Bush musher Clay Farnham had heard all the horror stories about his neighbor's dog yard before he went over to investigate two years ago.

Word was that more than 100 animals were going days without food and water at Charlotte Fitzhugh 's place in Chistochina. A misguided sled dog breeder with a history of dog neglect, her animals were reportedly left to fend for themselves at temperatures beyond 50 below while she worked as a taxi driver in Fairbanks, more than 250 miles away.

Even with the warning, Farnham was unprepared for what he saw. All the dogs were skinny and wild-eyed, he said. Some were chained to clapboard boxes offering little shelter; others were chained to trees.

A half dozen dogs lay dead across the snow, Farnham said. Hunks of flesh were missing from their emaciated bodies.  "It wasn't very hard to figure out what had happened," he said. "The live dogs were starving, and they were eating the dead ones."

The sprint musher videotaped what he saw and took the film to the Alaska State Troopers in Glennallen. They opened a long investigation and paid several visits to Fitzhugh's yard over the following months.

Eventually, the state filed 17 charges of reckless neglect against her. She pleaded no contest to two counts last December. A judge ordered that she get rid of all but three of her dogs by Jan. 15. She could sell them, give them away or put them to sleep, but they had to go.

Though the deadline was extended, Fitzhugh never complied. Troopers returned -- this time with a state veterinarian, a trio of volunteers from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and a court order to take the dogs.

Amy Low, one of the volunteers, said they found 83 dogs, including about ten puppies. Only two dogs could be saved. They went to the Anchorage shelter. The rest were too far gone or too skittish to live safely with people, she said.

One by one, the vet gave them lethal injections. He and the others piled their bodies into the back of a pickup truck and took them to a landfill.

"It wasn't easy to do, but we all felt it was the right thing," Low said. "You've got feral dogs who've been feral for years. You've got wild animals."

Fitzhugh, 65, claims to be the victim of a conspiracy designed to hurt her, seize her land and kill her dogs.

A musher wannabe -- she ran the 1989 Yukon Quest, but had to be rescued before the first checkpoint -- Fitzhugh portrays herself as a rescuer of unwanted dogs.

She says she takes in animals culled by mushers -- dogs that might otherwise be killed. She says the stories about her dog yard are lies, her neighbors are spreading vicious rumors, and state troopers have set her up on bogus charges.

Why then did she plead no contest to the neglect charges?  "I had to," she said, speaking by telephone from Fairbanks. "The prosecutor had blood in his eye."

As for Farnham's video, Fitzhugh claims someone killed the dogs, then threw the bodies across her yard to make it look like she was responsible.

But this is not the first time Fitzhugh has attracted the attention of authorities. In 1981, the SPCA rescued more than 35 dogs from her dog yard in the Talkeetna Mountains after federal authorities called with reports that the animals were in dangerously sorry shape.

Fitzhugh was eventually charged with 39 counts of cruelty to animals and 39 more of neglect. Tried and found guilty on two neglect charges, she was ordered not to own dogs for two years.

In 1993, after one of her huskies was found starved to death at her trailer in Fairbanks, Fitzhugh was convicted of animal cruelty there. A judge ruled she couldn't keep more than 20 dogs within the Fairbanks North Star Borough for at least a year.

That prompted her to move the bulk of her dogs to Chistochina. She put a sign up on the highway: Husky puppies for sale. Not long thereafter, neighbors started calling the troopers.

"We have 60 plus below here and they don't all have houses," said Terry Endres, who owns the Chistochina Lodge. "Some nights, when it was still, you could hear those dogs crying all night long."

Two years ago, just after the Copper Basin Sled Dog Race, Iditarod champions Rick Swenson and Martin Buser and musher Will Forsberg went to look at Fitzhugh's dogs.

"You've seen pictures of people starving to death in Somalia? That's what they looked like," Forsberg said. "I saw some dogs there so skinny I wondered if they could even get up."  A dozen or so adults were running around loose, Forsberg said. "The females were just tied up, with no pens or anything, so these wild males could breed any female they wanted," he said.

Forsberg said he felt helpless, standing in the yard, not knowing what to do.  "We kind of scratched our heads and said, 'Should we rescue these dogs?'" he said.

But the troopers were already involved and there was a dog handler living in a tarpaper shack on the property. Reluctantly, the group decided to leave the matter to the authorities, though they donated some dog food.

Later, Forsberg saw Fitzhugh selling puppies out of her truck in a Fairbanks parking lot. Some were no more than two or three weeks old, he said.

"They looked like they couldn't even walk. They were way, way too young to be selling them."

On Christmas Eve 1993, Alaska State Trooper Don Pierce searched Fitzhugh's yard after several of her neighbors reported she hadn't been seen for days. They were worried a cold snap would take a toll on the dogs.  "As I walked onto the property, I started seeing dead dogs," Pierce said. "They were dead on the ends of chains. ... It was real grim."

Pierce said he found five bodies that day. Necropsies later showed the dogs had less than 1 percent body fat. "The dogs were essentially feeding on their own tissue and organs," he said.

Fitzhugh maintains the only dogs that ever starved were those left in the care of dog handler Joe Diez. She filed suit against him in Glennallen, holding him responsible for their deaths.

But he countersued: She promised room, board and cash, he argued. Instead, she abandoned him for days with nothing but popcorn to eat and not enough food for the dogs.  A judge ruled in favor of Diez, according to a court clerk, who provided no details.

For Forsberg -- a musher who's active in PRIDE, a group formed to improve care standards for sled dogs -- the Fitzhugh saga is a striking example of the need for faster state intervention in such cases.

"Right now, the state pretty much has to wait until troopers find a dog dead on the end of a chain before it can step in," Forsberg said. "It never should have gone on this long and gotten this far. Especially when this woman has the background she does."

Reference:

Anchorage Daily News