Animal Abuse: 150 dogs seized from breeder's home, 22 dead - Willow, AK

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Case ID: 17218

Classification: Neglect / Abandonment

Animal: dog (non pit-bull)

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Attorneys/Judges

Defense(s):

Chong Yim

150 dogs seized from breeder's home, 22 dead
Willow, AK (US)

Incident Date: Monday, Jan 10, 2011
County: Matanuska Susitna

Charges: Misdemeanor
Disposition: Alleged

Alleged: Frank J. Rich

Case Updates: 2 update(s) available

Animal care staff in the Mat-Su Valley worked through the night Monday to remove more than 150 dogs from a breeder's home.

Alaska State Troopers arrived Monday evening at the Montana Creek home of 53-year-old Frank Rich of Willow, near Mile 92 of the Parks Highway, to investigate a report of animal neglect.

Troopers say when they arrived at the house on Kashwitna Drive, there was no food or water for the dogs. There were about 150 dogs on the property.

Troopers say nearly all the dogs were malnourished and dehydrated. The animals were shivering and eating snow and their own feces. An additional 22 dogs that had already died were found on the properly, apparently dead from exposure, starvation and dehydration. They say there could be more dead dogs on the property.

About 30 of the dogs are puppies. Some are just a few weeks old.

Troopers arrested Rich for 50 counts of cruelty to animals and remanded him to to the Mat-Su Pretrial Facility. He was arraigned Tuesday morning on the Class A misdemeanors, and a judge entered a plea of not guilty.

Rich is held on $5,000 bail. If he posts bail, he cannot own dogs.

Rich told troopers he lost his job in October and was having a tough time supporting the dogs for his breeding operation.

Mat-Su Borough Animal Care & Regulation Manager Richard Stockdale said Animal Care removed the dogs from Rich because of the lack of care. There were 157 of his dogs at the shelter Tuesday morning.

"It is huge, I mean right now we are at full capacity, you see we're closed today just so we can process them through," Stockdale said.

He said most of the dogs were husky, and a few are Malamutes. "Most animals are emaciated and dehydrated," Stockdale said.

Animal Care is asking the community for donations of money and the dogs' current brand of food, Hills Science Diet Advanced Fitness. The shelter needs the specific brand of dog food, money, zip ties, tarps, outside kennels, blankets and metal food bowls to help with the influx of dogs.

Supplies to help out can be dropped off at the Willow Fire Statoin and the Anchorage Animal Shelter.

Officials are also asking the public to come in and adopt other dogs -- not the dogs removed from Rich's house -- to alleviate pressure on the facility and let workers treat the incoming dogs. The facility is offering a discount on adopting the dogs that were already there.

Officials say Rich's dogs will not be up for adoption any time soon -- it depends on the outcome of the trial, or if Rich signs over control.

Case Updates

A Willow man accused of 50 counts of animal cruelty stemming from a raid on his dog breeding business backed out of a plea agreement Wednesday.

Frank Rich appeared before District Court Judge David Zwink in a black collared shirt with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. To get there he had to navigate a gauntlet of protesters wearing placards bearing pictures of his dogs.

"I'm here for the dogs, all of them," was the most common slogan on the signs.

Before the details of the agreement reached could be put on the record, Rich's attorney, Chong Yim, told Zwink his client planned to back out of the deal. The prosecutor expressed disappointment.

"Obviously, the state is disappointed that this isn't ending today, but obviously we can't force Mr. Rich to change his plea," assistant district attorney Lindsey Burton said. "There is very little the state can say at this point."

Addressing the gallery, which at this point contained two or three dozen of the protestors, though now without their signs, Zwink explained that Rich was exercising his rights.

"That's the right that is given to very citizen. The state cannot force someone to accept that deal," the judge said.

He set a pre-trial conference hearing date of Jan. 12 - oddly, almost exactly a year after he was arrested - to see if the case was ready to go before a jury and asked attorneys to have their motions filed by the end of the month.

As they filed out of the courtroom, one protestor stopped to tell Rich that if he thought he'd be avoiding a crowd by delaying proceedings he was wrong. She predicted double the number of protestors present Wednesday would attend future court hearings.

"I don't care how many people come here. I really don't," Rich said.

Rich's case began in mid-January when the Mat-Su Borough seized 157 dogs found on his property, almost all of them malnourished and dehydrated, according to Alaska State Troopers reports. Rich was a breeder of husky/malamutes and told troopers he'd lost his job in October 2010, after which he had trouble feeding his dogs. In addition to the live dogs, troopers found 22 dead dogs, a couple of them still chained up.

Source: frontiersman.com - Dec 7, 2011
Update posted on Dec 8, 2011 - 1:26PM

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he Matanuska-Susitna Borough animal shelter is scrambling today to make room -- and eventually find homes -- for nearly 160 skinny huskies after an animal-control officer found the dogs starving to death at the home of a Valley breeder.

Frank J. Rich, 53, pleaded not guilty today to 50 misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty.

A trooper arrested Rich on Monday, finding 16 dead dogs stacked in a Conex shipping container and dozens more without food or water. Borough employees and volunteers, including at least one local musher, spent hours collecting the emaciated animals and hauling them to the borough shelter outside of Palmer .

Borough animal control manager Richard Stockdale estimates 157 huskies have been impounded, including a straw-colored female that gave birth to six puppies on Monday.

At the shelter today, lanky huskies on leashes hunched low to the ground as workers continued to test, weigh medicate the dogs.

"This is the most dogs that they (shelter employees) have impounded at one time, at least that anyone can remember, in the last 10 years," Stockdale said.

Even before the huskies arrived, the Valley animal shelter had nearly as many adoptable dogs as it could hold, a spokeswoman for the borough said. The shelter was closed to the public today as workers focused on the influx of huskies and the borough announced a sale on dog adoptions in hopes of freeing more space.

Medicine is running low, borough officials said.

The shelter is seeking donations of Hills Science Diet Advanced Fitness Original dog food, metal dog bowls, blankets, towels and material such as dry straw, tarps, zip ties and plywood that can be used to build shelters for the dogs.

Shelter workers and employees stayed until about 3:30 this morning checking the health of the new dogs, said veterinarian Katrina Zwolinski said in the shelter lobby today. Barks echoed from every corner of the building.

They are in "horrible" condition, she said.

"All of the dogs have long hair, and you can still see the hip bones ... Their spines. Their ribs. They're all very, very thin," Zwolinski.

The dogs appear to be a mix of Siberian huskies and malamutes, she said. "They're not being bred for mushers. They're being bred for pets."

Rich, who lives in the Montana Creek Area near Mile 92 of the Parks Highway, was cited in 2007 for unsanitary conditions at his kennel, according to the borough.

The latest investigation began when a tipster called Mat-Su animal control officer Darla Tampke Erskine on Saturday to report that Rich had quit his job and that 75 of his dogs had died, according to a trooper affidavit.

Borough officials knew Rich has had as many as 170 dogs in the past and say he has a kennel licensing pending to house 168 dogs, according to troopers.

Erskine drove to Rich's property on Sunday, finding more than 100 dogs, troopers said. Most were emaciated and dehydrated with little or no body fat. There were no food or water dishes in sight, troopers said.

Erskine obtained a search warrant to remove the dogs and returned on Monday with trooper Shayne Calt.

Calt said he found the dogs thin and shivering in zero-degree temperatures. "The dogs had eaten a large part of the fresh snow around them and some did not have any fresh snow remaining, indicating that they had not been given water for an extended period of time."

"I observed several of the dogs eating their own feces," Calt wrote.

All told, at least 22 animals were dead, including two in the bed of a truck and two still chained to their kennels, the trooper said.

Rich, who said in court today that he most recently worked as a "maintenance manager," told troopers he quit his job in October and was struggling to feed the dogs.

Asked why he has so many animals, Rich told troopers he breeds and sells the animals, according to the affidavit.

"Rich stated that he prioritizes the food by giving it to the puppies first, because he sells the puppies," Calt wrote.

The breeder told Palmer Magistrate Craig Condie that he was unemployed for about four months out of the past year, and made only about $24,000 in 2010.

He was being held today at Mat-Su Pretrial Facility. Condie entered a not-guilty plea on Rich's behalf, with bail set at $5,000. The breeder is not allowed to take care of any dogs as a condition of his release.

Source: adn.com - Jan 11, 2011
Update posted on Jan 11, 2011 - 10:28PM

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150 dogs seized from breeder's home, 22 deadWillow, AK (US)

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150 dogs seized from breeder's home, 22 dead
Willow, AK (US)