Three generations found guilty of neglecting dogs (From The Northern Echo)

Three generations found guilty of neglecting dogs

8:00am Friday 10th February 2012 in Crime News By Stuart Minting

THREE generations of a family neglected the needs of 15 dogs in a house so full of rubbish police officers considered using ropes to reach rooms.

The whippets, a Portuguese podengo, a greyhound and a daschund, were found in cages in and around the semidetached house in Catterick, North Yorkshire, as the Environment Agency executed a search warrant last May.

Yesterday, Northallerton magistrates heard that the house in Mowbray Road, where dog show enthusiast Joan Wright, 83, lived with son Jonathon, 54, contained narrow passageways formed between mountains of broken and hoarded items.

Sergeant Kevin Graham said he found buckets of dog faeces inside and outside the house and he was only able to enter one room upstairs, which was extremely dirty.

“It was very smelly indeed,” he said. “It was more than cluttered, that would be a gross understatement. I have never seen a house so piled high. It was verging on dangerous.”

Kevin Campbell, for the RSPCA, said while Joan Wright’s granddaughter, Nicola, 32, and Jonathon Wright excercised the dogs in a field, their run in the back garden was hampered by piles of scrap metal.

Darlington vet Michaela Wright said ten dogs had conjunctivitis and five had dental disease.

Four, which were originally taken into RSPCA care, have since been put down.

Darlington Dog Show judge Peter Broadbent told the court that Mrs Wright’s dogs had always been in an excellent condition while Joan Wright insisted her home had been “spotlessly clean”, all the dogs’ needs were met and they never suffered.

Nicola Wright, who admitted failing to ensure six dogs had a suitable living environment, and Jonathon Wright, found guilty of the same charge, were given two-year conditional discharges with £250 and £500 costs respectively.

Joan Wright was convicted of the same charge and failing to protect the dogs from suffering and disease. She was given a two-year conditional discharge with £500 costs.

Ten of the 11 surviving dogs will be rehomed while the surviving dog will be returned to Joan Wright under supervision.