A show dog breeder accused of housing one hundred dogs in feces and starving them has been charged with animal cruelty.

Margaret Ann Hamilton, 70, of Issaquah was the only suspect charged, after her husband, James, died a few weeks after the October 2011 discovery.

Fourteen of the dogs were so ill when King County Animal Control discovered them, veterinarians euthanized them.

Many of the pups had dental problems, some so severe their jaws rotted off. In one case, a pregnant dog named “beauty” had such an advanced case of periodontal disease, that in an attempted cleaning, the dog lost three teeth, according to the charging papers.

Police first learned about the ill and emaciated dogs after members of Pasado’s Safe Haven broke into a home in Burien. They turned in a video of the basement, where roughly half the couple’s dogs were kenneled, according to the papers.

Police questioned the Burien homeowner until his arrest, when he revealed the that dogs belonged to the Hamiltons and that they were renting his basement. Police searched the Hamilton’s home in Issaquah, located on the 5900 block of 189th Avenue Southeast, and discovered another 62 dogs.

Their home showed classic signs of hoarding with debris, clothes and household items stacked from floor to ceiling in every room of the house. The second bathroom was so full of clothes and medicine that it couldn’t be used, according to the papers.

Police attributed hoarding – their inability to part with the pets they had collected over the years – to the motivation behind the abuse.

Most of the pups, mainly Chihuahuas and Japanese Chins, were in stacked crates in the living room. They were in better condition than the Burien home, but like those dogs they had feces matted hair, overgrown nails and were underweight. Some had developed heart murmurs, dental disease and many had muscle deterioration from lack of exercise, according to the papers.

Police say Hamilton hid four show dogs in a van in the garage for fear that they’d take them. The dogs were due for a show in Enumclaw the following weekend. Hamilton, who had also been a show judge, told police that she kept all her pups after their effective breeding or show life was over.

She maintained throughout the police seizure that she could properly care for the dogs, and that they wouldn’t have taken her 62 dogs if her husband had properly cared for the dogs in Burien, according to the papers.

The formal charges are two counts of animal cruelty in the second degree, one for each of the locations.