A video posted on Facebook of a person walking a dog alongside a moving vehicle has started to garner quite a bit of attention, and local animal investigators say reports of abuse have been on the rise in recent years.
Ashleigh Cooper says it happened near the intersection of 11th and Yale. She says she was too appalled to stand back and do nothing. It's something any driver would be disturbed to see, a dog on a leash, running next to a car.
"He was going about 20 miles per hour and the dog was running," Ashleigh Cooper said.
Cooper says the risk of injury was quite real.
"You could tell the dog was panting, but even when I was following the dog it didn't yelp or anything," she said.
Tim Geen is Oklahoma's only SPCA investigator. He believes this is a case of animal cruelty and says he's seen too many cases in recent years.
"In five years, I've investigated 3,200 cases," he said. "It's about 600 to 700 cases a year."
He doesn't know exactly what to think of this footage, but knows something is terribly wrong.
"Why do that?" Geen said. "What is the purpose? I don't know."
He says he’s seen a lot, but one case in particular, which occurred in June, left him disgusted.
"There were a lot of animals, in my opinion they were badly neglected they had mange and I'm glad we could get them out of that environment," Geen said.
Dozens of dogs were involved in a Delaware County animal abuse investigation. In this case, however, it was only one pet but it doesn't make it any less troubling, says Green.
"Is it because a person is mean spirited or is it because they got no conscious?" Geen said.
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