As a family in North Reading, Massachusetts, continues to mourn the death of their beloved dog, the Connecticut woman who said she was training him will be in court later this month.
Josephine Raglund was originally scheduled to be arraigned Friday in Woburn District Court on multiple charges including larceny and federal obstruction in connection with the alleged dog training scam. But that court hearing has been rescheduled to Oct. 25, the Middlesex District Attorney's Office has confirmed.
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According to Bart Hanson, he paid the 27-year-old $2,000 for a two-week boarding and training program last month for his family's 3-year-old French bulldog Charlie.
They say the woman, who went by “Lily,” sent them text updates on the training from Sept. 1 through Sept. 14, but when the trainer was supposed to return Charlie two weeks later, Hanson says her whole story began unraveling.
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Hanson learned Raglund had allegedly been using a fake name, had his dog in Connecticut not Massachusetts, and that she had allegedly been neglecting other dogs in her care here – and had been accused of similar animal neglect in California.
Investigators told Hanson that Charlie's emaciated body had been found dumped on the side of the road, and that he had likely been dead since Sept. 4 and placed in a freezer for some time -- meaning Raglund had been texting the Hanson family photo updates as if Charlie was still alive for more than a week after he died.
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“It made me feel sick to my stomach because most of those stories were of victims saying, like, that the dogs had come back emaciated, and really what broke my heart and my family’s heart was that, you know, she could have just stuck him in a crate, who knows, and French bulldogs are really, really sensitive breeds and that particular week when she picked him up, if you remember the first week of September was really, really hot,” Hanson said. "It just takes an almost sociopath, somebody who doesn't have any emotion, or doesn't care, to be able to treat any dog that way. I mean you're just going to stick them in a crate in the heat and just leave them?”
