180 days for dog breeder

PALMER — A judge sentenced a Willow-area dog breeder to serve 180 days in jail after pleading guilty Monday to two counts of animal cruelty.

Frank Rich was arrested and his dogs seized in January 2011. He faced 50 counts of animal cruelty, but entered a guilty plea for only two of those charges.

Mat-Su Borough Animal Care and Regulation authorities say that most of his 168 husky-mix dogs were dangerously thin and dehydrated. The borough found 19 dead dogs there as well.

At Monday’s hearing, the borough’s veterinarian, Katrina Zwolinski, said many of them were teetering on the verge of death. She said there was no hay in the doghouses, and no bowls out for food or water. Some of the animals had developed sores where bones protruding under their skin had made contact with the ground too many times.

The hearing was the second attempt at a change of plea for Rich. The first, in early December 2011, failed when Rich pulled out of the deal.

Rich laid out for District Court Judge David Zwink the history of his dog breeding days, starting when he brought a companion home for a dog he owned in Michigan. Those two dogs had puppies and soon a business was born.

“I was selling about 200 puppies a year in Michigan,” he said.

Rich said he got out of the business when he moved to Alaska, but slowly returned to it when he found his dogs produced puppies people wanted to own. They looked a lot like the classic sled dog, but weren’t as high strung as mushing animals. If an animal wasn’t one he could sell, he’d hold onto it, increasing the number of animals in his care, he said.

“I figured they were my responsibility,” he said.

As his kennel grew, Rich said his ability to pay for it shrank. When his employer cut back his hours and upped his responsibilities, his health also started to deteriorate.

“I was either going to have to give up my job or give up my dogs,” he said.

But unemployment payments didn’t show up right away. His food stock dwindled, Rich said, and he was afraid to reach out to the borough’s Animal Care and Regulation department because of a previous experience where, after a kennel inspection, he’d been ordered to get his numbers down and wound up picking 30 dogs to euthanize.

“I could only get to 24, I couldn’t pick a 25th dog,” he said, choking up.

The dogs got skinny and when the borough finally showed up, he was in the position of rationing food, and giving more to one particularly thin dog meant giving less to another, he said.

Rich’s attorney, Chong Yim, argued for a shorter probationary period and a shorter jail term, saying that his client loved his dogs and had simply become unable to care for them.

“He now acknowledges that he could have done better,” Yim said. “He knows that he could’ve done more and he could’ve gotten help.”

He said Rich planned to get out of the breeding business, but there was no reason he couldn’t own one or two dogs. Rich confirmed that, telling Zwink that when the borough took his dogs away, it was like “the weight of the world” had been lifted from his shoulders.

“This last year without them has opened up opportunities for me to live a different kind of life,” he said.

On the other side, Assistant District Attorney Lindsey Burton was adamant that Rich had proven himself incapable of exercising the proper judgment to own dogs and should be banned from doing so throughout his 10-year probationary period.

“Two dogs can make five, can make 10, can make 15,” Burton said. “The problem is it’s very easy to do.”

She said that the District Attorney’s Office was serious enough about the need to keep dogs out of Rich’s hands that it was willing to give up some of the jail time he had to serve if need be.

“These animals were sick and starving and he didn’t do anything,” she said.

Borough Attorney Nick Spiropoulos gave Zwink the borough’s position that Rich had cost the borough a sizable amount of money. He urged Zwink to do what the borough can’t and bar Rich from owning animals.

“This is a massive failure to meet any standard of reasonable care,” Spiropoulos said. “This defendant is not fit to own a hamster.”

As they did at the December hearing, protestors showed up to Rich’s hearing Monday, bearing homemade signs with slogans expressing their outrage at the animals’ treatment.

Also in the courtroom were three of Rich’s friends who spoke on his behalf.

“He took very good care of those dogs,” said Jim Armstrong, who has known Rich since 2000. “He would go without many times just to care for those dogs.”

“He just wanted to raise his own breed of dogs. He was very proud of the bloodline,” another friend, Michael Wood, testified. “Frank and I talk several times a week, and it’s always about his dogs.”

Zwink said that, being a dog owner himself and one who has had to put animals down in the past, he could sympathize with Rich and believed his tears were genuine during his testimony.

“I’ve been there,” Zwink said.

In the end, Zwink’s ruling sided completely with Burton, imposing the 180 days she asked for and restriction from owning animals, as well as 10 years of probation during which Rich could go back to jail for as long as 18 months if he doesn’t keep his nose clean.

He compared Rich’s situation to that of an addict and said that, with other addicts, judges often have to tell defendants there are certain things — going to bars, hanging out with dealers — that they just can’t do.

“You knew a number of times you had too many dogs,” Zwink told Rich. “You knew what other responsibilities you had.”

And so, while he could sympathize with Rich, Zwink said he also has to consider the blown-up photograph of dead dogs Burton had placed on an easel in the courtroom.

“I have a picture of a pile of victims here,” Zwink said.

According to the deal as Yim explained it in court, Rich will have to report to jail sometime in the next three months and can use that time to apply for a spot in the Department of Corrections’ program that allows him to serve his required jail time on house arrest wearing an ankle monitor.

Contact Andrew Wellner at Andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.