Emaciated Dogs Left At My Work For Over 24h

Location: Ohio

Hey Reddit,

I work at a franchise pet store in Ohio. Yesterday, I came into my shift at 4:00pm and was explained to, by my coworker, that two dogs had been dropped off at the grooming salon at 12:00pm. The dogs were absolutely emaciated, flea ridden, and matted to all hell. They ended up having to charge her extra for flea treatments. After she dropped them off, she called the store to ask how much the groom would be. When the groomer replied, she promptly hung up the phone. She was notified that they were ready to be picked up at 3:00pm, and when they called her, it went straight to voicemail. They proceeded to call her 5 more times before we closed, and twice after. Sometimes it rung, and sometimes it went straight to voicemail. We had to leave the dogs in the grooming salon kennels overnight. Our store’s “protocol” (I’m not entirely sure it’s written down like this) is to wait 48H for the owner to come pick them up. In this time, they are only allowed water, no food (because we don’t have any allergy records), and they are not allowed outside to go to the bathroom (because we only need evidence of rabies vaccination to groom, they could be exposed to diseases and get very sick). When I say these dogs were emaciated, I mean it. I truly don’t think they would have survived if they went 48 hours without eating. Anyways, I stopped by this afternoon to see if the pups were still there, and to my surprise, they were not. My coworkers explained to me that the groomer who worked on one of the dogs called the owner from his personal phone, and she finally picked up. When he asked when she was coming to pick up her dogs, she hung up again. She came to pick them up a full (over) 24H later at 1:00pm and provided the excuse that a family member had passed away. They then banned her from the store.

Our store policy is to absolutely, under no circumstances, call the police or animal control if you see a mistreated dog come in for either grooming or just in general to shop.

I have never, and I mean NEVER seen a dog so skinny. Flea ridden, and matted, I can’t fathom the idea of these dogs going back home to this woman. Is there anything I can do to report this anonymously? I risk losing my job, but at this point, $11.30 an hour isn’t cutting it anyways. If I called the police, would they do anything? I don’t know what to do. I feel so guilty letting those dogs go home and I felt so guilty leaving them in the store overnight. TIA. :/

Edit:
I called my dad and he told me to kind of look at it from an outsider perspective: they had all these fleas and were matted and she came to get them taken care of. That’s technically not a problem. I truly just don’t know what to do.