CURRITUCK — Cur­rituck County’s an­i­mal con­trol of­fi­cers seized more than 20 dogs liv­ing in poor con­di­tions from their own­ers on Sun­day.

Gina Mau­rer, di­rec­tor of an­i­mal ser­vices and con­trol for Cur­rituck County, said Tues­day the seizure of 21 dogs, in­clud­ing three moth­ers and 18 pup­pies, was prompted by a com­plaint from a con­cerned cit­i­zen.

Mau­rer de­clined to re­lease the names of those liv­ing at the res­i­dence where the dogs were seized or spec­ify their ad­dress, other than “Cur­rituck.”

“It will be pub­lic knowl­edge soon,” she said.

County of­fi­cials said in a press re­lease that an­i­mal cru­elty charges are pend­ing against the dogs’ own­ers.

Mau­rer also de­clined to dis­cuss the con­di­tions they dogs were liv­ing in de­tail, but said there were “ex­i­gent cir­cum­stances” re­quir­ing their re­moval.

“Ob­vi­ously it was enough to lead us to seize the an­i­mals,” she said.

Ac­cord­ing to Mau­rer, two of the mother dogs were found in crates with their pup­pies, while the third was found in an in­door en­clo­sure with hers. One of the moth­ers was crated with nine pup­pies; an­other had six pup­pies in her crate. The three lit­ters of pup­pies seem to have been born two to three weeks apart and none of the pup­pies were older than six weeks, she said.

Some of the an­i­mals had been ex­posed to the el­e­ments be­cause they were found out­side the res­i­dence, Mau­rer said. How­ever, those in­side the house were in a place that didn’t ap­pear to be reg­u­lated for tem­per­a­ture, she said.

“They were all ex­posed to vary­ing tem­per­a­tures,” Mau­rer said.

All 21 dogs are cur­rently be­ing cared for at the Cur­rituck An­i­mal Shel­ter. While of­fi­cials have health con­cerns about all 21 an­i­mals, none suf­fer from what ap­pear to be life-threat­en­ing in­juries or ill­nesses, Mau­rer said.

“They are very, very happy — and thawed out,” she said.

While not the largest seizure of mis­treated an­i­mals in her 17 years with an­i­mal con­trol, Sun­day’s ranks as “one of the big­gest,” Mau­rer said.