“I’m begging your honour,” April Dawn Irving said during a brief appearance before Judge Gregory Maxwell in Lethbridge provincial court.
Irving said she can’t return home because there are animals on the property, and one of the stipulations on her release order is that she not to be in possession of animals.
“I have a right to go home,” she told court.
The Crown is opposed to the change, however, and was not prepared Friday to address an amendment application without time to prepare for it. The matter was adjourned to next week for a hearing, during which the Crown may call witnesses.
The 55-year-old accused, who during the hearing kept her head covered with a scarf adorned with several photos of dogs, voluntarily surrendered 60 dogs in December while another 141 dogs were seized Jan. 13 after authorities returned to the property with a warrant.
Many of the dogs were emaciated, dirty, dehydrated and suffering from various medical and behavioral ailments, and were found under trailers, in outbuildings and outside where they were exposed to cold weather, rescuers reported.
Irving was later charged with a criminal offence Feb. 6 after an RCMP officer found five dead dogs on the property. The charge under Section 445.(1)(a) of the Criminal Code states that “everyone commits an offence who, willfully and without lawful excuse, kills, maims, wounds, poisons or injures dogs, birds or animals that are not cattle and are kept for a lawful purpose.”
However, that charge was replaced Friday by a new charge under Section 446(1)(b), which states “every one commits an offence who being the owner or the person having the custody or control of a domestic animal…abandons it in distress or willfully neglects or fails to provide suitable and adequate food, water, shelter and care for it.”
On summary conviction the lesser charge is punishable by a maximum fine of $5,000 and/or imprisonment up to six months.
The SPCA has also charged Irving with 13 counts under the Animal Protection Act. She is charged with causing or allowing animals to be in distress and failing to provide adequate food, water, protection, shelter, ventilation, space and care for ill or injured animals.
Through it all Irving has insisted she loves and misses the dogs, and that she has been mistreated herself by the SPCA, police officers and the court.
“My heart is shredded,” she told The Herald in an email. “I wake up to no one. In my vehicle. I am bleeding to death inside at the loss of what family I had.”
(Lethbridge Herald - March 7, 2015)
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