100 dogs slaughtered..warning..graphic content

100 healthy sled dogs slaughtered in Whistler, B.C.

An official of the SPCA in British Columbia says word of a mass slaughter of sled dogs in Whistler last April 21 and 23 warrants a criminal investigation. Traditional sled dogs run in the gang line near Churchill, Man. on Hudson Bay, Thursday, Nov. 8, 2007. (Jonathan Hayward / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Updated: Mon Jan. 31 2011 13:00:53

CTV.ca News Staff
The SPCA in British Columbia along with the RCMP are investigating a report that a Whistler tour company slaughtered 100 healthy sled dogs last year after business slowed and new homes could not be found for the animals.
Staff. Sgt. Steve LeClair, of Whistler RCMP, confirmed his detachment has opened a file, but said the primary investigator on the case will be the SPCA.
Marcie Moriarty, general manager for cruelty investigations with the BC SPCA, tells ctvbc.ca that the investigation was launched after a worker at Outdoor Adventures Whistler filed a WorkSafe BC claim for post-traumatic stress after being ordered to kill dozens of dogs.
Moriarty said the report suggests the slaughter was conducted over three days last April. The worker said he was ordered to carry out the cull after business slowed following the 2010 Olympic Games.
In the documents, the worker describes a dog that survived a shot to the face: "Its eye was hanging off, and it was still running around," Moriarty told ctvbc.ca. Another apparently dead dog was dumped into the mass grave, but the worker later noticed the animal trying to pull itself out.
Moriarty said it's technically legal to shoot an animal, as long as it dies instantly. "That most certainly did not happen in this instance," she said.
She added that lethal injections supervised by a veterinarian would have been the more humane way to cull the dogs.
She said the SPCA will now have to dig up the mass grave to complete its investigation.
Outdoor Adventures Whistler did not contest the report detailed in the WorkSafe documents, except to note that 100 were actually destroyed rather than the 70 dogs that the worker claimed in his report.
Graham Aldcroft, a spokesman for Outdoor Adventures Whistler says the sled dog cull was "tragic and regrettable."
But he noted that Outdoor Adventures had only a financial stake in the company that actually conducted the sled dog tours, called Howling Dog Tours. He says the worker who made the WorkSafe BC claim had full operational control of Howling Dog.
"While we were aware of the relocation and euthanization of dogs at Howling Dog Tours, we were completely unaware of the details of the incident until reading the... document Sunday," Aldcroft said in a statement.
He noted that Outdoor Adventures took over control of Howling Dogs in May, after the reported dog cull, and said it is now company policy that animals needing to be euthanized are treated at a vet's office.

 

That's fucked! Anyone with a heart who actually gave a shit about those doggies wouldn't have done that. Poor babies

 

i hate that it makes the news now?..i would have taken a dog in

 

Exactly.. I'm sure plenty of animal lovers would've!

 

I couldn't even read all that. The money. Always the fucken money.

 

This is sickening.

They stopped being a money maker as the tourists were not there to meet that demand and they are expendable. What a sad statement on humanity.

 

this breaks my heart. =( it reminds me of a video i watched about raccoons being skinned alive in china and then watching the bloody, skinless animals still trying to escape the horribly HUGE pile of corpses. i couldn't have killed those poor dogs if it was my job or not. i'd quit before i could do that.

 

Whats happening every day in meat prodution is way worse...