The High Court had only weeks earlier upheld a nine-year animal ownership ban on disgraced dog breeders Barbara Glover and her daughter when the SPCA and police returned to their once-renowned rural South Auckland kennel for a surprise follow-up inspection.
What they found would again shock the animal welfare investigators.
Now, as a result of that raid, a third member of the Glover family is before the court on animal neglect charges.
Court documents show Barbara Glover’s other daughter, 57-year-old Anne Glover, lived at the same Pōkeno farmstead where Volkerson Kennels – a formerly award-winning breeder of German shepherds – had operated.
Anne Glover claimed sole responsibility for the animals when authorities returned in April 2023, insisting they didn’t belong to her mother or sister. However, she could not tell investigators the names of any of the dogs and did not know which animals had been vaccinated.
The defendant, who until earlier in 2025 had name suppression, now faces up to a year’s imprisonment after having pleaded guilty in June on two representative charges of failing to properly care for the canines.
She returned to the Manukau District Court for sentencing recently, but the hearing was paused after lengthy defence arguments went well past the allotted time. Judge Grant Fraser ordered the parties to return next year for the hearing to conclude.
Court documents outline how a convoy of six SPCA investigators and two uniformed police officers arrived at the property, where they were greeted by Glover.
They immediately noticed two puppies in a blanket-covered travel container on the back of a quad bike – both of which appeared to be “weak in demeanour”. They were confiscated for veterinary treatment.
In a nearby garage, they found a dead puppy on the ground and a live puppy in a dog crate, described as “very quiet and lethargic, with its head down and body slumped”. It was also taken into SPCA care.
An adult dog chained up in an outside paddock was also marked for confiscation before investigators moved on to the main area – kennels consisting of 18 runs containing 23 German shepherds. Two more dogs were determined to be underweight, with their “spine, ribcage, hip bones and pin bones easily felt”.
“When the lead inspector asked why these dogs were underweight, Ms Glover replied that they ran a lot and burned off a lot of energy,” the agreed summary of facts for her case states. “These dogs were taken into the possession of the inspector due to a belief that their physical, health and behavioural needs were not being met.”
Five of the dogs, including the puppy carcass, were immediately taken to the SPCA Māngere Centre for more thorough veterinary examinations. But when one of the dogs tested positive for canine parvovirus, it was decided to euthanise all three puppies.
Even though the virus can be treated, it is extremely expensive, authorities noted in court documents.
“Also, due to its highly contagious nature, the need for round-the-clock care and the lack of any suitable isolation facility at the SPCA Māngere Centre to hold dogs with parvovirus, it was not possible to admit the puppies to the centre for treatment,” documents state.
Autopsies later confirmed all four puppies, including the one found dead, had the virus.
The symptoms of parvovirus “would have been obvious to the layperson and should have led the owner or caregiver seeking prompt veterinary intervention and/or humane euthanasia”, an SPCA veterinarian opined.
Two other dogs that had been found to be underweight returned to normal body condition after five weeks in SPCA care.
“It was the opinion of the veterinarian that their poor body condition was the result of failing to provide the dogs with proper and sufficient food, either due to feeding inadequate food quantities and/or feeding food of poor nutritional value,” court documents state.
A year before the raid, in April 2022, Barbara Glover and her other adult daughter, Janine Wallace, had been convicted in the same court following what was considered at the time to be one of the SPCA’s largest prosecutions.
The duo had fought the charges during a judge-alone trial before Judge Karen Grau. The judge found them guilty of 32 violations of the Animal Welfare Act – 26 counts each of failing to meet the physical, health and behavioural needs of an animal, and six counts of failing to alleviate the pain or distress of an ill animal.
Barbara Glover, 87, has been recognised in the past as the country’s top German shepherd breeder, importing pedigree bloodlines and selling dogs she raised online for $2000 to $5000 each.
Wallace, 65, became involved in her mother’s business “during or after a real estate career you had that ended in criminal charges from what I can tell”, Judge Grau noted in her decision.
Their fortunes changed after raids in 2017 and 2018, in which the SPCA confiscated more than 30 animals, describing overcrowding and squalid conditions that included some animals reportedly living among old food scraps and urine-soaked newspaper.
The raid was featured on the animal welfare organisation’s “list of shame” brochure the following year.
Wallace was ordered to serve 12 months of intensive supervision and 300 hours of community work, while Barbara Glover was sentenced to nine months’ supervision.
Judge Grau described Wallace’s explanation for the conditions suffered by one of the animals – a pregnant dog “locked in a small, filthy crate inside a locked, dark utility shed” – as “fanciful”.
“You said this dog was being monitored and observed because she was pregnant and that she was being groomed for one to two hours daily by your mother and another volunteer worker,” the judge said. “But the reality was she was hidden away lying in her own faeces and likely in pain. She had pus coming out of her ear, which would have been obvious to anyone who was actually caring for her.
“I found it likely that she was being hidden from the SPCA. She was a dog who was likely to increase the population of dogs at the very time the SPCA was telling you that you needed to reduce numbers so that you could care adequately for those dogs.”
Another dog, which had to be put down because of a gangrenous infection, was found with her leg tightly bound in a tether and in an awkward position near her head.
“The tether was cutting into her leg and acting as a tourniquet, cutting off the blood supply,” the judge noted of the canine, named Ritza. “This dog was completely helpless, not even able to make a sound.”
The duo appealed Judge Grau’s guilty findings and sentence to the High Court at Auckland, along with the “manifestly excessive” nine-year animal ban and orders they each pay $20,000 in court fees.
But then-Justice Paul Davison rejected all three requests for mercy in his March 2023 decision.
He noted the SPCA expenses for the investigation itself exceeded $310,000 and the legal costs were another $70,000. Asking the pair to pay roughly 13% of the investigation cost could be considered “reasonable if not generous”, he said.
As for Anne Glover, her prosecution started on a strange note during her first appearance in the Manukau District Court, in January 2024.
She was initially to appear before a magistrate, but prosecutors asked that it go before a judge because she was wearing a conspicuously large wig and a face mask. Authorities suspected it might be the already-convicted Wallace in disguise, appearing on behalf of her younger sister.
After a 15-minute break to consider the matter, the judge asked the defendant to remove her mask and wig in open court to check her image against her ID. The Crown apologised after it was made clear the person in court was indeed Anne Glover.
“I think it was a legitimate concern that was raised,” the judge replied.
Anne Glover wore the same askew wig to court during the recently aborted sentencing hearing.
Crown prosecutor Aminiasi Kefu, who had not been present at the first appearance, suggested at the outset of the hearing that the judge should impose a six-month starting point and allow a discount of 10-20% for her guilty pleas.
The end result, he conceded, would be a community-based sentence – although he hoped the judge would also impose a dog ownership ban on her for at least six years.
Lawyer Dan Gardiner, who had represented her sister and mother years earlier, asked Judge Fraser to consider a discharge without conviction.
He noted that in the time since the first raids on his client’s mother and sister, a “deluxe set of kennels” had been built in an attempt to alleviate concerns.
He also pointed out Anne Glover had been cleaning the kennels when authorities returned for the April 2023 raid. In more than 30 years of business, the breeders had never previously had a dog infected with parvovirus, he said.
Gardiner slowly directed through a series of photos that he suggested painted a more benevolent version of how the animals were being treated at the time of the raid. Eventually, however, the judge lost patience.
“None of this is relevant,” he informed the lawyer, explaining he must sentence according to what was already agreed in the summary of facts. “We’re not defending the charges. I don’t have any ability to interpret these photos – that’s already been done.”
When the lawyer later gave a lengthy oral response to the Crown’s written submissions, which had been filed late, the judge decided to be blunt. The hearing had been scheduled to last 15 minutes, but had been going for well over an hour – with the queue of other scheduled cases, too, at risk of being derailed.
“Quite frankly, I’ve had enough,” he said, ordering the parties to put any further submissions in writing before returning to court in May. “To rush it through does no justice to this whatsoever.”
The judge apologised to Anne Glover and told her to return too.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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