WAVY-TV reports that People for the Extortion, Terror and Abuse of humans (PeTA) has fired one of the two employees who took and then euthanized a chihuahua, Maya, owned by Wilbur Cerate of Parsley, Virginia. Back in November, of 2014 two PeTA workers were filmed on camera taking a dog off the porch of Wilbur Cerate’s mobile home. After realizing their mistake the employees returned with a basket of fruit and apologized for what happened in which they offered to compensate him.

The two women were charged with larceny after Cerate called police. Virginia’s Commonwealth Attorney later dropped the charges citing lack of evidence, stating the chihuahua did not have a dog tag or any identification specifying who owned Maya. He also explained that PeTA gets calls all the time for people to take stray animals in which one neighbor allegedly called the animal rights group stating that there were some stray animals in his area eating his garden and wanted them picked up.

While I have made numerous posts on this website ridiculing PeTA for its philosophy and its activist’s activities, I do not celebrate the the employee’s termination of employment. The two women were sorry for what they did and tried to make up for it. On the other hand, they ended up euthanizing what looks like a perfectly healthy dog and, to the best of my knowledge, made no effort to try to put Maya up for adoption. If they did, the chihuahua might be alive and Mr. Cerate could have gotten his dog back for his daughter. While PeTA deserves the scorn they received for this and other incidents, in terms of the employee’s conduct both of them realized they made a huge mistake.

There is a bill in the Virginia state legislature that will soon be enacted that will put more requirements on animal shelter’s like the one PeTA runs out of its national headquarters. Hopefully, the new law and the bad publicity animal welfare received from this entire affair will help prevent things like what happened to Wilbur Cerate’s dog from happening again.