Five puppies that were thrown into a river by their owner, sparking worldwide outrage after a video of the deed appeared online, have been rescued and put up for adoption, a Croat daily said Monday.
"I beg and appeal to all animal lovers to come and adopt four puppies since they are beautiful, good and gained popularity, but they cannot not live from it," the pensioner who rescued them Ruza Pavlovic told the Jutarnji List daily.
Pavlovic, from the village of Curcic Lug, near the central town of Bugojno, said she wanted to keep the fifth puppy, the paper said.
The animals were found two weeks ago and she has been keeping them in a garage.
"The food is not a problem but they will have to be vaccinated soon," Pavlovic said, adding her pension was rather small.
The puppies were seen last month in a video of a girl tossing them into a river.
The YouTube video sparked outrage worldwide before it was removed, but several pages on the social networking site Facebook have appeared dedicated to exposing the girl.
The 44-second video shows a blonde girl in a red sweatshirt casually taking the squealing black-and-white puppies out of a bucket and tossing them one-by-one into the fast-moving river.
Police said last week they had tracked down the girl, who lives in Bugojno.
Under Bosnian law a person who kills or tortures animals is punishable only with fines ranging from 15 to 5,000 euros (19 to 6,400 dollars).
If the girl is found guilty and fined it would be the first case of its kind in Bosnia.
Copyright 2010 AFP Global Edition
