A North Albury woman who inflicted a “terrible act of cruelty” in letting her two dogs die of starvation and dehydration in an empty Lavington house has been banned from owning animals for five years.
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Kimberly Thi-My Atwell showed no reaction when sentenced in Albury Local Court on Thursday to 80 hours of unpaid community work.
This matched the lack of remorse that RSPCA prosecutor Kathyrn Jurd said Atwell showed when asked about the deaths of two-year-old staffy crossbreed Benji and six-month-old kelpie pup Ruby.
Ms Jurd said Atwell reckoned the dogs “could be easily replaced”.
Atwell said she fled the house on July 23, 2017, because of domestic violence inflicted by her then partner that left her in hospital for a week.
But magistrate Rodney Brender noted the ex-partner was in custody on July 23 and had been sentenced to jail days before the dogs were discovered by RSPCA Inspector Lionel Smith on August 15.
Atwell claimed she fed the dogs four days before.
“There was no problem of her going back because of domestic violence,” Mr Brender said.
Inspector Smith went to the McDonald Road house on August 14 after receiving a complaint about dogs locked inside, but nothing could be heard.
After another report, that the dogs were dead, he returned the next morning, looked through the laundry window and saw the dogs.
One appeared to move a leg so he got in through an unlocked sliding glass door, but found both dead.
The dogs faced each other, with Benji’s off-side front leg draped over Ruby’s body.
“Both dogs,” Inspector Smith said, “were extremely emaciated” and a vet found they died from starvation and dehydration, rated only one on a body scale up to nine, which represented a “fat, healthy dog”.
Ruby weighed 5.57 kilograms when she should have been between 10 and 15 kilograms, while Benji was 10.67 kilograms instead of 20 to 25 kilograms.
“It’s a terrible act of cruelty to those dogs, it has to be really strongly denounced,” Mr Brender told Atwell, 21, in placing her on a 12-month community corrections order and directing she complete 40 hours of unpaid work on each of the two charges of aggravated cruelty to which she pleaded guilty.
“(This involves) you basically abandoning these animals and locking them inside the house without food or water for a period of three weeks until they were dead.”
RSPCA NSW deputy chief inspector Scott Meyers said Atwell’s case demonstrated how “our job never gets easier, seeing horrific stuff like this”.
“I can’t even imagine the pain and suffering these poor dogs went through over an extended period of time and in their last hours.”
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