By Ian Austen, The New York Times, February 2, 2011
During the Winter Olympics last year, the main attractions in Whistler, British Columbia, were the skiing and sliding events. But tourists looking for something different could also book dog sled rides pulled by teams of “energetic and lovable Alaskan racing huskies.”
The rides were suspended this week after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and animal welfare authorities in British Columbia said they were investigating what they described as an “execution style” shooting of as many as 100 dogs that took place after a business slump in the weeks after the Olympics ended.
Gruesome details of the killings surfaced Monday when a Vancouver radio station, CKNW, obtained a copy of a confidential decision by a workplace compensation board granting compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder to an employee who killed the dogs.
Both the killings and the compensation have outraged many Canadians and, according to the police, prompted serious threats against the company that operated the tours, Outdoor Adventures at Whistler.
“I see a lot of unpleasant things in my job,” said Marcie Moriarty, the general manager of cruelty investigations at the British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which is leading the investigation. “But I had to put this document down a few times before I could get through the whole thing. It’s a horror story.”
The report is a review of an earlier decision denying compensation to the employee, who is not identified. The Workplace Compensation Board of British Columbia, citing privacy laws, would not give information about the worker or his settlement.
The dogs were owned by Howling Dogs Tours Whistler, a company controlled by Outdoor Adventures. Ms. Moriarty said that her inspectors had investigated other complaints about Howling Dogs’ treatment of its animals over the past few years. In the period leading up to the Olympics, she added, the company expanded its operations, moving to Whistler from a smaller town.
Exactly what prompted the killings in April is not clear from the report.
Ms. Moriarty speculated that without the Olympic tourists, Howling Dogs found that it could not afford to carry 300 animals. Graham Aldcroft, the director of operations for Outdoor Adventures, denied that was the case in an e-mail, but he did not offer another explanation.
According to the report, a veterinarian refused to kill healthy dogs. Attempts to find them other homes were unsuccessful. Ms. Moriarty said that because sled dogs usually spend their entire lives outdoors, primarily in the company of other animals, they “are not highly adoptable.”
The killing went on for two days, and several of the deaths were grisly, the compensation board’s report said. When an initial shot failed to kill a dog that was the mother of the employee’s family pet, she ran around with her “cheek blown off and her eye hanging out” until she was felled by a rifle with a scope, according to the report. The bullet also penetrated another dog, which was not supposed to be part of the kill and which suffered for about 15 minutes before dying.
Another dog, left for dead for 20 minutes, emerged from a mass grave only to be shot again, the report said. The employee said he eventually wrapped his arms in foam padding after the frightened dogs began attacking him.
Under Canadian criminal law it is not illegal to kill dogs using a gun, provided it is done without undue suffering. Ms. Moriarty’s officers may dig up the mass grave after the spring thaw.
Outdoor Adventures said in a statement that it had known about the cull, “but it was our expectation that it was done in a proper, legal and humane manner.” The company said that it learned otherwise only on Friday, when it received a copy of the compensation board’s report. The company said that new policies were introduced several months ago to prevent another mass shooting.
The man who shot the dogs remains an employee, the company said.