Leader of Rescue Charged with Animal Cruelty After 128 Dogs Found in U-Haul

It's true. Those pets would have already been put down. She rescued them and probably had to pay money to adopt them out of the shelters.

People die all the time smuggling themselves over the border for a better life.

One dead dog out of 128 rescued isn't so terrible vs. all 129 dead.

Who's to say the dog didn't die from stress or a heart condition or just old age.

Most of the rescued animals are old muts nobody wants. Think of the costs to maintain a no-kill shelter and all that dog food, etc.

She did the best she could with the money she had to work with. What have you done?

By buying a puppy you contributed to this mess.

By rescuing only a certain breed you sentence others to death based on their bloodlines. You are doing little to nothing to help the real problem.

Agreed many people are mentally ill and hord animals and they are in just as bad of shape as their animals.

The animals are probably still better off than dead but we need to help the owners get counseling and medication and the dogs into no-kill shelters where the owners can visit them.

Just showing up with animal control and destroying all the animals does nothing.

At least their intention was good.

I'd rather be a horder's dog than get lethal injection any day.

Why not volunteer to help these people clean up and get their act together instead of trying to persecute them.

It's too easy to be an armchair executioner these days. All you little dog fetish people with sweaters on your dogs need to WTFUp and pitch in or STFUp!

way too many people believe that by saving large #'s of animals they show others what good people they are. they seem more interested in how other people see them then in the true welfare of these poor animals. any one who truly loves animals knows you can't save them all and you owe it to give the best life possible to what you can save. if you can only AFFORD to give one a good life that alone makes you a good person.

One of my oldest friends is active in a german shepard rescue group. She is always very vocal about how other people care for their dogs. She stopped taking care of herself and started drinking excessively. The dogs can't criticize her drinking and no one can enter her house because of the dogs. She was near death and the police broke in and took her to a hospital. The house was covered with dog feces and live rats and contained two dead dogs.

She is now back in her home hoarding dogs. (The definition of hoarding is having more dogs than you can care for.) Substance abuse and animal hoarding go hand-in-hand.

Ryan and commenters:

My wife and I have cumulatively worked for several years rescuing animals from shelters and have supported animal rescue organizations. We completely agree that people that take actions WITH THE INTENTION OF CAUSING SUFFERING TO ANIMALS, should be prosecuted and jailed...for a long time. And,
No one can defend the decision to transport so many dogs in those conditions - it was a terrible choice. But good and evil are really created and determined by the INTENTION in the heart and mind. Given that Bonnie had operated a successful animal RESCUE (not a puppy mill) since 1997,(check the YELP reviews - http://www.yelp.com/biz/hearts-for-hounds-long-beach)
are you certain that her INTENTION was to cause suffering to the animals...versus...being a very foolish and very badly made decision about how to transport them to their new facility that resulted in great suffering? Please place this terrible decision and its terrible consequences of suffering for the animals in the context of Bonnie's animal rescue work since 1997. For example, these, and many of the other animals she rescued, would have been left in the conditions of the county shelters and unfortunately, more often than not, killed. (If you haven't visited your shelter, please do so and ask about 'the live release rate', i.e. the number of dogs and cats that come into the shelter, and the number that leave alive (Good topic for a story, Ryan)...also note the stressful conditions...and please consider adopting one...or, adopting another one if you've already adopted.)

And please take the time to do a little research (it only takes a few minutes with GOOGLE and the Internet) to find out about how Bonnie's animal rescue was run and the results that it produced. Please read the comments on YELP and elsewhere about people who have interacted with Bonnie and her animal rescue over the 14 years it has been in operation.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/hearts-for-hounds-long-beach

And please ask yourself, what choices have I made in the past, what have I done or said or what decisions and choices have I made, that have caused suffering to others? What mistakes have I made that caused suffering to others?

And, Ryan, please before you write a 'news' story, and before in the comments we self-righteously condemn and pass the kind of absolute judgements on someone that often show up in comments, given that we have Google and the Internet, it takes but a few minutes to do a little honest research into the history of a person (in this case Bonnie, and in this case, an animal rescue (not a puppy-mill) that for over a decade may have rescued from death row in shelters in L.A. and Orange counties AND FOUND HOMES FOR as many as 12,000 animals.

You'll even find some negative things, rescuing that many animals, a dog apparently died recently, and her shelter was actually investigated by the City of Long Beach Animal Care because of a complaint from neighbors regarding "noise and odor" (not surprising; and while the investigating officers noted overcrowding for the dogs (perhaps one reason for the relocation of the animals), but they planned to come back only "to post a notice of compliance, listing the maximum number of dogs that they group could have", since they found NO animal cruelty regarding ANY of the animals AND "...NONE OF THE DOGS WERE FOUND TO BE SICK OR IN POOR HEALTH." I find this remarkable...over 100 dogs and NONE of them sick or in bad physical condition! This is consistent with the comments on YELP regarding the work of Bonnie's rescue. So please, honest background research before writing the story or judging.

Finally, we might look within our own hearts and minds and see what emotional, psychological, ego 'payoff' we get when, in this story, or in talking (and gossiping) about others in our lives...we make others wrong and make ourselves right.

Thanks for reading and reflecting