Photo: Contributed

A Kamloops-area man convicted of animal cruelty has been allowed to keep three horses.

A judge has fined Jody Huffman $1,500 and forbidden him from owning any animals for the next five years besides the three replacement horses currently in his possession.

Huffman was convicted after a veterinarian ordered two of his sick Peruvian Paso horses shot because their condition had become so poor.

The veterinarian report said the two mares' had become severely tangled with a weed, their hooves were infected due to a lack of care and they were likely underfed.

A third animal was later put down due to poor care and its advancing age.

Huffman's lawyer argued that his client was in the midst of withdrawals from a decade-long addiction to prescribed painkillers stemming from a 2003 accident.