UK Woman Kept 246 Dogs in Her House !!

[Guest]

OH, THE STENCH !!!!!!!! :dizzy: :dizzy: :dizzy: :dizzy:

Woman kept 246 dogs, 16 cage birds and 7 cats in her home

By Nigel Bunyan

(Filed: 19/05/2005)

An obsessive collector of animals kept a menagerie of 246 dogs, 16 birds and seven cats in her four-bedroom house, a court heard yesterday.

Rosalind Gregson, 55, confined most of her pets to cages, often in pairs and often piled on top of each other in conditions so cramped they could not stand to their full height.

   

RSPCA officers found dogs in cages piled on top of each other  

Many of the dogs were flea-ridden, emaciated and stricken with eye infections. Others had ulcers. Nine were in such a poor state that RSPCA officers had to put them down.

A district judge at Preston magistrates' court heard that when the RSPCA team raided Gregson's £500,000 detached house at Silverdale, near Carnforth, Lancs, they were initially "overwhelmed" by the stench of ammonia and faeces. They found the animals living in virtually unlit, rat-infested rooms with little water and food. Most of the water they did have was contaminated with cat litter.

District judge Peter Ward was shown an RSPCA video which showed officers viewing the "dismal and depressing conditions". The camera pans from cage to cage, showing dogs barely able to sit up. One RSPCA officer is heard to say: "How can they live in this? This is appalling."

Some of the dogs are lifted out of their cages and held up in view of the camera. One, a Maltese terrier, is shown with her fur matted with what appears to be excrement. An officer says: "She's in a terrible state."

Another, a Shih-tzu, has matted fur and appears emaciated. Its weakness and reluctance to stand is attributed by a vet to the muscle wasting in its hind legs. The animal was later put down.

An emaciated Yorkshire terrier had a discharge coming from both eyes. Few of its teeth remained, its nails were overgrown and it had a severe skin infection. It, too, had to be put down. Tim Bergin, prosecuting, said: "It is not the prosecution case that she maliciously caused cruelty to the animals in her home; simply that she allowed her obsession to collect animals to overwhelm her.

"She lost complete control to properly care for the animals in her charge. The net result was that the animals were living and surviving in what can only be described as dismal and depressing conditions where their needs were simply not met." He said the animals' poor health was solely the result of Gregson's "obsessional behaviour in collecting a large number of animals".

RSPCA officers, who raided Well Bank Cottage with environmental health officers from Lancashire county council, had never seen such a large number of animals in a single house.

"Not in their wildest dreams did they expect to be confronted with what they saw," said Mr Bergin.

Gregson denies 49 counts of causing unnecessary suffering to an animal in September 2003.

[JM15 386]

I love dogs but too but 1 is enough for me

[Guest Devil Dog]

I gag just thinking about it. Collyer's mansion of animals.