Over 100 storage bins containing the bodies of dead dogs were found at a woman’s home in south Arkansas earlier this year and have yet to be removed, authorities said last week.
Drew County Sheriff Mark Gober said deputies responded to reports of dogs growling at neighbors at a home on Rose Hill Cutoff Road in late July, and authorities found between 175 and 300 storage bins containing dead dogs and a house overrun by 45 living dogs.
Employees from state agencies have inspected the property, but the totes remain, the sheriff said. A state Department of Environmental Quality employee went to the house in October, and a health inspector visited in August, he said.
Gober said the situation will be resolved through the agencies, as there is “no law against stacking dead dogs.”
The sheriff said that when he went in the house, he found a dog’s remains in a blue tote. He found more totes throughout the property.
“For every tote, there’s no doubt in my mind there’s a deceased dog,” he said. The dogs in the containers died of natural causes, the sheriff said.
Many of the living dogs had mange or were unhealthy, Gober said, and they were euthanized in August.
Gober called the home “a big human doghouse” with dog feces throughout and torn-up furniture.
The sheriff hopes the totes containing the dogs will be gathered and taken to a landfill, and that the home, which is in unlivable condition, will be demolished. The totes remained on the property Friday, he said, adding that a few dogs still live there.
Gober didn’t have an estimate for when cleanup would start but said he hopes it will be “in the very near future.”