INDIANA -- Two Muncie residents have been charged with cruelty to an animal over allegations they abandoned three dogs when they moved out of a westside house.
The charges — filed last week against Hunter T. Wheeler-Routh, 25, and Madeline C. Phelps, 21 — are Class A misdemeanors carrying maximum one-year jail terms. Initial hearings are set Feb. 9 in Muncie City Court.
A Muncie Police Department report indicates three pit bulls were removed from a house in the 3200 block of West Ethel Avenue on Sept. 25.
The owner of the house told officer Doug Narramore he had not seen his tenant — Wheeler-Routh — for several weeks. The landlord said he had called authorities because he could "smell the animals from the outside of the residence."
Melinda J. Coffey, a city animal control officer, said she found two pit bulls "running loose in the main portion of the house "with no food or water that she could find."
Coffey said the amount of feces on the floors led her to conclude the animals "had not been out of the house for quite some time," Narramore wrote.
She then found a third pit bull, in the house's basement, where she believed it had been confined for several weeks.
That canine "was emaciated, missing fur and had been living in its own feces and urine long enough to have been affected by it on its paws, mouth and eyes," the report said.
Phil Peckinpaugh, director of the Muncie Animal Shelter, said Friday the dog found in the basement — named "Poppy" by shelter employees — was now in the care of a pit bull rescue organization in the Chicago area, while the other two dogs have been adopted.
Poppy was in "horrible shape" when rescued from the basement, Peckinpaugh said, "incredibly underweight," with infected paws, skin infections, and rubber stuck in her teeth, the apparent result of the dog's desperate bid to eat something she found in the basement.
"Her temperament was wonderful," he added.
In his report, Narramore also recounted his own inspection of the Ethel Avenue house, saying some of the piles of feces on the living room floor "had been there long enough to begin to mold."
The report said a strong odor of "animal urine (ammonia)" was "clearly noticeable" outside, several feet away from the front door.
The officer wrote he could not stay in the basement "for longer than I could hold my breath as the smell was overwhelming."
(Muncie Star Press - Dec 19, 2014)
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