A 60-year-old dog breeder, who also is a farmer and a manager of an agricultural company, has received the heaviest sentence yet under Portugal’s 2014 pet protection laws.The judge in Setúbal Court heard that the dogs found on the farm were ill, not properly fed, that they were all underweight and that they did not have sufficient clean water.
The case related to events on October 10, 2015, when a GNR patrol went to the man’s farm and found various types and breeds of dog, including Labrador, Shar Pei and French Bulldog – a total of 24 animals.
The dogs were chained up and kept in unhealthy and unhygienic conditions. One dog already was dead and eight more would die within hours of being found.
The Court handed out a sentence of one or two months for each of the 17 surviving animals (maximum is one year for each animal) and three months for each animal that eventually died (maximum is two years for each animal).
In addition to the sentence, the man will have to pay €2,500 to the animal protection association that ended up looking after the canine survivors and he may not own an animal for a period of five years, the maximum allowed by law.
The court handed out the sentence, which it then suspended.
