Animal control officers have confiscated 57 animals -- dogs, birds and a cat -- living in filthy conditions at the home of a Sutton dog breeder, according to Matanuska-Susitna Borough officials.

The breeder, Marcie Doppelt, faces 70 counts of animal cruelty and one of operating a kennel without a borough license, said Mat-Su chief animal control officer Dave Allison.

Doppelt is scheduled to appear in Palmer district court, borough officials said. Each animal cruelty count carries a potential $300 fine; the license violation brings $150, Allison said.

The 39 dogs, 1 cat and 17 birds lived in their own feces and urine, according to the borough Animal Care and Regulation Department. One bird was found dead.

The officers seized the animals after receiving a complaint June 22 that they lived in unsanitary conditions and the cat and dogs were killing the birds, according to the borough Public Affairs Office.

Doppelt rebuffed officers investigating the complaint June 22.  Armed with warrants and accompanied by Alaska state troopers, the officers returned to her home on East Carroll Drive and took the animals away, according to borough Public Affairs.

The animals are malnourished, have ear and eye infections, and were deeply soiled with matted fur, among other conditions, according to the Public Affairs Office. One dog had a fishhook embedded in its fur, Allison said.

The shelter staff plans a massive bathing, shaving and grooming session while the shelter is closed, Allison said. The confiscated menagerie includes cocker and springer spaniels and German shepherds, including some puppies. Among the birds were macaws and conures, according to borough Public Affairs.

Before animal control officers arrived, Doppelt removed 12 peacocks from her property to an undisclosed location, Allison said.

Allison said the animals put a nearly impossible burden on the already crowded borough animal shelter on North 49th State Street between Palmer and Wasilla.  "This makes it all very interesting. There is very little room," he said. "On a good day, our shelter is full."

This situation underscores the shortcomings of the borough animal shelter, Allison said.

Voters in October rejected a $4.6 million bond issue to fund an expanded shelter. Instead, the borough Assembly, by appropriating some money and shuffling some from other accounts, found a half-million dollars to improve or repair the shelter crematory and the septic, heating, ventilation and electrical systems.

The borough has custody until a judge decides what to do with the animals: Turn them over to borough care or return them to Doppelt, said Allison. He said the animals are better off in borough care.

"I'm positive we can find them homes; some may be adoptable," Allison said. "Hopefully it won't happen that the court returns the animals back to the defendant. ... We've seen that in the past, that would be the worst-case scenario for our community. It sets a tone that animal cruelty is tolerated."

Update 7/7/06:  Witnesses testifying in Palmer District Court described as filthy and unsanitary a Sutton home where animal control officers seized 57 live animals last week.  Others described the homeowner as a pet lover whose menagerie had gotten out of hand.

In a courtroom packed with curious spectators and witnesses waiting to testify, Marcie Doppelt, 60, petite in a black sweater, sat through more than five hours of testimony, periodically tapping her lawyer's shoulder to offer input as he questioned witnesses.  She faces 41 counts of animal cruelty and one of operating an unlicensed kennel.

Matanuska-Susitna Borough attorney Nicholas Spiropoulos, the prosecutor in the case, said that of 71 initial charges, one was dismissed because the animal, a peafowl, was dead and the other charges were consolidated.

Each cruelty charge carries a potential $300 fine, the kennel license $150. If she loses, Doppelt, whom the borough described as a dog breeder, would have to forfeit her animals.

District Judge John Wolfe said Doppelt might be entitled to a jury trial, but Doppelt chose to press on with the bench trial. She said she wanted to get her animals back as quickly as possible.  "They're all in the shelter, and I think that's a very unhealthy place for them to be," she said.

In court, borough animal control officer Mark Whisenhunt said officers left Doppelt's home on East Carroll Drive on June 27 with 12 exotic birds including macaws and parrots, three chickens, one Canada goose, a peafowl, five German shepherds and four cocker spaniel puppies, 30 adult dogs and one cat.

Fredric Dichter, Doppelt's attorney, said he intended to prove the borough charges false. He said many people knew Doppelt to be a conscientious pet owner and "at no time did they believe that the animals were in any kind of danger."

One of the first defense witnesses was veterinarian James Morris, who said he'd been treating Doppelt's animals since the late 1970s.  Asked about ailments among the pets, he said, "She's had a lot of animals, so there's been a lot of different things" but nothing out of the ordinary.  "I think she cares a lot for her animals. She feeds them well, she treats them well," he said. "I think in the last few years the numbers have gotten out of hand on her."

He said Doppelt would often stop by his Wasilla clinic with sick or injured animals. He'd treated Doppelt's pets for eye and ear problems and stopped by her home to administer rabies shots.  "The house was dirty," he said, but "I didn't think that it was an imminent threat to the dogs."

Whisenhunt painted a different picture. On his initial visit June 23, he said in court, the smell of the dirt-floor shed where 12-15 peafowls were housed was overpoweringly acidic and burning his nose and throat.

He said Doppelt told him that facilities that house a lot of birds always smell horrible and that, apart from moving the birds to a different location altogether, there was no way to mitigate the problem.  That meeting ended, Whisenhunt said, when Doppelt said she didn't want to talk to him anymore.

He came back later that day and taped two notices to the door -- a protective order for the animals and a notice that the borough intended to impound the peafowls.

June 26 Whisenhunt obtained a search warrant and went back to the house to seize the animals. The house was filthy, he said. "Everything was covered with a thick layer of grime," he said. Water dishes were mostly dry or dirty.  In the bird rooms, everything -- perches, ladders, water dishes, walls -- was covered in feces. Some of these rooms were attached to the home. Others were more like sheds.

The puppies were found in the bathroom, lying in their own feces, he said. The floors inside the house, apart from in the rooms housing birds or dedicated to the animals, had stained floors but not many animal droppings. As they searched the house, he saw dogs defecating.  One, he said, had climbed up on a kitchen counter and urinated on a box of almonds.  Outside, the kennels contained large amounts of old and new dog droppings. A dead peafowl lay atop an old refrigerator.

When he arrived, the peafowls were gone but the living conditions prompted officers to seize the dogs, birds and cat. The peafowls have not been found.

Dave Allison, head of Mat-Su animal control, outside court said the animals are currently at the borough animal shelter.  Space is cramped, and the shelter is undergoing remodeling and is not used to handling so many birds, but "we've since made room in the shelter for them."  He said if the case goes against Doppelt, "we truly hope that they will be adoptable."

Update 7/8/06:  The Sutton dog kennels and bird sheds whose condition prompted 70 charges of animal cruelty last week will remain empty. In a plea bargain with the prosecution Doppelt agreed to give up her animals for good.

As part of the deal, Doppelt pleaded no contest to one count of failure to register a kennel and four counts of animal cruelty, putting an end to the two-week case that landed 57 animals in the Matanuska-Susitna shelter. She was initially charged with 70 counts, consolidated for trial to 42.

Doppelt said she agreed to call it quits when she was told that borough codes allow only four dogs to be kept at a home that does not hold a kennel license.  "If I had known that, I wouldn't have started," she said.

Doppelt agreed to pay $1,250 in fines and forfeit all the impounded animals. The fine will be used to defray the $5,000 cost of holding and treating the animals. All told, 30 adult dogs; nine puppies; 12 exotic birds including macaws, cockatiels and a dove, 3 chickens, a Canada goose, a peafowl; and 1 cat will soon become property of the borough.

The agreement ended Dopplet's trial, with more than five hours of testimony from various witnesses. District Court Judge John Wolfe listened to evidence in a proceeding similar to those for people contesting speeding tickets and hunting infractions.

Given a chance to testify, Doppelt sounded a defiant note. She had not been treated fairly, she said. She was in the process of applying for a kennel license when the animals were impounded, she said, and should have been given more time to complete the license application.

"A lot of these animals are going to be killed, put to sleep," Doppelt said, adding that the borough "could have done things very differently and avoided this court case. But they didn't."

Her attorney, Fred Dichter, said Doppelt "is not a cruel person," and that her veterinarian James Morris summed up the problem well when he testified that Doppelt had let her menagerie grow to an unmanageable degree, perhaps because she "didn't like the alternative of euthanizing them."

Borough attorney and prosecutor Nick Spiropoulos agreed. He said the animals were not beaten or violently abused but still needed better care.  "I think this is the type of case we see where there are too many living things for one person or two people or even someone with more help to take care of," Spiropoulos said.

Living conditions in a shed housing peafowl prompted the initial animal control seizure. Those birds were missing when the other animals were impounded, but Doppelt agreed that a friend she had given them to would turn them in.

Once the peafowl are deemed adoptable, the friend will get first adoption privileges and be allowed to take home as many as he can reasonably handle, Spiropoulos said.

Animal control officers took away most of the dogs but left the four allowed by borough ordinances, Dichter said, choosing arbitrarily which ones stayed. The agreement allows Doppelt to swap the four dogs at her home for four at the shelter once animal control deems them healthy enough for adoption.

Reached by phone, Dave Allison, head of borough animal control, said he expected most of the dogs will be adoptable sometime next week.

Animal control will work with a local bird club to find homes for the exotic birds, Allison said.  "We've had an outpouring of love from the community and an outpouring of things to make the animals more comfortable," Allison said.

Allison urged anyone looking to adopt the animals to be patient, but if they'd like to help, donations are always welcome.

Update 7/16/06:  About two dozen dogs seized from a Sutton home will be ready for new homes early this week, a Matanuska-Susitna Borough spokeswoman said.  One dog, an older Dalmatian that animal control officers described in court July 6 as having an open, untreated wound on its leg, had to be euthanized, animal control chief Dave Allison said in an e-mail.

Borough spokeswoman Patty Sullivan said the dogs, including German shepherds and cocker and springer spaniels, but no puppies, should be ready for adoption.  "It's on a first-come, first-served basis," she said.

Sullivan said volunteers came forward with donations of dog treats and toys once the story of the animals, rescued from what officers described as squalor, was publicized.

Animal control officers had left Doppelt with four dogs, the limit allowed under borough codes for homes lacking a kennel license. Her plea agreement allowed Doppelt to swap the dogs for four held at the shelter. Doppelt has traded her four dogs for four German shepherds, Sullivan said.

Allison said last week that his department has been incredibly busy. When the animals showed up, they went through a triage process. Those most seriously in need of care were taken first. Volunteers pitched in.

That the animals are ready for adoption this week is the result of a lot of hard work from his staff and the volunteers, Allison said.

The borough entrusted the Alaska Bird Club with the 12 exotic birds -- five cockatiels, three conures, two macaws, one Amazon parrot and one dove. Club vice president Leanna Rein said the birds are not ready for adoption.  "They're coming along," she said, but "these birds all need a little bit of work."

All of them are in rehabilitative foster homes. Rein expects that soon, perhaps in another few weeks, the birds will be ready. Until then, she urged anybody who wants to adopt the birds to fill out an application at the club Web site at www.alaskabirdclub.org.

Applications are also available for anybody who wants to be a part of the group's network of bird foster homes.  "This confiscation really tapped us," she said, and the club could use more volunteers.

Update 7/26/06:  It was a happy ending July 17 for the dogs taken from a Sutton home June 26.  In the course of two hours, they all found new homes.

"We had people lining up at 8 o'clock," which is unusual since the Matanuska-Susitna Borough animal shelter opens at 10 a.m., animal control officer Mark Wisenhunt said.

Gauging from "hundreds" of phone calls Wisenhunt said the shelter took from hopeful would-be adopters, shelter staff prepared for 30 to 50 people showing up when they opened. A borough spokeswoman had said the previous Friday that the dogs would be ready.

Staff set up a table in the kennel July 17, to process the adoptions and allowed 10 people at a time to come into the building and look at the 24 dogs available.

Close to 20 people had shown up by the time doors opened; more came later. By 11:30, the dogs were gone. More would-be adopters arrived afterward. Some left empty-handed. But, Wisenhunt said, a few dogs not related to the Sutton case were adopted as well.

Four cocker spaniel puppies the shelter didn't think would be ready until Thursday were re-examined. Wisenhunt said borough veterinarian Lisa Espey determined they were ready to leave the shelter; early Tuesday, they were gone.

Espey said there are still three cocker spaniels the shelter doesn't want to let go until they've been treated for skin infections. Five German shepherd puppies went to rescue groups.

Wisenhunt said that two dogs were released with small growths that might have been tumors. In those situations, if the dogs are otherwise healthy, the shelter tells the adopters to contact a veterinarian as soon as they can.

Wisenhunt said he has since heard that both growths were not cancerous and have been treated; one was a hernia, the other an unclassified "mammary gland mass." The dogs are doing just fine.  Monday, he said, was a pretty hectic day, but "you can't ask for a better outcome."

An animal control officer with the borough since December 2003, Wisenhunt said he hadn't seen a case like this before. Seizing 12 or 20 dogs is not uncommon, but the 57 dogs and birds and one cat taken in this case made it Wisenhunt's biggest.

Officers also seized 12 exotic birds and four fowl -- a Canada goose, two chickens and a peafowl. An additional 12 peafowl were taken to the shelter later as part of the plea agreement. The exotic birds have gone to the Alaska Bird Club. The fowl have all been adopted or rescued as well. Four peafowl that were still at the shelter last week have since left.

Of the staff's performance, Wisenhunt said, "this was a true textbook success case."

Reference:

Anchorage Daily News

Juneau Empire