CONCHO, Ariz. — Editor’s note: This story uses graphic language and depicts animal abuse.
The stories Heather Hutchinson shares seem unbelievable until you see the photos she’s taken while rescuing hundreds of cats and dogs in a county with no animal control.
Starving dogs eating newborn puppies. Dogs hanging from fences on twisted-up 2-foot chains. Floors caked in inches of feces. Kennels full of animal bodies.
“I have seen some things up here in Apache County that I did not believe still existed in the United States,” Hutchison said. “The ASPCA commercials have nothing on what I have encountered here.”
Hutchison and her non-profit, Concho Animal Advocates, are based in the small town of Concho, 45 minutes south of Holbrook. It is a place where people can go off the grid and disappear. Some live in sheds with no electricity or running water.
This remote area of Arizona has become a haven for animal hoarding, according to Hutchison.
“I don’t know when it got this way, I don’t know how it got this way and I don’t know what to do about it,” Hutchison said.
Her non-profit was never intended to be an animal rescue, but it became one. Her home was never designed to be a shelter, but it’s become one, too.
Hutchison has a teenage son and a full-time job — she created the non-profit to help people in Apache County get their pets spayed and neutered. Now, she takes personal care of more than a dozen dogs and cats. Some are blind, others are missing limbs and have chronic stomach issues no one else wants to deal with.
“My last, last ditch is to bring the animal here to my house,” Hutchison said.
She tells people “No” all the time but Hutchison will always take in a litter of kittens left in a dumpster, or dogs forced to eat each other to survive. The pets that end up at her home are always in life-or-death situations, like the 18 dogs Hutchison rescued this spring.
Their owner died in an RV on the property — his body was discovered several weeks later. By that time, a mule chained by its hoof had starved to death and the dogs devoured it. Hutchison took us to the property and pointed out animal bones along the fence line, including what appeared to be a dog’s skull.
She spent 10 days trapping the 13 dogs and five newborn pups.
“Deceased owner situations are a huge piece of where these animals come from,” Hutchison said.
Hoarding is another.
Hutchison said hoarders join animal re-homing groups on Facebook and respond to desperate pleas. She calls the groups “All-you-can-eat buffets” for hoarders, who are often highly intelligent and formerly functional people. Animal hoarding is an addiction.
“Next thing you know you’ve got 50 dogs and 80 cats and you’ve lost track of them and everybody is pregnant and all the puppies are dying,” Hutchison said. “It just gets out of control so quickly and then they just tend to go into denial mode.”
Hutchison recalled a 2020 case where an elderly couple had 30 medium-large dogs (as well as several deceased dogs) locked in their home with them, in deplorable conditions with over 12 inches of garbage and feces on the floor.
“The floor was just absolutely gooey with unspeakable things and there was an amputee dog who could not walk and lived under the kitchen table and was just laying in that filth,” Hutchison said.
The couple's out-of-state family called the Apache County Sheriff’s Office for help and were told "We don't handle cases like that," according to Hutchison.
Then, there is the ongoing case involving another elderly hoarder who at one point had over 40 large dogs on her property (mostly pit bulls, Rottweilers, and St. Bernards), as well as dozens of cats, goats, chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese. Animals would die of disease or kill each other and be left to rot or be eaten by the other animals, Hutchison said.
She found a Great Pyrenees dead in his kennel — its torn-off head was being eaten by his kennel mate. The adjoining kennel was filled with bagged-up remains of other dead animals.
Hutchison said the hoarder referred to this as the "mortuary kennel". When the ACSO deputy arrived, his first question was to ask if there were dead animals on the property, since the smell was so overwhelming. Hutchison said she showed the deputy the “mortuary kennel” and the half-eaten Pyrenees. She claimed the deputy said the rest of the animals looked healthy enough and had food and water and told Hutchison it's not against the law to have dead animals on your property.
12News reached out to the Apache County Sheriff’s Office asking for the number of animal hoarding/abuse calls deputies received over the last two years and how many of those resulted in charges being requested.
Sheriff’s spokesperson Jesse Robinson responded saying, “Apache County is not a safe haven for anyone that wants to break the law. Period.”
In June, 12News reported on body camera video showing an Apache County deputy shooting and killing seven abandoned dogs.
The deputy requested animal cruelty charges against the owners, but none have been filed by the Apache County Attorney’s Office.
“I don’t know who is ultimately responsible, it just seems like this has gone on for so many years it has become normal,” Hutchison said. “It is just the way it is here. It is appalling, it is unbelievable.”
Following our interview, Hutchison left to deliver nine cats to their new forever homes, only to make more room in her home for other cats in need.
Hutchison wants Apache County to invest in an animal control department and shelter. In a previous statement to 12News, Robinson said "We do not have the infrastructure or budget to support such a department.”
“We have the same laws here as anybody else,” Hutchison said. “They are not being enforced when it comes to animal cruelty and neglect.”
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