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Editor’s note: This story contains graphic details.

The owner of a 20-year-old dog that was so emaciated and decayed that maggots were living on it pleaded guilty to causing or permitting an animal to be in distress on Thursday.

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Margret Dechambre, 73, pleaded guilty to the offence under the Animal Protection Act more than a year after her dog Sandy was euthanized by the Edmonton Humane Society in May 2016.

Sandy, a collie-husky cross, lived in the Edmonton home of Dechambre and her common-law partner John Nadeau, who has already been fined $1,200 and handed a 10-year ban on owning a pet.

Crown prosecutor Christian Lim argued Thursday that because Dechambre was Sandy’s registered owner, she should be fined $2,000 to $2,500, and be banned from pet ownership for life.

According to agreed facts read to the court by Lim, one of Dechambre’s children contacted the Edmonton Humane Society about Sandy’s poor condition. An appointment was made for the dog to be euthanized, but when Dechambre and Nadeau arrived with Sandy in the back of a truck, Sandy couldn’t walk and “smelled of death.”

She weighed just 10.4 kilograms, less than half of what she should have weighed, court heard.

‘I’ve sent people to prison for less’

Her fur was matted in several places all over her body, she had an ulcer and five-centimetre-by-five-centimetre open wound, her tongue was split, and her teeth were rotting, broken and missing. Maggots were living in her mouth and in her wounds. Her tail was also broken.