The most badly abused animal Diana Zollman ever came in contact with was an abandoned, emaciated and beaten beagle named Misty.

The dog came to Zollman, the president of the Coles County Humane Association, on what she recalled being a particularly cold day in January.

On the way to a movie, a group of high school students spotted a frail-looking dog on the side of the road. One of the students retrieved Misty, while her friends stayed in the car with dog until Zollman arrived.

“Not every person is like that,” Zoullman said.

After two hours, she was able retrieve Misty, who despite her apparent emaciation, would not eat from Zollman’s hand.

For the first few months, Zollman and her husband kept Misty, but the beagle could not wear a collar and shuttered when her owners would reach to pet her. Abuse that Misty had previously suffered left a clouded pool of blood in her eye where she is suspected to have been hit over the head.

“If you shut a kitchen cabinet door it would scare her to death. If you rustled newspaper it would scare her to death.”

Zollman said cases like Misty’s, although unfortunate, are all too common. She recalled a time a man brought her a dog he had seen thrown out of a moving car on the freeway.

“He gave me a look of ‘please don’t take me back to that bad place,’” she said.

All U.S. states have animal cruelty laws and 47 states treat some forms of abuse as felonies.

Zollman cited pit bulls as being the most commonly rescued animal in her recent experience.

She explained a direct correlation between popular breeds that are almost trend like, and the breeds the humane association takes in and noted that the most likely time to find abandoned, neglected and otherwise abused animals is almost always at the end of a college semester.

“The worst time of the year is May,” she said. “Right at the end of a school year – right now.”

Kyle Thompson, a Mattoon resident who rescues and fosters reptiles, said he has witnessed end of the year animal cruelty.

“People leave whole terrariums in the trash,” he said.

Thompson mostly finds bearded dragons and ball pythons dead or dehydrated in garbage cans or empty apartments.

In this area, there are not a lot of places to call to surrender reptiles or have them rescued, Thompson said.

Currently, Thompson, a PetSmart employee, houses about eight reptiles in his apartment, all of which were surrendered to him or rescued.

“Some people, usually men, want snakes to uphold an image,” he said of people who assert their masculinity by dominance over nature.

Despite the typical tolerance retiles exhibit toward their owners rather than emotion, Thompson said tortoises and iguanas have a higher cognitive function and can get to know you and display affection.

When people adopt these pets, however, there is an assumed tough exterior that buyers can be blinded by, Thompson said.

“The biggest indication for me is when I tell someone something and they repeat something back that is wrong,” he said referring to potential buyers who misunderstand basic reptile care instructions.

The lamps used in their tanks offers reptiles the essential vitamin D3. Animals with an insufficient amount of the vitamin tend to suffer from metabolic bone disease, an irreversible and sometimes fatal condition that cripples the animal’s limbs.

Zollman agreed that potential pet owners need to behave a certain way to win the trust of the seller.

“I have to hear it in their voice, she said.” “They have to ask questions.”

A 2004 study printed in Society and Animals determined that groups of identified animal abusers are at an increased risk of crimes against humans

Although Zollman has seen her share of college-student-initiated animal neglect, Jason Wallace, the assistant manager and animal control officer at the Coles County Animal Shelter, said instances have decreased in their shelter since implementing a stricter screening process.

When the shelter first opened, there was a recurring problem of college students in the area abandoning their animals in vacant apartments and turning them loose at the end of the school year.

This is why the shelter cracked down on their pre-adoption screening, which now consists of a 24 to 48 hour process of contacting references, parents and landlords, performing veterinary checks for spaying and neutering, he said.

Since the implementation of the new screening system, Wallace notice a decline in the amount of abandoned animals his shelter dealt with.

In 2013, The Coles County Animal Shelter took in 867 dogs, and returned 238 to the original owners.

“The number that really bothers me is the RTO (returned to owner), Wallace said.

Although a majority of animals in the shelter are surrendered by their owners, Wallace said he feels there is an inequity between the amount of strays the shelter houses and the number of owners who seek to find their lost pets.

This creates a problem for the shelter that becomes fatal for less adoptable animals.

Although Wallace said he regrets the special limitations the shelter struggles with, a surplus in rescued or surrendered animals, results in necessary euthanizing.

Of the 1,682 incoming cats and dogs in 2013, the shelter put to sleep 814 animals in a response to either overflow or sick, violent, or feral animals.

Wallace said when some animals are brought to a shelter, they suffer physical ailments from the environmental stress which can manifest as lethargy, whining, poor appetite or what he calls, “kennel crazy,” when an animal becomes so isolated it involuntarily paces in circles for long periods of time.

To prevent animals from becoming kennel crazy, Wallace and other workers invite community members to play with and walk their shelter animals.

President of a Coles County dog rescue, Lori Dunn, adopts animals out of her Greenup home, to provide them with a comfortable and consistent living environment during their foster stays.

Dunn started Raising Unwanted Forever Friends (R.U.F.F.), after she adopted a dog that had been poisoned during its time at a local pound.

She and a group of animal lovers became a licensed rescue in February of 2013 and now have five board members with a total of seven foster licenses.

Dunn says the animals generally adopt well, but because of their abusive pasts, R.U.F.F. executes a strict screening process of their own before going through with an adoption of one of their rescued dogs.

The process consists of one veterinary reference as well as three personal references. In the event that a college-aged student should pursue adopting a dog, R.U.F.F. contacts the student’s landlord and approves that the complex allows pets, as well as looking over the amount of space available to the dog and whether or not it is a safe and livable environment.

Dunn said the pit bulls and other “bully breeds” like boxers are the most commonly abused and abandoned dogs in this area based on her experience.

She said everyone wants a pit bull because they are cool and edgy, but the responsibility of taking care of a living being can soon become overwhelming.

“A lot have either been dumped or come from bad situations,” Dunn said.

Dunn said she rescues an estimated 5-10 dogs each month.

In addition to being the president of R.U.F.F., Dunn spends time as a humane investigator, where she said she gets calls to rescue dogs who are neglected, barking, malnourished or left outside for long periods of time without shelter.

Blackie, a senior eight-year-old dog was found on a country road south of Greenup about one year ago, after he was hit by a car. The dog was missing teeth presumably from lack of nutrition, which forced him to eat rocks and sticks out of necessity for an undetermined amount of time. When they found him, a bullet wound in his upper left front was almost entirely healed over. The bones had fused together, giving Blackie the dragging limp he walks with today.

Additionally, Dunn adopted Bella, a five-year-old pit bull was an emaciated, 29 pounds and heartworm and tapeworm positive when Dunn rescued her from another shelter last year.

Today Bella receives regular medication for a tumor that developed on her abdomen, which is only just now starting to heal, Dunn said.

“I think it’s the responsibility of it,” she said. “If it’s a puppy, you have to get up in the middle of the night and let it out. It is just like having a kid.”

Dunn said one of the major shocks to young pet owners is how quickly it can get expensive.

“If you have a 100 pound dog, it could cost you $50 or $80 a month to feed it,” she said.

“I would say be sure you’re ready to take on the life-long commitment of it. This is a living, breathing being and it deserves to be loved,” she said. “You are its life. All they have is you. You are their everything.”

Dunn recommends that students thinking about adopting a pet do their homework beforehand.

“Don’t just get a dog because you think it’s cool to have that breed,” she said.

She also asks that potential pet-owners rescue rather than buy.

“There are so many dogs in rescues looking for homes,” she said comparing rescued dogs to those who are sold at pet shops and tend to be born on puppy mills.

“Don’t support the problem,” she said.

Zollman, however, thinks one of the major problems occurs early on in the adoption process, when college-aged students fail to think of a backup plan for their pets.

“Their parents don’t let them take the pets home,” she said. “When you adopt an animal, it should be for the life of the pet. Think about moving and think about housing after you move.”

Even when potential owners consider possible setbacks and have plans for emergency arrangements, Zollman understands that unforeseeable complications can arise.

Sometimes under these circumstances, however, Zollman senses an apprehension in owners to surrender their pets.

“People think they will have to pay,” she said.

The Coles County Animal Shelter, Humane Association along with R.U.F.F. and other rescue services in the area will take in animals for free.

Zollman also believes that fewer animals would end up in a shelter if the original owners committed to behavioral training.

“If you don’t train a puppy or even an older dog to be part of the family and not be destructive and tear things up and bite, then they end up at the shelter,” she said.

To avoid experiencing shock from the responsibility to takes to raise an animal, Zollman insists on not buying an animal on impulse.

“You need to grieve the loss of an animal just as you would a person.”

Whether an owner is looking for a new pet to replace a deceased one, or wants to experience the maternal role of raising an animal to accompany their newfound independence, the advice is unanimous.

To lower the number of cases of animal abuse and neglect, buyers need to ask questions. They need to be certain they can have a pet in both their current and future living arrangements. Overwhelmingly, however, rescuers believe owners most know and display the time, money and patience that is imperative to caring for an animal.

Katie Smith can be reached at 581-2812 or kesmith2@eiu.edu.