Greybull Police Search for Woman in “Horrific” Animal Hoarding Case

Officers of the Greybull Police Department are looking for a woman with pending charges in an ongoing animal hoarding and animal neglect case. According to Greybull Chief of Police, Bill Brenner, the woman is facing “30 to 40” criminal charges.

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“It’s the most horrific case I’ve ever seen of animal neglect,” Brenner says.

As of this morning, the police have not been able to contact this person and they suspect she may have fled, but this remains unconfirmed.

As Mr. Brenner explains, a woman in town kept ten dogs in her basement for a year without human contact except to “throw food down to them.”

“They [dogs] had literally destroyed the basement, chewed through the walls, chewed through metal pipes, God knows what after a year of being down there,” Brenner says.

Since these charges against this individual are pending, no names have been released by the Police Department at this time.

As Brenner explains, the dogs were “vicious” and “disease-ridden.” In fact, three of the dogs were so vicious officers had to shoot them so that veterinarians could humanely euthanize the other seven.

“Basically, we responded up there, we got the help of some veterinarians from other areas, we had a veterinarian come down from Cody to help us. The officers had to dispatch three that charged them with firearms, unfortunately,” Brenner explains.

The veterinarians all agreed, “there was no hope for these dogs.” The animals were so sick with disease and so dysfunctional they could not be rehomed.

The woman who had been keeping and abusing these animals is being charged with “multiple counts” of animal neglect, improper licensing through the town, and numerous other crimes.

“We’d worked with this woman in the past on cats being outside,” Brenner says. “She would never allow us in the house, we didn’t know what was going on in the house – we’ve taken fifty cats off her property in the last two or three years.”

“We didn’t realize the extent of the hoarding she was doing inside her house with the dogs,” Brenner adds.

The situation had deteriorated to the point that the family no longer used the basement, which was being occupied by the ten severely neglected dogs. As Brenner explains, “they just left them in the basement for a long time.”

Neighbors had been complaining about a smell coming from the house. One neighbor had previously complained to police about dogs acting vicious at that home.

Police investigated, “We got her to register four of her dogs with the town and she had told us she got rid of the rest – the vicious ones – well, there was no way we could check, they wouldn’t allow entry into their house,” Brenner says.

There were fourteen dogs in total in the house, four lived upstairs, and ten had been locked in the basement. The four dogs living upstairs, apparently, were not part of the situation in the basement.

The guess is that ten dogs in the basement were either strays or dogs that people had given to her that were in search of a home, but this information is not clear currently.

“I hate to even think of what occurred, I mean these were male and female dogs unneutered so I’m sure there were puppies that were eaten over the year, I’m sure they were having puppies and the other dogs were eating the puppies,” Brenner says.

“It’s horrific – it’s beyond words what happened down there,” Brenner states.