Hoarding - 81 dogs euthanized
Chistochina, AK (US)Incident Date: Friday, Mar 31, 1995
County: Valdez Cordova
Disposition: Not Charged
Person of Interest: Charlotte Fitzhugh
Charlotte Fitzhugh kept at least 40 or 50 of her dogs tied out in the woods. None of the dogs had food or water. The remainder of her dogs were roaming around on the property.
There were only a few of the dogs that were socialized animals that would come to people to be petted. Most of the dogs ran away from humans at the ends of their chains or hid inside their dog houses. It was very difficult to pull some of them out of their dog houses because they locked their legs against the walls when people tried to get them outside. Most sled dogs are friendly and greet visitors with barking and leaping displays of being happy, hoping they'll be put into harness and run.
One year before the state veterinarian came to Fitzhugh's property to lethally inject 81 dogs, Martin Buser stood in the dog lot along w/ several others to decide how to handle the situation. They could tell these dogs hadn't been run in a very long time.
Charlotte Fitzhugh a long time ago thought herself a dog musher. She entered the Yukon Quest in 1989 but had problems which caused her to scratch before the first checkpoint. That might have been the last time she was on a dog sled.
A dogsled was found near the dirty, rundown cabin in the center of her property in Chistochina, it was similar to the style used in the Quest. It was buried in the snow & there weren't any trails out of her dog lot.
Fitzhugh wasn't home, she was in Fairbanks at her job as a taxi driver. There was a man living in a shack who said he was hired to be her dog handler. He didn't know very much about the dogs, but told Buser the dogs were being fed.
The problem with Fitzhugh's dogs was a complicated one. The president of Mush with PRIDE, a group dedicated to the health of sled dogs, arranged for Copper Basin mushers to donate about 1,000 pounds of food for the dogs. That would keep them alive through the winter.
Swenson wondered if it was any way for a dog to live -- even with better food? Dogs are social animals that deserve the chance to get off the leash to run and play. The dogs were not getting this opportunity and it was almost certain they never would. Most of the dogs were mongrels and misfits and were not adoptable at any pet shelter. They were either unfriendly or genetically suspect because a lot of inbreeding had been taking place at the dog lot.
Fitzhugh was not considered a bad person but someone who was emotionally troubled and collected or hoarded too many animals. When she was notified of the problems at her dog lot, she said she was on her way back to see her dogs. She loved her dogs. She was going to train, perhaps for another run at the Yukon Quest.
The dead dogs found on her properly earlier in the year weren't killed by dog fighting she said. They were killed by some evil, dog-hating people. She wasn't sure why the dogs were killed or who did the killing.
All Fitzhugh knew was she had to try to save the dogs, they would have died if she hadn't saved them. She said she had been in trouble before for mistreating dogs, but it had never been because she had mistreated them. She ran out of money and then she couldn't afford to buy dog food. It seemed impossible for her to understand money imposed a limit on the number of animals she could look after. It was stated, she loved them all to death. References
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