Barbara Perry Christian, 58, 1645 Buttermilk Road, Gray, was cited this week on 46 counts of animal cruelty and 46 counts of rabies vaccination violations. The animals are located at Christian’s Buttermilk Road kennels, Barbara’s Pet Palace, where she runs a business breeding and boarding dogs.
In a brief phone interview Monday afternoon, Christian told the Press the situation is nothing more than a “miscommunication between me and the (animal) warden.” She agreed the kennel area is dirty and stinky right now, but said it’s because of all the recent rain in the area.
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| "The entire facility is just smelly," Thomas said. "It stinks, it reeks of urine, feces. The (dogs) outside, they're just filthy, muddy, they all stink. Every animal in her facility smells of urine or just the smell it gets into the skin of the animal and it would take it a month getting them out of that facility to get them able to get that smell out of the animals." |
“He overstated it,” in describing the kennel conditions, Christian said, referring to Washington County/Johnson City Animal Control Officer Wayne Thomas. She also said Thomas went back on his word in September when he gave her a February deadline to get the kennels cleaned up and some of the dogs re-homed.
But Thomas said the kennel is no place for dogs to live and it needs to change now. Unfortunately, Thomas said, the dogs all look healthy so he was unable to seize them.
“The animals themselves are not in poor (health) condition. It’s the way they’re contained ... the confinement, the feces and urine smell,” Thomas said.
He’s been to Christian’s property three times since mid-September, twice on barking dog calls. But when Thomas arrived about the barking dogs, he found more than he expected.
According to a court document filed Monday Washington County General Sessions Court, Thomas first responded on a barking dog call at Christian’s property on Sept. 17. That’s when he saw the dirty living conditions in which Christian kept her dogs. He also discovered that Christian had 42 dogs and puppies in her kennels, some of which were inside and some were outside.
At that time, Thomas told Christian she had to clean up her property, pare down her dog population to at least 35 by Feb. 17, 2015 and provide the animals with better housing.
But it wasn’t long before Animal Control received another call about dogs barking at Christian’s property. Thomas returned around Sept. 30 and found the kennels had been cleaned some, but Christian’s dog population had actually grown to 51.
When Thomas rechecked the property on Sunday, he found that Christian had not followed any of his directives, so he filed the citations against her.
“She’s been warned,” Thomas said. “It’s basically no more than a puppy mill. She doesn’t pay heed to any kind of warning.”
Thomas said the matter should have been cleared up two years ago when another animal control officer cited Christian on 35 counts of animal cruelty and 35 counts of rabies vaccination violations.
He said he checked with Sessions Court on how that case was handled and learned there is no record of the case in the clerk’s office. That, he said, means the case was expunged from Christian’s record.
At the time of the 2012 citations, Christian was recovering from a leg injury that has just recently healed enough so she can wear a regular shoe, she said on Monday. That injury prevented her from giving the kennels the amount of attention they needed, she said, but she was getting things back in order.
“I’ve been diligently working on it,” Christian said, adding that the rabies vaccinations would be taken care of right away. She also said she was told she can’t do anything with her animals right now while the case is pending, which she said won’t help the situation.
“The animals don’t deserve to be housed that way and she doesn’t deserve to have them,” Thomas said. But because the dogs are being fed and watered, animal control has no authority to take the dogs.
Christian disagrees with Thomas’ assessment of her kennels and said she plans on talking to Animal Control “to see what we can do about it.”
Christian is scheduled for a court hearing on Dec. 30 at 9 a.m. in General Sessions Court.
(Johnson City Press - Dec 8, 2014)
Reported earlier:
Barbara Perry Christian, 58, 1645 Buttermilk Road, Gray, was cited this week on 46 counts of animal cruelty and 46 counts of rabies vaccination violations. The animals are located at Christian’s kennels, Barbara’s Pet Palace, where she runs a business breeding and boarding dogs.
But Washington County/Johnson City Animal Control Officer Wayne Thomas said the kennel is no place for dogs to live. Unfortunately, Thomas said, the dogs all look healthy so he was unable to seize them.
“The animals themselves are not in poor (health) condition. It’s the way they’re contained ... the confinement, the feces and urine smell,” Thomas said.
He’s been to Christian’s property three times since mid-September, twice on barking dog calls. But when Thomas arrived about the barking dogs, he found more than he expected.
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