A horse was starved to death at a property in Levin. Note: This is not the horse. Photo / File
A Levin woman has been sentenced to community work for allowing a horse to slowly starve to death.
Te Ara Smiler, 31, has pleaded guilty in the Levin District Court to ill treatment of an animal causing it to suffer unreasonable and unnecessary pain or distress.
She has been sentenced
to 120 hours of community work and ordered to pay almost $500 in veterinarian costs, and disqualified from owning or exercising authority over horses for five years.
An SPCA inspector visited the woman's property in August last year, where they found one horse suffering from starvation and another who had recently been put down.
SPCA New Zealand chief executive Ric Odom said the case was all too common.
