Entries Tagged 'animal cruelty' ↓

Police in northwest Georgia arrested four people and confiscated 33 pit bulls and pit-bull mixes from what they said was the largest dog-fighting facility they had ever encountered, the Cedartown Standard reported.

“This is the largest one we’ve ever encountered,” said Capt. Randy Turner of the Polk County Police Department.

In addition to the police, the investigation, raid and arrests involved the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, Polk County Animal Control, Atlanta Humane Society and the private investigation firm of Norred & Associates in Atlanta, which specializes in gathering information on dog-fighting.

The investigation began with a tip to Norred & Associates investigators about a dog-fighting operation in the woods of Aragon.

None of the dogs had access to food or water, but they appeared in pretty good health, Capt. Randy Turner of the Polk County Police said.

Read the full story.

Credit: Animal Planet

Each week on Animal Planet’s “It’s Me or the Dog”, British dog trainer Victoria Stilwell wows viewers with her ability to charm unruly pets into well-mannered family members. Stilwell lives in Buckhead with her husband, daughter and chocolate Labrador Sadie. We spoke about the transition from acting to training, her passion for positive reinforcement and the two dogs she couldn’t train.

You can read the interview here on AOL’s Paw Nation, along with two questions that weren’t published:

Did you have a dog growing up in England?
We weren’t allowed. My grandmother was a beagle breeder…and I spent a lot of time there. My father and mother both worked and they knew they didn’t have time for animals but I used to beg and beg and beg, “Please can I have a dog?” It never worked.

Where did you get the idea for the TV show?
I was living in New York and I watched the first episode of the American “Super Nanny”. I remember just getting so excited and thinking, “I do that with dogs. What a fantastic idea for a TV show.” I found the producers and emailed them and the next day, I got a phone call.

A warning: this one’s tough to stomach.

A man who admitted to smashing his dog in the head twice with a sledgehammer in a supposed mercy killing gone wrong was convicted on one felony Wednesday in DeKalb County Superior Court, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s April Hunt reports. Jurors found him guilty of two lesser misdemeanor charges of animal cruelty instead of two other felonies he faced.

Joe Waters could serve prison time and pay thousands of dollars in fines, the AJC said.

Waters left the 9-year-old dog near death in Murphey Candler Park on Dec. 1. The dog had a severe skull fracture, hypothermia and lost an eye, but he has recovered and lives with the man who found him the day after the attack. The Good Samaritan, Robert Kennedy, has paid $10,000 in medical bills with a trust fund that was set up for the dog.

Two Georgia men were convicted Friday, for a second time, of abusing their horses during a two month trek into the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in western Montana.

Craig Heydon, 72, and his 38-year-old son, Curtis Heydon, of Woodstock, Ga., had been found guilty last year in Justice Court of 21 counts of misdemeanor animal abuse, sentenced to nearly a year in jail and fines of more than $5,000 each. They were also ordered to forfeit the horses and pay restitution for their care.

The men appealed in District Court, where they were convicted again.

This time, the men were each found guilty of nine counts of animal cruelty to three different horses during their trip in 2008. The son was convicted an additional charge for abandoning a dying horse tied up without water on a trail.

The Heydons left their horse on the side of the trail after he refused to get up. (Ravalli Republic)

The case came to light when two women on horseback found “the emaciated horse lying in the sun, covered in biting insects and tied tight to nearby log,” according to the Ravalli Republic. They had the horse brought to a veterinary hospital for treatment.

Right from the beginning, Heydon said things happened they hadn’t expected, the Ravalli Republic reported:

The cot and tents they planned to sleep in were too bulky and banged into trees and rocks along the trail. The horse named Preacher would lie down for no good reason. Bay Baby – later named Able – kept falling.

And the trail over Pack Horse Pass was covered in snow.

Heydon said that was his oversight.

“I did not check with the wilderness service for what trails would be open and what ones would not be open,” he said.

The worst surprise came more than month into the trip when a small withers sore turned into something much bigger on the back of the elder Heydon’s riding horse he called Morgan.

That discovery marked the beginning of the end for the men’s trip.

In an effort to pull up their camp, the younger Heydon would attempt a 19-mile ride from deep in the Idaho wilderness to the Montana side. Along the way, he’d be forced to abandon a shoeless Bay Baby on the Big Creek Trail.

The discovery of the emaciated horse and the story of its rescue would end in the confiscation of the Heydons’ horses and the abuse charges being filed.

The elder Heydon remained adamant the men did nothing but care for the horses the best way they could.

“When we saw the withers sore, we knew we had problems that I had never seen before,” Heydon testified. “At this point, we’re not in a position to do much. We were way out in the middle of nowhere. We did everything we could.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the sheriff in Washington County, approximately 130 miles southeast of Atlanta, on Wednesday arrested a man who kept at least 25 injured and emaciated dogs tied to tire axles and posts in an apparent dog-fighting operation. Investigators found another 27 buried dog carcasses, and the sheriff said there could be others.

Billy Taylor Jr., 52, who had previously been convicted of forgery in DeKalb County, was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, but the sheriff said he would be charged with “many counts of cruelty to animals.” The dogs were suffering from untreated injures, respiratory problems and open wounds, and were shivering when they were rescued today by the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

“It’s bad enough that these dogs were treated cruelly and raised in horrible conditions,” Tim Rickey, the ASPCA’s Senior Director of Field Investigations and Response, said in a statement. “But to leave them like this to starve is incomprehensible and speaks exactly to the kinds of heinous crimes the ASPCA fights day in and day out.”

The sheriff’s office began investigating the cruelty case about four months ago and called on the ASPCA for help several weeks ago. The ASPCA took the surviving dogs to an undisclosed shelter in Washington County where they were being treated by ASPCA veterinarians with help from the University of Florida’s Center for Forensic Medicine.