“The dogs won, that’s the bottom line. And the cat,” said Pennsylvania Dog Warden Jim Rickert.
SueAnn Wilke-Westbrook burst into tears Tuesday afternoon when Senior District Justice Joan Snyder ordered the former Honesdale woman to forfeit her 14 shelties and one cat. The court also forbid her from owning a dog within the next six years, in lieu of fines and costs.

Pennsylvania Humane Society Police Officer Marlene Metzger, who works for the Dessin Animal Shelter, had brought 25 counts of animal cruelty against Wilke-Westbrook. The charges stem from three different incidents between June and July. One of the incidents involved 10 of the dogs being seized from a metal self-storage unit on Commercial Street in Honesdale.

Warden Rickert had filed 31 dog law violations, 15 for not having rabies vaccinations, 14 for failing to have dog licenses, and two counts of making false statements to an officer for claiming to have dog licenses when she didn’t.

 The Commonwealth was represented by Attorney Pam Wilson, while Wilke-Westbrook chose to represent herself in the animal neglect case. The Commonwealth offered six witnesses while the defense offered five. The five-hour trial was held in the Magistrate’s office at the Wayne County Courthouse. 

   
“I do, have, and always will love my dogs,” Wilke-Westbrook said, following the verdict. “People were hired to help me, so I wouldn’t have neglected dogs. They would be groomed ...and taken care of. All I needed was a little bit of time to bring them down there (York, PA) and have a new life with my dogs. That’s the whole thing. It was not my fault to have the timing as it was.” She said her husband, Dan, who was helping to care for the shelties “didn’t know how to take care of the dogs.”

All 14 dogs and the cat will now be in the care of the Dessin Animal Shelter until they’re adopted. Metzger said they’re “highly adoptable” and that they already have people interested.
Ten of the dogs have been at the shelter since July 24 after being seized from the storage unit. During the trial, Wilke-Westbrook said she had no intention of housing the dogs at the storage unit, that she’d penned them in temporarily while she removed a dresser and filing cabinet from the unit. She said she didn’t have enough gas to leave her truck running with the air conditioning on for the animals. She said she worried about leaving them in her truck where temperatures could reach 95 to 105 degrees. Officer Metzger says a temperature reading taken inside the metal storage unit showed 83.1 degrees Fahrenheit. She also said the dogs were flea infested and had “feces caked on,” the same condition they were in two days earlier when observed crated in a garage in Beach Lake.

“Do you have any proof that I was going to leave those dogs in that storage unit?” Wilke-Westbrook asked. Officer Rickert said. “The dogs could not live in a storage unit; I was not going to let them.” As they removed the dogs, Officer Metzger said the fleas were so bad that they were jumping off the dogs and into their faces.

Wilke-Westbrook said she couldn’t put the flea medicine on the dogs until they’d been bathed. “I’m appalled at the condition my dogs are in, because that’s not the way I’d keep them.” She said she is very specific about how her dogs are to be cared for and the care they received from a friend hired in Beach Lake was not to her standard. The friend said she’d done the best she could, since she owns her own dogs and was going to school. Attorney Wilson said the dogs were Wilke-Westbrook’s responsibility because she was their owner.

Following  the trial, Senior District Justice Joan Snyder said the Commonwealth provided overwhelming evidence that the dogs were neglected. “I truly believe that [Wilke-Westbrook] came upon hard times and just could simply not care for the dogs any longer ...The deplorable condition of the cat and the fleas were also a major issue.”