Attempted dog neutering
Huron, ON (CA)Incident Date: Saturday, Mar 1, 2008
Disposition: Alleged
Alleged: Atlee Miller
A Huron County man is facing five animal cruelty charges after someone tried to neuter his neighbour's dog.
The dog died. "It was a gruesome act . . . it was a family pet," Alison Cross, a spokesperson for Ontario's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said yesterday.
Neutering a dog is "a procedure only allowed to be done by a licensed practitioner," she said.
"And the family came home to find their dog bleeding on their front lawn."
If found guilty, a defendant in such circumstances could be jailed for six months in jail, dealt a two-year pet ownership ban and be fined, she said.
While the charges were announced yesterday, the incident was in March, Cross said. A Lucknow-area family returned home to find their dog butchered and bleeding to death on their front lawn.
The family rushed the dog to a veterinarian, but it died there of blood loss and shock. The vet reported the case to the OSPCA, saying someone had tried to neuter the dog.
The investigation wrapped up this week when the OSPCA laid the charges under the Criminal Code, including of willfully and unlawfully wounding an animal.
The defendant is also charged under the Veterinarian Act of Ontario for unlawfully engaging in veterinary medicine without a licence.
The OSPCA didn't describe a motive for the neutering or say what breed the dog was.
OSPCA officials respond to about 15,000 reports of animal cruelty a year, said Cross.
"Unfortunately we do see gruesome cases on a regular basis," she said.
Such cases led the OSPCA and other animal welfare groups to lobby for Bill 50, Ontario legislation introduced last spring that would toughen penalties for animal cruelty. Atlee Miller of Huron County is to appear in court in Goderich on the neutering-related charges Sept. 29. References
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