A tenant from hell let a dog starve in a Cork apartment while on holiday and then put it in a bin bag in a wardrobe where it rotted for months before being discovered.
A property manager has told of the disgusting find some months after the woman left the apartment, saying the "smell would knock you".
He told C103's Cork Today with Patricia Messinger how it cost €8,000 to sort out the home that had only been refurbished before she moved in.
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The manager, who goes by the name Seamus, explained how he looks after a block of apartments for a company and detailed some of the horror stories he's faced with some renters.
He said a woman and her two-year-old daughter once took an apartment before leaving one room with rubbish "up to the ceiling", and another with the dead dog which they only found after she moved, Cork Beo reports.
He said: "Less than two years ago we had this property refurbished and redecorated and everything was put into it brand new.
"This lady came through the council on this HAP scheme, she had a two-year-old little girl with her.
"For the two years she was inside of it, strictly there was no dogs. No pets of any description.
"But halfway through her tenancy she decided to pick up a dog, a pitbull, a fairly big dog.
Seamus said he was informed of the dog on "several occasions" and had asked her to remove it but he was told she "had to have it" and that he had no authority.
"In turn she went away on holidays for about three weeks and left the dog in the apartment. Then the dog, of course being starved, started to eat the furniture. Ate the doors, door frames, the furniture, beds, destroyed the carpets. This apartment cost €8,000 to put back renting again.
"In the meantime the dog died of starvation inside the apartment. She then came back and put the dog into a black bin liner and put it into a wardrobe in the bedroom where it remained for about three months unbeknown to us because we had no authority to enter the property until she vacated it."
He said she "had to be" living in the apartment with her child while the dog was in the wardrobe.
"She did abscond about a month before we got access to the apartment."
He only realised she was gone after a woman who worked from the council had come in relation to another apartment, and while there he asked if he could go in as the curtains had been pulled closed for a long time.
The council worker went to check it with them and Seamus said once they opened the door there was a fierce smell.
"It would knock you" he said.
"About six weeks previous there was a lot of rubbish outside the apartment, which they're obliged to sign up to get removed."
He said he asked the tenant about it one day and told her to get rid of it, and claimed she told him she had a skip ordered for it all.
But when he got into the unit with the council worker he found the bags "up to the ceiling" in one of the rooms.
"They were in one end of the apartment and in the other was a dead dog inside of a bag.
"At this stage she had gone."
When he queried the council he said he was told that unfortunately agreements are with the tenant and the landlord. Seamus said the council were involved in the deal and feels they should be helping with the repair costs.
"We had to throw out the cooker, the washing machine, the fridge. There was food left inside the fridge and we couldn't open the door of it. We had to get a skip as it would've been unfair to any new tenants moving in had there been any issue with any appliances."
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