By Caleb Hutton
This afternoon I spoke with Laura Clark, director of the Whatcom Humane Society, as a followup to this story about a mother and son from Ferndale held in criminal contempt for violating the terms of their sentence in an animal abuse case.
More than 40 animals — horses, dogs, a rat, fish, birds and cats — were seized from Maria A. Huffman and her son Richard James Huffman in July. The Huffmans weren’t allowed to have pets after they were convicted of animal abuse four years ago.
Clark gave this update on how the animals are doing:
- One cattle dog mix, named Summit, is still at the Williamson Way shelter, waiting to be adopted. He’s about 1 year old.
- All of the surviving cats have been adopted. One adult tabby, named Squeak, was actually adopted within the past day or two.
- One adult cat tested positive for feline leukemia and was euthanized. And the one kitten mentioned in the story died.
- Freckles, an Arabian mare, is at the humane society’s farm facility in Everson. He’s She’s up for adoption. A second horse has been adopted.
- A white rat died soon after it was taken in. Clark wasn’t sure how it died.
- All the fish and birds have been adopted.
So the good news is most of the animals appear to have survived and been rehabilitated.
The BAD news is that the monsters who did this are still running around loose. This is the second time these two pieces of human garbage have done this! The last time they cut the throats of several dogs and dumped the bodies in the woods to avoid being caught with them; one puppy survived. What does it take to stop this? Why were they able to acquire all these animals before being found out? Was anybody following up on them after they got out of jail the last time?
A mare is a female horse.