A New Zealand woman was sentenced to two months behind bars for overfeeding her pet dog Nuggi to the point where he could hardly walk 10 meters without needing a break.

When Nuggi was resued from his Auckland owner in October of 2021, he weighed a whopping 53.7kg and his small legs struggled to support his enormous body. SPCA officers said that he needed to pause three times to catch his breath walking just 10m from where he was kept to the rescue car. He had so much fat under his skin that doctors could barely detect a heartbeat when they performed a checkup. Nuggi also suffered from conjunctivitis and had wounds on his elbows and belly, most likely due to the time he spent lying on his stomach because he couldn’t move. His owner fed him eight to ten pieces of chicken a day, plus plenty of doggy biscuits, seemingly ignorant to the fact that he was killing the poor animal.

Photo: Auckland SPCA

“Nuggi was being drastically overfed and, instead of seeking help or amending the behavior, his owner continued to overfeed him until he could barely walk. This is unacceptable,” Todd Westwood, chief executive of the SPCA, told NZ Herald. “He was so enormous that he could hardly walk and he was clearly suffering as a result of the significant amount of weight he was carrying.”

The overfed dog spent two months in the care of the SPCA, during which time he lost 8.9 kilograms, but then died suddenly due to a hemorrhage from a mass on his liver. A necropsy revealed that he suffered from other health complications, including liver disease and Cushing’s disease.

Photo: Auckland SPCA

Nuggi’s owner was sued for overfeeding the poor canine and ultimately causing his demise, and last week the Manukau District Court ordered her to pay reparations of $NZ 1222.15 ($720), disqualified her from owning dogs for a year, and sentenced her to two months in prison.

Although the SPCA most often deals with cases of severely malnourished animals, the organization pointed out that overfeeding pets can be just as detrimental, if not more so, than underfeeding them. The organization’s officers said that Nuggis was one of the fattest dogs they had ever encountered.