From Tazewell ARC, one of the southern rescues from which we receive our dogs. Thank you for your show of support!!! The specific issue that is described took place just last week. I hope its okay for me to post the comment here that I left on the 27 News page. I just want everyone at Mollys Place to know that you all have our continued support, and if there is any way we can help beyond simply speaking up, please let us know. The comment is as follows: I am the Director of a rescue who has delivered dozens upon dozens of dogs to Mollys Place who were down to their last hope in Southern kill shelters. Because of this I am qualified to tell anyone who will listen that every transport weve brought into Mollys Place has been greeted at the door with a barrage of vaccines, flea treatment, and all sorts of in-house veterinary protocol. As a partner with the ASPCA MAP program, our rescue transports dogs all over the eastern half of the U.S. We deliver to private, boutique rescues that take only four or five dogs, and weve delivered loads of thirty or more to huge organizations like Humane Societies and SPCAs. I can tell you firsthand that NONE of the receiving agencies provide the level of intake care that Mollys Place does. NONE of the receiving agencies have ever been as exacting with the paperwork or protocols set down by state law. Not a single large-scale organization that weve delivered large transports to has paid as much attention to disease prevention and control by using gloves and sanitary practices between the handling of each animal, not a single large-scale organization has administered vaccines immediately upon intake, and not a single large-scale organization has had a full complement of staff members whose primary purpose is to provide comfort to animals who just rode eight hours to get there. In visits announced and unannounced, Ive been in the public areas of Mollys Place and in the private areas. There is no mess, no odor, no miserable animals. In fact, on several occasions, dogs with certain behavioral issues have been completely rehabilitated and adopted into loving homes by Mollys Place. This type of service and dedication to the animals has value. I am mystified why the PA Department of Ag has targeted this organization, when Mollys Place does so much not only for that community but for thousands of animals all over the southeast. Its counter-intuitive in regard to the function they are supposed to serve. In this news story, a representative from the Department of Ag prattled on about health certificates. I laughed out loud. The paperwork issues she was going on about include this one: we recently transported a litter of nine six week old puppies to Mollys Place. Here in Virginia, they were dumped at four weeks of age in a cardboard box on a womans porch on one of the coldest nights in November. They didnt even know how to eat. Animal Control in my jurisdiction gave the woman our phone number and she brought them to me the next day. I had to start them on puppy milk replacer and keep them on it until they could chew. Our vet carefully noted on the health certificate that it was her professional judgment that the best interest of these puppies was to go to rescue and find adoptive homes. Yet the PA Dept of Ag impugned our veterinarian here in Virginia for not specifically writing the word orphan on the health certificate and said Mollys Place should not have accepted the puppies because that word was missing. There is no law in Pennsylvania or any other jurisdiction that specifically requires the use of the word orphan on a health certificate for transporting underage puppies. THIS is the type of paperwork issues that are being used to target Mollys Place, and touted in a television interview as being so, so critical because they need to know if the dog is healthy. Something every rescue and adoption center in that jurisdiction should consider: if this legal action is successful and Mollys Place is forced to close, it sets a dangerous precedent for the Dept Of Ag to enforce interpretations of the law that do not technically exist. (Such as denouncing a health certificate because the vet didnt use the word orphan.) You can sit in silence and watch this debacle, or you can contact your local and state officials and make it very clear that this type of railroading in unacceptable and taxpayers wont stand for it. But just remember--if the Dept Of Ag gets away with this, its only a matter of time before you draw their attention for some small thing and get blasted by the same cannon.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 12:52:00 +0000
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