Tennessee: Amber Mittelstrasser, 23, charged with animal cruelty after her starving pit bull found on logging chain with embedded collar

TENNESSEE -- A Portland woman faces animal cruelty charges after Sumner County sheriff's deputies found her bleeding dog chained to a tree.

Deputies responded to Amber Mittelstrasser’s residence on Aug. 18 to check the welfare of a dog. They found a white and gray male pit bull that was “extremely malnourished.”

Multiple vertebrae, along with the dog's ribs and hips could be “easily seen” from the driveway, about 35 feet away, according to an arrest affidavit.

The dog was chained to a tree with a collar attached to a heavy grade of log chain in an area limiting its ability to roam. The collar was embedded into the dog's neck, causing “a massive laceration around the dog’s neck that was bleeding,” the affidavit said.

“Upon closer inspection of the dog I observed the laceration to be deeper than a superficial wound and it appeared to be around over half the dog’s neck,” Sheriff’s Office Animal Control Deputy James Brawner wrote in the report.

Deputies took the dog to the Animal Control facility in Gallatin, where a veterinarian evaluated the animal and administered medical care, Sgt. Joe Matthews said.

Mittelstrasser initially said she "didn’t know" who placed the chain on her dog's neck. 

Once arrested, she admitted to causing the injures by creating a makeshift collar for the dog, named Chevy, and "forgetting about it for a long time", investigators said.

Did she also "forget" to feed him? He didn't just have a logging chain attached to an embedded collar that she "forgot" about, he was also a bag of bones, slowly starving to death.

Mittelstrasser, 23, was arrested Friday and charged with two counts of cruelty to animals and a false report. She was released on a $3,500 bond the same day. She is scheduled to appear in Sumner County General Sessions Court on Aug. 26, according to her arrest affidavit and jail officials.

Mittelstrasser also told police Chevy had an undisclosed internal disease diagnosed by veterinarians at Crocker Animal Hospital in Franklin, Ky.

When contacted, Crocker Animal Hospital veterinarians said Mittelstrasser last came to the clinic in June 2015 with another dog for worming treatment, according to the affidavit , but had never treated Chevy.

So they've caught her in TWO lies. They should charge her with obstruction.

  

Child protective services should ensure that
she is not also neglecting children in the household

 

Police checked on Chevy in April after concerns from another resident..

“The dog appears to have lost a noticeable weight in the four months,” Brawner wrote.

In 2015, Mittelstrasser was convicted of allowing a dog to run at large and charged with two counts of failing to vaccinate pets for rabies, court records show.

Amber likes taking photos of herself

(Tennesseean - Aug 22, 2016)