Dog shootings spur complaint Killings in Jonesboro criticized

JONESBORO – The director of the Maine Animal Control Association said Thursday that he is filing a complaint with the state Department of Agriculture in connection with last week’s fatal shooting of seven dogs by a district humane agent.

Bruce Savoy said he believes Peter Mosher, acting director of the animal welfare program in the Agriculture Department, violated animal welfare law when he authorized Humane Agent Steve Ewer to use a .45-caliber pistol to kill the dogs when they began attacking each other Nov. 27 after a plan to euthanize them by lethal injection went awry.

Mosher said in an interview earlier this week that the animals had become agitated and were turning on each other in an unexpected response to a sedative that was intended to make them drowsy.

The dogs had belonged to John Hughes, 49, of Jonesboro, who had died in a fire at his trailer a week earlier.

Mosher has said the late owner’s brother at first wanted to put the dogs up for adoption, but decided, once he visited Jonesboro and saw the animals, that they were too vicious to go to a family.

Mosher also said he asked Ewer to shoot the dogs because the veterinarian who was to inject the animals was unable to enter their 50-foot-by-50-foot pen and that Ewer and a sheriff’s deputy at the scene were unable to find anyone who had access to a tranquilizer gun.

The drugs used in tranquilizer guns are legally controlled substances, and on Nov. 27 a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife in Jonesboro was the only person in the area with authority to use such a tranquilizer. And he could not be reached that day.

Ewer has referred questions about the shootings to his supervisors.

But Savoy said Thursday that he had spoken to a state humane agent who had a tranquilizer gun who had been willing to travel from Auburn to Jonesboro. There was no need for “the slaughter,” Savoy said.

Savoy said state law prohibits humane agents from killing dogs and cats with a gun, except in emergencies.

If an emergency occurs, the agent must induce “instantaneous death by a single shot,” Savoy said.

Savoy said he has spoken with Heather Geel, the Jonesboro animal control officer, who told him Ewer used approximately 15 rounds of ammunition. Geel could not be reached Thursday evening, but Mosher said earlier this week that Ewer had fired seven to 14 rounds.

As director of the Maine Animal Control Association, Savoy leads an organization that represents animal control officers throughout the state. The association says part of its mission is to “protect the well-being of all animals, domestic or wild” and “to enforce without prejudice all state and local laws relevant to all animals.”

Mosher said his decision to authorize the shooting was based on evidence that the dogs had already crippled one of their own and were continuing to attack, that it was the night before a holiday (Thanksgiving), a storm was moving in, and the only tranquilizer gun and authorized user were hours away. So Mosher said he made the only decision he thought he could make at the time.

But on Thursday, Savoy also accused Mosher of misrepresenting the situation by saying the dogs had attacked veterinarian David Cobb. Mosher said in an interview Thursday that he understood at the time that the dogs had attacked Cobb.

Cobb said Thursday that he never entered the pen because it would have been foolish to do so. The dogs had bitten Geel, the animal control officer, the week before and were out of control, he said.

Cobb also said that if the dogs had been housed in individual quarters, he could have injected them, but they were all in one large pen and acted like pack animals. Individual animals react differently to sedation and dogs that showed weakness were attacked, he said.

Cobb said he believes that if he and the others had walked away and left the job for another day, at least two of the already injured animals would not have survived the night. It was cold, and sedated animals lose their ability to retain body heat, he said.

“We tried for four hours to locate someone with a tranquilizer gun and for four hours we got nothing,” Cobb said. “I had drugs in my bag, but I had no way of getting the drugs from my bag to the dogs.”