Orange County authorities are still trying to decide whether to bring criminal charges against a Cedar Grove couple they say meant well but let their 66 malnourished greyhounds and other dogs wallow in a home laden with animal feces and urine.

County animal control officials spent much of the weekend removing dogs from the Old Noble Road home of Kenneth and Robbin Wiseman . The Wiseman's turned their collection of emaciated, dehydrated dogs over to animal control officers voluntarily, officials said, following about a three-day investigation that followed a complaint by a co-owner of one of the dogs on the Wiseman property.

Most of the dogs are greyhounds, with a smattering of cocker spaniels, Dalmatians and others, said Joe Pulcinella, director of the county animal shelter.

Most of the 66 dogs are undergoing treatment and are being held by animal rescue groups. One was euthanized.

County officials say the Wiseman's didn't intend any malice.  "They had the original intention of doing good with the dogs," said Ron Holdway, with the county health department. "It just got to the point where they were overwhelmed."

County officials are considering whether to charge the couple with animal cruelty, Holdway said.

Animal control officers who initially investigated found a country home stinking from dog feces and urine. The dogs were underweight and malnourished, though alert and active, said Harvey Melton, the animal control officer who headed the investigation. There were a number of dog carriers in the house, which the couple shares with the animals, Melton said.

Veterinarians who examined the dogs found fleas, skin lesions, a few tumors and some signs of heart worms, officials said.

The dogs are now undergoing physical rehabilitation and temperament assessment, and won't immediately be put up for adoption, said Pulcinella, the animal shelter director.  "These dogs need a lot of long-term care," he said.

Among those dogs in the worst shape was Tucker, a light-haired greyhound who, when Pulcinella brought him out for local media to view, was shivering and still dirty from his experience at the Wiseman house.

Tucker was in "very poor shape," Pulcinella said, noting that the dog's spine, four ribs and a portion of his skull were visible due to him being malnourished. He had at least one red, blotchy visible lesion, and gave off a pungent odor as well.

"Greyhounds are not fat, but they're muscular; they're runners," Pulcinella said, pointing to Tucker's extraordinarily lean torso and legs. "There's no muscle here."

(Photo's courtesy of News 14 Carolina)

The county had never seized so many dogs at one time, said Rosemary Summers, county health director.

But officials said it wasn't unusual to see warm-hearted people adopt too many pets and become overwhelmed.

"It's not an uncommon phenomenon," Pulcinella said. "It's very common for people with very good intentions to start out helping the animals, and somewhere along the line lose perspective."

Update 6/1/05:  Five of the 66 dogs removed from a Cedar Grove home over the weekend were euthanized after a veterinarian determined they were in "very bad condition," the director of the Orange County Animal Shelter said Tuesday.

Director Joe Pulcinella had held one of the dogs, Tucker, at a news conference.

The dog's tail, lower body and legs were, in some places, caked with dirt. Its rib cage, shoulder blades and spine were spotted with reddish-pink, flea-bitten skin. Periodontal disease, a problem in greyhounds, had claimed Tucker's front teeth.

Kenneth and Robbin Wiseman of 5530 Old Noble Road surrendered the dogs over three days last week.

Orange County officials had visited the home after getting a tip from a co-owner of a dog that lived there. The co-owner saw the dog at a recent show and contacted the county, concerned about its condition.

Officials found excessive amounts of urine, feces and fleas along with the emaciated animals, said Ron Holdway, Orange County's interim animal control director. Holdway plans to give information about each dog, complete with photographs and veterinarian reports, to the district attorney this week.

He said the fact that the Wiseman's voluntarily gave up the dogs does not necessarily mean they will not be charged.

"Certainly, we'll let the D.A. know that they did voluntarily surrender the animals, but that doesn't excuse the conditions that the animals were in," Holdway said. "It's not really [a question of] intent; it's just does the evidence support whether there was abuse or neglect."

Aside from the five dogs that were euthanized, four dogs had been placed with their co-owners and 55 had been placed with animal rescue groups that have taken on the task of rehabilitating and finding homes for the dogs.

Pulcinella said more than a dozen volunteers from the Triangle Italian Greyhound Rescue and the Triangle Greyhound Society spent 3 days working alongside staff to bathe all of the dogs and take them to rescue kennels and foster homes.

Joanna Wolfe, president of the Triangle Greyhound Society, said volunteers took hundreds of ticks off the dogs as they cleaned them. "After getting their baths, they looked better and they are in better spirits," Wolfe said.

Update 6/4/05:  District Attorney Jim Woodall has reviewed the evidence gathered in the case of 66 dogs that were seized from a home in northern Orange County, and he supports bringing animal cruelty charges against the couple that kept the animals.

Animal Control officers are compiling the charges against the couple, but it could be days before they complete their work and file the charges against Robbin and Kenneth Wiseman, who kept the dogs in their home on Old Noble Road in northern Orange County, Ron Holdway, interim director of Orange County Animal Control said.

The Wiseman's apparently believed they were rescuing the greyhounds, Holdway said.  But the amount of food and water needed daily for 66 dogs and the effort it would take to feed and care for them would be nearly an impossible task for two people, he added.

"I just can't fathom in my little brain how you manage that, and obviously they were not managing that very well or at all," Holdway said. "I don't know how you would even try to attempt to do that with two people."

It appeared some of the dogs had not been out of their crates for extended periods of time because they were covered in feces, Holdway said.

In 2000, Robbin Wiseman told The Chapel Hill Herald about a greyhound named Harry that she had rescued from a medical laboratory in Minnesota. Harry had been a racing dog that ended up being sold illegally to a laboratory that used greyhounds to test heart pacemakers. Once the testing was done, the dogs were killed, Wiseman said at the time.

She wanted Harry and went to great lengths to rescue him because Harry was the grandson of a greyhound she already owned, she said.

Robbin Wiseman told the Herald that in 1995, she saw an advertisement about greyhounds available for adoption through a greyhound rescue program. She adopted one of the dogs and then another and then began working with a greyhound rescue program, she said.

In 1998, she began her own rescue program for older greyhounds and greyhounds that had special health needs.

"Older dogs can be harder to place," she said at the time. "I take dogs that other people won't take, and they've just been a joy."

In 2000, Robbin Wiseman said she had placed 30 greyhounds in homes.

Animal Control officers were unable to find any record that the Wiseman's ever applied for a kennel license, Holdway said.

Update 6/8/05:  The Wiseman's now face 47 counts each of cruelty to animals.  The Wiseman's also were charged with operating a kennel without a license.

Veterinary evaluations found that 47 of the 66 dogs were severely malnourished with numerous health problems. They included 40 greyhounds, four Dalmatians, one greyhound mix, one Italian greyhound and one pharaoh hound.

Interim Animal Control Director Ron Holdway said the couple would be issued a criminal summons to appear in court July 21.

The Wiseman's have posted "No Trespassing" signs in front of their white, two-story home on a gravel cul-de-sac about seven miles north of Hillsborough. An image of a greyhound running decorates their white mailbox.

Pam Alexander, who lives across the street, had watched as Animal Control officers took dog after dog from the Wiseman's home beginning May 26.  "I felt really guilty about it, that living across the street, I didn't know anything was wrong," Alexander said.

She said that when she and her husband moved in eight years ago, the Wiseman's told them they had 19 dogs. She doesn't know when they more than tripled that.

She said she had noticed that the dogs had stopped coming outside and that the delivery truck that used to bring dog food had stopped coming, but she assumed that the Wiseman's didn't have the dogs anymore.

That was until Animal Control officers started bringing the dogs out. "Once they opened up the house, then you could smell," Alexander said, standing on her front porch.

She recalled that when she adopted a mutt named Watson seven years ago, Robbin Wiseman made sure she knew how to take care of him.  "She wanted to be sure that we knew what to feed him and that he had a good vet, and she encouraged me with the lead training," Alexander said.

The animal cruelty charges fall under state statute 14-360, which says depriving an animal of necessary sustenance is a Class 1 misdemeanor.

Update 10/4/05:  A judge rejected a plea agreement that would have given the couple 36 months probation and prohibited them from owning or caring for animals for five years, during which time they would have had to agree to unscheduled searches of their home, plus pay back $2,045.66 in restitution each.

Under the deal, the Wiseman's, originally charged with 47 counts each of misdemeanor animal cruelty, would have pleaded no contest to 47 counts each of misdemeanor animal cruelty. If they violated their probation terms, they could have spent as long as 90 days in jail.

"We have people who break into empty shacks who get more time than what you're doing here," Orange-Chatham District Court Judge Pat Devine said.

Lawyers on both sides called the couple's actions "animal hoarding," a mental illness defined in an Illinois statute as accumulating large numbers of animals without providing minimal care for them, and failing to acknowledge the animals' deteriorating conditions or the negative effect on their own health or households.

"They are not bad or mean-spirited people," the Wiseman's lawyer, John Loftin, told the judge.

But Devine said she needed proof -- thorough mental health assessments -- before signing off on the plea. Otherwise they could take the plea to another judge.  "I am not able or willing to put my signature on a piece of paper with the result you are asking," she said, later adding, "How could they not see what I am seeing or feel anything but helpless denial?"

The Wiseman's have no prior convictions, and North Carolina's sentencing rules don't allow a judge to sentence them to any jail time unless they violate probation.

The Wiseman's chose another judge, and were scheduled to appear Oct. 31 in front of District Judge Alonzo Coleman.

Five dogs were so malnourished and ill that they were immediately euthanized. One or two others have died since then, but most have been adopted or are in animal foster care and are recovering, Melton said.

Last week, the greyhound named Harry died, possibly of a stroke, said Phyllis Nunn of the Triangle Greyhound Society. Harry came from Wisconsin where Daniel Shonka, who ran a racing kennel, would offer to take greyhounds near the ends of their careers from other kennel owners, race them until their careers were over and then say he was adopting them out to good homes.  Yet, instead of placing the dogs in good homes, Shonka apparently sold them to a research laboratory.

Update 11/2/05:  The Wiseman's pleaded no contest to 47 counts of misdemeanor cruelty to animals.

Under a plea agreement, Orange-Chatham District Court Judge Alonzo Coleman sentenced the couple to three years of supervised probation.

The agreement prohibits them from owning or caring for animals for five years and allows unscheduled searches of their home during that period.

They must also pay $2,045.66 each to Orange County Animal Services and greyhound adoption groups that took in their dogs.

After the plea, Kimberly Jewell, director of Randleman-based Project Racing Home, and about 15 others waited outside the courthouse.

As a deputy escorted the couple out, Jewell followed them down Churton Street, taking photos to post on the Internet to warn other adoption groups not to give dogs to them. Assistant District Attorney Stephen Motta and the Wiseman's attorney, John Loftin, said the couple suffered from hoarding syndrome, in which people collect animals, likely with good intentions, but are then overwhelmed. The couple has not undergone a psychological evaluation, but must do so as a term of their sentence.

Reference:

The Chapel Hill News

The News & Observer

Chapel Hill Herald

News 14 Carolina