Woman sheltered pets from storm

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This article was published 02/10/2018 (2845 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As hurricane Florence barrelled toward the North Carolina coast, Tammie Hedges decided to open a warehouse she had been remodelling to house pets displaced by the storm.

The animals came from the streets and from owners who had to evacuate, but couldn’t bring their pets with them, said Kathie Davidson, who volunteers for a non-profit group that Hedges founded a few years ago in Goldsboro, N.C. Many of the animals were sick, injured and neglected. Some cats were covered with so many fleas that volunteers had to scrub their playpen with bleach twice. One cat had a bleeding cut on its neck and Hedges treated it with an ointment she bought from a Dollar Tree store, Davidson said.

Twenty-seven animals — 17 cats and 10 dogs — were in Hedges’s care as the storm pummeled the state.

But while many saw her actions as an act of good will to help animals during a natural disaster, county officials saw a violation of the law. They arrested and charged Hedges — a decision that immediately spun into a controversy in the community about 100 kilometres southeast of Raleigh.

Hedges was questioned and arrested before being handed a dozen misdemeanour charges for practising veterinary medicine without a licence. Specifically, she was charged with administering medications such as amoxicillin and a tropical antibiotic ointment to the animals, according to the non-profit’s Facebook page. She also faced one count of solicitation of a Schedule IV controlled substance for asking for a donation of tramadol, a prescription pain medication used for animals.

Hedges, who founded the nonprofit Crazy’s Claws N Paws to help low-income families with veterinary bills and pet supplies, said in a statement that she and volunteers did what they had to do to help animals displaced by the storm. She and others turned the warehouse into a temporary shelter, equipped it with crates, kennels, litter boxes and blankets, and asked for donations through social media. She said they had been remodelling the warehouse to turn it into a state-approved shelter.

“We had a plan. We had the calls for help, but we didn’t know where to put the animals… We came together as a community during a difficult time to help,” wrote Hedges, who didn’t respond to calls and Facebook messages from the Washington Post.

On Sept. 17, three days after Florence made landfall on the North Carolina coast, an official from Wayne County Animal Services went to the warehouse at the request of the state Department of Agriculture, which oversees veterinary services. The official, according to a statement from the county, “developed serious concerns” that Hedges was practising veterinary medicine without a licence.

Hedges has surrendered the animals to the county’s animal services department, which is reuniting them with their owners, officials said.

A GoFundMe page raised more than US$20,000 to help with her legal fees. In reaction to the story, the Wayne County district attorney, Matthew Delbridge, dropped the charges.

Delbridge said he hoped a dismissal of the charges would minimize distraction from the public and allow the North Carolina Veterinary Medical Board to decide whether it wanted to act on the matter.

Davidson said the animals had nowhere else to go, and veterinary offices had closed ahead of the storm. There was an emergency veterinary clinic in another county, but she said it was impossible to transport 27 animals in the middle of a storm.

The county’s shelter had enough room for displaced animals, said Wayne County spokesperson Joel Gillie, though it could not accept pets that owners wanted to surrender.

— Washington Post