Pet Search co-founder resolves citations
The co-founder of an animal rescue nonprofit pleaded guilty Wednesday to two citations a state warden filed over deficiencies in record keeping for dogs the group had helped rescue.
Sherry Knight of Canton Township, co-chairman of Pet Search, appeared with her attorney, Templeton Smith, before District Judge David Mark, who suspended the fines and court costs on the offenses.
Knight pleaded guilty under a deal with Thomas Wharry, a state dog warden supervisor. Mark dismissed the remaining 11 citations – which arose from alleged failures to provide “humane and sanitary conditions” – Wharry filed April 6 based on an inspection performed a little more than a month earlier of a kennel at Knight’s Pointview Drive home, where she keeps some rescue animals.
“We believe everything now is in complete compliance with the kennel laws,” Smith said following the brief proceeding.
He went on to add there was “never any knowing violation” and stressed none of the citations were for animal cruelty.
Wharry referred questions to the Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement in Harrisburg. Officials did not provide comment as of press time.
Knight pleaded guilty to keeping incomplete records. She said she’d fixed the paperwork in question. She also pleaded guilty to a citation over health certificates for dogs that were brought into the country from the U.S. Virgin Islands. Smith said those records weren’t at his client’s home at the time of the inspection, but she did have the proper documents.
The alleged problems with the conditions in which Knight kept the dogs included a lack of adequate space for the dogs and failure to keep an enclosure clean and free of feces, among others.
Knight said she’d passed an inspection just 11 days earlier by a different warden.
“Nothing had changed other than a different kennel inspector,” she said.
Pet Search’s website says the all-volunteer group was initially called People for Animal Welfare when it was founded in 1978. It was given its current name in 1996.