RAWDON — Véronique Lambert and David Dufresne had a lot of plans for their family last weekend, but burying their six-month-old pit bull wasn’t among them.
“I was a little bit sad and a little bit angry about it,” Lambert’s eight-year-old daughter, Amanda D’Onofrio, said.
It all started last Friday morning when Lambert let her two pit bull type dogs, Trixie and Anna, out in the yard.
She came back out to check on them 10 minutes later, only to find that something was seriously wrong.
“There was a bunch of saliva under her and she was making a noise like she was struggling,” Lambert explained.
Given the state of the dogs, the couple knew they had to act fast.
However, as it was Saint-Jean-Baptiste, most vet offices were closed, forcing Dufresne to drive all the way to Laval.
“I arrived there and I opened the door and just take the dogs,” Dufresne said.
“The dog was soft and she was dead.”
Six-month-old Trixie didn’t make it, but there was still a chance to save Anna, if only the vet could figure out what was wrong.
An X-ray showed nothing, so the vet made the dog vomit to empty her stomach, turning up small black grains.
READ MORE: Dog attack victim calls for pit bull ban in wake of Quebec woman’s death
“On the paper that they gave to us when we bring back Anna, it really tells that it’s an intoxication,” Lambert told Global News.
“But the exact product that caused that, they don’t know.”
The couple left Anna to recover and returned home with Trixie in a body bag.
“All of us just made a big hole and we opened the bag and we gave her a kiss,” Lambert said tearfully.
“We said our good-bye. That was the hard part.”
The couple is at a loss as to how their dogs could have come into contact with the substance on their balcony.
“Imagine if it would be one of my children that eat that?” Lambert said.
“That’s what bothers me the most. How can I be safe now for her and for the kids?”
READ MORE: Quebec City to ban pit bulls, province-wide legislation in the works
The family can’t imagine that someone would be out to get their dogs, but fear that recent events involving pit bull type dogs have instilled an irrational fear in the general population.
The Sûreté du Québec has opened a file and is investigating.
READ MORE: Brossard banning pit bulls in response to attack on 8-year-old girl
The couple’s kids have a few words of their own for whoever or whatever is responsible.
“It was not nice,” nine-year-old Anthony D’Onofrio said.
“I would like to tell him to stop listening to people that say that the pit bulls are bad and inform themselves,” Amanda added.
Though the family knows nothing will ever bring back their beloved pup, they hope their story will help prevent the same thing from happening to others.