A PET owner jailed for the “horrific” and prolonged neglect of a number of animals at her Bradford home has failed in her appeal to be released from prison.

Tracey Tindall, 46, was jailed by magistrates for 18 weeks on May 4 after admitting 20 animal cruelty charges, with RSCPA inspectors describing her neglect as a “truly disturbing and upsetting case”.

She was also banned from keeping any animals for 20 years, and told she would be unable to appeal the decision for at least five years.

Prosecutor Ayesha Smart, acting on behalf of the RSPCA, told Bradford Crown Court yesterday that inspectors had visited Tindall’s home in Lymington Drive, Holme Wood, Bradford, on November 25 last year.

They found two decomposing rabbits and a decaying dog chained up in a kennel outside the property, which Tindall later told inspectors she mistakenly thought had been picked up three weeks earlier.

Inside the house, RSPCA inspectors were “overwhelmed by the smell of decay”, with one saying she had “never seen such a horrific state of living for both animals and humans”.

They found the decomposing remains of a number of cats and dogs, emaciated and barely alive cats, dogs, and a bearded dragon, and four puppy training crates containing the bodies of three dead puppies, the carcass of a dead collie dog, and the bodies of two cats.

Tindall’s solicitor, Sara Lyle, said her client had struggled to look after the animals while acting as sole carer for her ill mother, who died two days after the RSPCA visit.

She said she had long-standing mental health and alcohol problems, and had tried to take her own life in September 2015 after suffering a nervous breakdown.

Miss Lyle said her client was “extremely remorseful”, and a pre-sentence report had argued that the prison sentence could be suspended due to her “serious vulnerability” issues.

Judge Colin Burn said as there was no detailed report on Tindall’s mental health issues, a judgment was limited to the same matters previously considered by the magistrates.

“The circumstances of this case makes for grim listening,” he said.

“A number of animals died as a result of the neglect of this appellant, and some were deprived to the level that they were eating those that had already died.

“We are not satisfied that the personal mitigation is sufficient for this court to suspend the inevitable custodial sentence.”

Judge Burn did reduce Tindall’s jail term to 14 weeks, but said it was “not appropriate” to alter the terms of the 20-year ban.