Employees of the New Boston Service Department were stunned Tuesday morning when they found two live puppies left in someone’s trash. The dogs have now been placed in a foster home, but Village Administrator and Code Enforcement Officer Steve Hamilton is furious and disgusted that someone could treat animals this way.

The two pit bull pups were nearly emaciated by the time garbage men discovered them in a box left in the trash behind someone’s residence in New Boston.

“People just dropped them off hoping that we would just pick up their box and put them in the garbage truck and just kill them,” Hamilton said. “What words are there to describe something like this? This is truly cruelty to animals.”

He already knows that it was not the homeowner in whose trash the dogs were discovered, because he has been out of town for a long while.

Hamilton took the two dogs to Sierra’s Haven but he was told they can’t accept pit bulls. Then Shawnee Animal Clinic told him to take the dogs to the pound.

“I took them to the dog pound and I asked the lady there what they were going to do with them, and she said pit bulls they can’t usually give away, so they was going to be put down Tuesday,” he said.

The dog pound put Hamilton in contact with Linda Gilliam of the Pike County Humane Society, and she has already made arrangements for one of the dogs to be fostered and the other will be adopted in Scioto County.

“You can have a pit bull if you properly confine them. If you keep a dog outside — any dog that’s on the vicious dog list — they have to be in a kennel with a top on it, and you have to carry the $100,000 liability insurance per dog,” Gilliam explained.

She said many people think that their homeowner’s insurance will cover a pit bull attack, but it does not. She said it requires additional coverage, and costs about $500 (per dog) each year.

In the meantime, Gilliam is continuing her investigation to discover who illegally abandoned the dogs.

“The box that they come in, (the person) left a shipping label on there. So I know where the dogs come from, or at least where the box comes from. That gives me a starting point, and it’s from a company here in Pike County,” Gilliam said.

According the New Boston Village Codified Ordinances, it is a misdemeanor in the second degree for any owner of a domestic animal to abandon their animal within the village. Hamilton asked that anyone with information of who these dogs belonged to, or who abandoned them in the village, please contact either himself at (740) 456-4106, or the New Boston Police Department at (740) 456-4109.

Gilliam has also filed paperwork with an attorney to incorporate a Scioto County Humane Society with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office. She said anyone interested in joining can attend their public meetings on every third Thursday of the month at 6 p.m. at the New Boston Community Center on Rhodes Avenue.

RYAN SCOTT OTTNEY can be reached at (740) 353-3101, ext. 235, or e-mail rottney@heartlandpublications.com.