Six dogs found dead at the Dillingham animal shelter succumbed to dehydration, starvation and neglect, says a veterinarian asked by police to examine the animals.
The city suspended the animal control officer charged with caring for the dogs after finding the skeletal, partially eaten remains in early December. The six were the entire dog population of the shelter at the time.
"I've never seen animals desecrated quite to this extent," said Jim Hagee, a Chugiak veterinarian who frequently practices in Dillingham. "The cannibalism is really what got to me."
Tipped off by the public works department, Dillingham police discovered the dogs inside the city-run animal shelter on Dec. 8. An employee had noticed there weren't any tracks leading to and from the pound and wondered about the animals inside.
Richard Thompson was the city police chief at the time and accompanied the public works director to the abandoned pound, a windowless, old warehouse at the city dockyard.
The heat was off, Thompson wrote in a report he shared with the veterinarian. Garbage, tools and feces covered the floor. Decomposed dog carcasses were in cages or curled on the plywood floor.
A black husky found inside a plastic bag was likely one of the first to go, Hagee told police in his report. A 14-week-old Rottweiler puppy wearing a pink camouflage collar was one of the last.
Hagee estimates the dogs were left to fend for themselves for four to six weeks. All the deaths could have been prevented, he said.
While police found a 50-pound bag of dry dog food in the shelter, the emaciated animals had no water and clearly had gone without eating for long periods, Hagee said. "It was obviously too little too late."
The city closed the shelter and police began a criminal investigation that's now in the hands of state troopers and the Dillingham-based district attorney, said City Manager Janice Shilanski.
City officials say the dogs had been in the care of Community Service Officer Travis Barnett. He has been suspended without pay.
Barnett, reached by telephone Saturday, declined to comment, saying he can't talk about the case until it's over.
"I don't know if I'm being charged yet. I don't know if they're in the process of doing charges," he said.
Police wrote that Barnett admitted to "abandoning his duty to care for or humanely euthanize two dogs in his care," according to a Dillingham police report provided to Hagee.
Barnett said a third dog was left dead at the shelter and he didn't know where the other three came from, according to the report.
For now, Dillingham police are filling in as dog catchers and holding animals in the department garage, Shilanski said.
Mayor Alice Ruby said she knew Barnett when he worked as a dispatcher for the short-staffed public safety department. He put in long hours and bought coffee at the bistro where she worked.
As a community service officer, caring for and catching dogs was only part of his job. The rest of the time he picked up inebriates and tried to help them find a place to stay, Shilanski said.
"I don't know that there was one person not doing his job, but a lot of responsibility was placed on one individual to make a successful program," she said.
Hagee, appalled by the condition of the dogs, said no one was looking out for the animals.
"If all these animals were destined for death anyway, the animal control officer who was there -- who was licensed and educated to put animals to sleep -- could have and should have euthanized the animals," he said.
The Dillingham government hasn't been in the shelter business for long.
Deanna Hardin, who runs an animal boarding business in Dillingham called Happy Tails, housed stray dogs for years until the city opened its own pound around 2005.
With the shelter closed she's seeking a contract to house the animals once again. Hardin said she heard a police sergeant on the radio Thursday looking for a home for a couple of puppies.
"He just wanted to find somebody who would take care of them," she said.
But since word of the dead dogs surfaced in a radio report in December, some people are reluctant to report strays to the city, Hardin said. They keep the dogs in their own homes and try to find the owners themselves.
Read The Village, the ADN's blog about rural Alaska, at adn.com/thevillage. Twitter updates: twitter.com/adnvillage. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334.
By KYLE HOPKINS
khopkins@adn.com