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 spend 90 days in home detention after her jail stint for violating the terms of her release on bond 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 Tuesday.
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.
The 30-pound Neeko weighed half of what he should have and had survived partly by eating the carcass of a 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 and then transferred to a foster home, she said.
The foster family was to formally adopt Neeko on Tuesday in a ceremony at the shelter, Conway said.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
