Severely Injured Puppy Found In Flagler County Park’s Ditch Shows Signs Of Illegal Dog Fighting

Robert Yanochko on April 8 was among a crew of Flagler County maintenance workers at Shell Bluff, the county park near the Putnam County line, when someone walking a dog approached him to report that a puppy was in a ditch, curled up and looking unwell. It had been raining on and off all week. Yanochko observed that the ground beneath the puppy was dry, suggesting that the puppy was dropped there that morning.

He called Caroline Johnson, founder and director of the Palm Coast-based Saving Missing Animals Response Team, the nonprofit known as SMART. She drove to the park. “She couldn’t lift her head at all, she was curled up, pretty much lifeless,” Johnson said of the black and white pit bull mix soon given the name Shelly. “No strength to move her head or get up. You could see the pain in her eyes. It was awful.” 

Not thinking the worst, Johnson at first thought Shelly may have been suffering from the contagious parvovirus that attacks puppies, an infection that debilitates young dogs and requires intensive treatment. On closer inspection, Johnson realized it was not that at all. She had injuries throughout her body. Maggots had burrowed into them. Shelly may have been the victim of something more sinister than an illness or neglect. She took her to East Coast Animal Hospital in Palm Coast and reported the incident to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office. 

ECAH veterinarian Dr. Jennifer Garrett, in a statement to a sheriff’s deputy, reported that “the injuries are deep and superficial and appear to be dog bites,” according to the sheriff’s incident report. “There were wounds on her face, chest and forelimbs and there were maggots present in many of her deeper wounds. Dr. Garrett stated this is consistent with illegal dog fighting operations. Dr. Garrett stated Shelly was severely lethargic, dehydrated, and cold. Dr. Garrett furthered by saying Shelly’s overall condition was also considered to be poor and suggested that she has been neglected. Due to her injuries on her face and four limbs, they are severely swollen and estimate the injuries to have occurred within the week.”

Dog fighting is illegal but continues underground. The ASPCA and Flagler County government’s attorney’s office in 2018 held a detailed seminar for 60 police officers and animal control officers in the region that illustrated the telltale signs and incidence of the subculture, with actual exhibits of dog-fighting paraphernalia collected from dog fighters. (See:“ASPCA in Flagler Shows Lurid World of Animal Cruelty and Its Kin to Domestic Violence and Other Crimes.”)

Only this week federal authorities arrested a 49-year-old Boston man on charges connecting him to a multi-year dog-fighting operation. The charging affidavit notes that “Dogfighters today tend to communicate with each other via text messages, Facebook, email, or website chat rooms dedicated to ‘game dogs.’ Dogfighters routinely ‘hook’ matches and exchange documents, expertise, photographs, or videos relating to dogfighting activities via email and other electronic means. Social media offers individuals who engage in animal fighting with the ability to communicate using text messages and audio calls, transmit and receive pictures and videos of animal fighting, and establish and widen animal fighting networks.”

Dogs victimized by fighting rings typically show scars on the face, front legs, hind ends and thighs. Shelly presented with some of that scarring, not all of it recent. “She has some old scarring, which is significant of old wounds,” Johnson said. When she was recovered, Shelly exhibited a smell of decomposition, with “dead skin wounds so open and so deep that they had to do surgery to basically cut away all the dead flesh and flush out all the infections.” 

At this point there is no way to prove that she was involved in dog fighting, only to suspect that she was. “We’re seeing a lot of abuse overall but the dog fighting, every once in a while you get one dumped in a ditch, kind of on death row basically,” Johnson said. 

There are some surveillance cameras at the Shell Bluff park, but the sheriff’s Real Time Crime Center tried to locate a vehicle with the puppy in plain view without success. “Further investigation is required,” the incident report states. 

It was a battle at first, especially the first two days, but Shelly has been recovering and is expected to survive, to be healthy, and to get adopted. “We’ve had so many people reach out, seeing her spirit and her injuries, offering her a home,” Johnson said. She described Shelly’s more recent vivacity, playfulness and affection with people, kissing them and playing with toys, though when the suffering returns, it is apparent in her eyes. 

“She’s incredible, she has one of the most amazing personalities, she’s playful, she’s playing with toys already, wagging her tail and kissing everybody,” Johnson said. “You can see the brightness spark in her eyes that wasn’t there before.” Shelly remains very cautious with other dogs. 

“Regardless of whether it was dog fighting or somebody’s dog who got into a really bad fight and they duped her there because she was too far gone,” Johnson said, “it’s criminal and disgusting for somebody to dump her there without care.”