Officers find 30 animals starving, arrest woman

LITTLE ROCK — A Pulaski County woman was arrested Friday morning after sheriff’s deputies found at least 30 malnourished animals at her home, including horses, dogs and cats, according to the sheriff’s office.

Deputies arrested Shelia Ford, 43, on four felony counts and 30 misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty after deputies found two of her horses loose and “in poor physical condition,” sheriff’s office spokesman Lt. Carl Minden said in a news release.

Ford was being held Friday evening at the Pulaski County jail in lieu of $20,676.58 bond, jail records show.

About 11:30 a.m., the deputies found the horses, a mare and her filly, which they then took back to Ford’s property at 16520 E. Mail Route Road, the release said.

There, deputies found “several dogs and cats ... in poor physical condition” that Ford admitted were hers, the release said. Deputies then called Pulaski County Animal Control and the Pulaski County Humane Society to care for the animals and arrested Ford, the release said.

Four of the dogs were in “critical” condition Friday evening, including an emaciated female covered in tumors and a 4-month-old male Pyrenees puppy that was receiving a blood transfusion, Humane Society Executive Director Kay Simpson said. The puppy weighed 10.5 pounds. It should weigh 40 to 45 pounds, she said.

“There’s a skeleton with fur on it. ... He’s got about a zero chance of making it, but we’re not giving up,” she said. The four felony counts stem from the treatment of the four dogs, Simpson said.

The other animals - five dogs, at least 17 cats and two horses in the Humane Society’s care - were also significantly underweight and starving, she said. Simpson said she couldn’t find any animal food on Ford’s property.

“Not one drop of food anywhere,” she said. “No hay, no grass, no horse food, no dog food, no cat food,” Simpson said.

The animals were being treated by veterinarians Friday evening and would remain at the shelter, where Simpson said the Humane Society is already “maxed out” on the number of animals it can take in.

“What we are taking is only things that are life and death,” she said. “That’s what this was. ... There was no place for these animals to go but here.”