A Melbourne woman has been banned from owning a dog for five years and handed a community corrections order after her pet poodle was found starved and abandoned in a yard without access to food, water or shelter.
RSPCA Victoria said it was told about an abandoned dog in a poor condition in Mill Park, northeast of Melbourne.
Inspectors arrived to find Dobby, a four-year-old poodle, who was thin and dirty with his coat heavily matted after being left alone in a yard.
Dobby was seized due to concerns about his welfare and taken to a vet for immediate treatment.
The vet said Dobby was “the skinniest dog still alive”, weighing just three kilograms with his body severely emaciated, dehydrated and anaemic, the RSPCA said.
His matted coat contained grass seeds, small pieces of wire and other debris, and once shaved off the fur weighed 18 per cent of the dog’s total body weight.
Dobby had to be hospitalised overnight for monitoring and was placed on intravenous fluids, but has since made a full recovery and was adopted into a loving family.
The incident happened in December 2017 and took several years to resolve, with a court recently convicting Dobby’s former owner for abandoning an animal and failing to provide sufficient food, drink and veterinary treatment.
The RSPCA said the Mill Park woman has been given a 15-month community correction order and banned from “owning or being the person in charge of a dog for a period of five years”.
