{"id":166362,"date":"2026-03-17T16:56:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T16:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/166362\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T16:56:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T16:56:22","slug":"watertown-couple-charged-with-animal-cruelty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/166362\/","title":{"rendered":"Watertown couple charged with animal cruelty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) &#8211; A Watertown couple faces animal cruelty charges after their dog was found emaciated and unable to stand.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">City police arrested 37-year-old Benjamin Tillman and 34-year-old Elizabeth Pettit of 309 Winslow Street last Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">According to police, the two failed to seek veterinary care for a 4-year-old German Shepherd, which had shown prolonged signs of sickness, including diarrhea for about a month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Court documents said, \u201cThe dog appeared severely emaciated as its hip bones were protruding. Its spine and ribs could be visible through its skin. A lack of muscle mass resulted in the dog\u2019s hind legs (being) unable to support themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">It also said the dog had fur loss on its back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Police said animal control took custody of the German Shepherd, but didn\u2019t know the dog\u2019s current health status.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Tillman and Pettit were ordered to appear in city court on March 30 and released.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WWNY. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) &#8211; A Watertown couple faces animal cruelty charges after their dog was found emaciated&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6343,68221,68222,9,11,10,49,51,50,104,7524],"class_list":["post-166362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-animal-cruelty","tag-benjamin-tillman","tag-elizabeth-pettit","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-police","tag-watertown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}