posted May 15, 2013 05:25 PM            

Karen Read saw someone in a gold SUV dumped nine puppies and their mother along the road and speed off. She and other residents rounded up nine of the puppies, which had gone in all different directions. Read called her husband to help, and he gathered the eight other puppies that had also been abandoned nearby.

Read called the police and waited until a Porter County Animal Control officer arrived to take 15 of the 17 puppies. A resident who had helped Read round up some of the puppies took the other two, which appeared to be ill, to the Porter County Animal Shelter Sunday.

Read said the mother dog was not caught Friday, but Animal Control confirmed Monday that she had been captured in a live trap and was taken to the animal shelter.

“I’m glad I came when I did,” Read told The Northwest Indiana Times. “We have coyotes, raccoons and possums out there. They’d be killed.”

Read also told CBS Chicago, “Good grief. I was really angry that night, and I’m trying not to be a judgmental person. I don’t know what kind of situation they were in, but I think it was a pretty reckless and callous act that they did.”

Lakeshore PAWS, a local foster organization in Valparaiso, Indiana, took in the puppies, which appeared to be from two different litters. According to the shelter’s latest “pupdate,” the puppies are Lab mixes, ranging in age from 6 to 12 weeks old. The puppies were only available for viewing from 10 am to 3 pm Wednesday at Coco’s Canine Cabana.

As of 10:40 am Wednesday, all of the puppies were spoken for, and Lakeshore Paws was no longer taking applications for them.

The Sheriff’s Department is asking for the public’s help identifying the person who dumped the puppies on the road.

Last April, six bulldog puppies were found locked inside a suitcase in a Toledo, Ohio, alleyway. The three male and three female puppies were 3 to 4 weeks old. The suitcase belonged to a man named Howard Davis, who said the suitcase had been stolen from him, and that he had given the dogs to a friend in Michigan. The dogs were taken to the Humane Society and reunited with their mother until they became eligible for adoption.

What do you think should happen to the person who abandoned the 17 puppies?

[Photo credit: Lakeshore PAWS]