Workers are determining which dogs are healthy enough to be adopted after more than 100 of them were seized from a home earlier this week.

Workers from the group Friends for Animals tried Thursday to see if the dogs would even approach them.

Some of the dogs have had very little human contact.  

Deputies said they found many of them crammed in small cages where they were not even able to turn around. 

“You can tell they are very frightened and it just hurts you to see them,” Burke County Sheriff Steve Whisenant said.

Deputies charged the dog's owner, Larry Buff, with animal cruelty. They said he hoarded dogs at his home south of Morganton.

The dogs are being tested for heartworm. Because treating heartworm costs nearly $300, if a dog fails they are euthanized.  

Volunteers are also trying to determine which dogs would make good pets.

“Her temperament is good,” Tedi Stamey with Friends for Animals said of one dog. “She is a little shy, but not unadoptable shy.”

The dogs who pass will be taken to the Burke County Friends for Animals shelter. There, they will be vaccinated and spayed and neutered. 

The organization hopes to begin adoptions in two weeks.