12/03/2024
Several people wondered why I stayed silent during the September online defamation and video release. My lawyer advised against addressing the video at that time. I’m breaking the silence now to clear up misconceptions about myself and my business, even though I know the gossip and ignorance will continue regardless.
The unedited video footage pertaining to the situation in question depicts a dog jumping at me to bite my hand and my attempts to free my bitten hands, and then keeping the aggressive dog at a distance while trying to secure it in order to bring it inside and out of the cold. This isolated event in question, being circulated online happened back in March. The incident and video footage were investigated by the Alberta SPCA professionals. There were no Police or Animal Control investigations, though the male owner of the dog has claimed such. The SPCA’s animal behaviour specialists and investigating team have a job to investigate animal abuse allegations seriously and they did their due diligence with proper education and skills. There were many factors that were taken into account during the investigation, and the SPCA came to the conclusion that no animal abuse charges were warranted toward me. SPCA can’t release those documents and results to outside parties due to privacy reasons, so calling to harass them was pointless for the people who felt the SPCA did an inadequate job.
Given the extreme circumstances as they happened, and sustaining bite injuries from the dog through winterized nitrile gloves, the only means to stop the escalation of dog aggression was using what was readily available for human protection to safely bring the dog indoors. The dog was not injured or traumatized.
The lead video circulating from my business was stolen by my manager back in March, shared with another employee, and kept a secret by the employees, to be used against me when it benefited them the most. As previously mentioned, this event was investigated and dealt with several months ago. It recently resurfaced because the video was released online by that disgruntled terminated employee who it was previously shared with. Those employees breached their employment contracts and manipulated the events in question to those they spoke to, or shared online with.
As personal and animal safety were in jeopardy during the course of events, split second decisions were made to keep both parties as safe as possible. I appreciated all who chose to look at it with an open mind and who didn’t jump to irrational conclusions. During all eight years of business operations, myself and my business had a great reputation, and as nothing of this nature has happened before, common sense and deductive reasoning should have been used. When regular dogs attending daycare were excited to come and participate and left happy, that should have been evidence enough that the footage and defamation statements were taken out of context.
I received devastating backlash from ignorant and hateful people through social media, by email, texts, messages, and calls extending through the month. Due to such harassment, abuse, threats to my life and safety, and the defamation ruining my reputation, I had been forced to rethink the dynamic of my business going forward. Unfortunately there are too many hateful, ignorant, and uneducated people in this city when it comes to dog behaviours and a dog business.
The majority of people don’t have the full context of the situation that happened at daycare back in March when that dog unpredictably and aggressively bit me. I know that fast footage without sound doesn’t depict the situation properly. Some videos circulating online had also been edited and cropped, or rearranged, so it was harder to view properly and in full context. When real dog behaviour professionals viewed the full footage critically or in slow motion, the events could be interpreted properly to reveal there wasn’t any abuse to the dog.
If people genuinely cared about the person and dog involved in the footage, they’d have came to the source to find out the truth of what happened that day, instead of making awful assumptions and jumping to false conclusions. The ex employee posting the lies online, was still employed at the time and was supposed to work that day. They were half an hour late for opening the business, and when they arrived, two sibling dogs they were dog-sitting escaped out of their vehicle and ran down the street. When they acquired the escaped dogs and arrived at work again, they didn’t have their key to get inside. The employee had called me in distress to explain the situations as they unfolded. I determined that employee was not in the right frame of mind to be working in my daycare that day based on our phone conversations. I made arrangements with another employee to arrive and take over the shift so the frazzled employee could go home, as they requested that would be appreciated if possible. When the dog in the video arrived in a high anxiety state, she tried to bite another dog on her way to the door, was redirected quickly to prevent it, and was put outside to do her business and to hopefully decompress a bit. She began pacing outside and barking. The video footage doesn’t have audio so only those of us present could hear it.
That morning came with a sudden drop in temperature along with several inches of snow. The metal frame on the door to the yard was more resistant to opening gently and struggled closing securely without using more strength. I put on thicker winter nitrile gloves and I stepped outside where the dog suddenly jumped upwards at me and bit my right hand. The bite caught me by surprise and she pulled me forward and down. While going down, I tried to maintain a safe position in an attempt to free my bitten hand. I knelt next to the dog in the snow but attempts to pull my hand out of her mouth were futile with her wild movements. When she tried to snap and redirect to my free hand, I was able to pull my bitten hand free. I got the first hand free only for the dog to connect more firmly to my other hand. I realized the dog was mentally unstable and my safety was compromised being close to her. I was determined to get distance from her to protect myself from more injury. I managed to stand up while the dog was still thrashing violently and attached to my hand. But as she continued her bite on my hand, her whole body came off the ground and up with my hand. I utilized the momentum of gravity to jolt my arms and try release her off my hand and it worked. There was no punching, pinning, or kicking involved at any time. I left her outside and went inside to assess the damage to my hands, as I figured I was bleeding inside the glove. I communicated with my staff to call the owners to pick up their dog, and I took a few seconds before figuring out how to try get the dog safely back inside, while also keeping myself safe.
The decision to bring the dog inside right after she bit me required many factors. It was too cold and snowy for the dog to safely stay outside any longer, an owner was on the way to pick up their dog, the owners weren’t permitted into the main zone for liability reasons, the dog had major separation anxiety outside, and the dog was stressing out the dogs inside with its incessant scream barking. When a dog is that unpredictable and aggressive, using a catch pole would have been the best method to contain it, but unfortunately one was not available. I have an extensive screening process for dogs being admitted into my daycare so situations like this aren’t supposed to happen, so we don’t keep a catch pole on hand. In the footage it’s near impossible to see the thrashing and snapping of teeth with lunging attempts, and you can’t hear the sounds coming from that dog, as the dog attacked my hands aggressively, then was fighting the broom stick and making aggressive attempts and lunges anytime the leash was relaxed. You can’t hear the bite power in her jaws as she chomped them while staring at me with body getting positioned ready to jump again. I used the broom, the leash, and held up my foot at one point to keep space between us. My goal was to keep the dog at a distance at all times, and hopefully try reason with her to just sit and relax so I could get her inside calmly and gently. I hoped she would be more calm to enter the building in order to prevent pack tension from the other dogs inside sensing her aggressive energy. It was proven that I did not cause any injury or harm to the dog.
I acted the way I did to protect myself from further attack, and still tried to do what I thought best for the dog to bring it inside from the cold and prevent more anxiety. Many dog professionals are sadly put in positions such as this and too often, are judged harshly for their decisions during the matter. A few of those educated and experienced professionals have spoken up to give me support in my actions.
When the dog’s female owner picked up the dog, she was apologetic and admitted she had been bit by her dog unpredictably a few times as well. She said that her dog seemed to have been targeting women more than men, and the bites had been escalating lately toward their family members. I suggested she seek professional dog training, said that her dog was suspended from daycare, which the owner understood, and she decided it was time to seek professional training for her dog. She confessed the dog was not medicated for that day of daycare as she was supposed to be, as the dog had been every other few visits prior to that one, and wondered if that’s what escalated her reactions.
I sustained a significant open wound to my finger along the joint that I have photo time stamped evidence of, and personal witnesses to prove. The female owner also saw the fresh wound. I sustained this injury through the rubber of the gloves, where pieces of the glove had to be removed from my bloody finger using tweezers. That finger also ended up with minor nerve damage. I sustained multiple bruises on the tops of my hands through the most padded part of the gloves, as well as limited thumb mobility due to a large swollen pressure wound on my palm caused by the severe biting. My arm sustained several bruises from the dog’s thrashing limbs, and so did my thigh.
The dog left my premises without an injury, and was behaving normal to its female owner upon pick up. The absence of a vet visit was confirmed by the SPCA’s officer involved in the investigation, and the trainer who saw the dog for a consult shortly after. The dog never went to the vet because it never needed it.
The male owner of the dog stayed silent for weeks after the incident until he tried to capitalize on the situation for his own personal gain. He tried to hide behind a fake profile on Facebook, to discredit me and my business at the start of April. He claimed there was an SPCA investigation ongoing at that moment, but there wasn’t to my knowledge. I wasn’t notified of an SPCA investigation against me, until the end of April. I was fully cooperative, and it took a while for them to investigate it in their due diligence. The SPCA’s trained behaviour analyst team reviewed the full video footage frame by frame in slow motion, to see it for all aspects, and determined no abuse had occurred to the dog, as was being claimed.
The dog owner tried to claim online there was a police investigation but there wasn’t. The owner used the September defamation online to start campaigning a fraudulent gofundme, 6 months after the incident, claiming he needed money for recent ongoing vet bills and trauma, as a way to gain monetary advancement. If there is trauma for that dog, it was not caused by me, and unfortunately was already there. The male owner continues to claim that I self-inflicted my wounds, or that they never happened at all. He has never taken accountability for his dog’s unacceptable behaviour, and redirects blame to me instead. More people should be questioning why this dog has severe anxiety that requires extensive medications, and is randomly biting its owners on multiple occasions.
It’s unfortunate the ex employee chose to release my private property video footage online after they knew there was no charge of abuse. The terminated and upset employee had vindictive motives against myself and my business to damage my reputation, then secure my clientele by any means possible for their own dog sitting and dog walking ventures instead, as they were in the process of rebranding and building their business bigger. They claimed to be concerned about the matter of all the dogs’ safety, yet stayed silent for over 6 months, and stayed working for and promoting someone they claimed was abusive to dogs in the entirety of their five years of service. In their years of employment, not once did they mention an issue with our methods.
It’s unfortunate the ex staff claimed they had no ill intent by posting such private footage they unrightfully acquired. For the other four staff that chose to side with that employee, and made more false statements claiming there was abuse during the entirety of my operations, is absurd. If dogs were being abused for the five years my manager was employed for, as she claimed was happening for the entirety, she is complicit working for someone so awful without ever reporting it, while continuing to promote my business’ services. Claiming to not have proof until now is untrue as she had video access for years and could have gathered evidence in that time, if there was any.
It’s devastating that my 8 year reputation could be permanently damaged by such ill minded ignorance and such deceit in this city. Too many people anthropomorphize dogs and view them as children, when in reality, they are canines. That doesn’t mean they should be mistreated, but also means that a human’s safety becomes priority over the dog when the dog becomes aggressive. Dogs can be handled in a way that human children can’t be (such as crate training), and dogs shouldn’t be viewed as helpless babies. Dogs learn how to act based on their humans actions or lack thereof, and too often dog owners treat them as helpless children and cause their dog behavioural problems. There’s a healthy balance when bringing a dog into the family dynamic, as they can feel like your fur baby, but that doesn’t mean they should be treated the same as a child. Dogs can be loved as much as a child, but that doesn’t mean they are one. Dogs are still dogs and should be treated accordingly. Most of the people who understand this logic, also understand the situation at hand, and would have done the same thing as I did. Unfortunately there are too many people who overly anthropomorphize their dogs and they’re the ones who ruin it for the others. I’m saddened for my remaining loyal and logical clients who this backlash negatively affected as well.
Those that know me would know I always have and always will love and adore animals. I would never abuse any animal, and I loved my client dogs like my own family. I appreciated my loyal clients’ unwavering support and understanding during this chaotic and stressful time. I apologize for having to close my doors in such an abrupt manner on several occasions. We hoped this would have been resolved sooner and that I could have gotten back to business as usual, but my safety was put at risk, along with other factors.
My daycare had structure with boundaries and we reinforced positive behaviours, but never condoned treating dogs abusively. As my full time manager took online courses for training the last couple years, she learned new methods for teaching and correcting unwanted dog behaviours. I was always receptive to learning those new techniques and styles to improve our methods for myself and all my staff. I understood methods changed through the years and those came with new understanding of techniques. I was happy to adapt and change our methods accordingly to always improve and do what was best for the dogs. I never approved of dogs to be treated with malicious intent or aggressive handling.
With recent events, I sadly learned several of my staff didn’t know how to analyze dog behaviours as well as they were trained to do, or with how they claimed to have previous experience with. I learned some staff had some vested interest in pursuing my business’ demise. I will never understand why four staff chose to quit in the manner they did, and mimicked each other’s “former employee” statements posted only minutes apart online. If so many of my staff were so unhappy and concerned about dog handling, I was the last to know it by the way they recently mentioned loving their jobs and for wanting to grow with my company. They led me to believe they admired me as their employer, and through all their previous jobs, I was the employer that treated them the best. If they were all so convinced I abused the dog in question, there’s no logic as to why they stayed six months after the fact, and were so kind to my face leading up to the day of the defamation online.
I can only hope my explanation sheds some light on the reality of events, and can help others enlighten those who cast any doubt on who I am, and how I operated my daycare. I tried my best to salvage my business for October after such violent destruction to mine and its reputation. I wanted to continue to be there for my loyal clients in the way they knew and trusted me to always be, and I was able to do so for that last month. I’m devastated to say that the damage done is irreparable, and I have chosen to close my doors permanently. There are several factors behind this heartbreaking decision, but in the end it is my choice above all else, and I need to do what’s best and safest for me and my family. It has been a pleasure working with those of you who had my back and never doubted mine or my business’ integrity. I appreciate the people who have seen past the dishonesty and misinformation spread online, and reached out to me in kindness and understanding. I value the people who have chosen logic over lies in unwavering loyalty and trust. I will be forever grateful to all you wonderful humans and your lovely dogs for your love, kindness and support, and for trusting your furry family members in my care. Dogs really are the best judge of character, and they knew their paws were always in good hands with me.
Sincerely, Sam H
