Judge hands lifetime animal ban in Battle River neglect case, spares woman jail

Hill said protecting animals from future harm was the court’s overriding concern.

“The risk to the community is not necessarily to people; it is to animals,” he said. “[The court] will not be trusting Ms. Haudeck to care for animals.”

The judge said the offences ranked at the high end of the spectrum of animal neglect cases.

“It is hard to imagine a worse severe set of circumstances involving multiple animals in some of them in torturous degrees of distress,” Hill said, adding some deteriorated “to the point where euthanization was required immediately.”

During the trial, court heard testimony from animal protection officers and a veterinarian describing inadequate food, water and shelter. One witness described finding a horse nearly dead and frozen to the ground during a January cold snap.

Hill said the neglect involved multiple species, continued over a prolonged period and persisted despite numerous opportunities to correct the situation. He found both the gravity of the offences and Haudeck’s degree of responsibility to be high.

Despite that, Hill said the evidence did not show Haudeck intended to harm the animals.

“She certainly did not come across as being cruel or sadistic,” he said.

Instead, Hill found the situation worsened gradually as the number of animals exceeded what Haudeck could physically and financially manage.

“I’ll find it as a fact, necessarily, that things develop over a period of time, that there were more animals than her physical operation could handle,” he said.

“But that is also at the same time that it’s clear that Ms. Haudeck does not lack for empathy for animals and cares for them.”

Hill said those mitigating factors persuaded him a conditional sentence was appropriate, although he stressed the seriousness of the offences.

“Were there less mitigating factors… a real jail sentence could have been necessary for denunciation,” he said.

The judge noted Haudeck has no prior criminal record and said evidence before the court indicated she had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and was already receiving counselling. He also pointed to her age, financial hardship and apparent lack of support as factors that helped explain, but did not excuse, what occurred.

“That doesn’t excuse the situation,” Hill said, adding Haudeck knew there was an ongoing problem but “did not take the proper steps along the way” before conditions deteriorated over an extended period.

Haudeck was convicted following an investigation that began in November 2023 and continued into January 2024 at a rural property in the RM of Battle River. Animal protection officers seized 34 horses, 11 dogs and six cats during the investigation, and a number of the horses were later euthanized.

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Kenneth.Cheung@pattisonmedia.com

by Kenneth Cheung

Judge hands lifetime animal ban in Battle River neglect case, spares woman jail

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