WARNING!!! Very Graphic Video. Please don’t watch if you think you can’t handle it.

– Kenn

From KOHD.com

The Oregon Humane Society, answering a call to help animals in distress, is dispatching a rescue team today on a six-hour trip to eastern Oregon to save as many as 100 dogs.

Most of the dogs are living without shelter on a rural property in Princeton, Oregon, about 20 miles outside of Burns. Some of the dogs are living underground in holes covered with planks, others are chained to farm equipment and have little or no shelter from the snow, wind and sub-freezing temperatures common in the high-desert country.

The rescue team is expected to return to the OHS shelter in Portland on Wednesday, Dec. 9 at approximately 4 pm. A three-person OHS team traveled to the property Monday and returned with 14 dogs, including four puppies who are one-week old and six puppies who are three- to four-months old.

The dogs being rescued were subsisting on cattle carcasses obtained from a local meat processing plant. The property was littered with piles of bones and cattle skeletons. Also visible were the unburied remains of at least one deceased dog.

OHS is perhaps the only animal shelter in the region with the resources to care and find homes for so many dogs at one time. “Most of these dogs, despite their living conditions, are friendly to people and want to be around us. I hope we can get them into loving homes in time for the holidays,” said OHS Executive Director Sharon Harmon.

OHS was called on by Harney Country Sheriff David Glerup, who arrested three individuals and charged them with five counts of animal neglect. The case was brought to Sheriff Glerup’s attention by county social workers who were investigating an unrelated complaint against the owners of the dogs brought by an 11-year-old child living on the property. Officials have since removed all children from the property.

The individuals charged with neglect surrendered ownership of the dogs to the country, paving the way for OHS to rescue the animals and find them new homes. The past owners of the dogs will be permitted to keep a few dogs in their home as part of the agreement to surrender the remaining animals.