Derbe "Skip" Eckhart took the stand in his own defense, describing his efforts to tend to the hundreds of animals at his Lehigh County kennel and disputing prosecution claims that he neglected dogs and cats.
Breeders routinely called Eckhart and said that if he didn't come for their unwanted dogs, they would simply shoot them, Eckhart testified.
"And that's what I did," he said. "I came for them."
Prosecutors allege Eckhart kept hundreds of dogs in filthy conditions. Witnesses from the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the state Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement testified earlier in the trial that dogs at Almost Heaven Kennel lived in their own urine and feces and suffered from a lack of routine veterinary care, contributing to their poor health.
Eckhart told jurors that he had nothing to hide from animal-welfare agencies, pointing out that his huge kennel outside Allentown passed inspection just two months before a 2008 raid.
"We had a very good working relationship, I thought," he said.
He said that changed on Oct. 1, 2008, when agents from the Pennsylvania SPCA and the state dog-law bureau raided the sprawling compound, detaining Eckhart and his workers for hours while the media looked on. Eckhart's attorney, Jeff Conrad, has maintained his client was targeted by publicity-seeking animal-welfare officials.
Eckhart said he took in about 30 dogs from another breeder only a few weeks before the raid. He acknowledged that some of those dogs still needed to be bathed and groomed at the time of the raid, but insisted that he was getting to them.
He said workers cleaned the kennel daily and noted that it had an automatic watering system, radiant heating and expensive flooring - a description meant to undercut claims that he ran a substandard kennel.
