pdf | print

Trooper, shown 10 days after her rescue from a Southeast dumpster, was apparently discarded after an illegal dog fight.

While taking garbage to the dumpster at the rear of an apartment building on Aug. 7, a resident of the 4000 block of Ninth Street SE discovered a dog's bloodied head, sticking out of a plastic bag within the dumpster. The dog was alive but covered with lacerations. The resident immediately called 202-BE-HUMANE, the Washington Humane Society (WHS) hotline.

WHS Humane Law Enforcement Officer Eve Russell was dispatched and succeeded in rescuing the dog – eventually naming her “Trooper.” Trooper, it appeared, had been placed inside a plastic bag, tightly wrapped to her body in duct tape. She had chewed her head free from the inside. WHS reports that Trooper's circumstance is evidence of “the brutality of illegal dog fighting, when the dog who loses the fight is typically discarded in this inhumane and gruesome manner.”

Russell pulled the dog out of the dumpster and cut the garbage bag off her body. Although unable to stand, Trooper was able to move her head and wag her tail. Russell rushed her across town to Friendship Hospital for Animals. At press time, she remains under 24-hour nursing care.

“We are committed to Trooper's long term rehabilitation and realize it may take longer for her emotional wounds to heal than her physical wounds,” says WHS spokesperson Tara de Nicolas, noting that no decision has been made about a future home.

WHS, active in the District since 1870, is the nation's only Congressionally-chartered animal welfare agency. WHS provides comfort and care to more than 30,000 animals each year through its broad range of programs, and no animal is turned away from its open-access shelter.