Don’t put down dog, local mom pleads
Canine that killed puppy and bit her daughter ‘could be rehabilitated’
A Toronto mother is calling for help to save the life of the dog that killed her 8-week-old puppy and attacked her 12-year-old daughter at a Leaside park last week.
“In a proper environment, I believe the dog could be rehabilitated instead of killed,” Lana Novikova said of the animal, which is in quarantine with Toronto Animal Services.
Novikova said the incident happened as she was walking her two dogs, a 5-year-old cockapoo named Cooper and an 8week-old puppy named Cleo, with her boyfriend, Dennis Pal, and her daughter Wednesday evening in Serena Gundy Park, near Eglinton Ave. E. and Leslie St.
Cooper went to say hello to another dog in the park and it attacked him, she said.
Novikova described the other dog as looking like an American bulldog, big and bulky and white with spots.
She said she got the dog off Cooper, but it then snatched Cleo from her daughter’s arms and shook the puppy around violently.
Her daughter, whom Novikova asked not to be identified, would later need five stitches for a deep gash on her left arm.
Novikova’s boyfriend was able to grab Cleo from the other dog, but the puppy later died. The man and a woman left the park with the other dog after a neighbour called police, she said.
Toronto police Const. David Hopkinson said that the dog’s owner, a man, was arrested Friday night, but did not say whether the arrest was related to the incident in the park.
Hopkinson said he could not comment further because the investigation has been taken over by the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which probes deaths, serious injuries and sexual assaults involving police. Tammy Robbinson of Animal Services said in an email that the dog is in their care and in a 10-day quarantine.
Robbinson said that charges will be laid under the Dog Owners’ Liability Act, and the fines will then be determined by the courts. One possible outcome in this case would be for the dog to be put down, she said.
Another dog owner, Rozeena Khote, said her Samoyed Samus was bitten by a white dog at Sunnybrook Park on May 1.
Khote told the Star that the dog bit Samus’s leg and refused to let go.
The dog’s owners did not restrain their dog or stop the attacks, she said.
Khote posted about the incident on the Sunnybrook Park Facebook page. She says she thinks Samus was bitten by the same dog that killed Cleo.
Novikova said she does not think the dog intended to injure her daughter. “I looked the dog in the eyes, and it didn’t look violent towards humans,” she said.
“It was only going for the puppy, meaning that the dog might not be dangerous for humans.”
She said she does not feel that the attack was the dog’s fault and it should not be punished.
“It would be a problem to kill the dog and let the man go,” Novikova said.
Her daughter agrees. She said she hopes the dog can run free in the sanctuary in a big, open space. With files from Ilya Bañares