Margaret and James Hamilton were a dog power couple, seemingly the perfect people for raising and selling purebreds. Margaret was a breeder and a dog show judge who owned prizewinning Chihuahuas. Some of her litters were registered with the American Kennel Club, a stamp of approval from an organization charged with maintaining breed standards and registering purebreds around the country. Her husband, James, was a leader in a local A.K.C. Rottweiler club.

But when the local police entered a home in Burien, Wash., in October 2011, they wondered what standard the Hamiltons were being held to. The police said they found 38 dogs that were under James’s care, mostly Chihuahuas, living in small crates filled with fur and feces, the cages stacked on top of one another in a dark basement, according to court documents. A radio was blaring, drowning out the sound of barking, and many of the dogs were malnourished and had eye diseases and overgrown toenails, according to investigators. Thirteen dogs were euthanized the night of their rescue because of incurable health problems, including severe periodontal disease.

The same day at the Hamiltons’ residence in Issaquah, Wash., 62 dogs were seized and one was euthanized. The Hamiltons were charged with animal cruelty in the second degree.

“It was a ‘Silence of the Lambs’ scene down there,” Kim Koon of Pasado’s Safe Haven, a local animal shelter that was involved in the investigation, said of the basement. “Those animals were in horrible shape.”