GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Last month, 17 dogs were found in Walker living in a pickup truck with their owner.
The dogs are now up for adoption at the Kent County Animal Shelter. Wednesday people got the chance to meet them for the first time.
Emmy Dufort came to the animal shelter to adopt a dog for emotional support. She is looking to adopt a Pomeranian named Patches.
Patches is one of the 17 dogs that were found living in the truck. Their owner has been charged with felony animal abuse.
Dufort said, “I actually did read about the 17-dogs-in-a-truck thing. I didn't realize that this was one of them. But, like, now that I know, I think that's really, really cool; that makes me like this little guy a lot more, knowing that he'll go to a good home.”
Now 19 dogs in that case need to be adopted because one of them had puppies.
Namiko Ota-Noveskey from the Kent County Animal Shelter said, “We have two German shepherd puppies, and it's very bad for them to be isolated, so it's been a lot of hard work on our staff's part to try to socialize them, taking care of them.”
The shelter says some dogs were underweight when they arrived on Oct. 14 but most of them are ready to go to new homes.
“Just try to help them transition, because clearly, they've gone through a lot of traumatic experiences and really unusual living conditions. So, living in the home might be actually a little bit different for these dogs,” said Ota-Noveskey.
Emmy is glad she was able to adopt one of the truck dogs and hopes the others will find good homes, too.
"I'm glad that it's always nice to see dogs being taken out of that situation and being able to get into good homes, especially now that it's around Christmastime and people are looking for dogs; I think this is, like, the best time that it could have been for these dogs to get out of that situation and go to really good homes,” said Dufort.
The case against the dogs' previous owner has been bound over to circuit court. Their next court appearance has not been set.
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