Jan. 06 2024
Subject: Re: Personal
This is the information I received.
Hi Everyone: just a heads-up on a (potentially) fatal dog attack I was involved in at the park yesterday, 5th January at about 4:30 pm, in case there are any legal ramifications in the future that we need to know about. The circumstances were as follows:
I was parked at the Farmer Road lot and was circling the park. I was walking across the wooded area of the Klimke Road parking lot when I became aware of a small dog barking frantically, and raised voices, culminating in desperate screams and the cessation of barking. I crossed the lot to find out what was happening, and a group of people were gathered about 20 yards up the main trail from the lot. A small boy of about 12 rushed up to me and said "don't come here, there's a dead dog". A young woman was standing screaming on the trail, a small boy of about 8 was sobbing his heart out, and a middle-aged man was attempting to leash a large, old black dog. He was yelling that she - the young woman, who turned out to be the mother of the two small boys - "had an aggressive dog" and it wasn't his dog's fault. A Yorkshire terrier was stretched out flat in the tree line with bite wounds to the stomach and a spray of blood around it; it was apparently dead. I calmed everyone down, the guy (whose name is Kim) carried the terrier to the woman's car (name unknown) and I wrapped it in a blanket in the cargo area.
The woman had no phone, so I let her use mine to phone her husband, who was on the other side of the city. I also got the guy's name and number just in case. (See below. )I told him in no uncertain terms that a yapping terrier did not constitute an "aggressive" dog and that he should not bring his dog to the park again. He left. A woman who turned out to be a nurse came up to the group of clearly distraught people in the parking lot while this was going on and said she would look at the dog to ascertain if it was, in fact, dead. I thought it definitely was, but could see the wisdom in getting a second opinion. She gave the dog a thorough examination, and said she detected a faint heartbeat. Also, the dog's eyes were not glazed over, which indicated that it was not actually dead (yet), just in a state of shock. I phoned the nearest vet's office, who directed me to the emergency vet on McGillivray. The dog's owner made an appointment for 5:30 and left.
Amid all of the sobbing, wailing and stream of accusations I pieced together what actually happened: the woman and her two small boys had just arrived in the parking lot and were setting off on the trail. The oldest boy was carrying the dog at this point when the large black dog came running from the trail and started jumping at him; the terrier, of course, was yapping. The boy was terrified by the large dog and his mother told him to put the terrier down, hoping this would cause the dog to back off from the boy. The dog - a large heavy set labrador mix - then proceeded to attack and presumably kill the terrier. I arrived just at this point. Clearly the man's dog was at fault here - if every yapping dog in the park was deemed aggressive and therefore justifiably to be killed we would have mass slaughter on an ongoing basis. The man backed off when I told him this quite forcefully; meanwhile the woman was screaming that his dog should be put down. I told him to leave, confident that we had his contact information, and she calmed down a bit after that.
I haven't heard what happened later, and frankly I'm reluctant to get involved further by phoning either of the participants. If the dog survives then the woman will obviously ask for the vet fees to be reimbursed; if it didn't then she will want replacement of an alleged $2000 dog. I am willing to be a witness to what happened if asked.
