FORT KENT — Police in Fort Kent are investigating a case in which a number of animals were abandoned for more than a week in a rental home littered with urine, feces, cigarette butts, empty milk jugs and other trash.
Sgt. Dalen Boucher of the Fort Kent Police Department said Friday that the investigation started on Thursday, Dec. 24, as a loose dog case. Officer Spencer Nadeau found a dog running loose outside 68 South Perley Brook Road and tried to bring it back to the residence. That is when he came upon the mess inside, along with four other abandoned dogs and several cats.
“There is trash from top to bottom,” said Wayne Vaughan, landlord and owner of the property. The tenants “left those animals in there for more than a week, unattended, with no food or water. It was unbelievable.”
Vaughan said he originally rented the apartment to three women, but he suspects boyfriends of the two younger women also stayed there often. He said he had no idea that the tenants had left or that the house was so trashed until the police contacted him on Christmas Eve. His only problem with the tenants before, he said, was that they were behind on the rent by between $3,000 and $4,000. The landlord said he had been working with them to settle the matter, but after he saw the condition of the home, he contacted the tenants and told them he was changing the locks.
Vaughan said there was no heat in the house and a pipe had frozen. The refrigerator door had been left open and there was trash all over the place, he said. Though the tenants told him they had planned to return, Vaughan said he wasn’t going to let happen.
Police were not releasing the names of the tenants since the case remained under investigation and no one has been charged with a crime.
Sgt. Boucher said police took the dogs — which included one cocker spaniel, one cocker spaniel/beagle mix, one Havanese, and two chihuahuas — to the Central Aroostook Humane Society in Presque Isle. The cats were taken to PAWS Animal Welfare Society Inc. in Fort Kent.
Betsy Hallett, executive director of the Presque Isle facility, was saddened to see the condition the dogs were in.
“They were all just full of mats,” she said. “The cocker spaniel was especially just plastered with them. She was also just saturated in urine and feces.”
Hallett said the cocker spaniel also has a condition called cherry eye, a disease sometimes seen in young dogs that can cause inflammation, swelling or infection.
Another dog has an ear infection, and a third has a tumor on its chest. Hallett is not sure if it is cancerous. Another will need extensive, expensive dental work before it will be eligible for adoption. In response to a question about the impact on the small shelter’s budget, Hallett agreed that it weighed on her mind.
“These are sweet dogs,” she said. “They are scared, but they are sweet. But of course this is going to tax our budget. When you have five dogs come in that are so sick like this and need a lot of care before you can place them up for adoption, it does weigh on you. This is terrible. These animals were not starved, but they were absolutely, completely neglected.”
On Friday, Vaughan said that most of the trash had been taken out of the home and a cleaning service was scouring the home from top to bottom.
For Vaughan, it was like watching a repeat of an incident last year.
“I had a tenant do this to me last year in Ashland,” he said. “It was the same kind of thing. They took off and left the dogs and cats with nothing, and we got to them in time before they died. We caught them and prosecuted.”