SPA rescue of more than 800 dogs from a breeding facility in Indre, France, Digi Mart USA News (Heugnes, Indre, France): On November 3 and 4, roughly 810 dogs were rescued from a dog breeding facility in Heugnes, Indre, that is accused of suspected animal mistreatment and fraud. The Société Protectrice des Animaux (SPA) says it is the largest dog rescue it has ever carried out.
In a statement, the SPA described the operation as “a historic operation.” The Gendarmerie nationale and the National Brigade of Veterinary and Phytosanitary Investigations were also on site. Tamara Guelton, legal manager for animal protection expertise at the SPA, described the facility as “an enormous structure” housing a very large number of animals, “but not always with the standards respected.”
In total, more than twenty breeds were present at the site, in conditions that ranged from poor to very poor. According to Guelton, each animal requires care depending on its health and the conditions in which it was kept, though she did not give further details about those conditions.
The operation was conducted under the authority of the prosecutor’s office of the Châteauroux court and required a large number of SPA employees and volunteers. Some 160 people worked in shifts with about 90 vehicles to take charge of the more than 800 dogs.
The animals were taken to the association’s 64 shelters.
The effort is significant given the SPA’s ongoing difficulties with shelter capacity and the many abandonments it receives each year. “It is inevitably complicated and requires organizing in a specific way,” Guelton said.
“But we are above all here to combat mistreatment and the animal as object.”
