Man arrested after 8 dogs found in ‘deplorable’ Murfreesboro home

A dog owner arrested for aggravated animal abuse admits the house he was keeping them in was in horrible condition.

The owner claims his wife often took in stray dogs, but he was planning on giving them to the pound and never had a chance before he was hauled off to jail.

Acting on an anonymous tip, police responded to the Academy Street home to check on a dog tied up in the yard, allegedly with no food or water for two weeks.

“Just making a big to do out of it,” dog owner James Hartley told News 2.

“Cause I didn’t expect nobody to look through my window, and come on my property unless they had a warrant,” he said.Hartley said he can’t believe police arrested him for aggravated animal abuse.

Police would find eight dogs inside the house, apparently living in deplorable conditions. Authorities say dog waste and urine covered the floors.

“It was horrible,” Hartley told News 2. “It was bad, but it was my house.”

Police and animal control said the smell in the home was so bad, they had to use masks to cover their noses, and take constant breaks while removing the dogs.

Hartley said he hasn’t been in the best of health; that’s the reason the house was in that condition.

Police claim Hartley told them he had not taken some of the dogs out of the house for years and had not cleaned up for five to six months.“… I had a heart attack, I got [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], I got about five things wrong with me. Half the time I can’t stand up,” he explained.

However, he now says that wasn’t the case.

“That’s no so. They can tell anything they want,” Hartley said. “I took those dogs out over two months every day.”

Hartley’s adopted son, Frank Deluca, told News 2 his mother would often take in stray dogs, but now that she is in a nursing home, they were planning on getting rid of them.

“Cause if she was there and we would have gotten rid of the dogs it would have been like WWIII,“ Deluca said.

“I’m the one who has been taking him every month to go buy the dog food,” he told News 2.Deluca says he always made sure the dogs had food, saying his father would buy six 50-pound bags of dog food a month.

The son also said they were planning on renovating the home.

“We were going to gut the whole house out and put new wires, everything, in that house,” Deluca added.

Hartley said he’s never been to jail a day in his life until he was arrested Friday.

“If I got to prison, I won’t never make it back because I will probably die in there,” Hartley said. “That’s not fair.”

Murfreesboro police are leading the investigation. The dogs are currently being cared for at animal control.

Courtesy of WKRN Nashville’s News 2