Thursday, 28 Mar 2024

‘It’s been very unjust’: Punky the dog destroyed after lengthy legal battle

A summer afternoon at a popular park in Vancouver that lead to a multi-year legal fight has ended with the euthanasia of Punky, a four-year-old Australian cattle dog.

In August 2017, Susan Santics was playing fetch with her dog Punky at Vancouver’s Locarno Park. After one final throw for the day, Santics said Punky was distracted and ran to a woman who was lying on a towel near a tree.

Punky then bit the woman below the knee, breaking the skin and causing what was described in court as “multiple puncture wounds, including a deep puncture to her right leg and punctures to her right hand, as well as scrapes, swelling and bruising.”

Punky was seized by Vancouver Animal Control on Sept. 13, 2017. Court documents included a description of how the dog reacted when an animal control officer approached.

“The officer testified that she found Punky in the yard, unmuzzled and lunging at her,” the documents read. “She attempted for about an hour to restrain Punky for transportation in her vehicle, but was unsuccessful.”

On Thursday, standing outside of the Vancouver Animal Control building on Raymur Avenue — where Punky had been kept alone in a kennel for more two and a half years — Santics refuted the claims.

Because she represented herself in the original trial in July of 2018, Santics said she wasn’t clear about the process and she was unable to fight against what she called a lot of misinformation.

“It’s been very unjust,” she said. “I wasn’t represented and I should have had a retrial.”

Punky was found to be a dangerous dog and ordered destroyed in July 2018 by a B.C. Provincial Court judge. Later that year, in December, the case was heard in the B.C. Court of Appeal.

By this point, animal law lawyer and UBC Allard School of Law Adjunct Professor Victoria Shroff was involved, fighting to save Punky’s life.

“Killing a dog should not be the first avenue we go down. It should be more about how can we do things to keep the public safe,” she said on Thursday, just hours before the scheduled euthanization of Punky.

“These things are really solvable with a muzzle order. There are easy solutions.”

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