An Oklahoma animal shelter will be investigated after a video surfaced Tuesday of one of its dogs feeding on the carcass of another dog.
The video, taken when Abe Thomas visited the Idabel town shelter to adopt a dog, shows a gray pit bull eating the bloody open chest of a dead puppy, according to the Tulsa World.
Shock and outrage quickly spread after Thomas posted the short video to his Facebook page Tuesday, with animal rights groups demanding an investigation and Idabel Mayor Tina Forshee vowing to look into the appalling incident.
It's not yet clear how the puppy died. Cecil Richards, Idabel's animal control officer, called it an accident and said both dogs were fine early Tuesday morning.
"I played with the dog at 10:30 (that morning)," Richards told the newspaper. "I went to lunch at (noon), and when I came back from lunch, I met with a guy who said he wanted to adopt a dog. That's when we both seen it," said Richards, referring to Thomas.
If a dog is to be euthanized, the town usually waits 10 days before any action is taken, Richards said.
But Thomas says the pit bull "wasn't vicious" when he visited the shelter. He adopted the dog out of fear it would be put down. She is now named Joy.
"When I told it to stop eating the dog, it did," Thomas told the Tulsa World. "There was another dog with it eating the dead dog. It was just a puppy. If the pit bull was vicious, I figured it would have attacked the puppy, too, but it didn't.
"They were all emaciated. So I figured they were just hungry."
Others have made similar comments about the dogs at the Idabel kennel. A Facebook group titled "Idabel Ok Pound- We Demand Reform- Fire Aco Cecil Richards claims "the pound is a house of horrors" where dogs are "starving to death." The group was created after Thomas' video went viral.
Richards said Joy was skinny but was at the pound less than a week and had not had time to gain weight, KFOR reported. The animals are fed once a day, he said.
"I have never heard of another dog eating a dog's carcass unless it was very, very hungry," Oklahoma Department of Agriculture veterinarian Rod Hall told the station.
