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OSHTEMO TWP MI ~ Four Dogs Die From Neglect, One Dozen Rescued ~ Survivors Found Living in Total Squalor at Groomer's Home

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"We found the head of one dog in the cage with another dead dog. We're not sure what happened to the body -- whether the other dog was forced to eat the body before it died," said Steve Lawrence with Kalamazoo County Animal Services.

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Saturday July 5, 2008, 1:04 am

OSHTEMO TWP., Mich. (Newschannel 3) - Several dogs are dead and a dozen others have been taken to a animal shelter after suffering neglect and abuse at an Oshtemo Twp. home.

Officers say the dogs were living in total squalor at a home on West KL Ave. when they were found on Monday, and those that were still alive were covered in feces, with no food or water.

Janel Hosie, a next-door neighbor, says the owner of the home is actually a dog groomer, but told Newschannel 3 that the inside of the home was in such bad condition that the owner moved out last fall.

“They had to go to the bathroom in the crates, go to the bathroom on each other,” said Hosie.

Hosie says that the dogs were basically stuck in prison cell-like cages - sometimes three dogs were crammed into one small cage, and says she heard their owner not too concerned about the situation.

“Like it wasn’t really a problem, like she loved her dogs, that she was able to take care of it,” said Hosie.

But what animal control officers discovered Monday, is not what they say they saw two years ago when they saw the dogs outside the home. At that point, they say, they found the dogs healthy, and left without concerns for their care.

“We’d never seen, never been in her house to know what was actually going on in that house,” said Kalamazoo Co. Animal Services Director Steve Lawrence.

Lawrence says that when they did go inside the home on Monday, they found cages and dogs standing on empty bowls to get out of the feces.

But when given the chance to escape, the dogs didn’t move.

“The dogs didn’t come out, it was like, they didn’t know they could, or they’d never been out,” said Lawrence.

Janel Hosie says that the worst of it, is that four of the dogs died, and their owner, a groomer, should have been able to care for them better than even the average dog owner.

“It’s just unbelievable to me that someone can say they love their dog and let this happen,” she said.

Animal services says that some of the rescued dogs will go up for adoption, but others are so traumatized that they have no choice but to euthanize them.

Their owner of the dogs could eventually face animal cruelty charges, and Lawrence says that he never wants her to own a dog again.

If you are interested in adopting one of the rescued dogs, call Kalamazoo County Animal Services at (269) 383-8775.

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OSHTEMO TWP MI ~ Four Dogs Die From Neglect, One Dozen Rescued ~ Survivors Found Living in Total Squalor at Groomer's Home

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