Crew looking for toddler finds dumped dogs

A crew searching near the Ship Channel for a missing 3-year-old toddler came across something unusual Monday: eight plastic bags containing the bodies of dogs. County animal control investigators said they don't know where the dogs came from or who put them on a pile of trash alongside Market Street Road.

"Somebody maybe picked them up from a veterinary clinic, and rather than take them to a landfill or somewhere else, they just dumped them on the side of the road. There's no way to know," said Marianne Hay, animal control field supervisor.

She said investigators could find no evidence of cruelty or abuse, because the dogs were decomposing.

Hay said she only knows of one other case in which dogs' bodies have been found bagged and dumped on the side of a road. A spokeswoman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which regulates pet crematoriums and the disposal of farm animals, said no one oversees the disposal of dogs (and, we assume, cats and other small domestic pets), but animals collected from veterinary clinics or hospitals are normally incinerated or contained and disposed of in designated landfills.