Teen gets jail for cruelty to dogs
A nineteen-year-old from Swansea has been sentenced to ninety days in a young offenders institute for his actions in administering cruelty to animals. Robert Freeman was asked to look after thirty dogs, some of them just puppies, when his father became ill. Rather than look after the dogs properly, Robert left the dogs in what was described afterwards as ‘concentration camp conditions’.
The court, in Essex, was told how Robert left the dogs unattended, stuck in dog cages which were littered with their own urine and excrement. The dogs had also been left with no food and no water for several days. The dogs were so distressed that some had tried to escape by biting the bars of the cages.
David Cooper, the District Judge, was unable to watch the video from the RSPCA which showed the dogs being kept in the cages. He labelled the video as heartbreaking.
Looking at the place where you kept the dogs it wasn’t so much a kennels as a concentration camp. Seeing the dog turn and turn in that way was heartbreaking. It was heedless neglect and cruelty.
The kennels where the dogs were kept were visited in February 2008 by the National Greyhound Racing Club when they were tipped off. The RSPCA seized all of the dogs weeks later, who were in a poor state of health.
