An Unhappy Easter!!!

  WARNING - IMAGES MAY BE DISTURBING!
  

The Easter present a family received was the POISONING OF THEIR 7 DOGS; a female and her three puppies plus three other adult dogs. 

The sight of the dogs that had died was disheartening!

       I received a call two nights ago at 10:15 pm, the voice on the other end desperately asking me to come because their dogs were sick, showing signs of poisoning.  When I arrived about 10 minutes later one male and two puppies were already dead.  The family was running around in a panic.  I asked them to get flash lights and to look under cars, under the bushes any where a dog would hide.  I asked for them to account for all of their dogs..to find them.  In the mean time I was treating a puppy that was struggling for it’s life and an older female who also showed signs of poisoning.  The filtalon shot did its work on the female but the puppy was too small, the dose of poison too much and it soon died. The female was immediatly releaved after vomitting and we kept an eye on her.  With so many dogs I didn’t have enough shots so I sent the father to find which pharmacy was on night duty and to get more medication.  In our efforts to account for all of the dogs, another male was found further away in a neighbour’s yard but too much time had gone by and as I was preparing to give him the appropriate shots he too died. Not waiting for the father’s return I jumped into my car and headed to the house of a volunteer who I knew had at least one more set of shots, but at the same time driving by the on-call pharmacy. It was closed so I called the pharmacist whose number was on the door.  I asked if she had the medication I needed … her response was “no”. I drove to the volunteer’s house and she gave me whatever filtalon and atropine she had.  I drove back to the family’s home to find that a second female, the mother of the puppies, had started to spasm.  I gave her the filtalon injection and it took effect within a few minutes. She emptied the contents of her stomach until only bile was coming up.  Our worries were that because so much time had gone by, the poison had entered her blood stream. After she had vomited she seemed to be better and her spasms stopped. 

    When all of the dead dogs were gathered, the sight was heart breaking. By that time it was past midnight.

     Of the dogs that were given the filtalon, the contents of their stomachs revealed, beyond what the family had fed them, parts of lamb.  At Easter, most homes have a lamb slaughtered for Easter day and they had seen their neighbours prepareing the slaughtered lambs earlier in the day. Except for the black male, the dogs did not wander away from the the home. The family explained that they have lived this nightmare many times, especially at Easter, placing the blame for the poisonings on disgruntled neighbours who often complained about the problems so many dogs caused and sometimes threatening to kill them.  They had never gone to the police but this time I pressured them to do so.  Although they had no proof of who might have dropped the poison, their house is in a cul de sac where there is no thoroughfare traffic and it would seem likely that the families who live in the cul de sac would be the ones to have an issue with the dogs.  I pressed the family to go to the police; to use me as a witness as to the events of the night and to give the names of the people they suspect to be responsible for the mass poisoning.  This would at least bring them in for questioning and perhaps scare them enough to not do it again. They agreed they would do so. Before I left, we cleaned up all of the vomit we could find and we hoped that no more poison or vomit was in the area for any of the other dogs to consume.

     The next day when I went back to speak to the family, they had more bad news to share.  Three more dogs had died; a male, a third puppy and the female mother of the puppies.  Most likely the first two had eaten some poison left behind as they were fine in the morning and found dead later while the female had died during the night from the poison that had made it into her body before we were able to give her the filtalon from the night before.  The other female that had been treated early was fine.  I was surprised to see the bodies from the previous night still were we had layed them and next to those the new ones had been placed. 

     The family had gone to the police and filed a report giving the names of the people they suspected.  This is a big step forward.  But in order to really look at what had happened in this small neighbourhood we need to step back and look at the whole picture. The total number of dogs that the family had was 15. The family is one of 6 children ages roughly 13 to early 20’s, plus the parents.  They are a low income family with a huge love of dogs.  They allowed the situation with their dogs to get out of control by not sterilizing the initial female and not being able to give the next generation of puppies away.  Being a low income family with so many mouths to feed going to the vet was overlooked. So many dogs could not be confined and many roamed the neighbourhood causing problems.  Seeing that the family could not control the situation someone eventually took things into their own hands committing the worst of crimes towards an animal.  I spent some time talking with the family and they admitted that so many dogs were an issue.  The remaining dogs are 8, of which three are females.  The family has agreed they need to get neutered and we are going to help them make sure it happens.   We are also going to see how else we can help, perhaps rehome some of the younger dogs and make sure the dogs are vaccinated and dewormed.  The victims in this whole story are of course the dogs!   

A female lay dead with three of her puppies.  The fourth dog at the top is from her previous litter!

    Our work is difficult and never ending. If you would like to help in any way please write to me at  tinakanellos2@hotmail.com.  Thank  you!

K.K.