Chance At Life Or Death Sentence?
I want to thank Dogster member Barbara for barking to me about ‘ Southside Bulldoggin,’ a controversial rescue group specializing in pit bulls.
The rescue is run by brother and sister Casey and Curly Phelps, who promise a $50 donation to take your dog and find them a new home. However, over the three years that they’ve been open it has just come to light that 261 of the dogs taken in have been turned over to a shelter and euthanized.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - For three years hundreds of people have turned over dogs to a Nashville rescue group with the hope they will find new homes, but it turned out to be a death sentence for the dogs.
Casey Phelps said her rescue group was legit and promised and had given thousands of stray and unwanted dogs a second chance. At least 261 of those animals were euthanized instead.
“She rescues them, finds them a home, adopts them out,” said Casey’s brother Curly Phelps.
“She’ll put an ad in – people will come by to view the dogs, bring their children,” said Curly.It seemed like the perfect fit when animal lover Candi discovered Phelps’ rescue.
“There was a pit bull stray in the neighborhood and we tried to find it a home. She said ‘I’ll take him for a $50 donation – just bring him over,’” said Candi.
Candi chose not to hand her dog over to Phelps, but hundreds of others have over the past four years.
“They’re going to realize the dog they took to her and gave her $50 for was killed in a shelter,” said Candi. “Deceived, tricked, cheated – sad.”
According to e-mails and witness accounts a $50 donation helped Phelps find an unwanted pit bull a new home.
The Phelps claim the dogs turned over were too aggressive to be adopted out. However, circumstances lead others to believe that there is questionable behavior taking place at ‘Southside Bulldoggin.’
Police say that fraud is very hard to prove in a case like this. Animal control has no power to go after them even if they are misleading the public. At this point nothing is being done to shut down the rescue.
If this is a not for profit there should be paperwork to account for the donation money. I am curious to know exactly what is happening with the money. I would also like to know how many dogs they have taken in versus how many have been turned over to the shelter. As well as how many they have adopted out overall.
Go to ‘Southside Bulldoggin‘ to see their response to the news broadcast. The question remains, is this a second chance at life or a death sentence?
Give me a bark, let me know what you think.
Here’s the video. If you can’t see it in your RSS feed, then click here.
*Jack is looking for his forever home, check him out.
I attempted to look at their response. However the spelling and grammatical errors I found within the first sentence really struck me as unprofessional. I would never give a pet to an organization that didn’t even take the time to hit “spell check” before adding comments to their website.
i agree with the above comment. i know things are tough and trying to find homes for ‘bully breeds’ are difficult. but the lack of using a simple spell check sends off red flags in my mind.
I’m sure this organization started out with good intentions, but soon got a reality check.
I wonder how the dogs are assessed and tested. A lot of rescued dogs are scared and stressed out and resort to fear-biting. It takes a lot of knowledge, work and love to make a bully rescue successful. All those dogs deserve a chance, dumping the “unadoptable” ones at the pound, knowing they will be put down, is just unethical.
Yeah, and the spelling, not good.
This makes me so angry! I do not believe that they ever had good intentions-if they did where are the people that adopted dogs from them???The worst part of it all is that even fight dogs can be retrained-there is no excuse for them to be put down!These people obviously have no skills or training to be running a rescue for these type of dogs in the first place.I own 2 pits and from what I see this bunch needs to do some real jail time! They don’t care about this breed-only making a profit!!! If they did adopt any out-OMD! Who’s hands are they in now?
BLESS THE BULLIES!!!
If the dogs were too aggressive to be adopted out, they could have had them put to sleep themselves instead of just dumping them at shelters to be euthanized, this wreaks of a scam to me.
this is right from their site “Hobby breeder & Rescue/Re-Homing Services.” what in the h**l is a ‘hobby breeder?’
on top of that, any group that i know of the rescues is not breeders of any type as well. to me you’re either a breeder or rescue.
I’ve been to her home/ rescue.
It’s far from professional.
Other than people finding her website with pit rescue expectations, she also seeks/ solicites people on craigslist that are trying to re-home animals they have found or taken in. (all breeds).
She was contacting numerous people weekly offering to help with a $50 donation fee.