Arlington dog trainer pleads guilty to animal cruelty, avoids jail after the deaths of 3 dogs
An Arlington dog trainer pleaded guilty to one count of animal cruelty Tuesday morning in connection with the deaths of three dogs he was boarding.
As part of a plea deal, Alan Brown was sentenced to two years of deferred adjudication, which is similar to probation but the conviction will not appear on a criminal record. Brown will not be able to board dogs, but he may still be able to train them. Other terms of the probation were not immediately clear.
The owners of two German shepherds and a Bernese poodle mix each came forward to CBS News Texas last year, sharing similar stories of boarding their pets with Brown while they went on vacation and finding out their dogs had died when they returned.
Last September, a Tarrant County grand jury indicted Brown on three counts each of animal cruelty and tampering with evidence.
He could have faced jail time, as felony animal cruelty charges carry a sentence of up to two years in state jail.
Trent Robinson, the owner of one of the dogs who died in Brown's care, spoke in court after the guilty plea Tuesday.
"You will never know the pain and the suffering that you have caused me and my family and my children," Robinson said. "These were not dogs to us. These were our children and they meant the world to us."
Brown declined to comment to reporters as he left the courtroom.
Mysterious deaths
The first of the three dogs that died was a German shepherd named Booster.
In June of 2023, Trent Robinson told CBS News Texas that he left Booster with Brown while he took a five-day vacation to Mexico nearly two years earlier. When Robinson returned, he said Brown asked to meet him at a veterinary clinic where Brown told him he found Booster dead inside his kennel earlier that morning.
Robinson said Brown told him that Booster had played outside the day before and never cooled off.
In June of 2023, Emeka and Masera Ndukwe boarded their Bernese mountain dog-standard poodle mix Brooklyn with Brown while they went on a honeymoon in Europe. They told CBS News Texas that Brown had agreed to regularly send them pictures and updates, but they never received any.
Five days into the trip, Masera Ndukwe saw that a summer heat wave was hitting Texas and sent a test message to Brown informing him that Brooklyn doesn't do well in the heat. Brown didn't reply until the next day.
Days later, one of her friends offered to pick up Brooklyn and keep him until they returned. Emeka Ndukwe said that was when Brown returned their phone call, telling them their dog had died four days earlier.
After CBS News Texas published its story on the deaths of Booster and Brooklyn, a third dog owner came forward with a similar story.
Evan Malloy's German shepherd named Hershey had boarded with Brown just two weeks before Brooklyn did, in June of 2023. Malloy said he and his wife had considered their 6-year-old dog's death a terrible mystery until a family member sent them the CBS News Texas report about the other incidents.
He said the similarities stood out, including that Brown had given them no indication there was anything wrong with the dog until they arrived after a trip to Miami to pick her up.