Shorewell woman pleads guilty to animal cruelty charges

A dead dog which had been so hungry it had eaten clothing material and another just clinging to life were discovered by an RSPCA officer in Burnie.

AN ANIMAL welfare officer acting on a report of severely malnourished dogs at a house in Burnie found one dog dead on a porch and another in an extremely emaciated condition and covered in fleas, a court has heard.

RSPCA lawyer Malcolm Caulfield told Magistrate Leanne Topfer RSPCA officer Lisa Edwards went to Jackie Jacobson’s house in Shorewell in July last year.

Ms Edwards found one dog dead in an open porch area and another in a state of chronic under-nutrition.

Both the dead animal and the remaining male “staffy cross” were seized.

Dallas weighed just 11kg and was infested with fleas. Two months after being seized he weighed 23kgs.

A post mortem on the dead dog found it had been so hungry it had eaten clothing material.

“The severity of the starvation led to desperation and the ingestion of foreign material,” Mr Caulfield told the court.

He said the poor condition of the animals would have been “blatantly obvious” to the people living at the house.

Ms Jacobson pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated cruelty, one of cruelty to animals and another of management of an animal likely to cause suffering.

She told Magistrate Topfer she “wasn’t feeding herself at the time – let alone a dog”.

She told the court the dogs belonged to her ex-partner who had died about five months before they were seized.

Asked why she had not surrendered the dogs to an animal welfare organisation, Ms Jacobson said she had no transport.

“I went into a severe depression. I was paying off my partner’s funeral and could just afford to feed my kids let alone myself and the dogs,” she said.

Jacobson is being assessed for a probation order.