An animal welfare group is investigating the execution of 100 healthy sled dogs in Vancouver, British Columbia, after tour business got slow following the Olympics, according to Canadian news reports.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is investigating the animal cruelty allegations after a Howling Dog Tours general manager filed a claim with the provincial workers’ compensation board saying he suffered post-traumatic stress after slaughtering the dogs in a two-day cull.
The claim says the dogs were killed in front of each other, causing them to panic and attack the worker, The Vancouver Sun reported.
“By the end, he was covered in blood,” the review board wrote January 25, confirming the worker’s claim. “When he finished, he cleared up the mess, filled in the mass grave and tried to bury the memories as deeply as he could.”
Attorney Corey Steinberg told Vancouver radio station CNKW that his client either shot or slashed the throats of the canines.
“It wasn’t always a clean, one-shot kill,” Steinberg said. “Inevitably, (the employee) ended up seeing and having to put the end to some horrific scenes.”
Marcy Moriarty of the British Columbia SPCA told the station she was most disturbed by the “description where he notes that one of the dogs he thought had been killed was crawling around in this mass grave. … Honestly, I had to put down the story then.”
The employee, who was compensated for his claim and no longer manages Howling Dog, sought treatment for depression, panic attacks and nightmares five days after the killings, The Sun reported.
Steinberg told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that his client tried to find adoptive homes for the animals, but when that failed, he and company executives agreed to euthanize the oldest and sickest dogs. The Sun, however, said the workers’ compensation report claimed a veterinarian was contacted but refused to kill healthy animals.
“He just wanted the greatest happiness for the greatest number of dogs," Steinberg told CBC. "He had to choose: Do I keep 200 dogs and make their lives great, or do I stick here with the 300 that I have?”
Moriarty countered that “blowing off half of the dog’s head while it ran off” – as one of the executions was described in the worker’s compensation report – did not constitute euthanasia.
She further told The Sun she isn’t moved by the manager’s claim that he named the dogs and had “developed a strong emotional bond of mutual love.” She added, “I don’t feel sorry for this guy for one minute.”
“I’ve no doubt he has suffered post-traumatic stress, but there’s a thing called choice,” she said. “I absolutely would not have done this, and he could have said no.”
The Vancouver Olympics closed February 28, 2010, and Canadian Employment Law Today reported that the company decided to kill the dogs - reportedly a third of its kennels - when business dropped off.
Twitter users have homed their sights on Outdoor Adventures Whistler, which had a financial stake in the company but didn’t take operational control until May 2010, a month after the incident.
“#outdooradventures has the guts to shoot captive animals, do you?” read one.
Another said she “Is truly ashamed to live in #Vancouver because of these dog slaughterings taken place in #Whistler. I never want to go back there. Idiots.”
Outdoor Adventures, which also offers snowmobile, snowshoe and horseback excursion in Whistler, issued a statement saying it was aware of the “relocation and euthanization” of the Howling Dog animals but was “completely unaware of the details of the incident” before reading a report Sunday.
Spokesman Graham Aldcroft said in the statement that there are no longer firearms on the site, and in the future, sled dogs will be euthanized in a veterinarian’s office.
Tourism Whistler, which has marketed the company’s dog-sled tours for six years, told The Sun that it has suspended dog-sledding reservations for the company and is offering refunds to anyone who has booked a tour.
On Monday morning, Outdoor Adventures was still advertising dog-sled tours on its website, saying that its “lengthened tour means more time with the puppies.”
I think if he would have put an add up on craigs list saying FREE SLED DOGS he would have gotten rid of them. I just don’t see the logic.
on the other hand
He might have tried that and no one would help him. It sounds like he called around a little trying to do it “the right way”. So as opposed to letting 300 dogs go hungry he let 100 die and 200 be healthy.
I’m not sure if you could even say the end justifies the means with that, even with cold logic.
As a result of the panic, a dog named Suzie was only wounded by the employee.
“Susie was the mother of his family’s pet dog ‘Bumble.’ He had to chase Suzie through the yard because the horrific noise she made when wounded caused him to drop the leash,” the report states. “Although she had the left side of her cheek blown off . . . he was unable to catch her. He then obtained a gun with a scope and used it to shoot her when she settled down close to another group of dogs.”
It also states when he went to get the dog, he was bitten in the arm. After disposing of Suzie’s body, he returned and noticed another dog — named Poker — that was special to him and not slated to be euthanized had been accidentally shot.
“Poker was covered in blood from a neck wound and covered in his own feces. He believed Poker suffered for approximately 15 minutes before he could be put down,” the report states.
The employee had put down about 55 dogs on April 21, and by the end of the day, the dogs were so panicked they were biting him and he had to wrap his arms in foam to prevent injury.
“He also had to perform what he described as ‘execution-style’ killings where he wrestled the dogs to the ground and stood on them with one foot to shoot them. The last few kills were ‘multiple-shot’ killings as he was simply unable to get a clean shot,” the report says. “He described a guttural sound he had never heard before from the dogs and fear in their eyes.”
…
His last memory of killing the final 15 dogs was “fuzzy” and in some cases he felt it was simpler to “get behind the dogs and slit their throats and let them bleed out.”
I’m not going to post videos, but there is some REALLY fucked up shit that lasts for WAY longer and is way more cruel than what any of these dogs went through.
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A lot of ranches load cattle one by one into a giant clamp which usually breaks their legs. It flips them over. Then their throats are cut with a machette, the larynx is torn out so as not to “startle” the other cows (though it infrequently works), then the cows are dropped 5+ feet onto the ground, where they stumble around for a few minutes until they bleed out.
I’m not saying all slaughter is done to the rules, but generally, slaughter in the US is far more humane than what happened here. In the cases where it isn’t I have no problems with the places being fined and or shut down.
The only real difference is intent. We kill other animals for food but these dogs were kill to be buried in a mass grave.
I don’t agree with how livestock is generally treated either, but having a dog myself makes this a little harder to take in. I don’t have a pet cow that sleeps at the foot of my bed every night.
They were killed with the intent to eliminate future suffering. Yeah, it seems like it was poorly executed (ha), but it still had somewhat “noble” intentions.