Animal lovers in South Miami-Dade are joining forces to help combat a plague of dogs that are dumped in the area.

Advocates on Wednesday asked the Homestead City Council for help, and promised to come back with a petition and a plan to get the abandoned animals out of the wild and into loving homes.

“We have an atrocious problem here in Homestead,” said George Arellano, who runs the Dog Barker Network, which helps rescue dogs in South Dade. “We are the dumping ground for dogs in Miami.”

While they still lack a clear plan, advocates who have worked independently to save dogs in the area have a few ideas about how to band together to care for the abandoned animals, and prevent more from being dumped in the area.

Advocate Lissa Terese said the group will come back to the City Council in February with their plans, which may include asking for a land donation from the city, petitioning for help from city staff, or petitioning the county to move further south a shelter currently slated to be built in Doral. Arellano said he wants to change city and county codes to make them more friendly to animal rescuers, and host more adoption events.

Moving the planned Doral shelter seems to be an unlikely scenario — Animal Services has already purchased a 70,000-square-foot facility and expects to open there by December 2013.

But the county is helping in other ways: On Jan. 28, Animal Services will host a spay neuter event at Castellow Hammock Preserve & Nature Center, located at 22301 SW 162 Ave. in South Dade. The agency hopes to host such events at least once a month, said animal services enforcement manager Kathleen Labrada.

“We actually are taking quite a bit of action,” she said. “We’re trying to focus mainly on the problematic areas.”

The problem of abandoned dogs is not new in South Dade, but advocates say it has been exacerbated by the bad economy and foreclosure crisis, which has made it difficult for some to continue to care for their pets.

Many of the abandoned animals end up starving to death, getting hurt or contracting an illness, said Mirta Maltes. So the Everglades National Park Ranger spends her spare time driving around south Dade, feeding the animals and capturing them to be spayed or neutered — and eventually adopted. Local dog lovers tend not to involve Miami-Dade Animal Services for fear the animals will be euthanized.

“I wish that if people didn’t want their animals, please take them to an animal shelter. Don’t abandon them in the middle of nowhere,” Maltes said.

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