A dog trainer has been arrested and faces animal cruelty charges after video appears to show her choking and kicking dogs in Palm Beach County.
Blessing Knighten, 21, was booked into the Palm Beach County Jail on Thursday morning and bonded out five hours later. She faces five charges of animal cruelty.
Animal control received a complaint about Knighten from Steve Cabral, the owner of Fine Line Family K-9 in Loxahatchee on Mar. 18, NBC affiliate WPTV reported.
Cabral subsequently fired Knighton and supplied three surveillance videos involving a Belgian Malinos and a black German Shepherd depicting the alleged cruelty. In one video, Knighten is seen choking a dog for 15 to 20 seconds.
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According to an arrest report obtained by WPTV, the video showed Knighten strangling a German shepherd on what Cabral called a bite box.
"The dog’s front legs were off the ground," the report said. "She then walks the dog around and the dog appears to be limping and in distress. She then hangs the dog back on the bite box. It struggles, and you can hear the dog yelp."
However, Knighton told investigators she was instructed to treat the dogs that way by Cabral. She said that if a dog bites, she was told to hold the dog up by the leash and that typical training methods included “not feeding the dogs," "yanking crank stuff" and not buying food.
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“The dogs were very, very skinny," she told the investigator.
Knighton told investigators she had a problem with Cabral's methods and how he was treating the dogs, but that he told her that if she had a problem with that, he would show authorities the videos.
When asked if she used Cabral's training methods, Knighton said yes, because she was "in a bad spot" at that time.
WPTV reports that in the preliminary conclusion, the investigator wrote: "Blessing Knighten abused two dogs repeatedly and defined it as training. This is a clear case of animal abuse causing mental and physical pain."
"In this case, we see a situation where animals were being abused," said Dave Walesky with Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control. "I'm very thankful to live in a county and be a part of an organization that has zero tolerance for animal cruelty."
