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Tangipahoa Chapter News
Group wants Kentwood shelter closed due to filth, waste
The Town of Kentwood animal shelter is under fire from The Humane Society of Louisiana after the group found no sewerage system, a pile of waste that had built up for years and several dogs that were too weak to stand.
The Humane Society detailed all of that in a report that also called for the parish to close the shelter or take it over. They are seeking to sign an agreement with Tangipahoa Parish Animal Control to take over services. The report was submitted to Kentwood Mayor Harold Smith and presented in front of the city council.
The group says that the shelter, which houses dogs in eight kennels and does not service cats, failed to meet state or national shelter standards and violated multiple city and state laws.
The report detailed problems with both the structure of the building and the manner in which the animals were treated. The shelter lacks any kind of drainage system and does not have a septic tank, while the building itself was not designed to house animals, the report says. This leads to a build up of waste that has accumulated for years, the report says, and is heaped off to one side of the kennel.
The group says that the building is poorly ventilated, damp and poorly lit only exasperates the problem.
"These conditions combine to make for a 'perfect storm' to spread disease and infection," said Jeff Dorson, executive director of the Humane Society, in a press release. "There is no way to humanely house animals under these primitive conditions.”
On Thursday, October 30, our representative, Ms. Dawn Taylor-Church, visited the facility and submitted her report and photos for our review.
On October 31, two other representatives, Mr. and Mrs. Randy Stegall, from Tangi Humane Society/Chapter of Humane Society of Louisiana also visited the shelter to adopt out two Catahoula puppies. Our two teams, working independently, were appalled at the conditions they witnessed and concluded that this shelter is simply unfit to humanely house animals and should be closed immediately, due to flaws and structural deficiencies in its design.
The two puppies that were taken from the shelter were “barely alive” and too weak to stand when shelter inspectors seized the animals, the group said. The puppies did not receive adequate food and were “ravenous” when the inspectors took them from the shelter. Dogs were suffering from parasites, mites and heartworms.
Our second team of inspectors said that this is the worst facility that they had ever seen and referred to it as a "dungeon," with no chance for the animals to be properly cared for.
We suspect that these puppies would have died over the weekend at this shelter,” Dorson said. “We hope that they will be the last dogs to be impounded at the Kentwood shelter.”
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