A MAN who allowed two dogs to starve to death in his back garden has been jailed for five months and banned from ever owning an animal again.
Michael Farrell, of Kilmahuddrick Road, Clondalkin, Dublin, appeared before Portlaoise District Court yesterday.
The court heard how two boxer dogs belonging to Farrell (26) had died from starvation and were dead for up to 10 days before being discovered by ISPCA inspector Brendan Hughes. He told the court he called to Farrell’s address at the time in Lake Glen, Kilminchy, Portlaoise, on December 18th, 2007, after a complaint. He found a male and a female dog left lying, one on top of the other in a small kennel. They were in a “state of decomposition”.
Father-of-three Farrell was charged with cruelty to animals, permitting a carcass to remain unburied and having no licence.
Mr Hughes said Farrell had told him he last fed the dogs on December 9th and that when he came back from a trip to Dublin on December 12th they were dead.
The defendant said he believed the dogs had been poisoned but the postmortem had shown there was no poison in their system and they had died from starvation.
Judge Gerard Haughton said Farrell consciously neglected the dogs; he knew he had them and did not feed them. He jailed Farrell for five months and banned him from ever owning an animal again on the charge of cruelty to animals with the other two charges taken into consideration.