In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Amarillo resident Miranda Harper claimed the Amarillo Animal Management & Welfare euthanized her dog, Gordy, the same day she was supposed to pick him up.

In the past 24 hours, her post has been shared more than 1,200 times.

The city held a press conference Thursday to address the situation.

Amarillo Animal Management & Welfare did not shy away from Harper’s claims. The city fully admits that euthanizing Gordy was a mistake, it should not have happened, and they could not be more sorry for the tragic error.

In a release, the city said Gordy was picked up on Thursday, Oct. 4, and was being held for a 10 day quarantine period for reportedly biting a mail carrier.

Harper contacted the city to reclaim Gordy, and despite internal emails saying not to euthanize Gordy, he was euthanized.

Again the City of Amarillo is taking full responsibility for what happened and wants to do anything it can to make things right.

“We are going to absolutely apply all appropriate disciplinary measures, but we first need to understand exactly what happened, and I don’t expect that to take a long time. I mean, we will be able to put this together very quickly, so we’ll evaluate all personnel remedies,” said City Manager Jared Miller. “We will do everything in our power to help them as they deal with this terrible loss, that’s a very hollow statement though. If there is anything we can do to help her we will, well it’s a family.”

Harper knows there is nothing Amarillo can do to fix this tragic mistake, so his goal is to make sure this doesn’t happen again.  That starts with a full review of all of their procedures to find out exactly what went wrong.  “I need to take some time with staff to evaluate exactly what happened, and how we got to the point were we euthanized a dog that should not have been euthanized,” Miller said.  “Usually you say we want to do everything we can to make sure this doesn’t happen again. This is one of those situations where definitively, we need to make sure and be able to say very confidently that this will not happen again. It’s not acceptable. It’s not something we’re okay with.”

We did reach out to Harper but she was not ready to comment at this time.

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