I have owned & operated a very successful business here in Salina for almost 4 years. I have a doggie daycare & animal boarding facility which was the first of its kind in our town. In September 2014 we moved into a much larger & nicer building with hopes of many great improvements & additions to last us for years. Unfortunately soon after moving in the landlord did not make the improvements that
were promised to make it possible for us to pass the city inspections needed to reopen. Therefore I was forced to go to our local chamber to ask for help in dealing with this situation. We believe that in retaliation my landlord then called the shelter & reported that he had seen abuse going on in our building. When they entered my building I was not fearful since I knew that the state had just been to my building and I had passed my inspection easily. Everything in the building was new & everything had new paint & looked great. We were a no cage boarding facility so there were no dirty cages. We had outside & inside supervised play areas. Besides a few customers dogs that had been moved over from our old building there was only my own personal pets. Instead of looking to see if there was any abuse as their search warrant stated & only removing any animals showing visible abuse they decided to arrest/remove me from the building, demand all employees leave & then proceed to remove all animals. Immediately after being released I contacted the shelter about getting my pets back. I was told that they found no abuse but I could not see them or get them released. I contacted a lawyer. 40 days later I was finally given my first chance to visit them. It was a heart wrenching visit. I could tell that they thought we had given them up & were so happy to see us. Yet we were not allowed to take them home. 60 days into it they gave me back half my pets & told me again...that they found no abuse....yet I was not allowed to get the pets that were most effected by staying in such an awful place. They kept my cats, dogs & therapy pigs. It has now been 120 days & I have been allowed to see my pets 6 times. Most of these visits were only after my lawyer negotiated times for me to see them. Only one of these visits was an hour. The other visits have been 15 minutes which comes out to less than a minute per pet. It has been awful. Even with scheduled visits the shelter continually cancels my visits for all kinds of random reasons. I was finally told after much complaining that I could come see them any time I wanted but just could not take them outside without a scheduled visit & then the next day they were moved into a locked room where even the volunteers are not allowed to go. For some reason the new director is bound to inflict emotional abuse on not only my family but my pets as well. No one seems able to stop the shelter from doing whatever they wish. They seem to be making up their own rules & even the city is doing nothing to control them. My lawyer has even tried to work out an agreement on my pets release but they continually drag their feet, don't return phone calls & at this point have not returned any paperwork even though they have told us repeatedly that they want to release my pets. I do not have vicious breeds of dogs. We have Boxers & Danes. All of which have been very well trained & are extremely friendly. My daughter & I are both dog trainers & local 4H leaders. We show all our dogs in some form or another. My daughter is a groomer as well. Our pigs are therapy trained and had been taken monthly to various retirement homes in our city. Before this happened all our pets regularly participated in all the fund raisers in our town for our shelter. Our pigs were not kept within the city limits but were never told that they could not visit & had been doing so for 3 years. This site has been set up to get help from the public & whomever out there can help to get these pets back to their loving home where they belong. I want people to be aware of what is going on with their local shelter. Hopefully we can ban together & make a difference.
