Bid to shed dangerous dog label fails on appeal

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This article was published 05/07/2021 (1901 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A dog that killed two other dogs at a Winnipeg pet care business will be designated as dangerous, after an appeal from its owner was denied by the city.

Andreina Holliday cried Monday as she spoke to the protection, community services and parks committee about the hole in her family’s lives left after her two small dogs, Tango and Rocky, were attacked and killed May 7 at Pooches Playhouse by a Siberian husky named Obi.

“They’re greatly missed every day, and life has not been the same since they were taken so abruptly from us,” she said. “Nothing can bring them back, but we certainly don’t want anyone else to go through the tragic and traumatic loss we have experienced.”

Three days after the incident, Winnipeg animal services held a meeting with Obi’s owner, Stephen Lo, and issued a dangerous dog designation.

The label means animal services officers will check to see the owner is keeping up with a tightened set of standards for the rest of the dog’s life, including: the animal be muzzled any time it is off the owner’s property, be microchipped for identification purposes, and the owner display signs on their property warning the dog is dangerous.

Lo appealed the designation. He was seeking to adjourn the hearing until he could get more training and a medical opinion on Obi’s health, arguing it would be unfair to give Obi a permanent designation without such information.

At the time of the attack, the dog was neutered, up to date on vaccinations, but was not licenced.

Lo described Obi as a “shy and anxious” pet that regularly attended the dog daycare.

Both Lo and Holliday said they had hoped for more information from Pooches Playhouse in the investigation. The dogs were unattended at the time of the attack.

“I believe that the care and protection we entrusted to Pooches Playhouse was ill-placed,” Lo said. “This was a tragic accident that I understand should’ve been 100 per cent prevented.”

No one from Pooches Playhouse appeared at the meeting; an owner declined to comment to the Free Press on the incident.

Lo also criticized the process of receiving information from the city on the incident, saying there were inaccuracies in the report and no camera footage.

Animal services general manager Leland Gordon said authorities were convinced the incident occurred as described after a series of interviews with parties involved. In other jurisdictions, a dog in a similar situation would be euthanized, Gordon said.

Gordon said Lo had gone above what many pet owners do without intervention from animal services, including paying for daycare services, and that factored into the decision.

“I feel that in this scenario, Mr. Lo was trying to be a responsible pet owner, something awful and tragic happened,” he said.

The decision to uphold the designation was unanimous, and committee chairwoman Coun. Sherri Rollins was critical of animal services factoring in paying for extra services for the dog into its decision while it remained unlicensed.

“To me, that is so irrelevant in terms of claiming to care,” she said. “So I disagree that this owner has tried their best, I don’t agree with animal services the way they characterized the bill payments for doggy daycare as evidence of trying.”

After the decision, Lo told the Free Press he planned to follow the restrictions set by animal services and pursue further training for Obi.

Holliday told the Free Press she was relieved, but sympathetic to both Lo and Obi.

“I think it’s a very sad situation that this dog was set up for failure from the beginning, and what today was about was making sure this dog wasn’t put into that situation again,” she said.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: malakabas_