Code Blue—Urgent Cold-Weather Alert Hits 52 Stores: ‘Take Your Dog Inside’

For Immediate Release:
January 25, 2022

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

Overnight temperatures in northeastern North Carolina are dropping below freezing, so PETA has rushed a code blue emergency alert to 52 convenience stores throughout the region in order to prevent dogs from suffering and dying. The can’t-miss messages on cash registers urge everyone to take their dogs inside and to call PETA if they need help. Ads posted in Halifax County also notify guardians that leaving dogs chained up unattended is illegal.

“Dogs are flesh and blood, not old bicycles, so if left outside in freezing temperatures, they’ll freeze, too—sometimes to death,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA is reminding everyone that animals depend on us for everything, from food and water to warmth and love, so it’s up to us to treat them like family and keep them indoors.”

PETA urges anyone who sees neglect to report it to local authorities. Witnesses should take pictures from public property and note how long an animal is left without adequate food, water, or shelter.

PETA’s ads are up in Ahoskie, Bethel, Elm City, Farmville, Greenville, Halifax, Littleton, Nashville, Pinetops, Princeville, Roanoke Rapids, Rocky Mount, Scotland Neck, Spring Hope, Tarboro, Weldon, Whitakers, Winterville, and Lewiston Woodville, North Carolina. There’s also an ad up in Onley, Virginia. Addresses are available upon request.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.