Skoonch, who's a grandmother at 32, partied while her Rottweiler starved

UNITED KINGDOM -- A young grandmother left a rottweiler to starve in its own excrement for five years because she was too 'petrified' to take care of it properly, a court has heard.

 

Apparently, this is her favorite pose

Emma Spooner, 32, was slammed by a judge at Dudley Magistrates' Court yesterday for neglecting the aging dog, and exposing her children to the dangerous possibility of being savaged when it went feral.

Spooner kept the dog alive, who was called Kane and aged between 10 and 12, by throwing him scraps in her back yard in Peel Way, Tividale, near Birmingham.

Summing up at her trial, Judge Graham Wilkinson: 'You left this dog to fester in the back yard. This poor animal, for five years, lived in a small space, unloved and mostly neglected.

'He goes feral, because he is not getting love and attention. He is left to lie in his own filth. He’s occasionally thrown food and he wastes away.

'Had it not been that someone locally alerted the RSPCA, eventually you would have realised you had not seen him for a few days, because he would have wasted away to nothing.

'He was left to starve slowly and would probably have died a sad, lonely death. All this time, you allowed your children to be at risk.'

Spooner, who became a grandmother at the age of 31, was handed a curfew preventing her from leaving her home between 7pm and 6am on Fridays and Saturdays, and was banned from keeping an animal for five years.

Judge Wilkinson also ordered her to pay costs of £1,000, which he told her to raise by giving up smoking.

She admitted failing to make sure that Kane was provided with a suitable diet and environment.

At one stage, the judge also halted the proceedings, ordering Spooner to leave the court because she was chewing gum, although he called the case back about 30 minutes later.

Prosecuting for the RSPCA, Gaynor Sutton said Inspector Steve Morrall had called at Spooner’s home on January 29 and could see the dog was ‘very lean’. The yard was covered in faeces.

Insp threw some food to the starving animal, which quickly gobbled it up.

Defending Spooner, Vanita Joshi said her client was 'petrified' of the dog.

It had belonged to her former partner, but had been left with her when he left Spooner and moved in with another man.

Speaking to her local newspaper, Spooner said she had tried to get the RSPCA to put him down, but they had wanted £200 to do the job. She was only willing to pay half.

Spooner, whose 14-year-old daughter had a baby son 17 months ago, said: 'The dog belonged to my ex-partner.

 

'I was under the impression he would look after it and he should have taken it when he left but he didn’t.

'I was made out in court to be bad but the dog wasn’t kept outside for five years, like they said. He used to come in at night.'

She added: 'The dog didn’t like women or children and, apart from biting two of the kids, he went for my throat.'

(Daily Mail - Sept 20, 2013)