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Middlesex County resident Josephine Ragland, age 28, of Haddam, who is charged with four counts of animal abuse, turned herself in to police on Monday, Sept. 16, Connecticut State Police said. Her mother, Jacqueline Witt, was arrested last week in the case.
A Massachusetts family from North Reading reached out to a dog-training company on the website Thumbtack in September 2023, police said. Ragland, who went by the name Lily, was behind the posting and agreed to train their 3-year-old French bulldog Charlie for $2,250, CBS News reported last year.
Ragland was supposed to keep Charlie for a week before returning him home as a newly trained pup. But that's not what police allege she did.
Instead, Ragland left the dog with her mother, who was also caring for three other pups. She left the animals in crates in a sunroom, where they had limited access to food or water, police said.
Investigators believe Charlie died on the third or fourth day of his stay at the Haddam home.
However, Charlie's family was not aware that the animal was dead, police said, because the women were sending them photos of the dog that had been taken before he died.
They later claimed the dog had escaped and was hit by a car and buried on Witt's property. But after investigators didn't find the bones, the 64-year-old admitted to driving 45 minutes from her home to dump the body off of the Canterbury Turnpike, a police report said.
Police retrieved the body where Witt said she'd left it in Norwichtown. Experts at the University of Connecticut found that Charlie was emaciated and had little food in its digestional track when he died, the report continued.
The other dogs that Hagland had agreed to train but left at her mom's home were also malnourished. One was sickly with an untreated skin and eye infection that required veterinary care, police said.
The dogs were reunited with their families after police rescued them.
Hagland was released on Monday after posting a $50,000 bond, authorities said, but she cannot train any other pets as part of her bail agreement.
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