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More than two dozen English and French Bulldog puppies were rescued from a hot van parked outside of a New Jersey Walmart store after a good Samaritan reported someone selling the pups from the van.
The 26 Bulldog puppies were found stuffed into two crates and left alone in a hot van parked outside a Garfield, New Jersey Walmart store. The van was not running and the puppies had no air conditioning or access to fresh water.
When rescuers began pulling the puppies from their crates, they had been crammed into the hot van for at least 45-minutes and were severely dehydrated and in need of urgent medical care.
“They were literally on top of each other,” Bergen County Director of Animal Services Deborah Yankow said. “It was a ninety-degree day, they were all overheated.”
“They’re all short nosed puppies which have a very serious reaction to heat normally, let alone in the back of a car.”
Yankow said the puppies were immediately put into the shelter’s van, so severely dehydrated that they, “literally jumped into the water bottles.”
The puppies were transported to the Bergen County Animal Shelter and Adoption Center in Teterboro where they are currently being cared for while an investigation is underway.
Yankow believes the bulldog puppies were originally flown in from a puppy mill in Colombia and were being transported to a pet store in Florida.
“One of the drivers told me she was taking them to Florida,” she told CBS58. “There was paperwork with them and it was determined, we believe, they might’ve been flown from Colombia.”
The puppies are currently in isolation and on hold during an SPCA investigation. Rescuers must go to court to obtain custody of the pups before they can be considered for adoption. The sometimes lengthy process could take months.