Pregnant Dog Dragged from Vehicle Across Concrete Before Being Abandoned Outside Virginia Shelter
A Virginia animal shelter is searching for two people who dragged a pregnant dog from a car and dumped her outside its building.
The incident took place on Friday night and was caught on video.
The footage, which was shared by WFLA Tuesday, shows two people next to a dark-colored sedan, with one of the individuals opening the trunk where the dog, who is called “Tilly” was being kept.
The person then proceeds to drag her across the concrete ground over to a fenced area.
Campbell County Animal Control officer Benny David told WFLA that the situation was heartbreaking and completely unnecessary.
“It’s not right to put an animal out to spend a night in the cold,” the officer said. “We need to know where they come from, what reason enough had to have health problems. Were there any other problems with animal? We need to know of its owner. They can sign an owner surrender.”
The Friends of Campbell County Animal Control, a rescue group that facilitates the adoption of animals at the Campbell County Shelter, has shared several updates on Tilly, who has been taken in by a foster family that has agreed to “hang onto her for as long as needed.”
“We’d like to identify the men responsible for driving this dog to the Campbell County Shelter under cover of darkness, pulling her out of the trunk of their car, and dragging her into the concrete fenced area where she lay unsheltered on concrete all night on Friday night,” the rescue group said in a statement on Facebook on Saturday.
The group, which works in partnership with animal control to provide medical care for the animals in their custody, urged the public not to assume that Tilly belongs to the people in the video, pointing out that she could “have been stolen from a neighbor, or part of a marital or custody dispute, or delivered from another county where the shelter was not open admission and would not take her in.”
“We do not know!” the group wrote, adding in another update if Tilly was stolen or the object of a dispute, “she needs to get home.”
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As the search continues for more information on the people who dumped Tilly outside the shelter, the dog mommy-to-be has visited the vet — a trip that revealed she has heartworm disease.
“Sometimes the news just gets worse, so in addition to being left in the elements for 12 hours after being dragged out of the trunk of a car, now she must also deal with heartworm disease,” the group wrote on Tuesday.
Tilly is expected to deliver her pups in the next 10 to 15 days, the group said.
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Kelsey Wright, the worker at the shelter who discovered Tilly on Saturday morning, told WFLA that she was dumbfounded at the cruel actions of the people who left the pooch.
“You know, it just astounds me that someone didn’t think to ask for help. They just took matters into their own hands and did what they wanted to do,” Wright said.
Anyone with information on Tilly or the people who left her are encouraged to call Campbell County dispatch and leave a message for Animal Control at (434) 592-9574.
