PRICE, Utah — Kimberley Lloyd had been working at the Carbon County Animal Shelter for about a year when the Sheriff’s Office told the employees to feed all the dogs one cup of food a day, she said.
“The dogs continued to decrease in weight rapidly over the span of a week,” she said. “They lost tons of weight. We had one dog who went from being very hyperactive, jumping up and down in his kennel constantly, to, I could walk in there and he'd crawl in my lap and I thought he was going to die the next day.”
Lloyd didn’t agree with cutting back on the dogs’ food, she said.
“We're only allowed to feed the dogs one cup, or else we fear we'll get in trouble for feeding them more and undermining our sergeant,” she said. “I really grew close with all of those animals, so to watch them start going through that was hard for me.”
However, Sheriff Jeff Wood says it was just one dog that wasn’t keeping weight on, and all the other dogs in the shelter look good.
“We're still trying to determine what happened to that dog,” he said. “We don't know if it had emotional issues. We don't know if it had physical issues. We know that it was sick and that it rapidly lost weight.”
The employees were recently trained on best practices for feeding so each dog would be getting enough food, he said.
“We're trying to avoid having excess food that gets thrown away at the end of the day,” said Wood. “In the past, we had a routine of feeding twice a day. We saw a significant amount of food being wasted.”
Wood said the County has spent thousands of dollars on veterinary bills from Dr. Dan Harmer, the veterinarian who wrote a ‘Letter to the editor’ to ETV News about alleged neglect at the shelter.
“To say that his work has been done pro bono, I have not seen anything on a statement where there was any free services,” he said. “He says there's other dogs here that were in that shape that are not. And he never came to see. He hasn't been on the dog side of the shelter ever.”
Sheriff Wood encourages people to come to the shelter themselves and see what the dogs look like. The shelter is open Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., excluding holidays.
