The head of the SPCA says it's unfathomable that the owner of a dog that had cancer knew of his suffering and chose not to intervene.
SPCA CEO Andrea Midgen was commenting after the owner of the dog Zeus was today sentenced in the Hutt Valley District Court to 170 hours community work, disqualified from owning animals for five years, and ordered to pay $527.80 reparations and $56.00 towards legal costs.
Michael Morehu had entered a guilty plea at an earlier appearance in a prosecution by the SPCA for ill-treating his dog after he failed to provide veterinary treatment when Zeus was suffering from cancerous oral, facial, and nasal lesions.
The case began in July 2018 when Zeus, a male husky crossbreed, was found roaming and picked up by an animal control officer, who alerted the SPCA that Zeus had a significant facial disfigurement and was very thin. He was then taken into the SPCA’s custody.
A vet found a large mass measuring approximately 10 centimetres in the muzzle, which was affecting both the eye socket and the jawbone, and had caused a three centimetre hole to open in the roof of the dog's mouth. The hole would have allowed food to pass in to the nasal cavity every time he tried to eat which would have caused him distress.
The mass had also displaced Zeus’ left eye, minimising vision on that side, and his nose was severely ulcerated, with a large amount of pus coming his left nostril.
There was a second mass inside his mouth, which had degraded the bone to the left upper gum to the point that teeth located there were no longer rooted in the bone, and were instead ‘floating’ and held in only by the mass itself, which would have caused him pain when he attempted to eat.
Zeus was also in emaciated body condition, which was most likely the result of a combination of wastage due to chronic illness and undernutrition from the inability to eat caused by the masses, which were found to be cancerous.
The tumours had been allowed to progress unmanaged for an unreasonable amount of time, to the point where Zeus’ pain and distress could not be reasonably mitigated by any other method than euthanasia, the SPCA says.
Zeus’ owner was identified by microchip registration. When interviewed by an SPCA inspector, he recalled his own vet had recommended euthanasia as far back as September 2016 but he declined because he couldn’t afford it and because of his attachment to Zeus.
He admitted he knew Zeus had been losing weight, had begun to smell bad, had difficulty eating and said he believed him to be in pain.
“Zeus suffered greatly as his cancer eventually overwhelmed him. It is unfathomable that his owner knew of his suffering and chose not to intervene,” Ms Midgen said.
“It is never easy to make the decision to put a pet down due to old age or poor health. But in this case, it is hard to understand why Zeus’ owner allowed him to continue living in such an intolerably painful way for so long."
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