LOUISIANA -- A 66-year-old retired doctor is being held after more than 100 animals were found dead or neglected on her Lacombe property.
Animal services found more than 100 dogs, 44 ponies and seven turtles on the property of Dr. Janis Walder. There were also dead animals in the yard.
Walder's bail is set at $25,000. She faces 119-counts of animal cruelty, with more charges pending.
"I've been trying all day to come up with words," said neighbor Wayne Childs. "It's almost indescribable."
According to investigators, a deputy responded to the home on Tuesday to investigate a 911 hang-up call. What he saw led him to immediately contact animal control.
"In twenty years as a veterinarian, I have never seen anything like this," said Dr. Brent Robbins, director of the St. Tammany Department of animal services.
"Inside the property there were actually 55 dogs living inside the house. Outside, there were animals eating dogs that had died."
Robbins said he is waiting for a judge to allow him to retrieve the ponies, which were kept on an isolated part of the property – so isolated that neighbors didn't even know about the horses.
Neighbors said they made previous calls to the sheriff's office about the dogs and the smell.
"It was so bad you couldn't come out of the house without gagging," Childs said.
Animal services is asking the public for donations of supplies. Robbins said the animals also will eventually need homes.
Re:"Dog hoarder has done it before, neighbors say," Metro, March 12.
The media have provided extensive coverage of Dr. Janis Walder's hoarding of
over 100 dogs. The district attorney in St. Tammany Parish has charged her
with animal cruelty. The public brought food, toys, blankets and other items for
the dogs at the animal shelter.
Six years ago, according to the news, Dr. Walder was in a very similar
situation. Once those animals were taken from her, she probably started again with one or two dogs, but the homeless, hungry and scared dogs kept arriving or she kept finding them on the street, in parking lots and other places where they had been abandoned.
(The New Orleans Channel - March 12, 2004)
