T-L Photo/ROBERT A. DEFRANK Belmont County Western Division Judge Eric Costine Tuesday orders the owner in an alleged animal hoarding case to provide food in lieu of a cash bond for the care of animals taken from allegedly deplorable conditions.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The case of an alleged animal hoarder is making its way through the court system, and the 28 dogs and three cats removed from a St. Clairsville residence are receiving care.

The animals’ owner was in Belmont County Western Division Court on Tuesday before Judge Eric Costine, who noted that there is no case number in the matter at this time.

“This is a search warrant,” he said. “There are no charges filed in this matter. All there is is the search warrant. … This matter today is set for a probable cause hearing on the confiscation of certain companion animals.”

The animals were seized when the search warrant was executed.

Costine continued the case for two weeks and ordered the defendant to provide the humane organization Belmont County Hoof & Paw with 15 bags of dog food in lieu of a cash bond. The animals are currently in the care and custody of that organization.

Julie Larish, humane agent with Hoof & Paw, consulted with the judge and agreed. Larish and group volunteers took possession of the animals July 4. She said they had been kept in filthy conditions, perhaps for a period of years, and would be in need of long-term care.

“They are slowly coming along. We are getting all the diarrhea under control. Many of them are on vet care. We have some severe anemia issues going on, but we are working on them,” she said. “We had two that were near death with anemia. The vet said two more days they would have been dead.”

The animals have not been surrendered to Hoof & Paw by the owner.

Larish thanked the public for an outpouring of support to help care for the large number of animals.

“We want to thank everybody for the donations. We’ve gotten a lot of donations and a lot of help. We have a nice volunteer staff coming in that’s helping us, and we’re going to be arranging to make sure that they get their proper exercise,” Larish said.

Animals taken in by Hoof & Paw are housed at Larish’s 88-acre farm in the Belmont area. Larish discussed all of the animals in the group’s care, including some from other cases.

“At this point in time with all of our court orders, we have almost 40 animals in-house, 40 dogs. It doesn’t include the horses,” she said. “We’re getting on a pretty good routine of rotating them all through. A lot of animals can’t be together that we have. We have to monitor that. We would like to eventually get a building where we are not doing it so much from my farm, but then again that adds on to where we’re taking money from the mouths of our animals to be able to pay our rent. … One hundred percent of our money’s going to our animals, not to rent or overhead expenses.”

Anyone wishing to help can contact the humane organization on social media, by email at bchp911@gmail.com or call 610-314-5203.