90 dogs found living inside Eastern Shore home; 45 surrendered to Virginia Beach SPCA

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — 90 flea-infested small dogs were saved by local rescue shelters from a home on the Eastern Shore on Saturday.

“They are scared, dirty, and covered in fleas. These dogs have never been outside of that house before now,” a VBSPCA post said.

Hard to watch video shows one of the bathrooms, where the terrified pups are sitting in inches of dirt and feces.

Angel Recoy with Critters 4 U Rescue said she met other animal rescuers at a nearby fire station to get some of the pups as they came out of the home in Bloxom, Virginia.

“The house was really bad. People were coming out vomiting, getting sick, boots all the way up to their knees,” said Recoy.

Recoy said her shelter was able to take in six of the dogs from the hoarding situation.

“Flies everywhere, maggots everywhere. These dogs were covered in their feces. The smell was atrocious. Their nails were so overgrown into their pads, they’re on antibiotics now,” explained Recoy.

Shocky Boyajian with Dogs Deserve Better Inc., who went inside the home, believes the dogs spent most, if not all their lives in these conditions. She said this rescue was facilitated by their Eastern Shore chapter of the rescue.

“As horrible as those conditions were, that’s the only home they ever knew, and we were taking them from that,” said Boyajian.

She believes this was not a puppy mill operation but instead a situation where the owner let things get out of control.

Boyajian said a relationship was established with the owner, from there they were able to convince the owner to let the shelters take them away.

“A little bit of shock as you can imagine, sadness more than anything else. We were very grateful once we got in that we were going to be able to get those dogs out of there. So just the whole range of emotions took us over and we just got to work,” said Boyajian.

Now, the dogs are split up at shelters across the area. The Virginia Beach SPCA took 45 of them, then handed over 12 to Compassion for Canines.

“We are full, but we realize this was an extenuating circumstance and we wanted to be able to help, so we took two vans loaded as many as we could in there,” said Mandi Kowaleski, the communications and marketing manager for the VBSPCA.

It’ll be a while before the dogs are put up for adoption because of all the medical and mental care they need.

Eastern Shore Animal control officials said they were aware of the shelters going in but did not help. 10 On Your Side asked if there would be any animal cruelty charges and was told to their knowledge, there won’t be.

Also helping in the operation are Coastal Sheltie Rescue, Squishy Face Crew, Homeward Trails Rescue, and The Little Farm Rescue. They could all use donations during this time.

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