A grandmother in Birmingham, England — well, she’s only 32 — allowed a Rottweiler to starve in her backyard for five years because she was “too scared of it,” according to the Daily Mail. During that time, Emma Spooner spent many of her nights partying in nightclubs.
The dog, named Kane, belonged to her former boyfriend, who left the dog with her when they broke up. Kane lived in the backyard for five years, living amidst his own excrement, surviving on the scraps Spooner threw him.
When she was hauled into court over the matter, the judge slammed her.
“You left this dog to fester in the backyard. This poor animal, for five years, lived in a small space, unloved and mostly neglected,” Judge Graham Wilkinson told her at court. “He goes feral, because he is not getting love and attention. He is left to lie in his own filth. He’s occasionally thrown food and he wastes away.”
“Had it not been that someone locally alerted the RSPCA, eventually you would have realized you had not seen him for a few days, because he would have wasted away to nothing,” the judge said. “He was left to starve slowly and would probably have died a sad, lonely death. All this time, you allowed your children to be at risk.”
Though we don’t know the specifics of the case, we do know that the RSPCA visited the home in January. Gaynor Sutton said Inspector Steve Morral saw the dog and said he was “very lean” and that the yard was covered in feces. The RSPCA then intervened, saved the dog, and pressed charges against Spooner.
We don’t know the condition of the dog at this moment.
According to the Daily Mail, Spooner defended herself to her local newspaper, and tried to downplay the abuse. “The dog belonged to my ex-partner. I was under the impression he would look after it and he should have taken it when he left but he didn’t,” she said. “I was made out in court to be bad but the dog wasn’t kept outside for five years, like they said. He used to come in at night.”
She also said that she had tried to get the RSPCA to euthanize the dog in the past, but she couldn’t afford the fee.
Spooner spent much of her time in nightclubs, and the Daily Mail story has plenty of photos of her in clubs. As a result, the judge sentenced her to a curfew, preventing her from leaving her home between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. She was also banned from owning a dog for five years.
He also ordered her to pay a fee of $1,600, which he told her to raise by giving up smoking. The judge, in effect, is telling a grandmother how to grow up. Thankfully, no more dogs will be hurt by her actions.
