HELENA, AR (WATN) – More than a dozen humane society dogs are being nursed back to health after being injured in a stomach-churning crime.
Officials say they were used as bait for dog fights after someone broke into the shelter a few days before Halloween.
Somebody took the dogs from their cages, used them in fights and left them for dead. They all survived and are now recovering.
To keep it from happening again is proving to be a challenge.
One of the employees described it as an horrific scene when the crime was discovered. There were injured dogs loose and blood everywhere. It’s a crime that remains unsolved.
“She couldn’t even walk, I had to carry her. All this here was ripped open, her legs here were gashed,” explains Tony Morehead, who works at the humane society.
He’s talking about Jenny, who is slowly on the mend.
“All up under here she was ripped open,” says Morehead.
Jenny and a dozen other dogs were out of their cages, the evidence clear. Someone freed the dogs, gathered them, then used them to train their own dogs how to fight.
For Gloria Higginbotham, the humane society president, it was a blow, in a seemingly long line of them.
“It takes us anywhere from $8,000 to $9,000 a month to operate, and there are many months that I will fund that on my own,” she says.
Taking care of these dogs rests solely on people like Higginbotham. The humane society receives zero outside government funding.
“Somedays you just think you can’t keep on going or get out of bed to do it,” says Higginbotham.
Jenny is showing signs of being her old self again, bouncing back from a terrible crime with the resolve to persevere.
“You look at these dogs and they need. You can’t stop, you just can’t stop,” Higginbotham says.
To prevent something like this from happening again, the humane society actually needs to build a fence around this outdoor pen. Fences, like everything else here cost money. Something that remains in very short supply.
