DINWIDDIE COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — A man is facing animal cruelty charges after nearly two dozen dead dogs were discovered on a property in Dinwiddie County last week.
On Feb. 14, Dinwiddie County Animal Control received an anonymous request for an animal welfare check at a property on the 12000 block of Boydton Plank Road. There they found a kennel containing 10 individual dog pens and a ‘common run area.’ Inside officers discovered 21 deceased dogs and one surviving dog.
“All of the dogs appear to have been a hunting breed commonly referred to as walkers or walker hounds,” Dinwiddie County Animal Control said in a release.
The surviving dog was immediately removed by animal control officers and taken for veterinary care and is expected to fully recover. 8News has learned that the veterinarian treating the dog believes it’s about 1-year-old and will make a full recovery.
“We hope to find it a home once everything is done,” Alvin Langley, the head of the county’s animal control, told 8News.
Langley said it’s the most extreme case of animal cruelty he’s seen in Dinwiddie in his 14 years working for animal care.
“We’ve had one dog, maybe two dogs dead, or we find something, but nothing in this magnitude,” he explained.
An investigation into how the dogs died is ongoing but Langley said his best guess is that some have been dead between four to five days and some possibly up to 30 days. Langley also told 8News it’s difficult to tell how old the dogs were, as some of the bodies were decomposed, but he estimated the dogs ranged in ages from 9 months to 8 years.
“We truly don’t know,” Langley said when asked how the dogs died. “We’ve taken the other bodies to the lab to be determined and we’re hoping they can tell us how they passed away.”
Based on the preliminary findings of the ensuing investigation, the dogs’ owner, Floyd McNeal Maitland, was charged with two counts of felony animal cruelty. Authorities said Maitland is cooperating and additional charges pending will come after the cause of death is determined.
“There was no food or water found in the kennel where the dogs could reach it,” Langley told 8News.
The cages where the dogs were kept are roughly 15 yards behind the house where Maitland lived.
“He is a good guy. This isn’t him,” Billy Maitland, Floyd’s brother, said Monday outside the home.
Maitland’s next door neighbor told 8News off camera that he knew that he had dogs but didn’t know he had that many. The neighbor said he never heard any dogs in distress but that the news hurts because he’s “an animal lover.”
The deceased dogs are being transported to the Lynchburg Regional Animal Health Laboratory to determine the cause of death.
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