BONYMAEN: Lifetime animal ban for woman whose Dalmatian starved to death

Warning: this article contains images and details of animal suffering that some readers may find distressing.

A Swansea woman has been banned from keeping animals for life after her one-year-old Dalmatian starved to death, weighing around a third of a healthy adult dog’s weight when she died.

Kimberley Richards-Miller, 38, of Bonymaen Road, pleaded guilty at Swansea Magistrates’ Court to causing unnecessary suffering to Darcy under the Animal Welfare Act, by failing to investigate and address the causes of her poor body condition.

Alongside the lifetime disqualification from keeping all animals, she was handed 12 months in custody suspended for 18 months, 25 rehabilitation activity days and 150 hours of unpaid work, and ordered to pay £400 costs and a £187 surcharge when she was sentenced on Wednesday 29 July.

The RSPCA was called in after Darcy’s emaciated body was brought to a vet on 14 November last year.

In a written statement to the court, RSPCA Inspector Keith Hogben said Darcy’s body condition scored one out of nine, where a healthy dog scores four or five.

“I asked if the vet felt that the dog had caused unnecessary suffering and she agreed,” he said. “I was also told that the owner of the dog had been advised several times to bring the dog to the vets in the weeks prior to it dying.”

The body was seized by police and passed to the RSPCA, where a post mortem was carried out.

A vet who analysed the results said the one-year-old dog weighed just 7.1 kilograms.

The examination found severe loss of fat and muscle throughout her body, almost nothing in her gut, and a type of stomach ulceration caused by severe stress and hypothermia, which the vet said is often present in starvation cases.

With no underlying health problems found, the vet said the pattern was “most likely due to a long standing energy (food) deficit as expected in cases where the animal has starved to death”.

An adult Dalmatian falling from a normal 20 kilograms to Darcy’s weight would take around five months on water alone, the vet said, while reduced food or starvation in a growing dog would stunt its growth but “would still likely take a number of months to reach that body condition, suffering for the whole time”.

“The owner of this dog has failed in their duty of care to provide the basic need of the necessary amount of food to an animal in their care, starving them to death and directly causing the unnecessary suffering detailed above,” the vet said, adding in a second statement that further examinations had found no underlying illness to explain the weight loss.

The offence covered the two months between 18 September and 15 November last year. In mitigation, the court heard Richards-Miller was genuinely remorseful.

Speaking after sentencing, Inspector Hogben said: “It is heartbreaking to imagine what Darcy may have gone through. All animals deserve to be treated with kindness and should have their needs met. Anyone who is struggling should seek help.”

It is the latest in a series of animal cruelty prosecutions across the region this summer, and the only lifetime ban among them. Last month a Neath man was banned for ten years after his pregnant dog was found too emaciated for vets to tell she was carrying puppies, days after a Carmarthen man’s dog was found tied to a tree with untreated skin disease.

Suspected animal cruelty can be reported to the RSPCA’s cruelty line on 0300 1234 999.