Bertie County Officials Called Out With Video of Dogs Who Died as Chaining Ban Rejected Year After Year

For Immediate Release:
December 3, 2025

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Today, a powerful video testimonial narrated by PETA fieldworker Alex Cutshall was sent to the Bertie County Board of County Commissioners, showing the decomposing remains of three chained dogs—Juju, Drako, and Eve—all found by Cutshall on a property in Bertie County in November. Cutshall recounts how he and PETA begged the dogs’ owners during repeated visits to surrender the animals to PETA due to the owners’ negligence, only to find them dead on their chains on a return visit. PETA has been asking the commissioners to ban chaining for several years, showing them ample evidence of suffering and death among chained dogs, and hopes that watching this video will cause them to act at last—before more dogs suffer and die due to their inaction. Broadcast-quality footage is available here.

The heartbreaking video includes footage of the dogs while they were still alive—taken during PETA’s dozens of visits in which PETA provided free doghouses, food, water buckets, and other essentials that the owner did not. The mother and adult daughter who owned the dogs have since been charged with cruelty to animals and abandonment.

PETA has pleaded with local officials for years to implement mandatory standards of care in addition to a chaining ban and has shared other horrific stories of cruelty at many county commission meetings, to no avail.

“There are dogs in rural North Carolina being kept chained outside 24/7 in all weather extremes, forgotten, and left to die because local officials fail to act,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA is calling on authorities to ban chaining now before more animals suffer and die.”

PETA points out that cruelty and neglect run rampant in northeast North Carolina—just one day prior to finding these three dogs dead, PETA fieldworkers discovered the body of another dog, Coco, tethered by a heavy metal chain to a doghouse in Ahoskie, North Carolina. Just feet away was a still-living but emaciated, chained dog named Lucky with no food or water in sight. The animals’ owner told the fieldworkers that no one had bothered to feed or water the dogs for a month—the owner and his wife have just been charged for the dogs’ suffering.

PETA notes that these most recent incidents are far from the first time PETA has discovered the bodies of dogs who starved, froze, or died of heat stroke or thirst. Last year, two Bertie County residents were arraigned on cruelty-to-animals charges arising from two separate incidents in which PETA workers discovered dead and dying dogs on their properties.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.