Dog mutilated, lower jaw, tongue cut off
Burden, KS (US)Incident Date: Friday, Nov 14, 2008
County: Cowley
Disposition: Open
Suspect(s) Unknown - We need your help!
When Burden area resident Kasha David returned to her home Friday evening, she expected to see her three bouncy dogs come running up to greet her and her husband as they normally would.
But when the couple got out of their vehicle and no dogs came running, they realized something was wrong. What they were about to discover was beyond anything they could've foreseen.
Normally the Davids' three dogs, Blue Heeler puppies Petey and Wilbur and their yellow Labrador Bunker are quick to give affection as soon as their owners get home, but this time only Wilbur stood in the driveway.
David said it was the way his head was strangely cocked to the side that she realized he was in trouble.
"When we came home, he was in our driveway and was up walking around," said David.
When her husband Morgan went to touch Wilbur and he winced away, David knew something terrible had happened to the normally loving puppy.
"He would only let me touch him," said David. "So I got him in the house to take a look at him, and his bottom jaw was so swollen it never crossed my mind it was gone."
The Davids then immediately called Winfield veterinarian Dr. Dick Warren. He agreed to meet the couple at the Winfield Veterinary Hospital.
Wilbur was less than cooperative in going into the clinic.
"When we got there, I couldn't get Wilbur to come out of the kennel, so we had to pop the top of the kennel off," David said.
After Warren examined Wilbur with the couple present, he shocked them: The extent of Wilbur's injuries was quite severe.
"When Dr. Warren looked at his swollen jaw, Wilbur tilted his head back and you could actually see each side of his bottom jaw bones laying inside of his mouth," said David. "The bottom half of his jaw was completely gone, along with his tongue."
It was in this horrific moment of discovery that Dr. Warren told them the injuries had to have been deliberate.
The couple made the hard decision to put Wilbur to sleep after Warren informed them there was no fixing the dog's injury.
"At that point, I had to walk out of the room," said an emotional David.
When Warren began a post-mortem examination, he found that someone had taken a sharp object to Wilbur's jaw and removed it as an act of torture or flat out cruelty.
"Living on a farm, I assumed (Wilbur) had been kicked by a horse or hit by a car," said David. "But after Dr. Warren's post mortem examination, he quickly ruled that out. He said the cut was so clean it looked like it was done with an axe."
Wilbur had no other injuries on his body, not even on the top half of his jaw.
"There were no other injuries to his body, and if he had been kicked by an animal or hit by a car, he would've had trauma elsewhere," David said.
David said she and Morgan's nightmare is far from over, since they still haven't located Petey and Bunker.
David said she and Morgan searched the surrounding pastures and roads around their farm, but to no avail. David even called in a number of family members who came to their property with four-wheelers to do a more thorough search. As of this morning, David said she still hasn't found her beloved pets.
"Being animal lovers, Morgan and I have huge hearts and would like to catch whoever is responsible for this," David said. "I just want to try to understand why someone would do this. It takes a truly sadistic and heartless person to torture a puppy."
The image of Wilbur's gruesome injuries will always be with her, David said.
"To find a puppy in that condition is just heart-wrenching," she said.
The Davids have filed a report with the Cowley County Sheriff's Office and contacted the Cowley County Humane Society, which has distributed fliers after receiving e-mail pictures from the Davids, in an attempt to locate the other two missing dogs.
Cowley County Humane Society Director Teresa Harden said she was surprised by what David described had happened to Wilbur.
"I was made aware of the situation by Kasha," said Harden. "But at our facility, we've never experienced animals that have come in with the kind of injuries Kasha described."
Harden said that instances of sadistic human inflicted injuries upon animals is rare, but could happen more often than people think.
"We've had animals come in with various injuries that, for the most part, weren't intentionally inflicted by a human," said Harden. "This is a first for us."
David said she has recently heard about a string of dog disappearances in the area, ranging from Dexter to Udall. As an employee of Winfield Motors, David said she speaks with random people all the time, and they tell her stories of dogs that just coming up missing in rural areas.
She said a couple of customers have even talked about how they've found dogs in similar conditions to Wilbur's, and in a couple of cases, worse.
Udall Police officer Jeremy Billman said this is the first he's heard of any type of serious animal cruelty in Udall, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening.
Billman assured the public that a crime against an animal is as serious as any crime. References |
