Dogs are in no danger, NCSU assures

E-mail was read across the nation

RALEIGH -- Animal welfare advocates hoping to save the lives of nine dogs have frantically contacted N.C. State University's veterinary school this week, after an e-mail message hinting at the canines' imminent demise was widely circulated on the Internet.

If you've seen that message, relax. The dogs most certainly will not be euthanized by Friday, as feared. In fact, it's highly unlikely they will be put to sleep at all.

The message that started the furor was originally intended just for students, faculty and staff of NCSU's College of Veterinary Medicine. The impassioned plea sought help finding homes for nine dogs that had been used for teaching and research.

The message said that if the dogs were not adopted by Friday, they would "go to a terminal study." It noted the service the dogs had given to research. It listed their names. It linked to color photos.

Sometime Friday night or Saturday morning, the message was posted on Craigslist. From there it was copied and pasted to numerous other Web sites, asking people to call or send a message to the veterinary school.

Dianne Dunning, assistant dean at the school, started getting calls Saturday. She was still getting them Wednesday afternoon. More than 130 so far, including one from an animal-rescue group in California that said it was prepared to send a plane to North Carolina to get the whole canine crew.

"It's been wonderful," said a patient and smiling Dunning, who hasn't been able to get much else done for trying to return the calls and e-mail. "People really care."

The dogs were not in immediate danger of being euthanized, said Dunning and Warwick Arden, dean of the vet school. In fact, Warwick said, NCSU's is one of only a handful of vet schools across the nation that has made it a practice to try to find homes for all its research animals: dogs, cats, ferrets, anything that would make a good pet. The school has had the placement program for 14 years.

NCSU buys its research animals, most often from breeders who raise them for that purpose, Dunning said. Most dogs used for research are beagles or hounds, and the animals may stay at the vet school for a few months or a year.

While they're there, Dunning said, they're well cared for, doted on by students and faculty. They have regularly scheduled play times, plenty of food and the best in animal health care.

In exchange, they may be used to teach veterinary students how to draw a blood sample, how to listen to a heartbeat or what a healthy limb should feel like during a physical exam. They may be used to test how fast a medication enters and exits the system.

At the end of their service, the animals are offered to the people who have worked most closely with them -- those who teach and study at the vet school. If suitable homes are not found for all the animals that way, Dunning said, the school works with local agencies that handle animal adoptions.

Only as a last resort, Warwick said, would the animals be euthanized, and that rarely happens at NCSU. Warwick said schools that routinely euthanize their research animals do so in a way that contributes to research or teaching, such as using tissue samples to study disease and develop treatments.

Already, Dunning said, arrangements have been made for three of the nine dogs now available for adoption. Enough people have called in that the other six will be placed in homes, too, she said.

It takes a while, she said, because the dogs are state property, and a lot of paperwork is involved in transferring them to private ownership.

Warwick said that although it's gratifying to see such interest in these dogs, "The real tragedy is that at animal shelters across the country there are 3 million dogs and cats euthanized each year" because no one offers them a home.