Very Bad Vet Arrested for Using Puppies to Smuggle Heroin

You may not need it, but this Tuesday morning brings you more news of exactly how awful humans can be. You thought we’d hit rock bottom before? That’s sweet. Also, you probably haven’t heard that some people have been using puppies to transport heroin.

ABC reports that a Venezuelan veterinarian named Andres Lopez Elorza has been arrested after authorities have ascertained that he was involved in drug smuggling via three puppies in 2005. The vet, who was arrested in Spain in 2013 (after fleeing Colombia where the smuggling occurred), has been in hiding since last month when the courts ordered his extradition to the United States. Spanish police found him in the town of Santa Comba.

Elorza has been living in Spain for eight years and, somehow, still working as a vet. He is, according to ABC, married with two children and had been practicing animal medicine for two different companies just prior to his arrest. In addition, aside from that whole “using puppies to transport large quantities of horse” thing in 2005, he’s been a model of propriety and has had no subsequent run-ins with the law.

CNN details exactly how the smugglers used at least six Labrador Retriever puppies to smuggle drugs in 2005:

In the case of the puppies found during the 2005 raid, the dogs’ bellies had been cut open, and heroin packets were stitched into their stomachs, Payne said. The pups, mostly purebred Labrador retrievers, were sewn back up and prepared for shipment to the United States, he added.

While authorities tried to save every one of the animals they discovered carrying heroin, not every one of the ten dogs they found during 2005’s drug bust in Colombia would survive. Three puppies, CNN reports, died of infection after the drugs were removed from their stomachs. I don’t know what the penalty for something like this is, but Elorza and his colleagues probably have warm seats in hell just waiting for their puppy-torturing selves.