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TAMPA, Fla. — A dog is recovering after she was severely injured while eating a product in her kennel at a dog boarding facility.
The vet noted the material she ingested was toxic. As the dog’s owner shared her story, we discovered there’s very little regulation of dog boarding facilities across the state.
3-year-old Elsa has no problem walking around a path near her home, but getting to this point has not been an easy road.
“Her injuries were so severe from her face, her nose, her mouth, her tongue and the burns went all the way down into her esophagus, into her stomach,” Sheva Burton said.
Back in August, Burton dropped Elsa off for a one-month stay at Puppy Manor in Hillsborough County.
“My son had camps, and I was traveling with the military,” Burton said. “I’m a reservist, active reservist with the Air Force, and so I had some Air Force active-duty days.”
The day before Burton was to fly back home, she received a call from the kennel.
“She said that Elsa had chewed something hanging inside of the kennels, which was a board that the dogs couldn’t see each other as they were inside the kennels,” Burton explained. “And she said she had a scratch on her tongue and on her leg, and she thought she should go to the vet. And I thought, well, a scratch not that big of a deal. I didn’t understand the gravity of what had occurred.”
She says she told the kennel staff that if things got worse to send Elsa to the vet. When Sheva called back later that day to see how Elsa was doing, she was experiencing more symptoms.
“Jessie said I think she should go to the vet. She’s lethargic. Her tongue is hanging out of her mouth. Had swollen. She cannot close her mouth. And I said, urgently, please, urgently, take her to the vet, Gandy Animal Hospital’s around the corner, like what’s happening. This doesn’t make sense from a scratch on her tongue and on her leg, and I didn’t understand what the material was,” Burton said.
The material, Sheva later found out from the kennel, was a fiberglass-reinforced plastic, aka FRP. In a video given to Burton, you can see how Elsa came in contact with the FRP inside of her kennel as she chewed and pulled the board down.
“She wasn’t able to eat. She still is healing,” Burton said.
She was told the fiberglass contained styrene. According to the vet’s diagnosis, that was the toxic material that Elsa digested. She wanted to know why that product was used. We reached out to the owner of the boarding facility to ask him about FRP.
And by email, he told us that “FRP is an extremely common material utilized in the dog boarding and daycare business. The reason being it is a durable, cleanable, yet lightweight material. I have been involved in 15 different kennels over the last 12 years (and visited numerous others), and nearly every one of them utilized FRP within the facility.”
The facility’s owner also said numerous kennel companies actually build their products using FRP. Here’s an example he shared made by Mason. Here’s an explanation of the different types of materials from Gator Kennels. Here’s what’s offered through K9 Kennel Store.
He attached links to the kennels, but none of their photos looked like the one Elsa was in where she was able to pull the board down.
We showed the video of the material inside the kennel to leaders in Pinellas County,
“That is certainly a hazard and something that we would potentially see on the outside of a kennel, but not something that we would see inside the kennel,” Jennifer Runner said.
Runner is the interim director for Pinellas County Animal Services. She says in Pinellas, dog boarding facilities are licensed and inspected.
“It’s an easy time opportunity to educate,” Runner said.
We told her our investigation has uncovered less than two percent of the counties in the state of Florida license and inspect their boarding facilities. Those counties are Broward, Miami-Dade, and Pinellas. Runner says she was unaware that Hillsborough did not inspect.
“We want to make sure that all of our boarding facilities are on the same page as we are, and we’re protecting animal welfare,” Runner said.
Elsa was boarded in Hillsborough County which does not inspect. The owner of the facility tells us they have removed the FRP from the inside of all of the suites at Puppy Manor after this incident.
Burton says she wanted to make sure no other dog suffers the pain Elsa did as she tries to pay the $16,000 vet bill that came with it.
The owner of Puppy Manor also told us by email:
“We felt terrible for Elsa and very concerned about her injuries, notifying Ms. Burton immediately and staying in very regular touch with her when she initially went to the vet. We take dog care very seriously and truly care for the dogs at Puppy Manor, especially after spending a month with us!
We did pay the initial $4,000 of her vet bill and also comped about $2,000 worth of boarding for Ms. Burton. She had also agreed to split the cost 50/50 (per a text message conversation). Nonetheless, we filed an insurance claim at the time of Elsa’s injuries to see if they could help Ms. Burton further – a claim which is still being evaluated by our insurance carrier.
We tried our best to stay in touch with and help Ms. Burton through the process of Elsa’s care as well as the vet bills. It sounds as though she does not believe FRP should be used in any kennel, and that she takes no responsibility for her dog’s part in ripping off and chewing the FRP.”