Dozens of puppies found in squalor at South Side home, IL March 26, 2009

Source: Chicago-Sun Times, March 24, 2009

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart could hear the yapping of tiny lap dogs — about 70 Chihuahuas, Malteses and dachshunds — from outside a West Englewood house where police raided a puppy mill Tuesday morning.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart carries out a puppy as authorities removed dozens of dogs living in squalor from a home on the South Side.

Many of the dogs inside 6440 S. Bell were crammed in bird cages, standing in their own feces without food and water. Some dogs were too big for their cages, which were stacked four high all over the house. Other puppies were locked in closets and on the back porch.

“You could smell the place from outside,” Dart said. “No dogs deserve to be treated in this inhumane manner.”

Demetria Newell, 38, was charged with 67 counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty, one count for each animal found at the house.

Responding to a tip, the sheriff’s office teamed with Chicago Police and U.S. Department of Agriculture officials to investigate. An undercover officer posing as a customer met with Newell, who was selling the purebred dogs for between $475 and $650, Dart said.

Newell also allegedly told the undercover officer that if he had a problem with a puppy’s health that he could bring it back and she would provide medical care. Police found syringes and antibiotics at the scene, said sheriff’s spokesman Steve Patterson.

The dogs were taken to Chicago Animal Care and Control at 2741 S. Western where they will be evaluated by veterinarians and possibly put up for adoption.

In addition to the puppies, police confiscated one pound of marijuana, a handgun and $3,000 cash. Newell’s live-in boyfriend, David Hayes, was arrested and charged with felony possession of marijuana. Dart said police also are considering gun charges against Hayes.

Clean Slate Animals Relocated, KY March 3, 2009

Source: The Adair Progress, March 3, 2009

The cats and dogs rescued from Clean Slate Animal Rescue have been completely relocated from the Green River Animal Shelter to a temporary shelter in Bowling Green.

The remaining 96 of the 240 dogs and 31 cats that were rescued from the Clean Slate Animal Rescue center in Sparksville on Feb. 20th are now under the care of The Humane Society of the United States in a temporary shelter in Bowling Green.

The National Disaster Animal Response Team of the HSUS arrived yesterday with a fully equipped kennel tractor-trailer to transport the animals to the temporary shelter located at the fairgrounds in Bowling Green.

The Bowling Green-Warren County Humane Society had already taken several of the animals last week and was waiting on the NDART to finish work at a puppy mill in North Carolina as well as a flood evacuation in Washington.

Senior Director of the HSUS Scotlund Haisley stated, “The NDART was established to assist in emergency situations like this as well as natural disasters to ensure the safety and welfare of the animals.”
After the animals arrive at the temporary shelter they will be treated for their current health issues including mange and respiratory disease, at which time they will be sent to shelters for adoption.
According to Haisley, in addition to the HSUS workers and the Kentucky Humane Society, dozens of volunteers came from as far away as California to help with the rescue of the Clean Slate animals.
“Rescues like this and puppy mills are two of the biggest problems we face,” said Haisley.

Clean Slate owner 50-year old David Howery was arrested and charged with 295 counts of animal cruelty and was released on a $1,500 cash bond after plead not guilty to the charges in district court on Monday, Feb. 24th and agreed to release the animals to the Green River Animal Shelter.

According to HSUS State Director for Kentucky Pam Rogers the case involving Clean Slate was a classic case of animal hoarding.

“The two biggest problems with animal cruelty we face in the state as well as national are hoarders and puppy mills and from what I have been told about the situation at Clean Slate, he was a classic hoarder,” said Rogers.

According to the HSUS fact sheet on animal hoarding, an animal hoarder is a person who amasses more animals than they can properly care for and fail to recognize or refuse to aknowledge when the animals become victims of gross neglect.

In most cases after the animals are removed, the burden of caring for the animals while they are in the shelters will fall back on taxpayers.

“Local government must enact local legislation that addresses some of the issues that deal with hoarders and puppy mills to more effectively address the problem and save the taxpayers money,” commented Rogers.

According to Rogers in many cases the person arrested for animal cruelty does not release control of the animals and there is not much that can be done to help prevent these types of events from happening.
Rogers noted that there is currently legislation at the state level that is awaiting approval to help combat animal hoarding in the state of Kentucky.

House Bill 428 in the Kentucky Legislature addresses the issue of the bonding of animals by specifying the responsibility for care of the animals that are seized in a case of animal cruelty.

The bill will allow judges to impose a cash bond for the care of the animals in addition to a criminal bond, which will force the offender to assume the financial responsibility for the seized animals while they are in the care of the shelters.

However if the owner of the seized animals releases control of the animals they will not be responsible for the cost incurred while under the care of the shelter.

House Bill 137 establishes shelter and shade requirements for animals by limiting the amount of animals and how they are boarded.

Both H.B. 428 and 137 will establish licensing, inspection and strict regulation of both private and public shelters.

To help prevent the amount of cases animal hoarding Rogers stated, “People need to be careful about where they send animals and if they have not been to the facility recently to check the conditions they do not need to send their animals there.”

Cops investigate dog mutilation, NY October 13, 2008

Police say burned corpse was wrapped in rags and had its tail removed

By SCOTT WALDMAN, Staff writer
First published in print: Monday, October 13, 2008

AMSTERDAM — Police are searching for a man who severed the tail and feet of a dog and burned its body.

A neighbor walking near 82 Prospect St. found the animal’s body wrapped in plastic and rags on Saturday, police said. The mixed breed pit bull terrier appeared to be the victim of animal cruelty.

An autopsy will be conducted today to determine if the dog was alive while it was mutilated, Sgt. Patrick Miller said.

Amsterdam police on Sunday said they have identified a suspect, described as a young adult male, but did not release his name. Miller said the suspect fled before he could be interviewed on Saturday.

“I hope this guy turns himself in to give his side of the story,” Miller said. “Maybe the dog was dead when he decided to hack it up.”

Police were still searching for the suspect on Sunday and Miller expects that he will apprehended within the week.

The suspect told neighbors conflicting stories about what happened to the dog, said Chris Turnbull, who lives near the vacant home where the animal’s body was discovered. Turnbull said the suspect told neighbors he had given away the dog, that it ran away and that he had given it back to its original owner because it was sick.

She said he also had a chihuahua that vanished earlier this year.

Turnbull said the suspect had walked the dog every day until two weeks ago, when it suddenly disappeared. She said the suspect was among people on the block who complained about the smell coming from 82 Prospect St.

“I was shocked,” Turnbull said. “Our street was never like this, it was a quiet street. … That was a friendly dog.”

The incident comes in the wake of the torture deaths of two cats this summer in separate cases in Troy. In June, a cat that had been tortured while still alive was found dead inside a weighted yellow luggage bag in the river near Bruno Machinery. In July, a cat with a six-inch metal object — possibly a nail from a nail gun — shot into its head was found on the Congress Street bridge.

A reward of $7,500 was offered for information leading to an arrest in that case. No one has been apprehended. Animal abuse is a felony under Buster’s Law.

Scott Waldman can be reached at 454-5080 or by e-mail at swaldman@timesunion.com.

NY man accused of burying starved dog under trash October 4, 2008

Source: Newsday, October 3, 2008

NEW YORK – Animal-welfare officers say a New York City man with a history of domestic abuse and sex offenses has been arrested for starving his dog to death and burying it under a pile of trash.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals says it first found the man in February near his Queens home trying to hide the body of the emaciated mixed-breed dog.

ASPCA peace officers took the dog’s body for an exam. The dog had lost all fat and muscle and had no trace of food in its stomach.

ASPCA officers say they arrested the man Thursday near his home.

The man is charged with animal cruelty and evidence tampering.

He faces up to three years in prison if convicted.

The ASPCA says his record shows arrests for rape, failing to register as a sex offender and other crimes.

Party kids flee as man shoots dog, South Africa October 3, 2008

By Arthi Sanpath, October 03 2008 at 12:07PM

A birthday party for a Malvern family took a gruesome turn when the family dog was shot dead with a shotgun by a neighbour – in front of children.

The neighbour is expected to appear in the Pinetown magistrate’s court on Friday on a charge of malicious injury to property for shooting the dog, Inspector Prevash Moodley of the Malvern police station said.

The Mackrory family’s one-and-a-half-year-old bull terrier Shrek was shot twice, and according to witnesses, it’s body was “split in two”.

On Thursday, an emotional Shandra Mackrory said the incident on Tuesday night had left her family and friends traumatised.

“We were celebrating my daughter Monique’s 18th birthday with close friends in our yard, when our dog Shrek and the neighbour’s dog got into a fight,” she said.

Mackrory said there were many children, from the age of six to 18, in the yard at the time.

She said one of her friends, Heinrich Trytsman, tried to intervene to separate the fighting dogs.

This, she said, was in vain as her friend’s attempts to calm the dogs was short-lived.

“By then our neighbour had come out of his house with a shotgun and started firing at the dogs. He did not even fire any warning shots or tell anyone he was going to shoot,” she said. Mackrory said Trytsman ran out of the line of fire as he was closest to the dogs.

“We all had to run back into the house as the children started screaming hysterically,” she said.

“It was terrible and inhumane and the kids were crying. The next morning they also woke up crying,” she said.

The family lodged a complaint with the SPCA, but senior Inspector Steve Wight said that because the dog had died instantly, there was no case of cruelty.

800 Animals, Including Monkeys, Swans, Found During Kennel Raid, Freezer Contained 65 Animal Corpses, PA October 2, 2008

EMMAUS, Pa. — At least 56 dogs and cats were removed for immediate medical care from a large Pennsylvania kennel where officials said hundreds of animals were crowded together in unsanitary and foul-smelling conditions.

Authorities are negotiating for the removal of 100 more animals from the Almost Heaven Kennels in Upper Milford Township, said Elaine Skypala, program director for the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

About 20 agents raided the kennel Wednesday. Officials said they discovered as many as 800 animals including monkeys, miniature horses, turkeys, geese, guinea hens and swans packed into the facilities, many living in excrement amid the stench of feces and decay. A freezer contained 65 animal corpses.

“It’s horrible,” Skypala said.

Kennel owner Derbe Eckhart disputed the SPCA allegations, noting that an August inspection by the state Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement turned up no violations of kennel regulations.

“What they tried to do yesterday was paint a picture that wasn’t there,” Eckhart told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Skypala said authorities would continue working at the kennel. She said a tentative deal called for Eckhart to begin an immediate cleanup and for PSPCA to have unlimited access to the facilities for six months. Eckhart also will face cruelty charges.

During the raid, the site was besieged by vans and a helicopter carrying news crews, including one from the Animal Planet cable television network. Eckhart did not emerge, but called state police to order the media off the grass.

Eckhart was charged two years earlier with having too many monkeys and operating a menagerie without a permit because monkey cages were visible to the public. He paid fines and court costs.

A neighbor, Jackie Arney, said she wasn’t surprised by Wednesday’s raid.

“You hear (the dogs) screaming and crying all night,” Arney said.

But Millie Altomare, 68, of Allentown, whose dog Fern is groomed at the kennel, defended Eckhart.

“This man is never given any credit for the good things he does,” she said. “They are constantly picking on this man.”

2 threats to dog racing: Mass. vote, low interest October 1, 2008

Source: Associated Press, By STEVE LeBLANC – 14 hours ago

BOSTON (AP) — Voters in Massachusetts will soon decide whether greyhound racing should continue there, though the real question might be whether the once-popular sport dies a quick death or a slow one.

Across the country, the legions of blue-collar fans the industry relied on have been lured away by casinos, lotteries, online gambling and other forms of betting.

Track owners fighting the proposed ban fiercely oppose claims that the dogs are mistreated. But animal-welfare issues aside, others involved in greyhound racing glumly concede a cultural shift away from the sport.

“It’s certainly changing,” said Gary Guccione, executive director of the National Greyhound Association. “It has downsized in recent years. We’ve seen a decrease in the number of tracks and dogs being bred.”

In the 1980s there were more than 50,000 greyhounds bred each year to race at about 60 tracks nationwide, Guccione said. This year, the number of dogs will drop to under 20,000 and the number of tracks has been cut almost in half.

Since the end of 2004 alone, 13 U.S. tracks have closed or ended live dog racing, according to the Committee to Protect Dogs, which is leading the campaign for the Massachusetts ban. It has raised nearly $400,000 since January 2007, nearly 10 times as much as opponents of the ban have raised.

Racing fans still come to sit at tables in front of television monitors at Wonderland Greyhound Park in Revere, one of the state’s two dog tracks. Live racing won’t resume until the spring, but they can still wager on races elsewhere via simulcast.

It’s a far cry from the 22,607 fans who filled Wonderland on May 16, 1945, when the track set its single performance attendance record — or the day in June 1939 when 1,500 people packed a dinner at Boston’s Copley Plaza to honor Rural Rube, who had just won 19 races in a single season.

If the ban passes, Massachusetts will join seven states that already ban live greyhound racing: Idaho, Maine, North Carolina, Nevada, Vermont, Virginia and Washington, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Gary Temple, general manager Raynham Greyhound Park in Raynham, is leading the opposition to the ballot question. He calls backers “zealots” who are misleading the public about track conditions and the treatment of dogs.

Temple said handlers and owners have invested time and money in the dogs and the tracks are some of the most highly regulated industries in the state.

“I am animal lover myself and I would never allow an animal to be mistreated here,” he said. “There’s a lot of passion and love that these trainers give their dogs. They are family members.”

Of all the claims made by the tracks, the most contentious is the statement — repeated by Temple — that they have achieved a 100 percent adoption rate for their dogs once their racing days are over.

Backers of the question say it’s untrue. They point to statistics reported by the tracks to the state racing commission that show just 31 percent of dogs were adopted in 2007, while 55 percent went on to race at other tracks. The remaining dogs went back to their owners, to breeding farms and a handful — less than 1 percent — were euthanized.

Activists say there’s no way to monitor what happens to the dogs sent to tracks in other states — and even Temple concedes that “after they go to another track it’s up to that track.”

Christine Dorchak, one of the organizers of the question, said dog racing is particularly cruel for greyhounds.

“These dogs are very gentle and very fragile,” she said. “When eight of them are put in a pack and trained to run after the same object they can be injured very easily. It’s basically putting these dogs on a collision course.”

Dorchak’s group has documented what they said are hundreds of cases of dogs being injured at Massachusetts tracks since 2002, when the state first required tracks to report injuries. The injuries range from scrapes and cuts to broken bones.

Dorchak said the new statistics have strengthened the case for closing the tracks since 2000, when a similar ballot question lost narrowly.

Closing the tracks could mean the loss of about 1,000 jobs associated with dog racing, according to Temple. Dorchak called any loss regrettable, but added, “Our economy should not be built on cruelty to dogs.”
On the Net:

* Raynham Greyhound Park : http://www.raynhamparkfun.com/
* The Committee to Protect Dogs: http://www.protectdogs.org/

Dog dies after being set on fire October 1, 2008

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, by Georgina Robinson
October 1, 2008 – 8:15AM

A dog has died after being badly burned in Sydney’s west yesterday, police said.

The male terrier cross was found by a man walking his own dog along Orchardleigh Street at Old Guildford about 5.30pm, police said.

Police said the man took the dog to the RSPCA at Yagoona but its injuries were so severe it was put down.

Inspector Slade Macklin from the RSPCA said it appeared the dog had been set on fire deliberately.

“Unless the dog was in a house fire or if someone turned around and said ‘the dog jumped in an open fire’, it’s sort of unlikely that a dog would [do] something like that,” Inspector Macklin said.

But a police spokeswoman said Bankstown investigators were following a number of lines of inquiry and had not ruled out the possibility the dog’s injuries were accidental.

It is believed police last night made contact with the dog’s owner, who lives in the Yagoona/Old Guildford area.

Inspector Macklin said the dog, which was “only a couple of years old”, was in shock when it was delivered to the RSPCA.

Yesterday a dead dog was found hanging from a tree in Mount Druitt.

Dog found hanging from tree October 1, 2008

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
September 30, 2008

A dead dog has been found hanging from a tree in Sydney’s west, the RSPCA says.

RSPCA NSW is appealing for witnesses to what it has labelled a shocking case of animal cruelty.

The female cattle-dog cross was discovered this morning in RAAF Memorial Park, on the corner of Belmore Avenue and Woodstock Road in Mount Druitt.

The tan-coloured dog, thought to be no more than five years old, was probably hanging there for at least a few days, the RSPCA said.

RSPCA NSW Inspector Matt Godwin said it was not clear if the animal was already dead before being strung up in the tree, but there were no other obvious injuries.

“It is without a doubt, the worst case of cruelty and the most disturbing that I have ever seen,” Inspector Godwin said.

“We’re appealing to anyone who has any information or who may have seen people acting suspiciously in the area over the weekend, to come forward.

“The dogs’ owners might still be looking for their pet.”

Anyone with information is urged to phone RSPCA NSW on (02) 9770 7555.

AAP

Glendale man, 76, faces 90 days behind bars, probation in dog-fighting case September 30, 2008

Source: By Melinda Rogers, The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 09/30/2008 12:40:47 PM MDT

A 76-year-old Glendale man who pleaded guilty to felony dog fighting charges was sentenced Tuesday to 90 days in jail.

John Clinton Smith was also ordered by 3rd District Judge Deno Himonas to not own or possess any dogs.

Himonas also placed Smith on probation for 36 months and ordered him to complete 75 hours of community service and undergo counseling programs ordered by Adult Probation and Parole.

The punishment brings closure to the controversial dog-fighting case against Smith, who has maintained his innocence throughout court proceedings.

In 2003, animal control officers seized six pit bulls and dog-fighting equipment such as treadmills from Smith’s home. Videotapes and dog magazines were also found in the home, according to charging documents.

Smith was originally charged with six counts of dog-fighting felonies and six misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals, but most of those charges were dismissed in exchange for guilty pleas in July to three counts of third-degree felony dog fighting.

The case drew outrage of animal rights organizations, in particular because Smith’s criminal history includes previous animal neglect charges.

Anne Davis, executive director of the Animal Advocacy Alliance of Utah, said her organization was dismayed by Smith’s sentence. Each felony dog-fighting charge carries the potential for up to five years in prison.

“I think it’s a shame on the system and shame on him,” said Davis, noting some of Smith’s dogs that were involved in fighting had to be euthanized.

Defense attorney Edward Brass had argued on Smith’s behalf that he struggles with dementia and a “mental condition,” which was a factor in his behavior.

Smith told news reporters at previous hearing that he didn’t train dogs to fight and that “everybody uses treadmills to get dogs in shape.”