Woman in dog-hoarding case speaks out.. full of excuses

INDIANA -- The Huntingburg woman embroiled in a deadly dog-hoarding investigation says she has been unjustly vilified and claims she has done nothing wrong.

Last month, police removed 37 poodles, shih tzus and a German shepherd  — including the bodies of nine dead dogs — from Mary Burch’s home at 609 N. Washington St. Burch, 65, has not been charged, though the case is still under investigation.

Dead dog left in a rancid kennel. Mary only admits to one dead puppy

 

 

She contacted The Herald after details of the case were made public. Burch said she wanted a chance to tell her side of the story.

“They got me looking like an evil person, but I’m not,” Burch said. “I didn’t want none of my dogs to die.”

 

 

The face of evil: MARY BURCH

Her house was so disgusting, the city ordered it demolished

 

She helped run a dog-breeding business near Cannelburg, but the kennel was closed last year after Burch’s business partner retired. Burch said she didn’t have enough money to open her own kennel, so she moved her dogs to Huntingburg around Thanksgiving.

“I had nowhere to go,” she said. “I had to bring them home.”

Burch doesn’t live in the house where her pets were kept. She stays with family and friends who live nearby. But she claims that either she or one of her family members went to the Washington Street home every day to check on her dogs.

“I bet any vet that would check them would see they were well-fed,” Burch said.

Mary has excuses for everything. What's her excuse for this dead dog?

She claims the dogs that had died hadn’t been dead for long. One of her dogs gave birth to a litter of puppies earlier this year. Burch said the mother of the puppies “laid on them and mashed them.”

She estimated the dogs had been dead about a week when police removed the pets from her home. Burch wanted to bury them herself, but she was recovering from heart surgery.

 

Mary doesn't explain this dead dog either

She had been in and out of the hospital and was busy with doctors appointments. She was exhausted and just never got around to burying the dead puppies.

Burch claims she was in the process of selling most of her dogs. She planned to keep four or five of her favorite dogs, give four or five away to friends and family and sell the rest. “But I never got a chance to,” she said.

Mice inside stored food barrel

Burch admits she hadn’t groomed her pets in several months.

“That was about the only thing that was wrong,” she said, “was that they needed a haircut.”

But animal welfare officials have said most of Burch’s dogs appeared to be underfed and malnourished. A veterinarian is still monitoring the health of several of the pets.

 

Police have forwarded the results of their investigation to prosecutors, but as of this morning, no charges have been filed. Most of the pets removed from Burch’s home have been placed in foster homes. Three of the dogs remain at the Dubois County Humane Society.

“I still love the dogs that they took away from me,” Burch said. “I could tell you every dog in every pen, the color of it, how old it is. And if I wasn’t concerned about them, I wouldn’t know that.”

(Dubois County Herald - May 13, 2014)