Judges heard the 55-year-old mother take a group of dogs, including her own, out during the afternoon to her hometown of Ringwood, Hampshire. Carpenter had told police in subsequent interviews that the dogs had been walking in a stream at the nearby Kingston Great Common Nature Reserve where they could cool off. She then drove the dogs back to her house and left them outside in her garden. Moments later, he put Poppy and Pixie in her car with the windows open while she was washing in her house. On her return she found the two animals lying down and not moving. Prosecution Sarah Wheadon told Southampton Court that Carpenter called the dog’s owner, Mrs. Narbey, and said in a trembling voice, “I’m panicking because I can not wake the girls.” Mrs. Narbey screamed at her and asked her to take them to the vet. But the court heard a few minutes after they reached the vets in Carpenter they said the dogs were “gone”.
“Correct breach of trust”
Carpenter had told the vet: “I left them alone for a minute, I love them as if they were mine.” Defense attorney Michael Stocken said Carpenter “immediately stopped her business” and “injured herself as a result of her negligent behavior.” Carpenter, who was trembling and crying on the dock, had previously pleaded guilty to causing unnecessary suffering to animals and failing in her duty to ensure her well-being. District Attorney Anthony Callaway sentenced her to 18 weeks in prison and barred her from having any animal for eight years. He said: “It was an incredibly hot day and every professional should know that having these dogs anywhere near a car, even with the windows open, was a bad idea. “People are waiting for their dogs to be taken care of, this obviously did not happen here … This was a blatant breach of trust.”
