Delusion of care led to unthinkable animal cruelty

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This article was published 21/07/2010 (5917 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you were to rank the horrors discovered at the home of Judy and Peter Chernecki, the most awful is what investigators didn’t find.

There were only four puppies among the 61 dogs seized from the Gull Lake property. That’s impossibly few, says Winnipeg Humane Society CEO Bill McDonald. It’s a certainty the neglected adult dogs were eating the newborns.

That brutal fact best describes what was taking place inside the windowless garage where the animals were housed. Peter Chernecki built shelves inside the room to add more space for the animals. The result was a relatively safe perch for the dominant dogs, removed from the puddles of urine, piles of feces and the worst of the fighting. The little ones couldn’t get up there.

Many of the dogs are scarred. One had a gash so deep you could see its skull. That dog was euthanized the first night after seizure.

Only some of them are adoptable. Many more will have to be euthanized, either because they’re too injured or too aggressive.

“Those dogs were in a hellhole,” McDonald says flatly. “They’re not friendly at all. They’re not socialized. They’ve never seen a leash. They’ve never been taken for a walk.”

The dogs were scrapping over food. At least one of the animals is obese. They were being fed but not in a controlled manner.

This is the largest seizure McDonald has ever seen. The runner-up was the 55 Rottweiler/shepherd cross dogs discovered two years ago in the Pembina Valley. People will hoard any creature, he says. Twenty-three pigeons were also seized from the Cherneckis.

The humane society has a “major animal influx” plan to cope with large seizures. When they heard about the animals in Gull Lake, they quickly fostered out 10 or 12 dogs waiting for adoption. Small dogs were doubled up in their kennels. Six vets and a large number of staff and volunteers were called in. In all, 40 people processed the dogs.

It took three vans and a trailer to bring the dogs to Winnipeg.

In what is the only sweet note of this tragedy, staff have named each dog. There’s Sunny and Copper and Gwen and Fido and Missy. The list goes on and on, giving these animals something else they’ve never had.

It’s pure heartbreak to walk through the rooms where the dogs are housed. Most of them are apathetic, not getting up when they see a human. Only a few bark, apparently having learned the futility of it. One large dog is curled up on his bed, face to the wall. He’s always like that, McDonald says.

Almost every dog trembles at the sight of a person, a shiver that renders them unable to stand. Most of the dogs are in shock.

Many are still matted with feces. The staff can only clean or shave four animals a day. It’s too soon to know what sort of illnesses the dogs might have. One was found with a large tumour.

“They simply don’t know what to do. They just sit there and stare at you,” McDonald says.

These dogs are one of the saddest things you could ever see. Their smell, their silence, their inability to look directly at a human speak volumes to the miseries of their lives.

The Chernickis can appeal to get the dogs back. They shouldn’t have a hope in hell, not with the photographic evidence the investigators have and certainly not from anyone with half a heart.

It’s impossible to understand their shared delusion they were doing the animals a favour by taking them in. Instead, they have been deprived of everything a dog deserves, from the love of a human to a sense of safety to a soft place to sleep.

Judy Chernicki claims she was hugging and kissing the animals. That seems impossible, given their level of aggression, the feces-matted fur and the lack of ability to interact with humans.

The Chernickis’ inability to know when to stop collecting dogs, even if motivated by a misguided kindness, condemned these dogs to a life of deprivation.

Sadly, they also condemned many of these innocent animals to death.

lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca