Kimberly Thi-My Atwell was sentenced in Albury Local Court last week to 80 hours of unpaid community work as a punishment for leaving her two-year-old staffy crossbreed Benji and six-month-old kelpie pup Ruby to die of starvation and dehydration.

She had abandoned them in a Lavington home without food or water for three weeks.

The case received national attention after RSPCA NSW shared it in a Facebook post, describing it as “one of the most heartbreaking we have seen”. The post has been shared more than 11,000 times, and attracted more than 15,000 comments.

Brisbane woman Rani Shankar, 26, was so incensed that she started a petition five days ago in the hope the sentence handed down to Atwell would be appealed by the RSPCA, with more than 16,000 people backing her as of Tuesday night.

“I took it upon myself to start one (petition) because I’m not alone when I say that I’ve had a gutful of the disregard for animal welfare in this privileged country,” Ms Shankar said.

“There’s no excuse for any living being in our country to die from dehydration and starvation, could you imagine going over 500 hours locked in a laundry in your own faeces and urine without a sip of water or food?

“What motivated me to start the petition is that the crimes alone were bad enough but magistrate (Rodney) Brender’s sentencing was outrageous and simply cannot be looked over.

“I’m consistently being told by people that they have been crying for days, cannot eat and have not been able to sleep since Ruby and Benji’s story surfaced and I can relate to them.”

Ms Shankar said the reaction to the story showed how “atrocious and heinous” the crime was but she hoped the support for her petition could make a difference.

“Ms Attwell needs to serve jail time, pay large fines and be banned from owning animals for the rest of her life. Australia’s leaders need to get on board and magistrates need to take their powerful and respected roles and use them to improve our country’s futures.”

A spokeswoman for the RSPCA said yesterday the organisation had 28 days in which to lodge an appeal, and was still considering whether that would happen.