CHÂTEAUGUAY, Que. – A Quebec family has been left deeply shaken after a chain of events ended with police shooting and killing their two dogs in their own backyard.
On Feb. 28th, the Réfuge AMR dog shelter in Châteauguay, a suburb of Montreal, responded to a call from Lisa Dickson.
Dickson had left her two dogs, Timber and Harley, in the backyard. One of them, a Collie Mix, was wearing a choke-collar, when, during a sparring match, the two dogs became entangled, with one of them twisting the choker around its lower jaw.
The shelter determined the two dogs couldn’t be separated because they had become frantic. One of them was bleeding from its jaw, the other was gasping for air. The shelter called police, who sent two squad cars. When officers arrived, they made the fatal decision to shoot and kill both dogs.
“I thought for sure . . . that everything was going to be okay,” Dickson said. “I never thought that what happened would happen.”
Police in Chateauguay said they responded in accordance with their training and tools and the shelter said it did what it could. But the SPCA that the situation could end with two dogs riddled with bullets in their own backyard.
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“There were an awful lot of solutions that could have been used before getting to the point where shooting animals would ever be necessary,” said Nicholas Gilman, the SPCA’s executive director. “There were so many other ways – humane and non-lethal means – that could be used to break up a dog fight.”
AMR said that one major obstacle to a non-lethal solution for this sort of scenario lies in Quebec law. It states that only a veterinarian can have access to tranquilizers.
But the family wants to make sure this never happens again.
“Nobody tried to save these dogs,” said Stephen Howse, Dickson’s partner. “They didn’t do their jobs.”
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