Veterinarian Charged After Keeping Dogs While Telling Owners They’d Died A shady Ohio veterinarian is now set to face charges and a possible lawsuit after keeping several dogs in his care under filthy living conditions for medical experiments…..even after he’d told the owners of the dogs that they had died. via Huffington Post In their petition filed in state court, the Harrises say that Tierce — their trusted, longtime veterinarian — kept Sid at the clinic for several months over the summer of 2013 while treating the dog for a “minor, anal-gland issue.” That fall, when the family went to collect their pet, they found him unable to walk. “He could not lift his hind quarters at all and simply slid himself across the floor to get to Mr. Harris,” reads the complaint. Tierce allegedly first told the Harrises that Sid was having a reaction to some medicine, then said X-rays had revealed a congenital spinal defect that was “degenerative and incurable.” (The family now believes that Sid was injured when a clinic employee flipped the dog onto his back.) The Harrises say the veterinarian advised them to euthanize Sid. They agreed, after being told the procedure would be painless and Sid would be buried on the Tierce family farm. On April 22, 2014, Mary Brewer, a veterinary technician formerly with the clinic, contacted the Harrises to tell them that Sid “(a) was still alive; (b) was being confined in a cage almost 24 hours a day in unsanitary conditions (typically being removed from his cage only once each day and for not more than 15 minutes); and (c) was being used for blood extraction,” according to the complaint. Brewer has also said that Sid and other animals had been used for medical experimentation, though no details have emerged, Eggleston tells HuffPost. “We trusted the vet. We said our goodbyes,” Marian Harris told ABC News. “We had even talked about burial arrangements, and then six months later I get a call that he’s still alive.” The family went to the clinic and recovered their dog. Another vet examined Sid, and concluded he’d been “abusively kenneled,” resulting in various ailments — mange and muscle atrophy among them. The new vet said it also appeared Sid had been used as a “regular blood donor” and determined the dog “definitively had no congenital spine defect,” according to the Harris’ complaint. Tierce was arrested at the end of April and charged with animal cruelty. The arrest warrant didn’t mention Sid. Instead, it detailed Tierce’s alleged cruelty to his own dog — a border collie police found in obvious pain with a missing foot, a dislocated leg and two dislocated shoulders. The dog was lying in a box on the floor of Camp Bowie, in what was described in the warrant as a “deplorable” environment, with animal organs in jars “throughout the clinic,” as well as “stacks of drugs, trash, laundry, paperwork” and insects in exam rooms. The border collie was euthanized after being taken away from Tierce, as were two other dogs. One of those dogs had been caged for as many as three years after the dog’s owners were told their pet was put down, Tierce reportedly said in a statement to the veterinary board. “The only criminal charges so far,” says Eggleston, “have been about his own dog.” This guy sounds like a grade A scumbag. Good thing he was caught.
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SMH: Veterinarian Busted Keeping Dogs In Filthy Cages For Medical Experiments After Telling Owners They’d Died
