BRADENTON, Fla. — Dozens of animals are in need of new homes and medical care at a Bradenton shelter after they were seized from a Putnam County home.
In a post on Facebook, Nate's Honor Animal Rescue says it now has 55 new animals that were "medical cases, matted, scared and needed our immediate attention."
Nate's Honor Animal Rescue said it has been working around the clock since Thursday evening when it got the sudden intake of dogs.
"This weekend was mostly organized chaos," Karissa Mayer of Nate's Honor said. "You just move into action."
Mayer explained that while they initially brought in 51 dogs, that number grew over the weekend.
"So we're up to 55 because one of these lovely dogs decided she was going to have some puppies on Saturday night," Mayer said. "The conditions of these dogs ranged in degree of neglect. They all have bad skin, they all have parasites, they all have ear infections."
The following days have been filled with extensive medical checks and treatments for the dozens of dogs, by Nate's Honor's medical team and volunteer veterinarians. Volunteer grooming teams have also stepped in to help.
"So we have full-time 11 staff members, but we have about 200 volunteers that do a variety of things, from transporting animals back and forth to surgery to dishes in laundry, dog walking," Mayer explained. "And so our volunteer-to-staff ratio is about 20 to 1. And it's because of that that we can manage a situation like this."
The Putnam County Sheriff's Office and animal control seized more than 100 dogs from an Interlachen home on Wednesday. The agency said the homeowner is in her 80s and was "overwhelmed."
"It doesn't appear that they're really malnourished. But it does appear that none of them have [ever] had veterinarian care. None of them are spayed, neutered, and it's just a situation that's gotten far out of hand," Colonel Joseph Wells of the Putnam County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.
Col. Wells said incident is being investigated as an animal neglect case.
The shelter says none of the dogs are up for adoption currently and that it may be sometime before they are.
"What we need most at this time are donations to help us with their medical costs," the organization said in the Facebook post.
If you are interested in donating or adopting the rescued animals, you're asked to fill out the adoption forms on the Nate's Honor Animal Rescue website.
First Coast News contributed to this report.