Petition: Five of the 17 Puppies Died of Parvo. The SPCA Calls the Survivors the Miracle Nine.

On the evening of Friday, July 24, 2026, Schoharie County Sheriff’s deputies went to a property in the town of Carlisle, New York, for a welfare check. They found puppies so critically ill that three were driven straight to Upstate Veterinary Specialties in Latham for emergency treatment. Deputies returned the next morning with the Susquehanna SPCA and the Animal Shelter of Schoharie Valley and removed 78 animals in total: 17 surrendered puppies, 12 dogs, nine cats, 31 birds, five chickens and four horses. The puppies were Great Danes, and several had parvovirus. Five of them died. The investigation is still active and no charges have been announced. Please sign the petition asking that anyone found responsible be barred from owning animals.

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Here is the part the petition does not tell you, because it happened afterwards. Nine of those puppies survived. The Susquehanna SPCA calls them the Miracle Nine, and this week they were cleared to socialise with visitors for the first time. What it cost to get them there is worth understanding. Parvovirus attacks the gut lining and white blood cells, and untreated it kills the large majority of puppies who catch it. The SPCA shut its facility to the public and converted rooms into emergency response units, turning its isolation area into a medical ward with a quarantine wing of isolation kennels. Because the virus survives on surfaces, every blanket and towel used on an infected puppy had to be thrown away after a single use. The monoclonal antibody treatment that gives a sick puppy a real chance runs to roughly $3,000 for six vials. Executive director Stacie Haynes and her staff ran that operation around the clock for weeks.

Two things follow from this. The first is that parvovirus is almost entirely preventable with a routine vaccination course, which is why it turns up again and again in neglect and unlicensed breeding cases and almost never in homes where dogs see a vet. The second is that when a county seizes 78 animals, the cost lands on small nonprofit shelters rather than on whoever created the situation, and it lands immediately. The Susquehanna SPCA absorbed the puppies, dogs, chickens and horses; the Animal Shelter of Schoharie Valley took the cats and birds. Both closed to the public to contain the outbreak. If you want to do something more concrete than sign, both shelters were asking for donations and supplies, and the SQSPCA in Cooperstown opened special socialisation hours for the surviving puppies. One Green Planet’s guide on what to do if you suspect animal abuse in your neighborhood covers how a welfare check like this one gets started in the first place, and the case is reported by NEWS10. This began with someone making a call.

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