A MASTER’S GRIEF
Senior mourns brutal death of his dog, the only “family” he ever had,
Kurt Haupt cared for his dachshund Dacky as if she was his child.
Like a new parent, the 81-year-old man pored over books about his companion, took her to the vet if he saw she’d lost weight and cooked her treats himself.
That was until last week, when Dacky was killed by four cane corso mastiffs that attacked her in Centennial Park. The dogs’ 46-year-old owner was arrested Tuesday, police said. Five dogs were seized by animal services.
“I heard her squeak . . . that’s when I realized she was dead,” Haupt said. He was dropping his cane off at his car metres away, to be able to pick her up, when he saw the large darkbrown dogs approaching.
Haupt called for her but she wouldn’t come. “Actually, she moved a couple feet towards them to say hello; she didn’t know they were unfriendly.”
One of the dogs mauled her back and, Haupt figures, “crushed her spine.” That’s when the others charged her.
Haupt, helpless, couldn’t rescue her, having to back off from the vicious dogs himself.
When the owner, named by police as Kiriakos (Kirk) Nendos, finally got hold of his dogs, it was too late.
“He never said one word; he just took off like that, as fast as he could,” Haupt said.
Nendos faces one mischief charge for interfering “with lawful enjoyment of property,” according to the Toronto Police news release on the case. He appeared in court Tuesday.
“Did you ever get punched in the nose without realizing that?” Haupt said as he softly motioned a hit to his nose. “That’s the way I felt when the first dog bit her from the rear.”
Cane corsos were bred to hunt boars and may have mistaken Dacky for small prey, said Krista Macpherson, director of Western University’s Dog Cognition Lab and a PhD candidate in psychology.
She added it’s not uncommon for cane corsos to be aggressive, so they need to be socialized as puppies.
“I would have a hard time believing that if it just grabbed the dog and killed it that way, that the owner had never seen any instances of aggression in the animals before.”
Macpherson said many dogs seized or surrendered are a result of owners not understanding “what breed they’re getting themselves into.”
Nendos made a court appearance last August for a charge of allegedly uttering death threats, the Star learned.
Borys Lewitski, who was walking his dog in Centennial Park on Wednesday, said the incident made him wary. “To see his family destroyed in front of him like that, it’s a terrible thing.”
Haupt got Dacky, who was brown with a caramel muzzle and eyebrows, on Sept. 8, 2001, a year after he retired from his job as a machinist. He’d taken a trip to his native Germany and became close with his nephew’s dachshund.
“I knew I had to do something to be active, not to just sit in my apartment and watch TV.”
Haupt said he never married or had children and “that’s why that dog was my baby . . . This dog was the most gentle and affectionate dog you could possibly think.”
Dacky was the size of his hand the first time Haupt saw her. Her absence is felt in his home. Her carrier sits empty next to the door and a bookshelf opposite his couch contains many books about dachshunds. “When I wake up in the morning and I get into my head, my breathing goes much, much faster,” he said, adding that he believed it would be less painful over time.
But, he said, “I never ever will forget the incident — or my dog.”
With files from Michael Robinson and Brennan Doherty.