Venice mayor refutes claim that employee mistreated 16 dogs removed from home
Metro East Humane Society is asking the public to demand accountability from Venice officials for alleged mistreatment of 16 dogs that a city employee removed from a home on Wednesday.
Humane Society Director Anne Schmidt said the employee left nine puppies and seven adult dogs in the enclosed bed of a pick-up truck in sweltering heat for hours before dropping them off at Madison County Animal Care and Control in Edwardsville.
“He kept puppies in a box way too long without Mom,” she said. “They came to us with heat exhaustion. The puppies were stacked on top of each other, and when they were taken out, there was one puppy with blue lips. They were essentially suffocating.”
The Humane Society took in the 2-week-old puppies, described as “mutts,” and four of the adult dogs, which is all it had room for at its shelter, Schmidt said. The “runt” or smallest puppy died. Two dogs went to another shelter, and one is still with Animal Care.
On Thursday, Venice Mayor Phil White strongly disagreed with the way the Humane Society characterized the incident in a Facebook post on Wednesday evening.
White said the city had been dealing for months with complaints about a home owned by a Virginia company and occupied by a squatter with a trash-filled yard, high grass and dogs escaping into the neighborhood.
According to White, officials who went to the “deplorable” home on Wednesday were shocked to find 16 dogs, and the city’s street superintendent tried to rehouse them as quickly as possible after initially being told that Animal Care didn’t have room at its facility.
“We rescued the dogs,” White said. “They were in poor condition. If we hadn’t (intervened), it would have been much worse.”
Dale Brown, a Madison County animal control officer, referred questions involving Animal Care to Manager Katherine Conder, who didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Humane Society described its Facebook post as a “call to action.” It asked the public to call and send emails to White, Venice Police Chief Kevin Knox and other city officials.
The post stated that the dogs removed from the home were loaded into the city employee’s truck bed “as early as” 9 a.m. on Wednesday and “didn’t have access to air” until they arrived at Animal Care at 1:15 p.m.
“It’s practically summertime in St. Louis,” the post stated. “It was already nearly 80 degrees at 9 am, and almost 90 degrees by 1 PM. Spending even an hour in that truck bed with no access to fresh air is inhumane, but 4.5? That’s the textbook definition of animal cruelty.”
The mayor is disputing the Humane Society’s facts.
White said the street superintendent, who was filling in for the city’s humane officer, and Venice police didn’t remove the dogs from the home until about 11 a.m., based on body-camera footage.
Schmidt said every city should have an animal control officer trained to properly deal with abused, injured and neglected animals.
White said that’s not always possible in small cities like his.
“We don’t have the budget,” White said. “We do have a humane officer. We do the best that we can. We’re not anti-animal, and we wouldn’t deliberately mistreat animals. That’s not what we’re trying to do.
“This town is turning around,” he added. “We’re going in a different direction. We want to do everything the right way.”
The original Facebook post by the Humane Society early Wednesday evening garnered nearly 900 reactions, 150 comments and more than 300 shares by mid-afternoon Thursday.
In that post and a second one, the organization reported receiving hundreds of dollars in donations to treat the 12 dogs in its care that had been removed from the Venice home.
Schmidt said it’s too early to predict whether the remaining puppies will survive. Those that do, as well as the adult dogs, will be available for adoption at some point. In the meantime, foster families are being sought to house the eight puppies and their mother.
This story was originally published June 18, 2026 at 4:21 PM.
