Police: Dog Trainer Arrested After 3 Soon-To-Be Service Dogs Died In Her Car
FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) — Fort Worth police have arrested the dog trainer who left three soon-to-be services dogs in a hot car last week, where they later died.
Officers arrested and charged 48-year-old Sherry Taylor with three different animal cruelty felonies Thursday.
On July 29, Taylor told CBS 11 News that this was only an accident. She said an alert system was set up to recognize any problems in her vehicle, but she never received an alert.
When Brooke King and Leslie Kurtz got the call that their dogs, Vinny and Alice, had been involved in an accident, they never suspected this.
Neither thought that when they made it to a veterinarian's office on the west side of Fort Worth, they would find their dogs were already gone.
Along with a third dog, they were all overcome by heat after being left in Taylor's vehicle.
Both Vinny, a Pomeranian, and Alice, a Mastiff mix, were being trained as support animals. Alice's owner struggles with PTSD, and King said Vinny assisted her with depression and stress.
King said she knew the dogs were trained together, and driven all over the area — being exposed to different everyday life scenarios — but she did not know they were regularly kept in the vehicle alone.
The incident has prompted her to start a platform in her dog's name, The Vinny King Foundation, to raise awareness of the issue.
Vinny's funeral is scheduled for Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m. at Faithful Friends Pet Cemetery and Crematory in Fort Worth.
