by Leslie Lytle, Messenger Staff Writer

Late on the afternoon of Aug. 8, Marion Animal Resource Connection cofounder April Bowden received the following text from Grundy County Sheriff Detective Avery McGinness: “I have extracted eight children from a home. The home has 41 dogs, a pig, and some cats that need to be extracted. I need some help.” McGinness also contacted Easy’s Dog Shelter in Tracy City and several other Tennessee shelters. MARC and Easy’s were both full. Tennessee Department of Children’s Services took custody of the children. In a Facebook post, Easy’s founder Andy Wostal wrote, “Tomorrow evening is the last the Sheriff’s department can tend to [the dogs]. If they are still on the property they will have to euthanize them.” In a social media update the following evening, the sheriff’s department wrote, “Some of these animals passed away overnight and into the day due to their conditions.”

Bowden coordinated her schedule with the sheriff’s department and visited the site late Saturday afternoon. By then, all but 15 dogs had been placed in shelters or with individuals. Five escaped during the effort to confine them. “One of the deputies got bitten,” Bowden said. “The dogs were starting to bite out of fear. They were terrified.” Based on what Bowden learned, when McGinness arrived, there were some dogs in a cage outside, others tied to trees, and a large number in the house. Plans were underway to livetrap the escapees.

Law enforcement arrested Zachariah Nunley and Vera Nunley. Charges included child neglect and animal cruelty. The Smithville residence hosted a Facebook page, Nunley’s Menagerie, asking for donations and professing to rescue dogs and offer spay-neuter services.

“My question is, was the family pretending to be a rescue,” Bowden said.

“When I moved to Marion County in 2005 there were six people doing what they considered to be animal rescue, because there was no shelter. It can turn into hoarding, and it turned into hoarding five times in front of my eyes watching from the sidelines.”

In one of the most horrific incident, Annette Mobely was arrested after investigators discovered almost 150 dead, sick and/or neglected animals at the Perry Link Memorial Humane Society operated by Mobley in Whitwell.

“These people think they’re helping, but they don’t have the resources, they don’t have the education,” Bowden said. “It turns into animal suffering.”

“It will keep happening until there is animal control and people aren’t encouraged to do it themselves. I don’t know what happened in [the Smithville] situation. I don’t think these people were purposely torturing animals. I think the woman would take animals probably with the intention of helping them or finding them homes. No one can afford to feed 41 animals if they have eight children they’re supposed to be feeding, too.”

“I’ve seen it happen so many times,” Bowden insisted. An elderly couple Bowden visited in 2011 had 28 dogs chained to trees or in crates outside in the dead of winter. “They were adamant they were keeping these strays from getting hit by cars,” Bowden said.

More recently, in 2021, a Grundy County woman, Margaret Allanson, was arrested and 211 animals rescued from her property near Gruetli-Laager. Law enforcement found over 160 skulls at the site. Officers were called to the property back in 2012, when Allanson had over 100 dogs on her property, but she wasn’t prosecuted.

Just this past July, 14 starved and neglected dogs were seized in Marion County and three Marion County residents charged with animal cruelty.

“There are probably hundreds of hoarding cases in the area,” Bowden said. Jasper has a law prohibiting people to own more than three dogs. “They don’t have a problem,” Bowden observed. “There needs to be some protocol in place,” she insisted, “simple things like the minimum length of a chain and the number of dogs allowed per square foot.” Bowden also argues there needs to be “a punishment,” not necessarily jail time, but perhaps prohibiting those who hoard or neglect animals from owning animals for five years.

Another concern Bowden pointed to was, due to the urgency of the recent Smithville hoarding case and lacking a shelter, unvetted dogs were placed with unvetted owners. “A dog with Parvo-like symptoms died while we stood there watching,” Bowden said. Another dog tested positive for Parvo, a highly contagious disease. Although two vets were on the scene volunteering services, the majority of the dogs went to new homes or foster homes without receiving testing or medical attention. Bowden has been fielding phone calls from panicked people who rescued one of the Smithville dogs and now want to be freed of the obligation due to concern about their own pets catching Parvo. Bowden suggested in hoarding rescue instances a temporary shelter might be set up at a firehall or similar location to allow the dogs to be screened for disease and serious medical conditions before being placed in homes.

Thanks went out from the Grundy County Sheriff’s Department for the outpouring of support and assistance from individual and area shelters. In addition to Easy’s and MARC, Animal Harbor, the Coffee County Humane Society, Nashville Humane Society, and Ruff Rescue responded to the call for help.

Founded in 2011, MARC was never intended as a shelter, but rather, to provide spay-neuter services and to find homes for animals in need. While applauding the generous community response to the sheriff department’s call for help and endorsing the need for shelters, MARC cofounder Sue Scruggs conceded, “Another shelter would fill up in two hours.”