With close of animal cruelty case, animals can finally find new homes

Two poodles taken from convicted animal abuser Cathie Warren’s property last August are the 54th and 55th dogs Patti Carlson has fostered, yet their story stands out amongst all the others.

Many have followed Warren’s legal case, which began last summer when officials seized 54 dogs, 6 donkeys and dozens of other animals from her property outside Libby after her care of those animals came into question after an inspection by county health officials on April 21, 2016.

Warren was found guilty of six counts of animal cruelty and two counts of aggravated animal cruelty on April 20, 2017 and sentenced Tuesday, June 6.

Only now that sentencing is over can the people who cared for Warren’s animals in the interim share their stories.

“I have a boy and a girl (red moyen) poodles, which have been in my care since October of 2016,” said Carlson, who lives in Whitefish. “They needed a lot of extra care at the beginning, as they had giardia and kennel cough. I’ve paid about $1100 out of pocket for vets bills to address these illnesses.”

The poodles came to Carlson after a chance meeting at Tobacco Valley Animal Shelter with director Wendy Anderson when Carlson had mentioned her history in fostering dogs at her prior home in Park City, Utah. A short time after that meeting Anderson suddenly needed experienced pet foster parents after the shelter was inundated with dogs from Warren’s property. She asked Carlson if she could help.

The two dogs originally came to Carlson and her husband with their mother, Daisy, who was still nursing the puppies.

“My husband is a dog whisperer,” Carlson said. “But even he could not get Daisy to warm to him. She had been allowed to breed in her first heat, and she was in horrible condition. She seemed like she had never been touched, she was scared of the house, scared of everything, and neglecting her puppies.”

“This lack of socialization seems to be a common thread with all of the animals from this case,” Anderson said in a post-sentencing interview.

The Carlsons eventually had to make the hard decision to take Daisy back to the animal shelter, something they had never done before.

“She’s the first dog we ever returned,” she said. “But she needed more than we could give. We were moving, and I was working full time.”

Because everyone involved in the case was under court orders not to talk about the animals while the case was open, Carlson only found out from Anderson this week that Daisy has been adopted, is doing well, and will be heading to a new home in Coeur d’alene.

The waiting period between Warren’s trial and her sentencing was an uneasy time for foster families, with the future of the animals they had grown to love in the hands of the judge who would sentence Warren.

A couple from Washington who fostered Eddy, another red moyen poodle found in the barn on Warren’s property, emaciated and covered with open sores, wrote Anderson regularly with updates about their foster dog.

“We love Eddy unconditionally and fortunately he seems to feel the same about us,” they wrote in late May. “We are praying that he is allowed to stay with us.”

The couple wished to remain anonymous.

The process of recuperating the neglected and sick animals is a long one. Eddy’s foster family detailed in the letter the lengths it has gone with Eddy’s diet.

“[We feed a] clean diet of grain free kibble,” they wrote. “He loves the crunch, as well as heart and scraps from beef from the meat market and to chew on chunky marrow bones. We also use a slow cooker recipe of organic ground beef or chicken, sweet potato, carrots, peas and chicken broth.”

For Carlson, caring for her two puppies meant feeding a gruel of milk and puppy chow around the clock, and treating the kennel cough by putting the dogs in a bathroom full of steam after a shower.

This, combined with medicine, finally helped the dogs overcome what is known to be like a bad flu for dogs. The process of restoring the dogs’ health took two or three months, Carlson said.

Helping to recuperate two of Warren’s dogs made Carlson balk at the idea of ever returning the dogs to Warren, an outcome that was possible up until her sentencing.

“I considered that we might have to buy the dogs from Warren if they were officially handed back to her,” Carlson said. “I didn’t actually know the dogs were taken from a bust until the week after we got them, but when we found that out, the terrible condition of the animals made more sense.”

As it turned out, Carlson did not have to buy the dogs from Warren because Warren’s sentence banned her from ever owning animals again.

Carlson’s brother is adopting Sophie, the female poodle, and Carlson and her husband have adopted Sage, the male.

Anderson has had a busy week following sentencing, as pet foster parents came to the shelter to officially adopt the animals in their care.

“Since yesterday [the day of sentencing] we’ve had so many come in because they want to get it taken care of quickly, just in case something were to change,” Anderson said.

As Anderson and her coworkers sift through applications to adopt out the last of Warren’s animals that were not fostered and have been living at the shelter, a chapter comes to a close. “We’re saying goodbye to extensive medical bills because these dogs have a lot of ear infections, even ten months later, as a result of the neglect they suffered,” Anderson said. “But we’re not too focused on finances — the most important thing to us at the shelter is that the animals were released into loving homes.”

That includes the donkeys.

“We got a lot of calls about the donkeys,” Anderson said. “They are still in foster care, but we are looking at applications and expect to see them all adopted soon.”