what having a dog is actually like.
“Everybody wants puppies because puppies are cute, but they only keep that cuteness for a certain amount of time,” Holmes-Taylor said. “But once they lose that, once they get that adult edge to them … and then all of a sudden you’ve got traits and behaviors and physical features that aren’t as cute anymore, or maybe require work, and then that puppy stage is over. That’s usually when people dump them.”
August is Clear the Shelters month, a campaign spearheaded by national news outlets and local animal shelters to get dogs and cats adopted out to loving homes.
“Even if you don’t adopt from us, even if you’re adopting from a neighboring shelter or neighboring rescue, we’re kind of all on the same mission together,” Holmes-Taylor said. “If you’re in a large area where you have a lot of adoptions, that frees up space there, (so) that they may take animals from out of their county or out of their jurisdiction to help get those animals into homes, too.”
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