A woman who starved two dogs — including one that ate the other after it died — will get 90 days in jail and must receive mental-health counseling.
Kristy Knecht, 30, also will serve a 90-day home-detention term after her jail stint for violating bond-release terms by having two dogs in her car while her case was pending, said Cheryl Conway, spokeswoman for the Aurora Animal Care Division.
Knecht, who pleaded guilty Friday to one count of aggravated cruelty to animals and a nonaggravated animal-cruelty charge, will not be allowed to have an animal in her possession during a three-year probationary period that will follow her jail sentence, Conway said.
Knecht’s surviving dog, Neeko, a Belgian Malinois, was skin and bones when Aurora animal control officers answered a call to the home in August 2007, Conway said.
Neeko, who at 30 pounds weighed half of what he should have, had survived partly by eating the carcus of another dog that had starved to death in the home littered with dog feces, Conway said.
Neeko was nursed back to health in the Aurora animal shelter for five months then transferred to a foster home, she said.
The foster family will formally adopt Neeko in a ceremony at the animal shelter today, Conway said.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
