http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/08/08/wi...eut/index.html
LANCASTER, California (Reuters) -- Nearly 170 wild Chihuahua dogs facing death at a Los Angeles-area animal shelter were spared Friday by a judge who released them into the custody of actor Gregory Peck's former daughter-in-law, who runs a Chihuahua rescue operation.
County animal control officers seized the feral dogs last November from a breeder in the desert town of Acton, north of Los Angeles, because of what a prosecutor referred to as "abominable" conditions.
During the hearing, an animal control officer testified that the Chihuahuas had taken over breeder Emma Harter's house. They had burrowed holes into the walls and the furniture and left in their wake piles of dead chickens and geese and a two-inch (5 cm) thick layer of feces on the carpeting.
When Harter came out of her house to talk, "she was barefoot and had feces all over her feet, and feathers," testified Los Angeles County Animal Control Lt. Sheri Koenig.
"She smelled the same way" as the inside of her house.
After the Chihuahua were rounded up, Harter was taken in for a psychiatric evaluation, Koenig added.
In the county shelter, the purse-sized dogs have killed dogs from rival packs, sometimes by biting at their throats, Koenig said.
Koenig and Kimi Peck testified that it was in the dogs' best interest to move them from the shelter to the facilities of breeders who can not only care for the dogs but tame them.
"Over 400 people in the United States and Canada called, volunteering to take them," Peck said. "We're ready to go." She said she screened all of the volunteers and pared them down to a list of about 20 breeders who will each get a few of the dogs.
"They'll all live their lives out happily ever after," said Peck, who said her pet Chihuahua recently died at age 22. The move will also relieve the county, which has so far incurred more than $500,000 in costs caring for the dogs, said Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lisa M. Chung.
Although the fate of the dogs was decided, the court still must decide what to do with Harter, 72, who is charged with two felony counts of animal cruelty and six misdemeanors, including battery on a peace officer for allegedly shoving Koenig. If convicted, she could receive up to 44 months behind bars, prosecutors said.
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