Mat-Su dog breeder was previously cited Borough's delayed inspections may have prevented discovery of starving animals

Long before scores of starving huskies were found at his home this week, Montana Creek dog breeder Frank J. Rich struggled with the size of his kennel. Dogs died that time too.

It was late 2007. The breeder -- who is facing 50 charges of cruelty to animals after his arrest this week -- had just applied for a kennel permit, said Mat-Su Borough animal control manager Richard Stockdale.

At the time, Rich asked borough animal control officials to help kill 24 of his dogs, Stockdale said. "They in fact did put down dogs out at his property to get him into compliance ... to try and get his numbers down to something that was a little bit more manageable."

That year Rich was fined $575 for animal control violations such as failing to register a dog kennel and having loose dogs, according to court records. He was also granted a borough kennel permit for up to 127 dogs.

In 2010, the problems continued.

Customers say they bought thin, sick puppies from the breeder in the parking lot of the Wasilla Walmart even as the borough took months to process his latest application for a kennel license and failed to conduct a timely inspection that might have uncovered the poor kennel conditions earlier.

Acting on a tip that Rich had recently quit his job and allowed dozens of dogs to die, a borough animal control officer and trooper this week visited Rich's home between Willow and Talkeetna, near Mile 92 of the Parks Highway.

Most of the huskies they found at the kennel were emaciated. All suffered some degree of malnutrition and dehydration, according to a trooper affidavit.

Another 22 were found dead, troopers reported.

All told, the Mat-Su animal shelter on Monday seized 157 Siberian huskies and malamutes, officials estimated.

As many as four dogs are still at the property. Animal control workers and volunteers couldn't capture them, Stockdale said.

"The ones that were loose, the neighbors are trying to catch them," he said.

Rich, 53, has pleaded not guilty to 50 misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty.

A spokesman for the Mat-Su Pretrial Facility said Rich was released on bail Thursday after posting a $2,500 bond. Rich could not immediately be reached for comment.

CITED IN 2007

The breeder's troubles with the kennel, and his clashes with borough animal control, date back almost four years, according to interviews and public records.

In March of 2007, Rich was the subject of a loose-dog complaint, Stockdale said. He was ticketed for the violation the next month. More violations soon followed.

Rich was cited Aug. 18, 2007, for failure to register a kennel and failure to "provide a sanitary enclosure" for animals. He pleaded no contest and was fined a total of $175.

Within the week, Rich applied for a kennel permit, Stockdale said.

But a few days later, on Aug. 26, one of Rich's customers complained to the borough that the breeder sold a dog with parvovirus, the animal control manager said. No one could prove where the dog got the highly contagious disease, but the complaint apparently raised concerns about the kennel.

The next month Rich sought help from the borough to "put down" 24 of his dogs to reduce the size of his dog yard, Stockdale said.

Stockdale, who has been on the job as borough animal control manager for less than two weeks, said he didn't know the details of that case. The dogs were likely killed by injection at Rich's property, he said.

Animal control officials in October approved a kennel permit allowing no more than 127 dogs, Stockdale said.

That same month, the breeder was ticketed another $200 for failure to meet kennel requirements, according to the state court records.

NO INSPECTION

With his kennel license scheduled to expire by the end of the year, Rich applied in April 2010 for a new one, Stockdale said.

But processing the paperwork -- including records for each dog -- "took forever," Stockdale said.

While the shelter's small staff slowly finished the paperwork in late August, someone still needed to inspect Rich's property, checking for food and looking over the condition of the kennel, before the breeder could get his new permit.

That never happened.

Stockdale said it appears no inspection was ever scheduled. "They were, at that point, trying to get up there to do the actual inspection," he said. "With other priorities ... animal bites and things like that taking over, it just hadn't gotten done."

The animal control team was short-staffed, Stockdale said. There are currently four animal control officers serving the 88,000-person borough.

Asked if the abuse reported at Rich's kennel could have been discovered earlier with a timely inspection, Stockdale said maybe so.

"It may have. But at the same time, it shouldn't matter if we have an inspection," he said. "It's up to the owner to properly take care of these animals regardless of whether we've had an inspection or not."

Rich said in court this week that he was unemployed for about a third of the past year, guessing that he made about $24,000 over the past 12 months. It's unclear how much of that money comes from selling puppies.

PUPPY WITH WORMS

Denise Bostedt, of Anchorage, saw Rich's ads for husky puppies in the newspaper in July, she said. She agreed to meet the breeder at the parking lot of the Wasilla Walmart.

Rich told Bostedt he sold the males for $250 and the females for $300. She wanted the fluffiest male, she told him.

Rich arrived at the box store in a flatbed pickup. Bostedt talked him down to $200 for a black puppy with white paws that she named Ramses, she said.

The next morning she woke up to hear the dog whining, its stomach gurgling. The husky had intestinal parasites that called for a trip to the vet, Bostedt said.

Another woman who met Rich at the Wasilla Walmart said he wouldn't let her visit the kennel because he didn't want anyone to steal his dogs.

"He informed me that he had 160 dogs at his dog yard and was a breeder not to make good working dogs, but 'beautiful dogs to look at,'' said Palmer resident Megan Christensen, who says she bought the female puppy a day before the raid on Rich's kennel.

She named it Sasha.

DONATIONS POUR IN

News of the arrest launched a wave of donations from dog lovers, with at least $14,000 collected in a Wells Fargo account created on behalf of the shelter, and another $4,000 gathered by Animal Food Warehouse and Pet Zoo stores in Southcentral Alaska as of Thursday.

Students at the Alaska Job Corps Center in Palmer are building the huskies dog houses.

One of the dogs seized from Rich's home has been euthanized. The others are "gaining ounces" under care at the shelter, a borough spokeswoman said, but are not yet available for adoption.

For now, they are evidence in the case against Rich. Whether they can be given away at all will depend on what the court, and the breeder, does next, Stockdale said.

As long as the huskies are at the shelter, there's little room for adoptable dogs, he said. That could mean more euthanizations for other dogs.

"We're preparing the shelter for the worst-case scenario that this is going through the whole court system and (the huskies) may be here with appeals for the whole year," Stockdale said.

Read The Village, the ADN's blog about rural Alaska, at adn.com/thevillage. Twitter updates: twitter.com/adnvillage. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334.

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