I tend to trust people and believe what they tell me. I don't think that's so bad. But when it comes to finding a new home for an animal, that is not a good time for trust. That is a time for suspicion and paranoia and extreme fact-checking. Don't ever take people's word for it when they say that they can give your animal a permanent home until you have seen for yourself where the animal will be living. Look how these dogs ended up:

They were handed over to a "no-kill" shelter in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and shunted into this outdoor pen that flooded every time it stormed, forcing them to live in ankle-deep water. The "shelter" is called All Creatures Great and Small (ACGS), inappropriately named after James Herriott's book about the experiences of a rural English veterinarian—because the dogs and cats at this particular facility didn't even get any veterinary care! I'll spare you the photos of all the untreated injuries and diseases that the inmates at this facility endured, but suffice it to say that even a dog with a crushed pelvis and a broken leg was forced to languish in pain all alone in a back room without any veterinary care.

How do we know all this? Because one of PETA's heroic (and I mean that literally) undercover investigators recently worked at this facility for seven months. Prior to the investigation, we had gotten complaint after complaint from people about the extreme crowding, the filth, the lack of access to drinking water, the lack of veterinary care, the lack of shelter from the elements, and on and on over the past decade.

The good news is that today, thanks to a lot of very hard work by PETA staff and many of our members and supporters, the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services is taking possession of the place and will start transferring the roughly 300 remaining inmates into the arms of reputable sheltering organizations after doing preliminary health and behavior assessments on the animals. (To find out how you can help pursue justice for those who have suffered at ACGS for so long, click here.) For these dogs and cats, the hellish nightmare is over. Finally, ACGS is going out of business!