Miami-Dade animal shelters quickly filling up amid rise in pet abandonments

MEDLEY, Fla. – Animal advocates are raising concerns about conditions and capacity at Miami-Dade animal shelters after a heartless act was caught on camera.

The footage shows a woman pull up and dump her dog in a park off Northwest 62nd Street and then drive away, leaving the animal abandoned and confused.

“As you can see in the video, she is running behind the car that left her because that’s all she knows,” said Jennifer Diliz, who rescues abandoned animals.

Diliz rescued her and took her to a shelter.

The video speaks to a larger problem in our animal community.

Miami-Dade Animal Services is under scrutiny for how the dogs at its old Medley shelter are being cared for.

MDAS gave Local 10 News a tour of the shelter last week, and it appeared to be very clean.

Animal advocates such as Michael Rosenberg called foul, saying that it was all for the cameras and does not speak to the true day-to-day care, claiming that the dogs are truly living in deplorable conditions.

“They are stuck in these cages with not enough people to walk them, trying to not go to the bathroom,” he said.

In response to that, Miami-Dade Animal Services said in a statement that dedicated kennel staff care for the pets and that the enrichment team visits the medley facility twice a week.

With the explosion of surrenders, shelters are basically at full capacity.

Rosenberg says there really are only three options for a solution.

“You turn them all away, keep them warehoused or God forbid, start euthanizing again, and it’s up to our elected officials to pick one of those three things,” he said.