DUNCAN, B.C. — A man accused of animal cruelty told an SPCA officer he had been away from home for several months and had returned a week earlier to find his dog with an extremely swollen head.
Despite medical treatment and around-the-clock care, the dog, named Teddy by veterinary staff at the Duncan Animal Hospital, died a day after SPCA officers retrieved him. “I advised him we were seizing the dog because it was in critical distress. I asked him again if it was his dog. He said ‘yes.’ I asked him how long the dog had been like that. He said he had been at the Cowichan longhouse since December and he had been home one week, and the dog was like that when he got home.”“We were speaking in regard to the size of the dog’s head,” Morrison replied.
“The dog was hunched over,” she recalled. “His head was quite low to the ground and he was also standing on what appeared to be a type of wood palette. As I got close I could tell he couldn’t move, the tether was too short.”