Pit Bull Euthanized As She Delivered Her Puppies At Texas Shelter

AMARILLO, TX — A Texas animal welfare advocate has taken to social media to protest and call attention to the death by euthanasia of a pit bull as she delivered a litter of puppies last month at a city-run shelter in Amarillo. Shelter officials said the dog was “vicious,” but Amarillo-Panhandle Humane Society volunteer Dacia Anderson accused the shelter of “putting a spin on something that’s a narrative.”

“Her last moments, while she lay dying, were spent still trying to clean her newly birthed puppies. Their words, not mine,” Anderson wrote in an emotional Facebook post that accused the city of routinely treating “certain dogs” for conditions like ringworm and promoting their adoptions in the media, “while others are quietly euthanized.”

She said she met the pregnant dog on a May 10 walk-through with an Amarillo-Panhandle Humane Society employee, and said she was “friendly, but scared, and jumped up on me for comfort.” The dog had been surrendered by its owners the previous day.

Later, Anderson noted the dog was in labor and had already given birth to one puppy on the concrete floor, with no whelping box. She alerted the staff and “assumed it was being handled” after she saw an employee assembling the nesting box, but later suspected the dog was being prepared for euthanasia when she saw a large, portable cage and was blocked from entering the building.

Anderson said she received confirmation from employees inside the shelter that the dog had been euthanized. “She was in labor, and euthanized,” she wrote.

“I am aware that euthanasia is a reality at the shelter,” Anderson wrote. “I am well aware of the overpopulation problems. I am also well aware that AMW has to make hard decisions. However, I feel that this action is the exact opposite of a what ‘the most humane community in the Panhandle of Texas’ would do. This act was horrific to say the least. If this is acceptable to the leadership of the shelter, then what is out of bounds?”

Anderson said euthanasia is part of the “overall agenda” of the shelter, which she said lacks public support. “Amarillo couldn’t euthanize its way out of our problems in the past, and it won’t work now,” she wrote.

Shelter director Richard Havens said it was the “right call” to euthanize the dog, whose owners had made a 911 call the evening before to report their dog as a “vicious animal,” television station KMAR reported.

“We responded after hours, we took the animal into custody and then the following morning, we ended up euthanizing it due to the nature of the call and then the behaviors that we also saw the animal exhibiting," Havens said.

The dog wasn’t a foster candidate, Havens said, and was euthanized as a matter of public safety.

“It’s very unfortunate that this had to happen, but it was the right call,” Havens said.

Anderson said in a tearful interview with the television station there were no markings on the dog’s kennel to suggest that she was aggressive. “If she was aggressive, she should have been marked as such,” Anderson said. “She should have been in the appropriate facility.”

Anderson also pointed out that the dog was not euthanized before she went into labor or after the puppies were born. “She was euthanized as she was delivering the puppies,” Anderson said. “So, aggressive or not, I don’t know where you can excuse this or say, ‘This is why we did it.’ ”

"The shelter already lacks public support, which is so crucial not only for the new breeding ordinances, but the overall agenda," continued Anderson. "The fact that the Target Zero report was just released makes me even more disgusted that this occurred. Amarillo couldn’t euthanize its way out of our problems in the past, and it won’t work now.

Anderson, who she is no longer volunteering at the shelter, has taken heat for her defense of the pit bull and followed up with a Monday Facebook post. She wrote, in part:

“To those who say, how dare I? How dare I value the life of an ‘aggressive’ pit bull? How dare I, a mere volunteer, pretend to know what is going on? How dare I post on social media? How dare I challenge the shelter that has to look those dogs in the eyes and euthanize them? To those I say, how could I not? I have looked the very same animals in the eyes. To turn and do nothing, to say nothing, would have been an injustice for the very ones I hold so dearly.”

She said she has never argued that dangerous animals should be adopted or that shelter employees “enjoy” putting animals down, but has “begged for 24-hour notice and more transparency.”

Meetings on the situation are planned Tuesday at 5 p.m. at City Hall and 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Downtown Library.

Here’s her original Facebook post:

Photo courtesy of Dacia Anderson, used with permission