PEKIN — A woman now could be sent to prison on felony charges alleging she intentionally let two dogs in her care die of starvation and thirst.

Regina Robards, 43, was ordered last week to appear in court Feb. 4 in the felony case that replaces the misdemeanor charges first filed against her after the dogs were found dead in her Howard Court home in late November.

Robards’ landlord, who found the dogs, and others publicly criticized the initial misdemeanor charges as Robards made her first appearance in Tazewell County Circuit Court.

State’s Attorney Stewart Umholtz said then the case remained under investigation, which included a veterinarian’s exams that determined the dogs’ cause of death.

The felony charges accuse Robards not merely of allowing the dogs in her care to die, a misdemeanor crime, but of intentionally killing them by depriving them of food and water and failing to seek necessary care for them.

She faces between probation and three years in prison if convicted of any of her four counts of aggravated cruelty to a companion animal.

A prosecutor’s affidavit filed with the new charges stressed that the dogs, who the landlord said were named Walker and Sparky, had no access to water in the house after Robards moved out of it last July.

Her landlord, Loretta Joachim, called police Nov. 24 after she entered the house and found Walker, a mastiff puppy, dead in the living room, the affidavit stated. The second dog was found four days later in a rear bedroom, its body significantly decomposed, the affidavit stated.

Robards, now of South Pekin, apparently never told Joachim about the second dog in the months after she moved out. She later told police it belonged to her son, the affidavit stated.

Joachim said Robards told her she had left the mastiff in the house at 1509 Howard Court after she moved out but was returning daily to care for it, the affidavit stated. Robards told police after its discovery that she had seen it alive four days earlier, the affidavit stated.

She said the dog appeared emaciated because of a virus that she couldn’t afford to get treated. She didn’t take it to a shelter or contact animal control because she thought she could care for it, the affidavit stated.

She was arrested after Joachim said she discovered Sparky, the second dog, lying dead under a baby crib in the bedroom on Nov. 28.

Robards remains free on bond pending her February court appearance.