Dogs unchained by the book this time

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2009:
TIPTON, Pa.–Three years after seizing a chained dog without
a warrant, and paying a high price for it, Dogs Deserve Better
founder Tammy Ci Thayne on September 6, 2009 freed four dogs from
chains and did it all by the book.
Receiving an anonymous tip that “at least two starved,
chained German shepherds were abandoned at a property in Centre
County near Tyrone, Pennsylvania,” Ci Thayne recounted, she
“journeyed to the location to assess the situation and document the
neglect” on September 5, “armed with camera, food, and water.” She
found not only the two German shepherds, “covered in fleas, with fly
strike on their ears and lacking food and water,” but also “one
blind and deaf Pomeranian in a pen with only a crate for shelter,
and a chained black Lab/border collie mix.”

Not expecting to get help from law enforcement, Ci Thayne on
September 5 posted photographs of the scene and a description on her
Facebook page. Someone at the Pennsylvania SPCA saw the posting.
“The PSPCA acted quickly to get an officer to the property on
Saturday, September 5,” Ci Thayne continued. “Finding sufficient
cause to warrant removal of the dogs, the organization obtained a
warrant on Sunday, September 6, brought a truck from Philadelphia,
found the property owner, and won the release of all four dogs” to
PSPCA custody. “The dogs are being taken to the PSPCA shelter in
Philadelphia, evaluated for health issues, and then may be released
to Dogs Deserve Better’s foster program or adopted out to loving
homes and families,” Ci Thayne said. “This is the first time in my
seven years of working for chained dogs that the system has worked
the way it should work.”
Ci Thayne, then known as Tammy Grimes, was in
February 2008 sentenced to do 300 hours of community service, in a
capacity helping humans rather than animals, and to spend a year on
probation, for taking an old and apparently painfully dying dog from
a yard in East Freedom, Pennsylvania on September 12, 2006. The
Central Pennsylvania SPCA and Blair County district attorney Richard
Consiglio refused to press a cruelty case against the couple who
chained the dog. Ci Thayne was convicted of theft and receiving
stolen property in December 2007. She was ordered to cease posting
photos of the dog and selling merchandise bearing images of the dog
via the Dogs Deserve Better web site, and to pay the $1,700 cost of
her trial, plus additional fees of $1,500.