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Justice for the French Bulldogs of Criadero D Kasta

Justice for the Murdered French Bulldogs of Criadero D Kasta

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Artist Olga Gonorovsky's tribute to the French Bulldogs of Criadero D Kasta

Artist Olga Gonorovsky’s tribute to the murdered French Bulldogs of Criadero D Kasta

New Years Eve is a time for all of us to look back at the year that has gone by, and to look hopefully towards the future. However, for Tania Cáceres and Angel Aguayo of Quito, Ecuador, New Years Eve 2013 became the day when their entire world came crashing down.

Tania, who breeds French Bulldogs under the kennel prefix “D Kasta”, is understandably distraught, but she took the time to explain to me what happened on that evening. Zeeba Sanchez translated for us.

On the night of December 31 we were at home with family. My kids were in their kennels like every night. We Waited until 12 am to celebrate the new year and then continued talking at home.

At 1am approx , we received a call that we did not answer because it was family time , about an hour later we listened to the message, which said mockingly “Happy New Year Dkasta ” .

Before we went to bed around 3:00 a.m., I looked through the window at my (dogs) and everything seemed normal. The next day I woke up with the mom who (had nursing puppies) , and we went outside together to give her a break and let my (other dogs out of their kennels) like every morning.

As I walked closer I did not see the normal lifting up of heads or greetings. I discovered they were all dead.

Because of the despair that I felt upon discovering my dead children, I did not realize that the mom who came out with me had found a piece of sausage on the lawn and had ingested it without my realizing it. She died in my arms while I tried desperately to save her by giving her milk and oil. A recipe I had heard was effective to apply in these cases. The poison was so strong that in less than 5 minutes after her initial pain, she was gone like her brothers and sisters.

In total, Criadero D’ Kasta lost twelve dogs – the nursing mother, her siblings, some younger puppies, and the American Bulldog guard dog meant to ‘protect’ the French Bulldogs. In all of the kennel runs, pieces of poisoned sausage were found next to the corpses of the dead dogs (warning: disturbing imagery).

The shock, horror and heartbreak of experiencing something like this is literally unimaginable, but what happened next has thrown Tania and Angel even further into despair. Ecuadorean authorities are unable to prosecute anyone for this crime, because what happened isn’t even actually a crime. Tatiana Packer is researching this further, but it seems that under current Ecuadorean law, there is no enforceable law currently in effect to criminalize the abuse or even murder of dog. Furthermore, Ecuadorean journalists aren’t even interested in covering this story, because poisoning deaths of dogs in the country are an increasingly common occurrence – common enough that the press feels the public has lost interest in hearing about them.

I can’t imagine living in a country where the poisoning of dogs is such a humdrum event that the media aren’t even interested in covering the story. Then again, with the rate that dog park poisonings are on the rise in Toronto, San Francisco and other parts of North America, that day might not be too far in the future. 

Angel and Tania have been overwhelmed with the support they’ve received from the world wide French Bulldog community, but it’s time to spread their story to the rest of the world, and to do this, they need your help to get justice for the murdered French Bulldogs of Criadero D Kasta.

Here’s what you can do:

  1. Sign the petition to the change the laws regarding dog crimes in Ecuador.
    This petition will be sent to Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa. amd to the Government of Ecuador, asking them to create and enforce laws making harming or killing dogs a crime. The petition is in Spanish, but you can sign it in any language, and signatures from around the world are welcome and encouraged. Signers from the USA will find their country listed under États-Unis.
  2. Tweet this story, and your outrage, using the hashtag #JusticiaDkasta , and follow JusticiaDkasta on Twitter.
  3. A well known European breeder has offered to donate two French Bulldogs to Tania and Angel, to help to fill the terrible holes left in their lives. Like me, Zofia does not ship her puppies cargo, and the cost of having a puppy nanny hand carry the two new pups from Poland to Ecuador is almost $3,000. If you can, please donate to help to cover their travel costs.Note: I have used this same puppy nanny, and can attest that their services are skilled, caring and second to none. I can also attest that this sum seems minimal, considering what I paid just to bring two puppies from Europe to Canada, a journey of half the distance. I would not share this fund raiser if I did not have complete confidence in Zofia, the puppy nanny, and the organizer of the fund raiser. I know that there are others who have offered to send puppies (including one heart breakingly generous offer from an Autistic girl who offered to donate her own pet French Bulldog), but I don’t know any of them personally, and don’t know anything about any fund raising efforts other than this one.
  4. Network and Share! Re share this story on Facebook, Twitter and on your own blog. Do you have friends in media, in publicity, in the entertainment field? Ask them to share this story. The more voices me make heard, the better the chances for justice for the dogs of Criadero D’ Kasta.
  5. Join the Facebook Page – Justice for the French Bulldogs of Criadero D Kasta
    Updates on the case, along with photographs and news, will be shared via this page. A lot of government officials pay close attention to how many ‘likes and shares’ stories like this get on Facebook. Let’s use that to our advantage.

Please note: There are a lot of photographs relating to this case, including graphic and disturbing shots of the dogs. I’ve chosen to use only one graphic photo, but to me, the one that best illustrates the heart breaking depth of this loss is the one Tania put on her Facebook page. It shows the view from her patio before New Year’s Eve, December 31st 2013, and her view today.

I look at my own dogs, and I can’t imagine the immeasurable hole that would be left in my heart, and in my life, if all I saw were the empty spaces where my dogs had been.

Justice for the French Bulldogs of Criadero D Kasta

 

 Thank you to Tatian Packer, Criadero D Kasta, Richard Rockford, Zofia Buczkowska, Zeeba Sanchez and everyone else who assisted with this post, and who has set up the fundraisers and petitions.

Where did your puppy come from? Pt 2

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Yesterday, I wrote about CAPS (Companion Animal Protection Society) fight against Kathy Bauck, of Pick of the Litter Puppies aka Puppies on Wheels. If you haven’t yet, please watch the CAPS documentary.

Today, I’m going to write about the fall out from the Kathy Bauck investigation, and how it applies to all of us. Next week, I’ll write about the implications of this case for Canadian Breeders, and for Agriculture Canada.

Let me put it to you bluntly – consider this my declaration of war.

Read more →

French Bulldog Puppy Mill Rescue – Live Blogging Friday

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Ginger, a French Bulldog helped through rescue

This is Ginger - another puppy mill rescue. Her full story is coming on Monday. This is Ginger AFTER gaining weight, by the way.

 

Just a quick update that, thanks to some dedicated Chicago French Bulldog Rescue volunteers, I’m going to be live blogging as much of Friday’s puppy mill rescue efforts as possible.

No updates will be possible from the auction itself (and there are police on hand to make sure of that, which is pretty much the height of irony), but as soon as the auction is done, and from the staging areas onwards, we’ll be getting you news just as soon as we possibly can.

Check in through out the day on Friday, for news as soon as we have it, including photos and video.

These Frenchies are going to need a LOT of veterinary attention, so please – continue spreading the word and encouraging people to give. Once they’re out of the puppy mill, the real job of ‘rescuing’ them will just be starting!

 

Whistler Dog Slaughter Stuns Canadians

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Whistler Sled Dogs Slaughtered

Howling Dog team photo, from their website archive

Living near the Bruce Peninsula, I’ve always been tempted to try a day of dog sledding. I’m not usually one for outdoor winter sports, but sledding has always appealed to me. I’ve got a great deal of respect for the historic traditions behind sledding, which for so long was a major method of transportation and survival in the Far North. I’ve even teased American friends on occasion by telling them that we’re thrilled to finally have our mail delivered by truck, instead of by dog sled (and it’s somewhat scary how many of them have actually believed me, initially, at least. The giggling usually gives me away).

Of course, in the last century dog sledding has become more and more anachronistic. Most Inuit get around by snow mobile now, and dog sledding has been relegated to either the diehard old timers, or to tourists, like me, who’re looking for a taste of Tundra adventure. The “adventure tour” craze has led to a glut of “dog sledding” companies, which will take tourists out for an hour or even a few days.

One such outfit in British Columbia was banking, big time, that the Vancouver Winter Olympics were going to be an economic goldmine for them. With the post Olympic tourism slump came the reality that they had an awful lot of high energy dogs to feed, exercise and care for.

Their solution? Slaughter them all, by shotgun.

From CTV:

Police and the B.C. SPCA are investigating “horrific” reports that the general manager for a Whistler tour company slaughtered at least 100 healthy sled dogs last year, dumping their bodies into a mass grave.

The employee at a dog-sledding company now owned by Outdoor Adventures Whistler filed a WorkSafe BC claim for post-traumatic stress in May 2010 after shooting dozens of dogs to death.

“It’s horrific,” Marcie Moriarty, general manager for SPCA cruelty investigations, told ctvbc.ca.

“I’ve seen some pretty terrible things, but reading this [claim], I had to put it down at times.”

The slaughter was conducted on April 21 and 23. In his claim, the worker wrote that he had killed 70 dogs, but the company corrected that number to 100.

The dogs were killed because of a “slow winter season” after the Winter Olympics, according to WorkSafe BC documents.

The owners of the company aren’t denying that they ordered the employee to kill the dogs – heck, they even upped the final total, as noted above. In fact, their only defense is that they “assumed” that the slaughter had been done in a “humane manner”.
Outdoor Adventures says the cull was conducted by the manager of its subsidiary company Howling Dog Tours.

“It was our expectation that it was done in a proper, legal and humane manner. We only learned otherwise on Friday, January 28 when we read the WCB ruling for the first time,” Outdoor Adventures said in a release.

From the employee’s report, the last thing anyone could call the deaths of these dogs is “humane” –

.. The worker describes chasing after a dog that survived a shot to the face: “Although she had the left side of her cheek blown off and her eye hanging out, he was unable to catch her.”

Another apparently dead dog was dumped into the grave. “‘Nora,’ who he had shot approximately 20 minutes before, was crawling around in the mass grave he had dug for the animals. He had to climb down into the grave amidst the 10 or so bodies already there and put her out of her misery.”

According to the claim, the dogs panicked as they watched their compatriots being killed, and attacked the worker as he finished his job.

At one point during the slaughter, he ran out of ammunition and had to kill an aggressive dog with a knife.

“By that point he wanted nothing more than to stop the ‘nightmare’ but he continued because he had been given a job to finish,” according to the documents.

“He stated that he felt ‘numb.'”

As much as I want to feel sympathy for this employee, who claims he was “just following orders”, I fail to see how anyone who describes himself as being “emotionally attached to the dogs” could then kill them in such a gruesome manner.

You couldn’t put an ad on Craigs List? You could call the local shelters? You couldn’t call the police, and tell them you were being ordered by the heartless automatons who sign your paycheck to slaughter perfectly healthy dogs?

I’m sorry, but I’m not buying it.  When you choose to follow the orders of monsters, you become a monster yourself, and this whole thing is nothing short of monstrous.

Cruelty beyond boundaries

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Cj Needs a Miracle

Sometimes, it seems like just yesterday to me – a time when no one knew what a French Bulldog was. If you were walking one, the most common question was “Is that a Boston/Pug/Bulldog?” (quickly followed by “did you crop his ears?”).

If you wanted a Frenchie, you had to search for one, and you had to be prepared to wait. I searched and waited almost a year for my first Frenchie, and my first show Frenchie was a year and change search that had me flying cross continent into the buckle of the bible belt.

In rescue, a single dog in need was a big deal – big enough that we all knew the back story, where the dog had come from, what it had been through. If you’ve been around for a while, you remember the story that shocked all of us to the core – the little puppy mill Frenchie who’d been living in a chicken coop, one ear cut off, possibly to get rid of her identifying AKC tattoo. A rescue was usually just that – a needy dog, taken out of a horrible situation. There weren’t many abandoned or unwanted French Bulldogs, even fewer strays (I can’t recall any, actually, or if they were strays it was only until their frantic owners tracked them down).

Times have changed for our breed, however. You can’t look at a rescue page without reading about a French Bulldog dumped at a shelter, or given up by an owner who doesn’t want it any more. Even the “rare” Frenchies are turning up in rescue now – FBRN has had a Blue French Bulldog or two in their care, given up by owners who apparently didn’t place value on either their dog, or the $6,000 they paid for him.

We even have strays – dogs found wandering, and unclaimed. French Bulldogs that no one bothered to look for. Inconceivable, not very long ago – common place, today.

CJ is one of those dogs – found wandering on the streets of a southern town, CJ ended up in a pen at a kill shelter, just one more dog that no one wanted, and that no one bothered to look for. CJ’s time was running out, but the French Bulldog Village won him his freedom, and he made the trip north to Canada, along with Peanut.

CJ has been fostering with FBV/ECFBC Rescue Volunteer Karen, in Beamsville, Ontario. I met CJ, and I envied Karen getting to share her house with the big galoot.

CJ is all happiness and affection – a leg leaner, pressing against you for comfort, smiling his big goof ball Frenchie grin at everyone he meets. His back legs are wobbly, and he has the occasional accident, but he’s a good boy at heart who tries his best to make you happy, and who we were optimistic was going to make someone a fabulous companion.

Then, over the past weekend, CJ became ill, vomiting and unable to keep his food down. When he stopped eating, foster mom Karen knew something was very wrong, and rushed him to the vet’s office.

What she found stunned her, and has stunned me – CJ has been shot, not once, not even twice, but at least three times. Embedded in his body are three BB Gun pellets, two in his chest and one in his leg. He has peritonitis, possibly from the perforation that one of the bullets left in his body caused.  They’re going to have to open up his abdomen, insert drains and put him on IV antibiotics.

Some time in CJ’s past, perhaps while he was wondering lost and alone on a dark southern street, someone saw him and, rather than wanting to help him or alleviate his fear, aimed a gun and shot him. Three times.

There are moments when the very thankfulness and gratitude that I wrote about just two days ago seem to slip out of my grasp. There are times when I feel, when anyone who rescues can only feel, overwhelmed by the amount of cruelty that exists in the world.

This is one of those times.

If you ever meet CJ, a little dog who only wants to make everyone his friend, look into his soft brown eyes – and now imagine, instead of being moved by him, deciding to aim a gun at him instead.

CJ needs what we’ve already asked you for so recently – CJ needs a miracle. His vet bills are $1,100.00 so far, and he’s on his way to the University of Guelph (where Ema will be receiving her surgery).  Their estimate for his care is $1500 – $2,000.

If you can help CJ, please visit his page on the French Bulldog Village website, and click the paypal button at the bottom of the page. Again, as with Ema, every dollar counts.

In our own tiny attempt to fund raise for CJ, I’m going to do something I’d always said I never would – I’m going to put ads on my blog. If you donate $250 or more to CJ’s care, I’ll place your banner on the bottom of every post on my blog, for six months. A pretty good deal, since we get well over 30,000 visitors a month.

What a bargain! Make your donation via CJ’s paypal button, and note that you want to run an ad on this blog, and I’ll get it set up. Heck, I’ll even design the banner for you. Ads are limited to three, due to space considerations.

Do you have your own fund raising idea for CJ? Tell us about it – let’s try to get this big happy boy, who’s had such bad luck with the people he’s met in his life, that there are people out there who care.

If you can’t donate to CJ’s care, please please – spread the word about him. Share his story on twitter, facebook or on any mailing lists you’re on. CJ needs a miracle – let’s be his angels.

If I haven’t managed to convince you yet, watch CJ’s video – and now remember those bullets.