25 dogs siezed from area musher

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough’s animal shelter has been filled to overflowing after officers seized 25 skinny dogs from a Palmer-area musher Tuesday.

Animal Care and Regulation Chief Dave Allison said now would be a good time for anybody looking to adopt a dog. To try and clear some space, he said the agency has reduced adoption fees by $20 for dogs and $15 for cats.

For now, the 25 seized sled dogs will stay at the shelter until the Borough’s case against the owner has been decided, Allison said. But the shelter has dozens of dogs viewable at petharbor.com.

Doug Bartko, a recreational musher who kept the kennel, said Wednesday that he had been worried about the condition of some of his dogs, but had always fed and watered them.

“Right now I’m restructuring my business, several businesses that I have,” Bartko said. “Our finances are tight.”

He said he’d set up a system where he picked up loads of fish, as many as 2,000 pounds, and brought them to his Lazy Mountain home where he fed the fish to the dogs. His truck recently broke down and he wasn’t getting the fish like he used to. But he’d still buy grain and feed the dogs as much as he could, Bartko said.

Allison said that when the dogs arrived at the shelter they were so malnourished they had trouble raising their heads. Some had broken teeth from trying to eat rocks. On a 1 to 10 scale the shelter uses to rate the weight of dogs, most rate a one.

“Which means fixing to die,” Allison said.

Officers had made the mistake of leaving out a dish of water in the kennel area and the dogs made a bee-line for it.

“They didn’t want anything else,” Allison said, adding shelter personnel have been pumping the dogs full of intravenous fluids to hydrate them and medications to keep them alive.

Bartko disputes the dogs were thirsty. He said he always gave them plenty of water.

As to whether they were starving, he said they weren’t, although some were skinny enough to worry him. He had been trying to get the dogs back up to a proper weight. Some, he conceded, could have rated a 1 on the shelter’s scale, but certainly not the majority as Allison said.

The Borough wouldn’t agree to work with him, Bartko said, a claim Allison refutes. It was Bartko who wouldn’t work with animal control officers, Allison said. When they showed up on their first visit, he said Bartko wouldn’t let them on the property. They dropped off some food for the dogs, then went to seek a search warrant.

When animal control officers returned to the property, Allison said Bartko had moved some of the dogs to another property. A complaint from a nearby resident sent animal control there as well.

Bartko said he didn’t let the officers on his property because he was about to bring in more fish.

“I wanted to show them I had plenty of food and I’d got my system back together,” Bartko said. He recalled telling the officers, “Come back tomorrow and I’ll have things a little more presentable for you.”