Fiona McCoy, who acknowledges her operation was not properly registered, said they had a dog transporter on site at the Ring Road reserve in Wendouree when council rangers swooped, and had not left the dogs unattended. 

“There was someone there, they were not on their own,” she said. 

Both the City of Ballarat and RSPCA accounts of the seizure said the dogs had been left unattended in the park, in an effort to hide them from an inspection later on Friday. 

“Allegedly these dogs had been brought, in packed cages, from an intensive breeding facility, as the operators of the facility were believed to be attempting to hide the dogs whilst a scheduled inspection was being undertaken by the local council,” said RSPCA Inspectorate and Special Investigations Unit manager Allie Jalbert. 

An RSPCA spokeswoman said on Tuesday they could not comment further while the investigation continued. 

Ms McCoy had been notified of the inspection on Wednesday. She said they had brought in dogs from all over Victoria temporarily to take to a property near Wodonga on Friday, so did not think it was necessary to tell council about moving them. 

The inspection took place on Friday afternoon. 

She said an RSPCA inspector had called on Tuesday and told her the dogs were in good health except for some fighting injuries, which she said happened after the dogs were all mixed in together that morning. 

“They didn’t have a scratch on them (beforehand),” she said. 

Ms McCoy said the accusations of cruelty hit hard, and said the balance between genders among the 53 dogs seized showed she was not running a puppy farm. 

Peter Senior, who was there as well on Friday morning, said it was laughable Ms McCoy could have had 57 dogs permanently at her house. 

“They’d be stacked one on top of another,” he said. 

No charges have been laid.